Learning to Fight - Forrest Griffin - Episode 18 - Round 2

Learning to Fight Podcast — Conversations in Combat Skill

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

Your hosts are:

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

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

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

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:04

It's pretty fun. Come on, Forrest. Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning, Forrest. Part two. So are we having a redo because we were rabbiting on about fucking weight cutting and everything last time and never really got our pants off?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Well, y I mean, I'm definitely more of an expert in other things. Not that I don't feel I could run a weight cut, but um what I do is I usually just parrot stuff that our team has said. So if you have questions or what I say, I'm fucked. I don't know what you're like, well, yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 0:35

Well, you sounded like an expert relative to me, because I still don't have that uh I still don't have the weight cut by anyway.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I mean, it's not that hard, you know.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

But there was stuff you wanted to share some specific stuff today, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Yeah, I'm I'm kind of looking around. Um, I mean I'll share. So uh can I share my screen? Let's see how would I do that?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

You don't have control that says share. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, so I've I've you know, throughout the years I've kind of uh tried to refine our system and when I say me, um, you know, this is uh you know, this is a group thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I'm I'm uh you know definitely gotta kind of contribute and oversee it, but this is uh this is the work, you know, of a lot of you know smart people. That's the line. Yeah. Alright, so this is just, let's see.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

So this is just kind of where we draw the line between what we do at the UFC PI and what we don't do in regards to technical coaching of UFC athletes. It's a good place to start because you think about it. If you guys are both fighting, you both come into the PI, we can write you the perfect dietetics program, the perfect S and C, we can manage your recovery, I can help you dial in your schedule based on your strength and weaknesses and what skills you want for the fight, but you tell me what you're trying to do, right? Like I'm not gonna tell you, hey, well, you're fighting this guy, or hey, in your last fight, you missed um X, Y, and Z. You know, I just say, hey, well, what is it that you want to do? What is what are you trying to maintain? What are you trying to improve? Um, and then you know, we we would work on a schedule from there. This sounds like the funniest thing in the world, but there used to be a Richard Simmons diet thing. Everybody's mom bought it. Richard Simmons, remember him, the crazy guy that did the calisthenics and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Dude, it's funny. You mentioned you say him because I was talking to Scotty about a coaching course that I teach tomorrow. Richard Simmons is in there because the dude looked weird and he moved weird and everything was weird, but it didn't matter because he knew how to present and be confident and be excited.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

You know what? And the other thing, too, what I fall back on in my job constantly is I only need to know 10 or 15% more than you. As long as I know I don't have to know, I don't have to be even a master in this field. It's like nutrition. I'm not a master in that field, but I know maybe 10% more than you guys, right? Just from having done this. So, you know, it makes you kind of comfortable. But he had a thing that was.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

But can you blow this up for us? Can you just uh make this up like the presentation mode or the slideshow mode? So that people can see this if you don't mind. You might have to just do a slideshow.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Can I ask before you go through there? What is it? I'm I'm curious what the how you define what is a technical mean or the technical stuff.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Technical stuff.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

What is a technical part in that?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's something that again, it's not not my term. Um the the technical would be MMA. So MMA is the actual sport. Everything else is non-technical or the supplementary services. Does that make sense? Yeah, I was just curious how it was Yeah, so technical I refer to like myself as the technical leader.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

That should be a little better. Are you guys on phones? No, I just want people to be able to see it. So this is um, yeah, I mean that's not super important.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

There we go. There we go. This is kind of the framework that we fall into as far as um, you know, kind of where, and I've gotten to draw the lines with some of our bosses on what we do and don't do. Um again, you know, just trying to give the best to the fighter. Uh here's what we're trying to do. You know, identify the best talent from the region. So we we have to have a relationship with every good gym that region, with every really it starts with the local fight promotions. And then you go, all right, who are the fighters? What gyms are they coming from? And then we just put all this on a spreadsheet, and then every year when we have our combine, I just email who you got, who you got, who you got. And then, you know, managers, I'm at a point where now managers come to me. I don't have to like send it out, or they go to Eric Delpiero, a guy named Peter Zhang in China who's been you know doing it over there for years.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Um pause, just pause. Don't say anything. So you said combine, because Scotty is working on his master's in skill acquisition. And one of the things we have to do for the end of the semester is um figure out a way to Scotty, tell us not the framework, but the other part, the evaluation part.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

Yeah. Yeah, so part of our uh part of one of the modules on frameworks this year is coming up with our own framework, which I think is easy enough, but there's an assessment tool that has to be built into it. And I'm just as fucking lost as I was last week and the week before and the week before that. How you assess skill ethically in MMA from a like uh relational ecological perspective is a real challenge. I'm not sure how robust any kind of findings or data we can get, and I'm not sure what to do with the data.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

But so uh there's a guy named Dean Amund Singer that did a lot of this. Um and you know, basically we we take all the 50 fibers and we have them compete, and then you rank them in order of value, and and you know, if X beats Y, all right, move to X, and then you just kind of move on like that. So um, you know, control the live ghosts, right? So we do a lot of jujitsu, we do all the basic, you know, like the four or five most basic positions found in UFC fights. Um we know this through data, and this is what I get to do. It's like, all right, where do fights, where where are fights happening on the ground in the UFC and for how long? And then you get up from there, you know, get up, sweep, submit. Man on the bottom gets up, sweep, submits, you win, you get points. Guy on the top maintains control 30 seconds, passes, submits, he wins. And then you just you know you can rank points based on like how extraordinary the action was, you know, submission would be higher than an escape. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Um, but but the wrestling is you know, there's a risk of injury. So we take out no back trips, no uh, or no outside trips, no uncontrolled weight. We don't start a common position is where I would have your back on the fence. Do you know what I'm saying? We actually don't do that position, even though it's very common to the UFC because of the risk of injury.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

So but but you know, basically we just can you what position don't you do?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

So where I have a tight waist on you from the back and we're against the fence. Oh, okay, okay. That's a very common position MMA in the open in the fence, but it's also high probability of injury, so it's not working. Because people sit on each other's knees. Yes, all the time. And but there's no uncontrolled body weight, so you shouldn't be able to jump. And even if I pick you up, I can't leave my feet to slam you. Right. You know, like I can't do the jumping slam. Um, but yeah, so just set up the most common positions in the sport and have people go live from there. You can attribute offense, defense, or you can just say go. How do you handle the striking phase? So uh just basically a fancy uh a guy named Mark Timms came up with it. It is a fancy Dutch drill, and then we'll pull them aside and we'll have them hit mitts for three minutes. The first minute being the basics, the second minute, um, you know, kind of see if you can work with the flow with the guy, and the third minute, you know, we're gonna assess what's your what do you like to do, whatever, you know, like the athlete's kind of prowess there. Um so we, you know, hear your fundamental skills, and then what's your range of skills? So how like what type of strikes are how big is your arsenal?

SPEAKER_03 8:29

And then you know how does that correlate? How do you see that correlating? How do you see what they can do on the pad work correlating to what they can do in real live sparring? Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So yeah, yeah, but you're well, everybody else in the world, but you guys does a lot of pad work and back work. So it is it's pretty it's pretty common. And you can see has a guy done this, how's his power? Um, you know, can can he find his range? And and we have, I don't have them with me. I should actually brought those up, but we have some markers, just again, we we're taking the subjective and objectifying it. So I've given like or the team, we came up with like six markers, you know, power, speed, your ability to react, your creativity, your uh, you know, just I want to see how how the breadth of your MMA arsenal that's gonna give me some ideas how to how long you've been in the sport. And then this is again the China team figured this one out. We do an in-take survey. What's the highest level? Like how many years have you been training this? At what level? So we we have an understanding of who you are coming in. And I've also we've watched your last three or four fights. So we know when the rubber meets the road, where you are, what you're about. Because it was the fight tape that got you in. The fight tape, the age. Um, this is why we went out and I said, Hey, well, we're gonna give you a sweet contract and we'll give you money to to uh you know to basically fight for for the UFC. And you know, again, we're why wouldn't you come to an academy program? My goal is to fast track you into Roach UFC contender or directly into the UFC. So if that's what you want to do as a professional martial artist, the academy program is the best thing you can do.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Uh Scotty, I this is what I was hoping you get to hear a little bit of.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

So just you know, you've got grappling on the so we've taken MMA just like everybody else, grappling on the ground, grappling on the feet, and then striking, and we've divided them for safety because I find, and I'm sure you guys do too, it's those transitions, the uncontrolled bit where thing people get hurt. But even a spar, if we both got like 12-ounce gloves on and some padding, what we'll do is I get X, Y, and Z to attack you, and then you defend, and then we're gonna rank back how many times you get hit, what would it look like, you know? So it's not sparring, but it's a it's a live Dutch drill. And I know that that kind of violates everything you could think because it's it's live, but it's it's you know what it is, it's it's heavily constrained, so we don't have a fight. Sure. But we're still fighting. You know, I'm still trying to for one minute hit you in the fucking face with a jab with with straight punches, any straight punches, you know? Um, and you're just defending. And then we'll go break, go, break, and then you'll go, not for a minute. It's just like you get to go, I gotta go, you gotta go, I gotta go. We switch the technique, you get to go, I get to go, you gotta go. And then I just want to see like if somebody's low kicking you, what's your what's your defense system for it? Is it a check? Is it a this, is it that? And then we get down to where it's like I'm throwing combos with a kick, but you're only allowed, you're you're not allowed to like catch and dump me, right? Because now we're getting we're getting to where now I'm gonna try to take your head off, or like, well, I wasn't trying to hit him that hard. That's what we got string guards on, that's why he was able to catch me and dump me, and you know. So you know, we just we just limit that. Like you can't catch kicks, you can kind of catch them and throw them off, you know. But I want to see, you know, how do you how do you deal with low kicks? How do you deal with high kicks? How do you deal with body kicks? What's your defense system for that? How do you deal with straight punches? How do you deal with hooks? How do you deal with punches at different ranges? You know? It's really I mean, it's just a basic Dutch drill, not unlike what we did with Scott, but now we're we're we're uh putting some parameters on it and trying to score it.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

I I'm gonna I'm not gonna speak ill of the dead. Um we just did a we did a lot of offense-defense drilling, which is exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, and I mean we still do. And I say, look, man, put your faints in there. Like, don't be like, you know, throw a punch, throw what you throw in a fight at fight speed. He knows you're gonna throw it. If he can't defend it, it's kind of on him. That's what we do, you know. But I don't want like, I don't want the where like faint it, grab your hand, and then punch you, you know. So you have to like be you can't, you know, we're not we're not like throwing the hook to pull the guard down and then the second hook, you know. It's a great technique, but it's it's not fit for this purpose.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Is is there also a physical component to the combine where you get an idea of what their attributes are?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Oh, yeah, yeah. So they do, I think that, I mean, it's in the journal. It is in the journal. It's in the journal. I mean, there's there's I know that there's 12 tests. Isometric myth dipole, the uh weighted, the weighted jump, where according to your body weight, they have the jumps to get your uh you know, react reactive strength index, right? And then they want to get your you know uh rate of force development off the isometric myth dipole, and then they do the one-minute test and the six-second test. They don't do a VO2 max, but they do the one-minute uh blah blah blah. They do the a-lactic six-second test. It might be a truncated version, they might just do two instead of three goes, so it's like six seconds, two minutes rest, six seconds, two minutes rest, six seconds, and then they just do the the one-minute you know, max like all out go, the uh, you know, like the litig burn. It feels like when we used to run four hundreds. Right, and that was that was the goal. So to get the burn, run a 400, walk 400, run a 400, walk 400. I remember like you making me and Duffy do that workout.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

Yeah, I thought I thought that was a good indicator of where we were for sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

It was a good uh good indicator of how things can suck, especially when you got somebody like Duffy who's fucking fast. So now you're 400, you're gonna go like you're gonna want to do it pretty well, you know. You're not gonna kind of pace yourself.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

I think eventually we had some we've set some times for those too, I think, in later years, and they were pretty good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Say what? I'm sorry, I'm I'm sorry, I'm jumping in. Was that Todd Duffy you were talking about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:50

Big boy, huh?

SPEAKER_03 13:51

I co I coached him in his uh early professional career.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

So yeah, I'm still sharing my screen, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, that was a great aside, though, and hopefully that's it.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, no, no, no, just just on the combine. You know, again, there's there's so much in this program, and you know, having looked through the journal, you know that there's so much to it that like nutrition, uh intake process, how do I identify what makes a good martial artist? What makes you know what's going to make you good at the sport? Oh, quick aside, I don't, I mean, I still call it MMA, but I would argue that what we do is actually sport fighting, not mixed martial arts. I would argue that mixed martial arts is a separate beast, is actually, you know, derived from the whole military martial thing, and then it you know became in America anyway, a fat guy and a karate gee doing fancy stuff that may or may not ever work in a fight. Um, and then you know what we do is actually based off the rules of sport and and it's very ecological, right? Like what we do is we have these are the rules of the sport. How what's the way to inflict maximal damage to this person within this rule set? So, i.e. sport fighting. So I think that's what we really do. If you uh if you think that's what I do anyway, if you think about it, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:58

No, it's uh we Scotty and I like the word fundamentals is this like giant flagmire you get into talking to someone. And there's always like they they add so many things that it has no definition. So I think the simplest definition of fundamentals is the rules of your sport, that's what guides all behavior.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

And then you work backwards from there.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, the slide that says that. You know, basically uh, here forgive this is my PowerPoint ability. I don't know why there's a sheep there. This is how we should adapt our training, right? Um don't be a sheepfucker one. That's that's key. Uh, but no, it's the rules, the scoring criteria, and the most common win methods, plus UFC fight data, plus the athlete's abilities, and that is how we develop a training strategy for that individual. And then that training strategy from from we want to do how like head outside single, blah, blah, blah. And from there, we're gonna design his curriculum. So on Wednesdays, it's a wrestling day, high, you know, head outside, working the skills he wants. You know what I'm saying? Back to the um, back to the who is the guy we were talking about, the crazy uh weight loss coach guy, uh register with the crazy hair, what was his name? Simmons. Simmons, all right. So he had um he had a calendar. It was basically all your meals. So it was seven days, three, three blocks. So what I do is I bring out a calendar, seven, seven, uh, seven days, you know, Sunday usually off, right? And then you have three blocks on each day. And then I put, all right, you're gonna get a total of 12 practices. You got three wrestling cards over here, you put your wrestling cards in. You got three striking cards, put your striking cards in. Grappling, you put your grappling in, S and C, you put your SNC in. So basically, you have to value order your training. I want to get better at wrestling. So I'm gonna use four wrestling cards. I'm trying to, in this phase of camp, maintain my striking. I'm only gonna use two striking cards. You know what I'm saying? And then S and C. Well, I'm gonna use the three for now out of camp while I'm trying to develop some physical attributes and develop what you would call you know, cardiovascular base for the sport or an energy system base. Make sense? So we'll do that, four-week block, you come back, do four-week block, um, and and that, and then you know, it's it's uh, and then each week would have an intensity rating, you know, it's high volume, high intensity, high volume, high intensity, uh, you know, maybe medium volume, medium intensity, slightly higher, slightly higher. Peak, deload. Make sense?

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Yeah, do any other analytics on the fighters like uh heart rate, RPE, stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

In the academy. And in the bit, if they're in the building, yeah. Yeah, we do the SSRI, the rate of perceived exertion, rate of perceived the S uh sessional rate of perceived exertion is a tough one because if we have an hour-long practice, uh, and this is you know driven by research, I think from Foster himself, who invented the scale, blah, blah, blah. Well, Board invented the scale 6 through 20, but then it was Foster, they came up with a sessional uh sessional rate of perceived exertion. So if you do an hour-long practice, drill, drill, drill, but you go really fucking hard the last 20 minutes, you're gonna give me a very high rate of exertion for an hour, right? Which is gonna give us uh a metric. But you know, you're you're because what we did last, you have a little bias and you say that was a really hard workout, even though it actually wasn't that intense. You had live sessions versus drilling sessions. So, what we're trying to do now is separate out the drilling from the live, and then you would rate your intensity. You would understand that you did 15 minutes of live, uh, you know, three or three miles like full-on goes, and then you would rate that with the perceived intensity, and this would have us this first 40 minutes would have a separate perceived rate of intensity. So, yeah, we we so what I'm saying is yes, we do that. Um, we wear heart rate monitors when possible, you know, and they'll even tape them on. Um, there's a shirt that Garmin makes. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a shirt with the heart rate monitors in it. Um, we've used it. I thought it was good enough. Our sports science team did not think it was good enough. But even if you're not wearing it in practice, if we can get you a basic concept of uh sleep score, readiness score, and your HRV, like once you have a you know, 30 days of HRV data to look back on, you can start using that heart rate variability to gauge where you are as far as your training window for the next sessions or for the week. Does that make sense? Yes. And I think that's the easiest way to do it because you're only asking me to wear a ring when I go to sleep. Which I forgot mine on the charger this morning. Or rings, is that what you use? Uh we use ultra-human right now, but just they're still a little better, no subscription fee. Ultra human, okay. I mean, you know, the technology is relatively similar. I didn't really realize I left that horror horrible slide on there. Um, so this is something, and this is completely made up, but um, it's kind of what I work off of. That and and what is on my my board over here, which I'll show you. Um, so these these would be um uh a lot of it is is what our team of sports scientists and you know other coaches have identified as the parts of a train training. Um I don't do a fight camp and a late fight camp. So they do a late fight camp, which is three weeks because we do three-week cycles. So early fight camp would be the first three weeks, late fight camp would be the second three weeks. I feel like a late fight camp for me is more about strength and conditioning. It's more about when we start going to short, sharp, pop, pop, pop. We've developed our our base, we've developed our strength. Now we're just working on speed and power. We're maintaining uh power and trying to work on speed. Does that make sense? I mean that's I mean that's like CSCS basics, right? That's the whatever organization that does that would tell you that that's kind of the way to do it. Um but I don't in in fight in MMA training, I don't differentiate the first three weeks from the last three weeks. I differentiate the first four or five weeks, depending on how long, how much conditioning you're in, versus the last four or two weeks, right? So it what I mean by that is basically when do we stop hard sparring? When do we start deloading to taper for competition, right? When when when does that uh point start? Uh my my my belief, and I can be corrected on this now that I'm thinking about it, I've never seen scientific research, but my belief is the longer training you've done, the longer taper you get. Does that make sense? There's no no empirical data to suggest that. That's just what I found. If you train, train, train hard, hard, hard for five, six, seven, eight weeks, well, you should probably take a 10 to 14 day taper. If you only did it like a six-week camp, you get a week. Does that make sense? Yeah, you would take age and weight cut into account as well with that, right? Well, the taper is basically as so that's a I mean, that's sorry, in my head, that's included in the taper. Not age. I don't know age age you'll have to tell me about, but the the taper is why are we tapering? And I'll use an example for myself. We're tapering because our caloric uh we're we're having less calories. So if we have less calories and we're we're losing body fat, we're losing like lean mass too. We can't maintain that volume of work. We should maintain the intensity, but we can't maintain that volume, i.e., we have to taper down. So that's that's based on that. And that's personally. So I had a camp where I was freaking awesome, everything was going great. And then the last two weeks, I was getting out wrestled by Jay Heron, a 170-pounder. The first, you know, six weeks of camp, I would just physically manhandle him. And my strength was enough to overcome his technique. But you know, as my strength and energy went down, because I was only taking in like 2,600 calories a day, which for me was not a lot, um, I started getting out-muscled by 70 pounder, which is like the worst thing to do is going into a fight. You're like, I'm getting muscled above 70 pounds, this sucks. I suck.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Do you do you remember there you had a fight camp? It was one of your early UFC fights. And the Saturday before, you brought in John was there and and some other people were there. And some other people. I don't I don't think he was there, but it doesn't matter who. There were people there, and we went through a full workout that Saturday, and you, at the end of that workout, I don't I don't think I said it to you, but I said it to Rory. I'm like, this is bad because he just peaked today. Yes. The fight is next week.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah. Yeah. I I know exactly what you mean, but but then and I probably did that in my career. I remember another time I was trying to get some just some easy sparring, like the week of the fight. It was literally like Sunday. I was leaving Tuesday, and uh I had kicked Yehoshu, I knocked him out, and I told him, Yeah, yeah, you know, we can go easy. It's fucking Yeah, but that's that that's fine. I it was like a pure accent, like literally I was just fucking on, you know. I go around with Big John, get the better of him, around it, you know. I was doing like two guys, and I was like, fucking great. Um, but but yeah, from then though, it's it's the weight cut. Of course I felt good. I was doing great because I was 223 pounds, you know. I was 224 pounds or something, you know? Get down to 205, you know, start getting for me anyway, getting under 225 at that time, I started feeling like a little, ooh, okay. I'm I'm lighting. What does RTT stand for? Uh return to training. Oh, okay. So return to training, general prep, specific prep, uh, you know, fight camp, taper fight, peak fight. Um, I couldn't, I ran out of space to put peaking. But you know, and peaking would be, you know, where you're doing like the elactic mit work, as uh the guy named Dean would call it. You know, just pop, pop, stay sharp, but you know, it's a it's kind of the same thing I do in the locker room to warm up. I'll hit mitts really hard for 10, 15 seconds, maybe shoot a takedown, maybe do a get up, and then walk around for a minute, let my heart rate come back down, just that explosive burst, just relax. And then, you know, it's it's actually a lot of the stuff, the Joel Jameson book you gave me 20 years ago, it it's it's really adhering to that stuff. Whereas I remember like reading the book, that Joel Jameson's first book, and thinking like, rest for three minutes? That's stupid because that's that's not what this sport is about. So in my head, I was like, well, I have to do some sort of intervals in you know that that equal to five minutes. You know, I was really the five minutes was in my head, and I was like, Well, you would never rest three, you get a minute rest, so I shouldn't do more than a minute rest. He's telling me to rest for three or four minutes before I go get, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

There's there's a difference, you know, there's a difference between specificity of training, yeah. Right, and you know, representative of the training. And there's probably a there's a role for each, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

But well, you know, now what I realize is he was developing a maximal skill, right? Well, you know, max peak thing, and that's what you have to do now that I understand energy systems. When I read that book, I didn't know I didn't really understand any of that. I didn't even know aerobic anaerobic. Like I didn't know this, you know. I mean, I had basic biology. I could describe the parts of the cell, but I didn't know like, you know.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

Right, right, yeah. I have a question about this periodization, right? Yeah, if we have to look at it from two different perspectives, one being that we acquire these skills, we build these, we memorize these motor patterns, or we program our bodies or whatever, right? Yeah. Then you could also look at it from the different perspective that we're constantly we're constantly adapting and updating so our skills can develop and degrade, right? Yeah. Um, so two things. The first question I was gonna ask, we talk about the sports science team, and I'm not trying to be cute here, whatever. Are there motor learning scientists on the team?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Not directly, no. Okay, so I was just I was just kidding. Nobody that's all right, so you know, to get a PhD, everybody, all the PhDs have touched that and they have a good understanding of that. They've taken courses in it, uh, all the PhDs we have anyway. Um, but that's not they've nobody's got their PhD in motor learning, skill acquisition. Nobody's got nobody has that. Okay, I'm not I'm not trying to keep up with that. And she has a pretty good knowledge of you know the skill acquisition process as well.

SPEAKER_04 26:40

I just think it's uh so there's two things that spring out as I think about this. So if you look at it from a traditional information process and model that we're going to develop these patterns, these skills, these mental models, these representations uh coming up to the fight, then generally speaking, that could that can be done over a long time. We build that through our development uh arc, but um what is what would be the what is really the point of a fight camp then? Just to hone in and refine some of these more patterns and to get ourselves uh physically prepared?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

So it's a great question. It's not uh it's not a one-sentence answer. So this is the point of a fight. Let me I'll start from the beginning. All right, so we're in a fight camp. These can be three-week blocks, these can be four-week blocks. I like uh return to training, two-week block. Uh, and then we have just kind of you know positions and skills. So return to training, I'm just identifying what it is the sport consists of, and that's very general, right? Intentionally broad and vague. Uh, in general prep, what what are we doing? Well, we're doing a review of where we are to where we want to be. What are the, and this is actually from a non-MMA guy. Where where were we here? What do we need? What skills do we need to acquire to be then you know better than we are, to be elite? What are the skills? Um, and then you know, uh, yeah. So we got to identify what skills we need to add in the general prep, and we'll start working them. And then we'll do that discrete skill training in isolation, right? And I'm needing to I keep I'll just start with wrestling. So this is this is the technique I want, this is the scramble I want. And then this is also kind of the Ilya Taporia model, right? So he does everything separately until about the last four weeks, and then he does MMAs. He doesn't do MMA sparring outside of the last four weeks. And so for me, there's a place for that, but it's in the general prep, maybe the specific prep. Specific prep, we're just trying to refine down what skills we really need uh and what we are physically capable of acquiring, right? So I've identified the skills. Now I'm still trying to learn them, I'm trying to pick them up, um, you know, and then we're kind of playing around with, well, what am I gonna take into my next fight, regardless of my opponent, right? So the further out from a fight, the fight a fight you are, the more you're working on your skills, the closer you get to a fight. Oh, they actually said that here I could just read off the thing.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

Can I ask you a question? Yeah, yeah, because what does that word skills mean to you? Because I think we're using it in a different context. The people that are listening to us on this podcast might have a different understanding of that word.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

What was the definition I sent you? I I was happy with that.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

You mean the definition I sent you or you sent me? Oh, I thought they were similar. I'm gonna find it. All right, I'm gonna find it. I'll I'll go with either one of those. So the definition I sent you was a skill is the ability to adapt your movement solution to the problems the environment presents. Yeah. And I think that you were using it as a technique that uh solve problems. And so there is there isn't a lot of daylight, but uh it may be a really important distinction. Are you looking on your phone? Yeah, I'm I'm looking for I really liked it. Okay, you wrote a coordinated action that can be repeated in a fight under pressure. I almost use the word technique, which it could be, but could be something else. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Which is what it is, though, right? I I hang out with uh I hang out with you know PhDs all day. That's how they talk. What's the answer? The answer could be many things. But that that is how that is how I am defining skill when I talk about it, right? It's just a skill, it's it's an ability you have that you can use in a fight. Uh, and ability is not even the right word, because ability can be physical ability, but in this case, I mean uh, you know, a technical ability, you know, something that, again, in my arsenal, they can be utilized under duress.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

It's funny that you said physical and then you you you removed it, but I would say don't remove it, because without the physical, there is nothing like it's there's no separating the physical from the technique or the skill. I mean, it's all one thing. The more physically able you are, the more you're able to do things.

unknown 30:45

Right?

SPEAKER_03 30:45

I mean, that's you know, that's why you were ahead of your time because you were a really good athlete.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Yeah. Um, and and it's yeah, no, I mean I agree. So that's that's kind of where we're at with with the skill or technique, right? So if it makes sense, I think to both of us, it's pretty close. I mean, it's not the same, but it's pretty close, which is I I I think you know, probably for the best. You know, and and now now we're gonna start, like as we get closer on this continuum to the fight, we're gonna start, you know, who who are we fighting? What are they good at? What are the situations which I perceive I have an advantage over them? You know, where do I want this fight to take place? What do I think is the distance or range? You know, I don't want to kickbox at distance with Addisandja. Maybe I want to put him on the fence and grind him and fight him there. Maybe I want to fight him in boxing range, you know, but I, you know, it's like just general, right? Um, yeah, I mean, which is you look at the last fight, kickbox, he said kickboxing range the first round did really, really well. Second round, he went into the boxing range and he went into the 50-50 position, right? When I say 50-50, it's like I can land, you can land, I can land, you can land. So then power becomes more important and the actual skill uh and and distance management become less important. Why do you think he did that? Uh no idea.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Okay, hypothesize. Why would a fighter win the first round with an obvious game plan that he had that was working, and then be like, you know what, I'm gonna do something different.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

You know, I don't know. Maybe uh maybe um what's his name? Starts with a P. Maybe Viffer did something different. I think maybe like Addisandia still got a good chin. I think he took some of the shots in the first round and said, I don't really need to be afraid of that. Or, you know, uh or maybe he was looking to be exciting and finish the fight, you know, instead of usually just touch, touch, touch until something rocks a guy and then you go in for the kill. But you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

This is all this is all scream and uh adaptation to me. Um I know you may I saw in the original slide the Dreathless model. I'm not totally familiar with that. I believe it's a very linear information process model. But you you you mentioned Taporia, right? He he he puts it all together the last the last week. He's adapting to game speed. Um so yeah, it's it's interesting. I I I looking at this periodization thing, I I think it goes through a lot of these linear assumptions. Uh regards to game plans, I think Adam likes to say that 50% of game plans fail.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Well, I I like to say, yeah, well, because someone loses every fight. I also like the old everyone's got a plan until they get hit in the mouth.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah. But also, you know, the that wasn't even Tyson's original. There was somebody else who put a very similar quote. And then that's the original.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

In general, it was like not Eisenhower Pattern.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

No, no, no, yeah. Well, there's there's a couple, but the the one you're talking about is a battle plan rarely survives the first shot, first, first contact. Is that what it is?

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Yeah, stuff like that. But yeah. Um yeah, and and I think the f the flip side is right of the other person has a say in it. And I like the fact that you pointed out that maybe what Adasanya did was driven by what Pfeiffer did. You know, that he that he because it's not Adesanya's fight, it's their fight. And so sometimes the idea to these game plans, I get, I get it, but if if we get too granular, then sometimes we forget that the other person has a say in it.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Yeah. And and that what you've seen in the past is not always what shows up. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like people, people change, people develop, people go to new gyms and start fighting a different way. Now, I've seen this a bit too, where you're like, that is a different guy. He went to a different gym for seven weeks and he's different. Wow, he's fighting different than he has before. I didn't even know he had that. But um, here's the thing when you're working the game plan, the techniques, everything like that, you're not losing. You're still getting better at a skill or adapting something. So that that's gonna come up and improve you for later on. Right. I mean, the the other thing is when I say game plan, I also mean like we want to identify the opponent. What are his tells? What are his weaknesses, what are the feints he likes. And I want to say, okay, you know what? He does that rear leg feint, but he really actually throws that kick. I know that. Or, like me, when I'm in trouble in a fight, what do I do? I fucking put my head down and go forward. Like you could watch four fights of Forrest Griffin and know that like when he gets clipped, he puts his head kind of down, look over the top of his eyes, and does the uh, you know, the running man punches, right? You know, like that's that's gonna be his oh shit. Um, you know, or like this guy's gonna shoot. Or if you push him, you know, uh BJ Penn identified it with Shirk. Once he gets to the back line, once he gets on the cage, he's uncomfortable, he's gonna want to shoot on the fucking knee him every time he tries to shoot, you know? And then that was something he identified specific for Sean Shirk, which if you look at Sean Shirk's career, that's something he always does.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

Uh Rob Gray, who is a professor in this area, is doing a series of short lectures on this type of idea. Like, what do you do with offline information? You know, does it be like I'm sorry, what did you say cross? What is offline information? These these things, these things that you identify that the other person does, you know, when when a picture is uh has a three-two count, he usually throws a fastball. Yeah, right. Like, and is that just is is that a cognitive process or is that just you're educating your attention? And so you can pick it up better, you can if it happens or doesn't happen, things like that. And there's no great answers because I've got what I think is a good answer. No, I don't mean uh I want to hear that, but I meant in like where where does that does it get stored? Is it representative? Is it does it come out in the middle of the fight? Like, there are no great answers to that. I know how we feel about that.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Let me hear so this is what makes again MMA very unique. You've got a guy in the corner that can also identify, that's also watched the film, that a guy, and I've I've heard an Eric Nixon do this where he called the technique the guy was gonna throw, and sure enough, he fucking threw that technique. You know, I got some. Okay, but what's the you know right? But what's the value of the your film study with your coaches? So your coaches now have the ability to give you information. Maybe it's in some sort of code, maybe not, but now I can give you information on what I see your opponent doing or what I think he might do without you having to, because you want to be kind of more about what am I gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

So I think what what what we what I would argue is you are perceiving and acting without anything in between those two things. So whatever Eric Nikstick perceives is way different than what you can perceive and act on. Yeah. And so I again I don't know what the value of that is other than it makes Eric Nikstick look, you know, like like uh uh like he's watching film. Like he's watching film, you know. And I get it in football or for sports where you can make changes on every play, it makes sense. But um, and it's funny, before you said Eric Nixtick's name, I was gonna point out that there's a coach in the UFC recently that you really like. And I've seen this trend with his fighters, and they are unable to make any changes between the first round and the subsequent rounds. And I was going to say, I believe a lot of that is because they programmed that on the heads.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah, no, I I see that too. You know, I would say that is probably um if if I wanted to throw like a, you know, I think of I think of a TJ Dillashaw and um, you know, his coach, I forget, I forget, also, Ludwig. I think of those guys because they have those sets. And then it's like if you do XYZ, then this, this is always the response. Um, but you know, I worked with one of the guys, Peter Welch, and I really liked it. You know, it's just simple as if I catch a cross, I just immediately without thinking, cross, hook, cross, move off on the second. And I dude, I've done that freaking 10, 15 times in uh, you know, 16 fights in the OFC. Or if I catch a hook, I just throw my own hook, cross, exit. You know? And like they didn't always land, but it came out and it was enough to give the guy something to think about. It was like, oh, the second I touch this, this comes out, and it's okay, that's there's intent there. It might even not land, but it's you know, I have to do something about it. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm just giving you a case where it works, but yeah, I've seen guys where you know it doesn't work either.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Right. And and I I think what you're pointing to is you know, the way that striking works is that if you defend, it it sets your body up to do something naturally almost.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yeah, yeah. It's just an instinctive, it just pops out. I love it. Sometimes it'll still pop out when I'm scrolling. Bing, bing, bing. Like, oh shit, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

Um it's never quite the same. It's never quite, but it's never quite the same.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

No, because you're always slightly different. Your feet are in the wrong position, you're there. But it's it's it's my attempt at that perfect technique. So it's like bag work, you know. We don't really see I think bag work done correctly has some value. Um, I think most bag work is shit, but but that's only because there's not an intent behind it. Like, what am I getting out of this bag work? Like, what am I trying to do? Um and then um what what's the uh yeah, yeah, you know, um and then you know, taper, um, and sometimes on the taper your opponent changes or some crazy shit might happen. And then you would kind of want to drill that. Um then there's also where you're fighting like uh Damian Maya, a specialist, where that will change your your plan to some extent too, because you know like I have to fucking not get taken down. I have to change my stance a little bit. I have to like, you know, suck in my offense because I can't I don't have the confidence to get up if he gets to my back. I could be done there, you know. So you're identifying the text you the techniques you need, and then you're sparring in the fight camp, and you're saying, Did I successfully adapt this skill? You know, right? And that that's kind of my thought on it, you know. So I can do it in training, I should try to do it in the flight. I can do it under, you know, close to competition conditions. That's the best uh idea I have that I'd be able to do it in a competition. And then obviously you're cut, you cut, hopefully the work's done. And then post-fight, though, and I ran out of space, but post-fight, what you know, you gotta identify the fight. What were the skill gaps? You know, what what didn't I do well? What do I want to improve? What did I do well? Um, but but more or less like, you know, how do I maintain what I did well and how how do I add some skills that would have been useful for that last fight? So like a post-fight reevaluation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

What what what kind of uh what kind of value do you put on getting sparring partners that well, I guess it's two sparring partners that can mimic your opponent and or sparring partners that already look like your opponent.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Yeah, I think those are yeah. What do you think? I think the more specialized your opponent, the more necessary it becomes. You're fighting a long southball, you need a long southball. Period. Just period, right? You're fighting a long southball kickboxer. You're fighting a guy with really good shots, you need some sort of wrestler. And then I would prefer that shot to come out of the stance that my opponent's shot is going to come from. So uh again, look, you can only get what you can get. You only have access to who you have access to. And you hear this in the fight commentary a lot when they talk about like, imagine trying to find people to train for this guy. Well, I mean, if you can't, you can't, then you're just working on being the best version of you. But I think my caveat would be that the distance, the arm length, the leg length makes just it just makes a difference in sparring because you know I fight so much better when I'm longer. If my opponent's longer, it's a whole different thing for me, you know. So, you know, that's just and that's just personally what I found. And because I found that personally, when I watch fights, I think I seek that out for to kind of validate what I think is true. So uh that that's my full thought on I think it's definitely useful.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

So I don't I it's unclear to me what the value of film study is, but I I'll I'll concede there's there's there's value there. From probably the perspective that Adam and I would have, though, I don't think you can meaningfully make much sense out of a fighter without thinking of how he's interacting with other fighters. So I think with regards to film study, shouldn't we just be looking at it? What the fighter, what the I and you know this, right? But what the fighter tends to do, rather a little bit more uh maybe more valuable is what is illicit in that behavior? What is the relationship in that fight?

SPEAKER_00 42:32

What I heard you say to me, what in my own brain, I translated um the closer your opponent's is to fighting someone similar to you, the more valuable that's gonna be. You know, if my opponent is fighting another long striker and I'm a short wrestler, he's not gonna fight me the same way. I know that, but I can still see what his technical preferences are, what his go-tos are, what he does when he's fatigued, where he moves in the cage. You know, some guys will move back when they're fatigued, some guys will move forward, you know. I can still see what what he does if I have enough uh recent film on him. Yeah, I don't disagree with that.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

I just if I'm watching film, um, which I do, I try and I try and look at the interaction rather than the action. That's all. And you're probably doing that. Yeah, I mean positive.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah, 100%, 100%. And and yeah, like my takeaway from that would be the closer they are to the closer the opponent, the closer the guy is fighting someone to you, the closer it's gonna be the more useful it's gonna be, right? If they're fighting somebody totally different than you, you know, it's interesting, but is it, you know. Or or maybe it's like uh, you know, I I'll go one the other way. Maybe it's T Ortiz. T Ortiz tries to do the same thing against everybody. There's only one way that sucker fightes. He's gotta, he's gotta try to punch, punch, shoot, and set himself up for the shot. You know, that's and then Brown and Power. He fights everybody the same way.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

Sometimes Brown and Power with elbows, too.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah, yeah, but but you know, he sets his shots up and he sets his offense up the same way, you know, with everybody. Uh you know, ke Kevin Randleman was always he did the exact same thing with everybody. It was just like, was he fast enough and athletic enough to do his thing to you? Like, could you get out of the way fast enough? Or could you get into the second, third round and then speed him up?

SPEAKER_04 44:09

You know. So I guess I'm I'm talking a little bit for Adam here as well. But um so I think Adam and I would would agree that we want as much novelty and and the novelty, all the different looks you're getting, the different sizes, the different speeds, the different skill sets, the different experience, the way it's all actually that's doing the heavy lift, that's doing the heavy lifting as it pertains to being becoming an adaptable fighter. So well Adam and I I think are advocating for sorry Adam, I'm bringing you a wing, I'm throwing you on the board. It begs a question: why are we teaching ideal, why why are we trying to teach to not saying we all are, to a technical ideal at all? I don't want my fighters moving the same way. First of all, we need to come to a consensus of what a fucking perfect job or a perfect cross or a perfect roundhouse is anyway. Yes, there's features that make some better than others, but as long as my fighters are gravitating towards that, I want as much diversity and and ugliness and like novelty in the room as I can.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

So what you just described is why it's so important to have out-of-camp sparring that doesn't hurt you because I want as many looks as possible. I want to solve as many, to put it in your terms, I want to solve as many unique problems or novel problems as I can in that off-camp just because I don't know who my next opponent is. One, and two, it's gonna broaden my skills. I'm gonna find out, all right, what do I do against this guy? What I okay, this guy's different. And I think that's great, you know. Um, and maybe I would do that anytime except for maybe the last four weeks of sparring. Last four weeks is sparring, I want maybe the look. This is what this is the look, you know. And when I say last four weeks of sparring, I mean like five weeks out. But yeah, um, yeah, I mean that's that's literally, you know, when you go with a random person, you might spar with a like uh sparring, I sparred again for the first time in four months. Um I've decided my knee is so fucked, there's no point in trying to save it. And I did around with a girl. I've I don't know that I've ever sparred with a girl before, but I did and I got something out of it because I was like, well, I'm gonna move and I'm gonna let her get close, but try not to let her punch. You know what I'm saying? So like you're just you're just working yourself. And and that's like where the athlete, and I don't know that I have this in my 20s, the athlete has enough intelligence to take advantage of every problem they're given and think, all right, how do I solve this problem? Like, obviously, I don't want to hit this girl hard. I want her to punch at me, and I want to, you know, I want to evade every punch, right?

SPEAKER_03 46:17

I tell me. And I think, Scotty, I think a little bit, a little bit of a disconnect because I don't think there's a lot of daylight here. No, because you know, Forrest is exposed to a lot of really good stuff and comes up with a basis in in aliveness. Some of the some of the discussion here that we're having past each other is there are amateurs and then there are low-level pros and higher level pros and now UFC fighters and elite UFC fighters. And each one is in a different place in their skill levels and what is stabilized, and so you know, and what you can do after a fighter has 15, 20 fights as it and it's elite. There may be a difference in what you can do with that fighter versus when a fighter's young and and more malleable. And so we have to take that fighter where they are, meet them where they are. And far as just meeting them usually at an elite level.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

They're developed. They've developed something already. They've already got what they want to do. They've got, you know, it's slight changes. You know, when you're just starting, you can you can do a whole course correction and go this way or that way. And you should, you probably should. But as you get here, that that adaptability, because you've got so much rope dogma, it's going to be harder and harder to just change who you are as a fighter. Also, oh, the the the thing I brought up last time, Scott, my favorite thing is the thing I do best when I coach is I show a technique and I say, Look, I'm not great at this. This is what I do, this is a boxing technique that I've adapted for MMA. So I've changed my stance, I've changed it, blah, blah, blah. I want you to do it with your body, your speed, your time, and your space. So we're doing the same technique, but it's going to look different. So the jab becomes it's just a lead hand, you know. Like we've really like, you might do it, it's a lead hand from, you know, in a relatively straight fashion. You know what I'm saying? So your jab, your footwork on your jab might look a lot different. I I teach the same footwork doc taught, but a lot of guys move their front leg up only, and then they bring their back leg up on the cross. I move both up on the jab and then pivot on the cross. It's preference.

SPEAKER_04 48:16

Do you do that in flights?

SPEAKER_00 48:18

I have. I have done that. I I will uh who's the guy I fought? Um went to jail for uh Travis Fulton. Um Jack Cross. It was fucking beautiful. It looked like it looked like I was on the fucking mitts. Big beep. All three punches hit him clean. You know? It was like my fleet were in the foot right spot. I was like, I know this because there was a picture of it in the UJ paper, and it was like perfect. It was like a fucking, you know, out of a textbook. It's like that's how you should throw a Jack Cross. That's what it should look like, you know?

SPEAKER_04 48:45

So that's that's beautiful that that that situation, that in uh interaction, that flight you're in, that afforded you the ability to express that.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

And I guess because Travis Fulton was not as long as Forrest, and Travis Fulton was a traditional boxer for his striking.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Yeah, yeah. He you know, he was loading up a big rear hand the second I came in, but I was longer and quicker, so the big rear hand kind of fell down with him, you know? He was trying to counter my jabs because that double jab is not the hardest thing to counter. He was trying to counter my jabs with a cross or some sort of overhand, I think. I couldn't really tell. Yeah, overhand. But that that cross caught him and crumpled him before he could, you know, express that skill.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

I liked what you said last week. I like what you said last week about you want to train in the body you're gonna fight in. Yeah, because I think that's a really that's a really ecological idea that I that I think is is missed.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

And again, that's something I would tell you I know is trial and error. You know, I really liked when I'd get up to like 235. Remember those days? I do. I was yeah, not for me. It wasn't great for me. I know it wasn't great for anybody except me. That's why my body hurts. But that's not the body I could have on fight day. So those attributes are irrelevant, you know what I'm saying? Like that's not that that wasn't I couldn't replicate that on fight day. So in essence, it was like, you know, sense of false confidence, you know, like I was just fucking you're 250 pounds, and I'm just pushing you off of me. But then, you know, you cut the calories, cut the weight by 10 pounds, and I'm like, shit, bad technique doesn't work without extreme strength.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

Can I can I ask you about this slide you put up?

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

All right. So this is sessions per week, 60, 90, 120. How if you had a 60 or 90 or 120? It could be 80, it could be anything. Okay, how much live work? So there's some warm-up, there's some cooldown. How much live work do you think can a person do in a session before it starts to become either dangerous because of risk of injury or just it's not valuable anymore?

SPEAKER_00 50:45

I gotta, I gotta give you an atom answer here. It's a hundred percent dependent on that individual in that environment. If I look at high school wrestlers, look at high school wrestling. How much live work do they do? It's a fucking lot. In few, they're still doing a lot of live work. You know, it's like they'll do some live work, stop, bullshit a little bit, do some live work. At least uh when Gray Maynard used to take me to, you know, wrestle with the high schoolers, I'd wrestle with heavy uh wrestle with the heavyweight high schoolers and beat them up. It was really pathetic. I was a 30-year-old man wrestling, beating up uh 17-year-olds, but it was great. It was great. We were the same weight. What do you want? But uh uh beat up guys that don't even have pubes yet. It's great. Um no, but but um yeah, that was uh yeah, so it's it's gonna be very shoot for about 20 minutes. I like drill, drill, drill, learn, rewarm up, rewarm up, do your do your live rounds. Uh, and then the other thing that that uh I guess I don't know what they're doing in Mexico exactly, but what they're doing in Shanghai is you might do like three minutes, 30 seconds rest, three minutes, 30 seconds, or you might do like do two minutes rest and you know, like where it's like kind of a like a ladder practice where you're actually out more than you're in. But when you're in, you're going live. You know what I'm saying? Like those rotational we used to do that. Yeah, Scott, Scotty, Scotty used a lot of that. We used to do that. Yeah, yeah. We you know, we would we would have like basically your rest is based on how my rest would be based on how long it takes you and Rory to either get the uh get the move we're going for or to break from that position. And then we would reach that, and then I would come in with the winner loser, or you know, top bottom out, like we do, you know, so you do drills like that. So even then, even though you're doing 20 minutes of live work, it's not 20 minutes of all live. It might be it might be me and you for two minutes, rest 30 seconds, me and somebody else for two minutes, or you're top for two minutes, rest, I'm top for two minutes. You know, if it could be like that too. So so uh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

Okay, yeah. Uh one thing I got, one thing I got from you at the first UFC thing was we do some live work to warm up, then we do our hard sparring, and then we do some live work to cool down.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Yes, I love it. I love it. I just feel you're just for me, I'm just primed to learn. And and we're we're not we're taking a big break. So we're taking like a full five minute minutes, and then we're we're doing, you know, uh specific, you know, like okay, what what did I want to work on today? What was I trying to do today? Like, and and I just feel for me, and I've gotten positive feedback, you're you're you're primed to learn because you just made the mistake. Why not fix it right now, you know? Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

I call it self-study, and so I'll say, okay, you have a 15-minute block right now, pick something that happened during the sparring that you need, you know, reps on live reps on, get a partner and go. And then that that's usually the only time that myself or the other coaches will sort of interject.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

I want I I I hate that we're going through this slide deck so fast. Oh, really cool stuff. A lot of it is not, uh, I mean, I got so many slides. A lot of this, there, all right. So I have a ton of slides, and each has a portion of skill acquisition, you know? Like I don't have a whole slide dedicated to skill acquisition. Um, I just you know mention it in every slide, if that makes sense. Like in every presentation, there's gonna be some form of skill uh acquisition. I don't know, you might find this interesting.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

Oh, so Forrest is a cat person, which is why I can't go to Vegas and stay at his house. Scotty, what else what else? I know I know Forrest has probably a hard out at 1230 or whatever in that time.

SPEAKER_04 54:34

I'm gonna I'm gonna ask Forrest a question that uh just curious to answer that. I ask a lot of my team and fighters. Okay, so you're starting, you pick a sparring partner or training partner. You're out there, you're you start the spar, they go to throw a strike at you. When does that strike begin?

SPEAKER_01 54:49

When does that strike gonna go for?

SPEAKER_00 54:51

I mean, I guess for me, I got I mean, I have a really good answer. It begins when I identify that it's coming. Good answer. Might be the shoulder, might be the hip, might be his lead step. It might not be until it's fucking already coming to me. But that's when that strike begins for me, and that's when I have to take my mind from what am I gonna do to him to how am I gonna counter this? Now that's actually something I struggle to do still in fights, and then we could talk about flow, and times I've had fights where I didn't struggle to do that, but I got my like I know what I'm trying to do, but then now you've done something, I've got to forget what I'm trying to do and adapt to this. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 55:30

I think I was good answering.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

I'm trying to touch that's a great answer. I'm trying to touch you with my leg, but now I see I have to deal with this cross coming at me. So that's when, you know, that's when I once I identify it, now I've got to deal with it. And I've got to deal with that, and then I can go back to trying to kick you in the leg. Or maybe that's gone because our positions have changed, and I've got to identify what I want you to hit you with now.

SPEAKER_04 55:49

I think we're getting close to putting this in a nutshell. So I don't explain your little replace the P with A thing, and then I'll follow up.

SPEAKER_03 55:55

No, I I think Forrest, the way Forrest is described it was excellent. I mean, a strike, the strike doesn't start for him until he perceives it. Until he perceives the affordance of defending it or countering it, or whatever that affordance is, it doesn't exist. And I I like that. I mean, I think that's a that's a really good answer.

SPEAKER_04 56:13

That's a I tell you, no, just that's the best answer. That's answering. It's actually the answer I'm looking for. But I do have a follow-up. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

So far, I like the we are trying to figure out like if perception and action are coupled, then they're really the same thing. And so when you when you perceive that punch coming at you, your action is coupled with that. There is no thinking or changing or doing, it's just happening.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, brain answer. And and then I will I will defer to you guys as to whether, you know, for me, I have counters that I've done a lot. So one of these counters hopefully is gonna pop out, and hopefully it's gonna be the right one. You know, so like it's a cross, I see it, I immediately slip outside. And if I'm really good, if I'm really feeling myself that day, I slip outside and throw my own cross, come back with the left hook, move off. Stable movement solutions.

SPEAKER_03 57:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

So we shouldn't you mentioned stabilizing earlier. Well, you can explain that one to me offline.

SPEAKER_04 57:11

Gotcha. So um we would we would from a dynamical system thing, right? We would call these you, you're you're the fact over time you're gonna see what you're gonna start to perceive rear crosses coming, you're gonna start coupling your uh slipping actions to that, and that becomes an attractive solution. So when you see that in the chaos of a fight, you're attracted towards that solution. We're not saying there's a little forest in the head going, oh, that's what I do now here. I'll I'll pull from my rolodex of techniques and I'll go over there. So I think we're on the same page. The reason I asked that question, when does the strike start? And I thought again, I'm not just gassing up here. That is the that is the answer I want. I would follow up and that says that's that's where the value of the liveness comes from. Because the more rear crosses or kicks or strikes that come at us, we will be able to perceive that earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier. That is the rate our our perceptual resolution gets higher. And if perception and action are the same things, that is where skill lives. And that's the reason I guess we're we're kind of against dead drilling. Certainly, pad work and that can't pad work cannot offer you that. So padwork may have a value, but it has to be a different value. It it's not the same, it's just not the same. It can't be the same. There's no case to be made that it's the same.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

Yeah, and the pad holder literally moves his hand because I've thrown a shitty punch. This shit wouldn't connect. But he literally moves it so to make me feel good. But you know, uh, so all right, uh aliveness versus uh aliveness and a big part for me of aliveness is game speed. Aliveness versus risk versus damage. So that's that's if you wanted to say what is the problem, what is the biggest problem uh, you know, with training MMA, I would say it's adding the aliveness and the game speed, the the freedom of movement, right? The openness of the sport, if you will, that's how I describe it. Like I call it a very open sport because there's so many options more than any other sport, so that's freedom of movement, right? Um, versus the amount of damage you can take over here. So how do I get maximal aliveness with damage? Now, the other thing, uh the thing I'll throw down against you guys, and um, you know, I'm not sure if it's a it's a criticism or what, but aliveness at a speed that is not game speed, I feel, sets you up for failure. Because if I'm alive down here, but I go to a competition and the guy's alive at this speed, it's whoa shit. And that that's something I struggle with because I'm slow. You know, it's weird. I have a weird, I'm not weird, I'm just like, I'm not an amazing athlete when it comes to reaction time. You know, I'm very good at some things. Uh I'm I'm actually relatively quick for my size, but I don't have the ability, and this is why I didn't make it in college football. I don't have the ability to see what you're doing, react to it in a second, move off. And I think that's the skill that you want to get in sparring. Your ability to react or impose your will on somebody that doesn't want you to, plus do that under fatigue with some level of exhaustion. And that's the value of sparring and aliveness, right? So I I guess that's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:54

I love what you said about the the the because I mean I I've got a guy right now, Mitch, right? So I think speed, fastness comes probably from the weight room and your intrinsic dynamics, muscle fibers, blah, blah, blah, right? Or your parents. You mentioned parents. Apparently, parents, parents, parents, parents, yep. You mentioned quickness here. And I love that you brought that up. I think you're I think you're probably quick because of your perceptual attunement, right? Yeah, yeah. Quickness for me is able to get off quicker, able to start earlier. Yeah, yeah. This is what comes through the the perception action loop and becoming perceptually attuned. So I have a guy, Mitch, who's not fast. He's not a fast guy, but he's quick. Now, when you can get someone who's naturally fast and get that quickness in them, that's when you see some of that elite movement.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

Yeah. Well, you know, some of the studies on athletes is more experienced athletes start their adjustments or reactions slower. Oh, or later. Later, later, not slower, slower to bedward, later. So uh the more experienced or higher level uh shortstop is in baseball, when the ball is hit, they will actually start their movement to the ball later than a less experienced guy. But to be able to start later, you have to be a better athlete. You have to be able to close that distance also. So it's all one, it's all one system. Yeah. But it's gotta remember that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

That's interesting. Yeah, that that I would not have guessed. No, I don't think a lot of people would have, but I I would have think I would because I feel like, yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:18

I feel like the best soccer goalkeepers start to dive later.

unknown 1:01:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:25

If they go earlier, they have more, there's more chance to be faked out or make a mistake.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

Less information. They've just got less information to make the decision on. The longer you can wait, the more information you have on where he is, where his foot is, right, where he positioned his body, all that stuff's gonna come instinctually, and then you move. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. The longer I wait for your cross, the I can tell if it's here or if it's straight, you know, the yeah. But again, I so I don't have that affordance personally. Because I was just getting hit right in the face if I just try to figure it out. Like I've got to go, oh shit, shit, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:58

A lot of my a lot of my best head movement comes after you've punched me.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

Yeah. Then I'm like, oh, it's like when we would spawn with the Atlanta guys, and I was like, I caught the second of a double jab. I was trying to catch the first and it already hit me, but I caught the second one. Should have double edged the I should have should have just knocked out of the rig with those dudes. But yeah, um no, I I yeah. You get what I'm saying though. I mean I I don't really agree with that. I like that. I never really thought about that. Um I mean I didn't know, but I can see why. And and then the other thing I I guess that I would give you is the purpose of all this training. What's the purpose of all this? For me, it's for that for me, because I have specific UFC fights, these are this what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make you better in a UFC fight. That's that's my sole goal in this. Uh I want you to be able to find your rhythm or flow or whatever the fuck it is as fast as possible. Does that make sense? So that's what um that's what I'm I'm uh you know kind of kind of looking for. How how do I get you into where you're the rhythm where you've done so much that you see the guy's shoulder dip and you know that this is what's coming? You know you see the guy's shoulder dip and you know that's that's a feint, he's not doing shit, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

Look when when you have some time later this week, look into the idea of calibration.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Calibration, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:14

Yeah, because uh I think you'll find it exactly what you're talking about that uh human beings, especially high-level athletes, they learn so well that they have to recalibrate all the time to what they're seeing. And so you want them to get into the cage and very quickly recalibrate to what they're seeing. So we we I know what this term is because you've told me this before. I think you'll find it interesting if you because I think it's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

Yeah, yeah, you're just you know that that's exactly it. And then you're gonna recalibrate so fast that it's almost not a conscious thought, you know? And you have to keep calibrating as you get fatigued or they get fatigued, or it's a constant process. Because their speed changes, their distance will change. They're all of a sudden they're throwing a punch from you know too close because they are fatigued, they've they've made bad cognitive choices. So your defensive solutions have changed. Yeah. No, I mean I get it. I I'll say what was that?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:08

I just said it's fucking chaos, especially at the levels our fighters are at. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:13

That would be my pushback on your point about game speed. I don't disagree, right? A fight can't, that's what I'm trying to do with my fighters is calibrate them, calibrate them to game speed, just you know, to peek towards a fight. Yeah. But I don't know if it I'm it's unclear to me, so I'm not making a statement here. Um, that it's unclear to me whether we need to have game speed generally while we're developing and we're just uh you know picking up on our developing our perception action capabilities. It's unclear to me if we really need to game speed here, because I think what we do is they just recalibrate it closer to the fight. Because as Adam says, we can calibrate up and down. Uh our body is incredibly adaptable, but that's not always for good or for ill, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

Um, so uh I can't show you this because you know the camera works very well. Anyway, um yeah, so what what I've got, you remember they introduce an isolation integrate, right? So for me, you're identifying the technique, you're starting slow, and you're moving on a continuum to going faster. Does that make sense? So I start the technique, my partner's gonna go relatively slow, and then we're gonna try to speed that up. There we go. And then we're gonna try to speed that up as we go to where we gradually get into what is a game speed. And you know, I'm pretty sure what you were saying about recalibration, um, you know, because now I'm having a he's going faster and faster, uh, you know, and then hopefully I can just, okay, this is what it looks like full speed now that I've mastered this technique, right? And so for me, in this sense, technique, I'm simply talking about catching the jab, just catching the jab, frame off, catch the jab, frame off, catch the jab. He's going faster. I'm okay, shit. Now he's fainting, he's double jabbing, shit. Okay, you know, now he's real close to me, and I can't, you know, I can't frame him. I've got a shield, you know. How am I making these decisions quickly? Hopefully, I've for me anyway, and and I know this about myself. I was saying, like I need to kind of see it, and then we'll kind of ease into it, and then we keep going and going. Um, and and this is this is something I saw out of uh when Magmetov. Uh no. Sorry, who's the 170-pound champion now? What's his name? Islam. Islam, Makachev, Makachev. Um, the guys had so much skill that they were able to go with a kind of a very high flow roll. But but it was because they were so skilled, they're doing these live wrestling, but without hurting each other. Where we got a guy's in Mexico that hadn't done a ton of live wrestling, they didn't grow up doing wrestling. They live wrestle, they fucking kill each other. You know what I'm saying? So these guys are each so skilled that they can they can like pull back and pull back and it almost prevent themselves and their partners from getting hurt to some extent. And then that's what I saw is that group was very skilled at you know, kind of adapting their wrestling to whatever day it was. Or, you know, like for me it was always Mike Whitehead. If you go in and you say, Mike and I have a shit day, take it easy on me, give you a nice technical work. He said, Mike, fucking feel great, let's go. He could he could match you with that. Um, and that's why he was a better sparring partner than he ever was fighter, is because he would kind of match his opponent's face. If his opponent came out and sucked, he would fight with them in a fashion that almost kind of sucked. But if his opponent canal was really good, he I'm not saying he could beat anybody, but he could hang with most people in a real fight because he had the ability to turn it up. What he didn't always do is turn it up when his opponent was down here. So that's just another kind of weird dynamic thing that can happen, you know? Yeah, it's cool. Oh, you gotta go. The last thing for me that I have trouble, I and again, I run one, maybe two practices a week, so it's it's it's hard. Um, but guys want to see fucking techniques. They just want to see, they want to learn the move. I can't I can't break them of learning the move. I posted the thing about Drysdale the other day with the kids, you know, and basically they'll they'll find it. I know that you'll find it, but they want me to tell them, is my head in the right place? Are my hands in the right place? They just they just want that feedback. I tried to not give it to the kids in China and they hated it. They they needed to be told what what to do. And then I told them what to do. They didn't all do it, they kind of also did their own thing, but they just needed me to tell them. I think it could be cultural. Yeah, it could be cultural too. They also needed to know that I had my solution. This is what you do, this will work. I don't know. It was weird.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

It's easier, it's easier if you started with people that had never been spoon-fed, had did not know there was another way.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

That didn't think that you know paying$100 for a Gary Toonan seminar was going to change their lives. Right. Exactly. I don't know. You know, yeah. Well, I gotta I gotta go to work now.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:22

So do I. Hey, that was great. Thank you so much. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:25

Thank you guys. Yeah, yeah. I learned a lot, and I'll I'll I'll come back and we'll talk about uh stabilization.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

Love you, brother.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:31

All right, love you guys. Thank you, Scott. Great to meet you brother.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Thanks, man.