Learning to Fight! Conversations in Combat Skill

Learning to Fight - Episode 19

• Scott Sievewright and Ben Schultz

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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.

SPEAKER_01

Good morning, Adam Singer. Good thing you no guests today, just me and you.

SPEAKER_00

Blather and away. It keeps us on track. I think the two episodes with Forrest were fantastic though.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, I got some good feedback.

SPEAKER_00

Um sorry, I I think it's just like it's hard for me to see him sometimes. Well, so you know, I coached him and he's been one of my closest friends longer than I want to admit at this point. I I I watch the anniversaries of his like TUF fight or his championship, and I'm like, Jesus, that could not have been that long ago. And we've remained close, but it's when you start talking to him and you realize what he's been around, like he's at the forefront of the UFC. You know, he he has seen and is part of all of the evolution of the UFC. At first, he was part of the evolution of the UFC, going from this small, unwatched thing, the human cockfighting era, if you will, to now being treated like another billion-dollar mega sport. And he's sitting in his office surrounded by scientists. And hopefully, next time you get to Vegas, now that you guys know each other, you can get over to the PI and see all of it. It's it's really amazing what they do there.

SPEAKER_01

My Vegas trips are over unless they stop ripping everyone off. When are we there last? It's fucking agreeable.

SPEAKER_00

So I I don't think I've been there since COVID and and I was just sort of watching passively what was changing during COVID. Um, I don't know if you've noticed, but they've recently a lot of the casinos now have these all-inclusive packages because they are trying to undo the harm that they did. Oh, really? Like all implicit for food and drink? Yeah, you get the the room, the parking, there's no resort fees. It's like you pay X amount of dollars, you get food and drink and stay. So I think they're trying to undo some of the harm they've done. Yeah, they're gonna need to because it's it's wild. I think part of it is, and then I don't know if you see this with your young fighters, but my young fighters are very avid gamblers.

SPEAKER_01

Oh.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and not just my my young fighters, I assume that they're a snapshot of the entire generation.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's not new to me because I was a degenerate gambler growing up in Scotland, as were most of my friends. We had uh we call them bookies. Oh yeah, yeah, you know, bookies. Yeah, yeah. They were on every corner. So when I came to the States, you know, and yeah, you you we'll have our reservations and stuff here. The idea, most people, I I thought you could only gamble in in Vegas when I when I came to the States, but uh you didn't find bookmakers and stuff, and then the online stuff comes on. What's that poly market they're talking about now? You can bet on fucking anything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you can, I mean anything. And and and now you can not only can you bet on anything, you can bet continuously during like like it used to be you had to call your bookie before the game started, and you place the bet who's gonna win, who's gonna lose points. Very simple. And now you can continuously bet on the game, you can arbitrage with different sites and different things. It is unbelievable what you can do. Now, the prop bets, I think that's where they they really get people. The prop bets, the parlays, like bookies didn't really have that shit. You know, you called your bookie in the on Saturday morning, you're like, I want to put 100 on this game, 100 on this game, 100 on this game, and then you let it ride. Now they're betting during the events.

SPEAKER_01

And that and the digital currency, you know, when I once I was broke back then, once I put all my money in the pluggy, which is the the slot machines, or picked the wrong horse, my my my cash was gone. I do worry about my boys, you know, if they're uh because they've got their their cards and their digital money and everything. So I try and shoo them away from that. Like that helps.

SPEAKER_00

Right, exactly. And I I'm constantly like, you know, I like you had said a couple episodes ago, you have sort of a tech string with your your fighters. I have a tech string with my athletes. Um, and every every big fight night, that's they're on that tech string. They're like, I need, you know, someone's like, I need this guy to win for my parlay, or I need to I need him to throw more strikes. That was the other night. He's like, I someone's like, I bet the over on the strikes. And I'm like, do you even like MMA or you just love to gamble on it at this point? So um I I am constantly on them about 1-800 gambler and making fun of them. And I assume at some point I'm gonna have to help somebody with something. But at least the difference is your bookies, when you didn't pay them, they beat you up, right? Or I assume they come beat you up. I assume that these big companies don't come beat you up, but they ruin your fucking credit life forever.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a slippery slope, it's a real disease.

SPEAKER_00

There was an article on in The Economist a little while ago, and I shared it with all the guys. They they didn't understand it, probably what I would how I was reading it. But these companies know exactly what your lifetime worth is after you know just looking at your demographics and the few bets you make. And then so they they maximize that lifetime effort. They either throttle you down or let you gamble more. Like if you're a sucker, they make it totally easy for you to give them their money. If you're good at it, they make it more difficult to give them your money. And so it's not like the bookie had a number for everyone, they had the betting line for everyone. These companies are are adjusting it and moving it according to you. Yeah, yeah. And puppets on strings. Puppets on strings to steal your money. But the UFC has gone hard into it, obviously, right? I mean, you can't you can't watch a UFC without seeing four or five, you know, advertisements for different gambling companies.

SPEAKER_01

Speaking of UFC, I didn't watch it. I hear people raving about that heavyweight fight last weekend.

SPEAKER_00

What do you mean by raving? Like because I saw something excitement. Sure. But I have also seen street fights that were just as exciting. So I what I saw, okay. So not to Curtis Blades, I've always felt like had a very low fight IQ.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_00

Because he had a skill, he has a skill set that is rare in the heavyweight division, which is the ability to punch and shoot. You don't see a lot of heavyweights that can shoot a takedown. Most heavyweights are they're clinch and cage based. And so now you have a heavyweight who can who can punch and shoot, but he fell in love with the punching part. And he would lose fights because you know, heavyweights, heavyweight striking is it's like playing the lottery. You know, you could be winning, winning, winning, and then you're exhausted or you get gagged with something. And the other guy, have you looked into the other guy, Holik? Is that his name? Holik, whatever the hell his name is.

SPEAKER_01

I never heard of him. Uh but granted, I'm a little, I'm a little washed out with the UFC. I'm just I'm a little bit fatigued myself. Between my own fighters, I'm I'm usually we spoke about that. Yeah, just I don't get I don't get worked up from him now.

SPEAKER_00

So if you think about it, Blades has this skill set where he can move and throw punches and shoot takedowns, right? He's a very good wrestler. The other guy played college football, college wrestling, and made it into the NFL. And so now you're talking about a guy with with the highest level of athleticism that we're gonna see at heavyweight in the UFC. And but he he just, I don't know if he's dumb, I don't know if he has CT, I don't know if he's playing a role, but he he fights very unintelligently and he he wants the showboat, and he kept giving blades the finger, and it was just very annoying. Um he's not gonna be in the sport that long if he keeps fighting like that, but the athletic ability he has and the skills he has already tremendous. But now they signed um they signed the other kid at heavyweight, the uh the wrestler, the the world champion wrestler. Stevens. No, no, no. Uh what's it the Jesus Christ? Like, is this our podcast gonna turn into this where we can't remember anyone's name or any dates or anything anymore? Um, yeah, Stevens, Gabriel Stevens, you're 100% right. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm I'm dumb. Case in the UFC now.

SPEAKER_01

Let's talk about fight IQ. Is it another term or word that just gets branded around? What does fight IQ mean from our perspective?

SPEAKER_00

Adaptability is a great question because just peta pin for half a second. The title fight uh on that night, people are pointing to Jerry having a very low fight IQ. Because after he was aware that his opponent had blown out his ACL, right? The guy that won blew out his ACL, he didn't make any changes. He just still swing and bang with this guy and got knocked out when he was pretty much in the driver's seat. He had knocked him down, and the other guy blows out his knee on a non-contact injury, which just that's like the scariest thing in sports to me, is that can happen. Um, and he ends up getting knocked out. And so what does spite IQ mean to you?

SPEAKER_01

I was hoping you were going to go first. I could piggyback on yours. I don't know, I don't know how I think it's maybe I think it's adaptability actually, but um that that doesn't push the ball up the field. That's just another word, right? I I it's it's curious because when we're coming from this alternative perspective, this now I mean no, it means cognitive, right? Right? I I I actually don't know. So actually the question, I've never really fucking thought about it.

SPEAKER_00

Alright, so I have I have a I'm gonna call it a functional definition, right? Because I think I think we can say that it's we can make it a cognitive thing, right? But that doesn't help us necessarily. How do you train that? Um I think some of it is how a person reacts in the moment, and and then post hoc, we could say that was a high IQ or a low IQ thing. Like, like you see it all the time when a guy knock, you know, and a guy is winning on defeat, he knocks the other guy down, the other guy gets up, and he shoots a takedown on a cage and it gets all tangled up and lets the other guy recover. Right? That that is I call that a low IQ move, but it's but what it is really is just a in the moment, it's a bad strategy, it's a bad tactic, right? Can I stop you there, though?

SPEAKER_01

I think I think I think I see this. I see I have this conversation a lot, right? The what ifs and what about that and if I could have just done this. They're all they're all counterfactuals, right? We don't know. Yeah. You can knock someone, we've seen, we've seen fighters knock someone down, go in for the kill, and and get fucking choked. We've seen fighters get knocked knocked someone down, let them back up, and and then they lose. So we never really we never really know.

SPEAKER_00

Or gas gas themselves out going for the kill. I I think you see that. I think the two things you see a lot of guys gas themselves out going for the kill and then they lose. Or they are in a position to finish the other guy and then they change ranges and let the other guy recover and then lose the fight.

SPEAKER_01

I think we just call that I don't know that that's what I'm saying. Uh I would call that fighting. We can always we can always attach a what if and a story about what might have happened. Um I don't know how helpful that is. You know, I was thinking about this. I'm I'm staring at my screen last night, still trying to come up with this fucking assessment, and I'm I'm still lost, I'm completely lost.

SPEAKER_00

Forest didn't help you at all.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Forest, Forest helps me. There's lots of people I'm talking to that are helping me and saying, what about this and what about that? I just I don't think it's that meaningful when we're talking about live a live assessment, a live skills assessment. I think it's a feel. I think it's uh a feel that you get over a period of sessions, a period of time. And I think as soon as we start looking for a certain criteria or assessment or whatever, you're already muddying things because if they're are they aware they're getting assessed, you know, what about the other person? Are they trying to uh I don't know, it just doesn't feel organic. I I don't I I don't have a good answer for it. Um But that that that's the thing with the so when we look at maybe affordance-based control where you know you're just you're in the moment, you're you're perceiving and acting on certain things, um that's where the idea of flight IQ seems a little muddy to me.

SPEAKER_00

Right. So for me, and I don't know, I'm gonna say uh I I don't think anything is necessarily valuable as a coach unless it's a functional thing that can be trained or or somehow go past cognitive. Like, you know, you can't tell your fighters, hey, you gotta have a high fight IQ, right? It has to be something we train for. And some of it I think is limited because we can't put them in the moment. You can't put someone in the moment where they, and I've seen other coaches do this nonsense, but where you knock someone down and you you taste blood and you're in the moment, and the crowd goes fucking bananas. How are you gonna train someone to take a step back, take a deep breath, take a second, assess the situation, and then make a choice? Like you can't do it. Right? So You can't recreate you because you can't recreate a fight in the gym. No, I mean you you can try, but you can't. I can't imagine, and we could ask fighters, but I can't imagine what it's like to knock someone down in the middle of a big fight in front of 10,000 people who just start screaming and then ask that person to make another choice, a different choice, or practice a different choice. So some of it, some of what we call fight IQ has to be an innate thing related, very probably similarly to IQ. There are fighters we've say, hey, he's a smart fighter, and there are fighters that tend to make these decisions improperly over and over and over. For me, what I can see functionally, I call pace, place, and space. Yeah, I love, you know, and I can spell all those words too. So what I'm trying to do functionally with them is drill where they play with the ability to control or push pace.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And we've seen fighters lose fights because they fight at the wrong pace. They get drawn into the wrong pace. And if they can't re-establish their control of the pace, then then they they have a tendency to gas out or they have a tendency to lose a fight that they didn't want to begin with.

SPEAKER_01

Um sorry, just to add to your pace. I remember early, early on, 15 years ago, I did a first cage grappling match, I think. And I was holding on to this G18. I didn't I didn't finish it. But I was I was holding on for DL life, like squeezing as hard as I could. My arms took about half an hour. I they were completely dead. So this is I I call it redlining, right? And I think that's what a lot of the amateurs struggle with. And I don't think you can again, I don't think you can meaningfully redline in the gym.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Because there's this there's this real urgency to fucking fight for your life. And I'm just not sure you can get that in the gym. And I do see my uh I have a young debutist, he wants he's a very dominant uh grappling. It was a it was an MMA fight, but he had a debut there and he did great. But we were setting him in the first he had uh it was a RMG or something, or whatever it was, and we were saying that, you know, if you don't have it, let it go, relax, because I was I could see that he was pulling everything he had, and his arms were going to be shot at the end of it. So how do you is this something you can you get what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00

There's a red line in things like of course. I I don't think you can do that either. I think that you what I do, because it's easy to say, hey, if you don't have the guillotine, let go. But how do they know they really have the guillotine and not in the middle of the fight when all that shit's going on? And you so what we do is a lot of drills that affords them opportunities to do things with the guillotine or asks them or forces them or whatever to do things with the guillotine that's not just hold on to it and try and finish. Now, over the long term, I hope that that and I've seen it, I've seen it with one of my fighters who was apt to hold the guillotine long too long or put himself on his back because of the guillotine. And over time, drilling so that it opened up the options for him when he has a guillotine as a counter-wrestling move, as a way to get up, he changed that behavior in his last fight.

SPEAKER_01

Because with a guillotine, if you're on a bottle and once that head pops it's like Yeah, you're dead.

SPEAKER_00

You're dude, you lost the fight. Um and so like is that a low IQ move, or is that something that hasn't been trained properly? You know, which is probably what it is. Like the Bond flu choke should not exist. It is purely a person holding on to a guillotine when they are drowning. And if they just let go, it would be better. So uh in my fight IQ idea, I think that that is one of those things like so. I got pace, space, and place. Space being, you know, we see this all the time: people fighting in the wrong range, people people not controlling distance, people you know, when you knock someone down crashing into them on a cage and and changing the range w when you shouldn't be when you should just take a step back. And so we have to drill this space control. Can you control the center of the ring? You know, ri it probably used to be called ring generalship in boxing, right? You would see when we watch two boxers and we could see who's the real ring general. And then um you know, and again, these are all these all one type of thing, right? Space, place, and and case, place, and space. We see fighters getting drawn into a fight like Adesanya that that they shouldn't have.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And I don't know how, and and we just have to be able we have to drill and drill and drill until they have more ability to avoid being drawn into things. It seems like an uh an emotional component there, too, though. Oh, for sure. For sure. But at a minimum, I think we need to identify as coaches, if we can identify some of the components that we would consider this low IQ fight, right? Fighting at the wrong speed, fighting in the wrong space in the cage, you know, or fighting in the wrong place, the wrong range, then at least we can attempt to find ways to drill those things to change behaviors or make the fight slow down a little bit for them. Now, we can't account for any of the things going on in the cage most of the time, right? You knock someone down, you smell blood, a thousand people are cheering. I don't see how we can help someone take a step back. But we have seen fighters that react better in those situations and worse in those situations. And some of it's probably emotional, some of it's probably unchangeable. But if it's a novel situation, then I think they have almost no chance of making any other decision than emotional.

SPEAKER_01

And again, just uh the the the stories that we tell. Um we we've spoken before, but you have you read uh Gil Christoph about the split brain?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I mean, just a little bit, not not enough. I I I'm not too impressed with you know, I I just when I read left and right and this and that, and this is creative, and this is this, and it it doesn't resonate with me that way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, and I'm not like from what I've been reading, I don't see the the brain being like that either. But um but but the the phenomenon you've talked about was that when when they they do all these tests, you know, they'll give some stimulus in the right eye and then whatever the either one way or the other. And the you start to elaborate, you make up a you make up a story. You make up a story about your actions, right? And I think this is a lot of what goes on in fighting and commentary and navel gazing about fighting. We're we're we're watching action unfold, we're watching interactions, we're watching this this the system behave, and then we just map our nice little stories onto it.

SPEAKER_00

Which are probably far from reality. Right. And they do also, right? They they'll after fights, and we'll I'll be sitting with one of my kids and we'll be talking about the fight. And some and and what's fun is they have a story about, you know, they they they can tell you what they think they were thinking, what they think they were feeling during the the event, and and the further I think you are from the event, the more that story is completely made up, um, especially if they've watched the fight. And if you watch the fight with them, then they they seem to be able to narrate what they were thinking and feeling, but there's no way that that's remotely possible. Because I have said to them, I'm like, so wait, you were just constantly thinking about this whole thing like nonstop. And then they know like they realize how silly it is to try and do that. And what I want them to do is just look if they want to look at pieces, look at where we need to improve our training so that they have opportunities to do better in those areas or exchanges or things. But to say that I was, you know, I was I was waiting for this or I saw this or or this was going to happen or I felt this way, I wish we could we could really know it what they were really doing. Because I I hope during the fight their brain wasn't doing much at all. Like I hope they weren't overthinking and feeling and emotional during the event. They almost never floor, right? Yeah, or something, or terror. You know, maybe I I would love one to one of the guys to say, listen, I don't remember any of this round because I was fucking terrified. Like I got, you know, come tell me like, hey, he hit me in that first round, and I felt his power, and I spent the rest of the fight just trying not to get hit. I I would believe that story. I would I would definitely believe that story.

SPEAKER_01

I think that was my story. I was fucking shaking every time I got in there, and it took me a few slaps around the ear holes to get to get to get engaged.

SPEAKER_00

Some guys are like that. And you know what, you see it in the flow of a fight sometimes where if uh one fighter is coming forward and he's throwing and he's pressure and everything's going his way, and then he gets hit. And he gets hit harder than maybe he's been hit before, or harder than he thought he could be hit, and all of a sudden for the rest of the round or the rest of the fight, he never comes forward anymore. And that can't possibly be like he he It's in a fight IQ. It's not right, it's not fight IQ. It's not, it's it's something uncontrollable. It's it's human nature. You know, it's fear, it's fight and flight, and it's intentionality, and all things that we don't control online.

SPEAKER_01

No, and I think again, I think it's it's it's not straightforward. Uh you could have the the most robust game plan, but maybe that's not helpful if things don't go your way. And things don't go your way in fights all the time. And now you're trying to we spoke about that where you know Mali wasn't able to kind of get out of that against Marab. So you you do see that, and I'm wondering w what we're trying to do is we talk about skill gain adaptability and whether there's a a downside or a detriment to to going in with too much of a plan. I don't know.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we have definitely Seen fighters and even teams in sports that play differently when they are ahead or behind. And there are some fighters who can only only fight well when they are quote unquote ahead, when everything is working, when they are in control. And when they lose that control, they start to fall behind, they start to fall apart a little bit. And you see that even in team sports. There are teams at the highest levels that if the score is 0-0 or they are winning by three points, then they play differently. And I don't know if that's the coaches, but it looks like on the field, there is a change of organization when they are ahead versus when they are playing from behind.

SPEAKER_01

I guess that's the question we're asking. Is that an emergent calling that just happens, or is it, you know, is it somewhere in between? You know, did you watch the mask?

SPEAKER_00

Did you watch the masters this weekend?

SPEAKER_01

The golf.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No. You love golf? I love golf. I I it's like grappling. I love grappling. I don't want to watch it.

SPEAKER_00

Me either. I don't want to either. But I didn't pay attention because after the second round, I think, or the second, I don't know what the even the terminology is. My my father-in-law loved golf, so I ended up watching a little bit. After the second round, Rory McElroy was in charge. He he had the biggest lead. He figured he could just sleepwalk into it. But he gave it all back in the third round to the point that it looked like he was going to have a monumental all-time collapse. And as a coach, you watch, and a lot of times when you see that, it just gets worse and worse. It just builds its own momentum.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_00

Momentum's an interesting thing, right? In sports, they talk about momentum all the time. This team has momentum going into the locker room. This team has lost momentum. I don't know what that is. It's obviously it is an emergent thing. Um but the way he handled that adversity to come back and still win again was very impressive to me. And I I assume that's part, you know, his makeup, his fortitude, all the things that go into the system. Um but that's why I don't I don't watch usually, but I was watching to see if this was going to be an all-time collapse or could he hold it together. That's what I was really impressed by. You know, when a fighter gets knocked down, can they get up? Can they give up on it? Which is like some of human nature, can they fight their way back into it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00

So if it is emergent, which I think we both completely agree that these things are emergent, these systems are self-organizing, what do we do as coaches to help the system organize in a way that you know would be beneficial for our fighter?

SPEAKER_01

I think it all comes back to me. I mean, I'm I'm I keep coming back to this idea of just the the experience. And I don't just mean that as a generic word, I mean it very, very specifically. You're experiencing that context, you're experiencing the dynamics, uh everything that goes into that that representative context and experience. We need to get that as much as possible. That's why at the moment, you know, my I'm taking my it's it's all amateurs I have, and I'm looking at them they're probably not gonna have the patience for this, and it's probably gonna be hard to match them, but I'm looking for 10 to 15 amateur matches. Right. Slowly progressing. You know, I don't cherry pick, I'm not putting them up against cans, but you know, I'm I'm careful. I want fair, I tell the promoters all the time I don't want to I don't want to mismatch either way. I want a fair fight, and um but I'm I'm careful with that because it's it's at this stage it's about the experience for me. And we we speak about a lot. I I I can handle a loss. I hate I hate losing, I hate it for them, I hurt for them, but if they're not getting hurt, that's much, much more manageable. I can live with that. And then at least they've got the experience. That kid uh kid Lucas who was he hasn't debuted yet, because it's just so happens his fight was axed right at the end. One was axed a couple hours before he got in the cage, but I was happy because he got the experience of the lead up and then the weight cut and the nerves and walk into the stadium and stuff. That all counts.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I only get as much of that as that count.

SPEAKER_00

I it's it's one of those just many small reasons that I I have them bring their training partners. That you know, a lot of times guys who haven't fought before have them bring their training partners, and then I like to not be in the corner. I like one of those guys to be in the corner so they can experience as much of it as they can experience. Even just a little bit, just every little bit is additive to me. Yep. So then if you're a if you're a gambler, then then part of what you bet on with Rory McElroy is that he'd been there before. Right? He is a defending champion. There's a value in the fact that he had been compete he has competed and won that before. And the stakes are different. And the stakes are different, but the the point being he has done it before. So I guess if you're looking at that point where it's like, is he gonna fall apart or not? Some of your calculus for that is he has been there and done it before. And that is probably the best indicator of being able to do it again.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Which is why they you know, defending a belt is different than winning a belt. The stakes are different. You know, it it's easy to be the challenger, it's harder to be the champion.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, so the stakes thing is interesting. I think I've used it a long time ago when we're talking about because I've used a I used to use the poker analogy. Were you ever a poker player? No, no gambling for me. Oh really? Um yeah, I was a poker fiend as well. But um that was like with Sparn, right? If it like with poker, if the stakes are too low, you play like an asshole, and if the stakes are too high, you play like an asshole. You need that that you the the the stakes, the bets, the wages, they have to be just on that edge of comfort and discomfort. And I don't I and I think there's something there that maps on to how we train, how we fight.

SPEAKER_00

But I also assume that I assume that some people this the stakes become easily overwhelming. And for some people, nothing is ever too big for them. And you you hear this all the time that the NFL draft is next week in Pittsburgh. I'm I'm going. Um and so I like to I I follow I follow just the process because I'm really interested in the process of talent evaluation and what they're looking for. And I find it very humorous how how much of talent evaluation is based on things that are completely out of context. Um now, some of that they have really good metrics for. So body type, body shape, all the athletic attributes, they have really good metrics for. So, but um some of the players they talk about that the moment is never too big for them, and some players they talk about when they go against better competition, they seem to not perform as well. And I assume that that much of that is just it's not blank slate. I mean, that's what they bring to the table to begin with. Some guys, we both have guys who they just seem to love to fight. Right? I mean, they they train hard, but they love to fight. And so their their mentality is is different. Their ability to perform under the lights is different than a guy who either is less experienced or doesn't have that makeup.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think we've been talking about this training environment and whatnot, especially from our perspective, it it's somewhat of a filter, right? There's a evolutionary and selection process in training, in development. And right you just mentioned it. You know, I I got a team of fighters, they're all very, very different, and uh eventually the sport through injury or whatever circumstance is going to filter a lot of them out. Some of them are just age out of it or whatever, or going to other things, which is great. But um, who's left standing at the end is very much depending on who walked in the fucking door in the first place. 100%.

SPEAKER_00

100%. Whoever walks in the door, whoever survives, whatever that selection process is, and that selection process is not just in your room, it is all the roadblocks the world puts up, it's all the choices. You know, I often tell a story about one of the most talented young fighters I ever had. He met a girl, and she came to one of his fights, and then after the fight, she said, if you continue to fight, we can't date anymore. And that was the end of his amateur and pro career. Because he chose her. And in the long run, it was the right move because he married her and became a medical doctor.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

That's uh right, but that had nothing to do with, you know, that that's part of the selection process of life. I mean, there are, you know, the the these NFL guys are making their they are making choices that will affect their job security and millions and billions of dollars on 21-year-olds and 22-year-olds who have never had that much money put in their hand, have never had that much freedom, have never had that many people in their ear before. Some of them are going to be able to ignore that, and some of them are gonna fall apart within a couple years, sadly.

SPEAKER_01

So you mentioned. I might be bullshit. I was reading about Mayweather yesterday. It's fucking just mind-blowing to me how these athletes can I I'm not suggesting he's broke or ever be broke. That's the article I was reading.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, that he was a billionaire and now he's broke, and then he was a billionaire and he's broke. Yeah. I have you ever like so I've never spent time around him, but I've seen some. I had some people that were part of that boxing show he put on in Atlanta. I don't know if you know this. He he did like his own his own version of um TUF, really, where he had rappers and boxing teams and and he lives his entire life with cash. Right? So there's no like money saved, there's no money invested, it's just like cash. And the brilliant thing, I don't know if you know why he made all that money, but the brilliant thing is he gambled all of his money on himself. So he promoted himself. So he put up all the money for his fights. If he, if he, if the fights were failures, he would have just been done. But when they're successes, he makes all that money. But then it's not like that money goes to an investment guy, it just gets spent. He's got a huge entourage, he's got all these hangers on and stuff. He could possibly be broke one day. Tyson was, right?

SPEAKER_01

I believe Tyson was, Holyfield was. Right.

SPEAKER_00

The worst thing to do is marry a bunch of women and then you have to give them half every time. I don't know anything about that, but you might, but I don't know anything about that.

SPEAKER_01

Happily. Yeah. I'd happily give up half a billion dollars.

SPEAKER_00

If I could keep the other half. So that was a wild story. Wait, you said evolution, so it's a good segue for me. Did you see this paper in Nature yesterday?

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_00

So long story short, and I think you should look it up. I think if you because what it showed was evolution basically of different populations has not slowed down, it has not stopped, and it has sped up. And so when they are comparing populations, I think they use West West Eurasians. I'm not sure how they parse out what that group is and compare them to other groups. They are evolving as fast as ever, and much of that evolution is on the brain. And so there are these differences. Some of it was body fat, some of it was skin color, but the ones in the brain are fascinating to me because I think people have a tendency to separate the brain and the body and think the brain is much more programmable without realizing how much genetics plays a role in the difference between me and you, let's say. And so this paper, you know, there's been a lot of work. The guy that did this paper wrote wrote a really good book, and he's taken a lot of shit for some of his viewpoints. Um, he's one of the he's a Harvard guy, he's one of the best, you know, when it comes to this area. Some of these differences between populations over the last 10,000 years have been really large, and the signals all point towards evolution. Um and so you start to realize how many of our mental abilities or or processes or whatnot are are just as strongly shaped by evolution as everything else.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

But what we were talking about the other day, I think, I mean, maybe you don't maybe characterize it as an evolutionary pressure, but I I think this is this is going on at a micro scale too, with our skill sets and our movements and engagement with the world, right? And that's that I think that might be that might be one of the underlying mechanisms is that you know, when we're when we're sparring, you know. I'm I'm reluctant to mention people's names or coaches on here without, you know, yeah, don't too. No, no, but uh I made a lot of no no, I made a comment on um because we share a lot of stuff. We talk a lot of shit. Um just not published. It was uh it was uh guy had a reasonable follow and he made some wheel on and I try I I try to avoid you know get my fingers going, but um he's he said so it was something along the lines that you can't learn boxing through sparring. And I made a comment and said that is where you learn. Because in the same video, he was saying you get hit in the if you get you can't do that, you have to learn the fundamentals. Because if you get if you go just spar, you get hit in the face, you're gonna bring your hands up. If you if you get hit in the ribs, you're gonna bring your elbows in. You're making my fucking point for me.

SPEAKER_00

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_01

I think there's this this selection pressure that we're using as we interact, and we are as Bruce Lee says, you know, keep what's useful, discard what is not, and this is what's going on. Like that's more a 30,000-foot view of the the dynamics and the tractors and blah blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And so you and I have had this discussion. I I think I sent you a message the other night, I had this sort of epiphany that we agree that the that the fundamentals, what people call the fundamentals, are the rules of the sport. And I think by rules, we are saying that the entire system that the sport is governed by, right? Where how big the cage is, and that it is a cage and that the surface is matted. Um and any changes in those things will have an immediate and drastic effect on the athletes. And so, like, if you took a football field and you spread it 20 yards and you made it 20 yards longer, I would argue that within one or two seasons, the players would be 20 or 30 pounds lighter because the ability to move laterally will become more important, and people who are lighter move laterally better, as just an example. And that's evolution of the sport, right? That is is one system that evolves, the athletes evolve. And I I know we're using the word evolve in a lot of different ways, but systems evolve over time. And so the athletes, the shape of the athletes will evolve or change governed by the sport. And so, like in Georgia, they fight in two size cages. At one location, they have this very small cage to fit in that location, and at the other locations, they have a larger cage. And so as a promo as a coach or a matchmaker, we have to take into account that some of our fighters will do way better in a big cage than a small cage.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, really simple. We have we have a show around here, uh a couple of regional uh shows here, uh state shows. Uh one is in an 18-foot cage. That's a small cage.

SPEAKER_00

That is small. Yeah, I think that's uh 20 is the small one for us.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so 18 is like you're two or three steps back, you're on the cage, right? So that that that plays into my matchmaking. Right. If I've got a few options, and I know one's a 26-foot cage and one's an 18-foot cage, I'm gonna probably prioritize putting my grapplers in the smaller one.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. For for sure. We just had one of our one of our tall, we have a 6'3, 170-pound fighter who's a very good striker, very good mover. He wanted this fight, so we took it against a college-level wrestler, and it was in the small cage. And and we did it on purpose because it was one of the novice amateur fights, and who gives a shit? Fight as many guys that that are the fight as the hardest guys you can, especially in Georgia, the first novice fights, there's no striking the head on the ground. And when there was the other guy just was able to close the space because there was nowhere to move, and it ended up being a grappling match. That fight in a in a bigger cage, maybe it goes the same, but it's easier to move in a bigger cage. And so if you're fighting a better striker, you want the smaller cage. If you're the better striker, you want the bigger cage. Now, if everybody fought in a same size cage and all of a sudden everyone was fighting in a 30-foot cage, but now the sport says everyone's gonna fight in a 20-foot cage, the sport evolves and the fighters have to evolve with it. And so I I love that about sports. Like, you know, I've I've told you before, I evolution is is at the biological level, evolution is one of my favorite topics. Yeah, I really because it's it's fascinating me. When I started reading about it when I was in high school and college, um, it just fascinated me. And I know a lot of people get weirded out by time scales and things, so they don't it seems like it's not possible, but but I really love the idea of these this microevolution of just you just change one rule, you change one piece of equipment, you change one incentive structure, and then you watch the the rippling evolutionary effects on on the entire system. And it tells you that a systems approach, a systems view is the right one.

SPEAKER_01

And you don't mean system, as in I have this fighting system. No, I mean dynamical complexity. Yeah. And I'm reading it, and that's very much that's that's that's very much um depending on your perspective or what you think like the underlying ontology is. Um the last one of my last papers for my bachelor's was investigating the homeside advantage. But okay, but it's coming from a very kind of cognitive thing. So was it like um you know, was it the travel, was it the was there a bias, was it the fan crowd or whatever? So I was trying to get all these things. I'm gonna now that I look back at it, I think it's familiarity, right? I think it's familiarity.

SPEAKER_00

You're your your the your Well, I guess if you said, if you listed those things, is it this, is it this, is it this, is it this? My answer would be yes. It is. Or maybe every variable, every variable that changes from being the home team to the away team is is a factor, some more than others.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_01

You ever because the fundamentals are like the basketball, football, whatever the fundamentals of the game, the rules of the game are exactly the same. Do you ever see the movie Hoosiers?

SPEAKER_00

No, it's a famous sports movie, but uh just to your point, he takes the team to the arena for the the big championship game, and he gets a ladder and a tape measure, and he goes to the he climbs up the ladder and he takes the tape measure and he measures the basket height. And it's he's he has this assistant coach say, What is what is the height? 10 feet. And and his point is that that's the same height basket at their gym, at every gym, all the time. So that showing them like don't it's the same thing, right? Don't put too much effort or or or nervousness about being somewhere else. The sport is the sport, and it's played the same way between those lines. Now that's easy to be reductivist, but it does make your points a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

The sport is a sport. The sport's a sport, and it's all the other tiny little things. I know we're again I'm going wildly off track here. Have you read it? Have you read anything about that kind of postural stuff? The way people posture themselves. Yeah, I don't. You're not buying it. The reason I asked that is uh when I was when I was studying about the home side of bandage and whatnot, I forget which club it was, but it was a English premiership club. And apparently they designed the uh the visiting side's locker room, so there was loads of crouching down. And there were the there were almost the affordances that were putting in that in that locker room was causing the players to it was where their their to keep their gear and everything, just to be in this kind of almost bent over. I mean, now you're now you're really clutching at straws here, but sure. That that that was that was whether the science is robust, whether that's what's really going on. This was a team that was trying to get every single advantage by putting their the visitors in this kind of I don't know emotional, hormonal state of being kind of fearful or submissive.

SPEAKER_00

So I don't I don't put too much into that stuff. However, make making the visiting locker room much less comfortable than the is something across all sports, right? Your the home locker room is plush and beautiful and and and I've heard I think the Celtics, the Boston Celtics at their original facility, like the visitors' locker room didn't even have hot water. Like it was made to be uncomfortable. Not, I mean, I don't know if they were dealing with the psychology of being uncomfortable, but it was wooden benches and there wasn't enough room and they couldn't, there wasn't a whiteboard, like everything they could do within the legal rules to make the away team, the I mean the team visiting uh feel shitty, they did that. So I don't know if it's postural or whatnot, but what you're describing, I think, is something that goes on in all sports now, even. If you go into, I've been in the visitors' locker room when we fought in professional stadiums. We once fought where the avalanche and the nuggets play in Denver, and they toured us, and we we saw the the two locker rooms, and the home team's locker rooms were like home away from home. Everything was like four or seven-foot guys, and it was plush, and it was hot, hot tubs, and the visitors' locker room was sparse. They were not, they were going to take every advantage they had from being home verse away. And do you you you ever read about um England the English Olympic cycling team? I I can't remember the term they used, this this oh marginal gains. And so English cycling wasn't winning uh the medals that they wanted to. So they employed, they brought in some people to find as many marginal gains as they could, as many small uh gains as they could. And so one of the things that they did was they the team traveled with their own beds. So that you know, I don't sleep in hotel rooms. Can you sleep in a hotel room? I can sleep on a washing line. Okay, I can't. I gotta take a bunch of Xanax and and I don't I sleep like shit. It's terrible. But imagine that that hotel room had your bed in it. And so yeah, there's some I I think we can get into this this stuff, but it's all very simple. Yes, and so but think about like when you people when they go to the Olympic village. There was an issue years ago where like people were eating one thing in their the in the Olympic training center in Colorado, and then you fly to Sochi or somewhere, and the cafeteria is all local foods and stuff. You're gonna have a couple days of discomfort. You're gonna have a couple so like FARS was saying, you know, they they fly chefs around now. So now you don't have to worry about how am I gonna eat the next three days in Vegas. You know, I think all these things that that are really part of this really big system. Fars was talking about, because you were talking about home and away, which I had I had not ever thought about, training with different opponents to get variety, variability, we both agree is very important, but I hadn't thought that there would be a that there's a big difference between you going to their gym versus them coming to your gym.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think I think we see that as you know, you watch Strickland, Adassania, and guys like that, they're all they're they're always in different gyms, sparring with different dudes. And I think that's extremely powerful. And you know, to an extent, when we run these pank creation events, 18th will be our next one. I'm I'm I'm really trying to encourage coaches and gyms around the area. Like, I I don't want to own this, I'm not a gatekeeper at what we're doing. I want opportunities for my guys all the time. But there's been a couple of opportunities we we have gone out to and the team just haven't quite performed as well. Same rules. Everything's the same apart from just the obviously you know they're in different different locations. So I come back to this kind of f familiari again. And I wonder when things are unfamiliar, it's just maybe tugging away your attention or perturbing you somewhat. That's from that that that's from our perspective. But when that paper I wrote, it was about you know, you know, uh jet lag and travel and blah blah blah, all this stuff. Which which again, it's it's it's probably all part of it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's a statistic in the NFL about teams going from the West Coast to the East Coast versus the East Coast to the West Coast, and teams have had to adapt to that, or playing early games versus later games and all those things. It shows how dynamic everything is. And the we as coaches, there's a limit to how many of those things we can even do anything about. Experience mitigates some of it. In the NFL, when they see these things, they have to be very careful to adjust for them or it fucks up their gambling, back to gambling. Um and so I don't want I don't want the first time my pro gets in a car and drives eight hours while cutting weight in a car and fight the next day in a foreign place. I don't want the first time to be as a professional. Now, maybe some of them it wouldn't make any difference because they're wired that way. And we try and make those road trips fun to reduce the pressure and things like that. But those are all variables we never introduced, we can't introduce. And I don't want that novelty necessarily to be at the professional level.

SPEAKER_01

I know. The more we scratch down, it just seems like it's a big fucking black box of mist mystery.

SPEAKER_00

And we realize how little of it we actually control.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think that's what we're when we talk when we have the narratives and the game plans and the blah blah blah, and we're sitting here fucking rabbiting on every week. There's almost like an illusion we have it, right? This is why we're talking about it. It's an illusion of control.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's like the illusion of free will. You know, with I think without that, for some people it'd be really hard to get up and start their day every day. And so as coaches, without some illusion of free will, and I think maybe some of it our fighters gain confidence from it. I think maybe that's that's a one of our big jobs as coaches is to make sure that they enter the cage as confidently as they can. Um, I think that that is helpful. And so the more experience we have as coaches, the more we can help them navigate some of that. Come back to that experience piece.

SPEAKER_01

Um was it you that was telling me that fucking lobster story about if the lobster loses a fight, it it changes its baseline of either serotonin or dopamine, but makes them more risk-averse for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_00

It makes sense. Didn't didn't Kahneman and them do a lot of looking at uh risk and reward, and and human beings are more risk-averse than they are reward-centric. Like, even if the even if the proposition is put in a way that highlights the risk versus highlighting the reward, it's the same exact proposition. People will choose the one, the the risk-averse version versus the reward-based version. And so, yeah, I I mean, we see a lot of young fighters and we see even professional fighters fight not to lose, right? That happened at the UFC this weekend. Um, Johnny Walker fought somebody else. I don't I don't love Johnny Walker, which is why I remember. And and so these two guys are fighting for numbers and rankings and and prestige. Neither one of them fought. They were both so afraid to lose. They were so risk averse.

SPEAKER_01

I think this is why I keep coming back to this idea of trying to maximize the frequency of that experience and and really take a long-term development plan. Because we talk, you know, I think there's a defensive mechanism, right? We're like, well, you know, uh amateur results don't really mean anything. And I think deep down I do believe that, but they're also meaningful to me too, because it's uh there's there's a lot built into it, right? If a team goes on a string of losses, do they start losing faith in the training? You know, the the the questions, the creeps, the doubts all start coming in. So that's where I see myself now is it from the not so much the development side, just my regular students, but for the fight team themselves. Um most of my attention goes towards when we're fighting, who we're fighting, and and is this something that you know that that's fair and in the right time. And I don't know it's the right time, but that's that's what I think about. Like I'm careful, yeah. I'm careful with matchmaking for the bigger picture because it's part of a longer term thing.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And it does it does have an effect. It's hard when you have multiple guys on the same fight card and and one of the guys that everyone loves and and love, you know, one of everyone's favorite training partners goes out and loses early in that card. And you know, I'm always preaching, you know, that this is a team sport, but the competition is a solo thing.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so one of your teammates going out and losing a fight is has no bearing on you in your fight. That's just an independent event. It shouldn't. It shouldn't, but it's hard to it's hard to do that. You know, the the good thing is most of the time when that guy loses, he comes back and he's still upbeat and he's still, you know, if if a guy loses and and I could see it that he's took that loss really tough, I might even pull him away from everyone else until the night's over.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, go go put on your shirt and go sit in a crowd with your friends and stuff. Don't don't come back to the locker room. But they take the loss well and they're like, hey, I had a great time, that was fun, you know, let's let's go kick ass and come back to you know, keep the guys going.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's interesting. My my team are very uh very, very different on how they they handle losses. Some want to just bury themselves in all for months, others are back in the gym on Monday, getting after it. It's it's wholly unique.

SPEAKER_00

Right, if we started the team, if we started a that it just it all points to how many things we actually can control. You know, farrest mentioned sports psychology. I I have two thoughts on that. One is it is an area of of the sport that I don't know that much about, but I also have a very negative feeling about sports psychology. Um and maybe that's my normal bias against soft sciences and things like that. But I have I've never seen a person change their makeup, right? And I I've seen people find ways to work around mental deficits, if you will. But I don't know if that comes from sitting in a you know, sitting on the couch with a sports psychologist or practice, training, experience. But the highest levels of all the sports employ sports psychologists and use them and trust them. And so maybe there's a maybe I my bias is just what I think sports psychology is versus I'm sure there's an ecological approach to sports psychology. I'm sure that's what John Baker's doing. I'm sure that's what other people are doing. I just don't have enough experience with it. Like motivational interviewing and and things like that. I just don't have enough experience with that stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it it's the same ratio from our perspective, it's just how you behave, how you relate, how you engage with the world. And if you're able to experience that over time and build some kind of positive affect around it, then that's that's what we're looking for, right? And converse, that's why that's why losses could be so kind of devastating because the the the the re the change or uh they reconfigure the relationship that you have with with that experience.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah, I I've had fighters, I'm sure, we've all had fighters who you watch them fight and you're like the only thing missing is they don't know how to win. Like they maybe it's because they've never played another sport, or maybe because this is so different than anything they've done before, that they just they haven't figured out how to win yet. And maybe some guys never do. You know. Um I reading the other day, a a high-level professional who had lost lost his first two professional fights. And that could, you know, you lose your first couple professional fights. I could see that being so damaging for some people that they never they either never fight again or they never make it to the level because it changes that relationship, it changes how they look at everything. But there are also guys in sports, there are positions in sports where they say you have to have a short memory, right? Like uh the guys that cover wide receivers in the NFL, the cornerbacks, like if they give up a big play, they still got to go back against that same guy the next repetition. And if the previous repetition is coloring your your thought process, if you're in your head, it could all go very badly very quickly.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm sure both ways, right?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it builds confidence in one guy, right? And so when you look at like when guy, they say a guy uh it gets hot, right? Well, I don't know, is that is that just eventually they're going to regress to the mean, or is that a confidence issue? And why can't they carry that forever?

SPEAKER_01

I do have to be mindful of that. You know, I talk especially the grapplers and stuff. I want them grappling early. Like I want that you've been training with us for a month and a half, go and do a tournament. You'll probably get whooped, but you're at least experiencing that.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Now you're gonna be thinking that's a double-edged sword. I could like it's similar because we have a live environment all the time with very mixed classes. I have to I have to remind people as well, is there's a rite of passage here. You're gonna suck for a while, and then when newer people come in, you're gonna have this perceived sense of competency because you're gonna be way, way ahead of them, but it takes time. But in the car to me, that's colored by my own engagement with the sport and who I am, and that might be too much for people. But then we're talking about that's the filter, right? No, everyone who walks in your gym is gonna be capable of this.

SPEAKER_00

I think we have to match that with what they're looking to get out of it. So I have some if I have a guy who is looking to just get, and I'm and and this is I taught two coaching courses this weekend. And on Saturday I I taught my people that are interested in getting into coaching in the gym or or outside. And then on Sunday I did my current coaches. And one of the things that that, and my current coaches all have a lot of experience with with this approach. One of the things that came up is that some people are not in the room to get better at grappling. Like they didn't even join the gym to do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. They joined the gym for whatever other reasons they had. Uh make friends, confidence, self-defense, fitness, whatever it is. Those students are different in some sense than a student who joined to compete or get good at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And so, as coaches, we have to shape their environment for what they want. And so if you have two students who are just there for whatever reason, getting better at jiu-jitsu is not that important for them, then I shape their environment differently. And when they come to me and they're like, okay, I'd like to earn a blue belt, then we can change their way that they interact with the environment. But the the point was what really came up, and I was so proud of my current coaches, is that they are taking into account everyone's personal journey as they try and shape that person's environment. And so if you have a 20-year-old kid who wants to compete, then when they're white belts, yeah, go compete and train with different people and train in a different manner, and I expect something different. I have different expectations. If you're a 32-year-old lawyer who's just there for whatever reason, then I want you to experience this differently. And what if you change your mind about that or you change your own intentionality, then we can we can help you do that also. And I have MMA guys the same way. I mean, if you came into my room on a Tuesday night, I had 20, I think I had 24 guys. Probably if if 10 of them are actively competing, that's probably uh all of them. And the other 14 are just there because they really enjoy doing this, they really enjoy the camaraderie, they really enjoy the community, they really enjoy going to fights and being a part of the team, then I help shape that differently than the guys that are fighting. The guys that are fighting, I I have different expectations.

SPEAKER_01

And I think the room organizes for that. Like if our our because we've got so much so much partner changing and whatnot, people gravitate towards where they're comfortable, generally speaking. But you'll get so this is gonna I know I need to get going here surely. Um this idea this idea that we talk about the challenge point, that's getting muddier for me. That's getting muddier for me too. Because I have this kid, I have this kid Ethan, who came in, and I can't speak highly enough of his work ethic. But it's not his work ethic. It's his work ethic, but it's his resilience and grit and determination. You could and we did, because he wanted to be on the fight team and stuff, and he came in, he'd had a bit of moy tie experience, no grappling whatsoever. He got fucking mauled and wrestle-fucked around the floor for the best part of six months. But he would be back the next day and he'd be in it, and he'd be really you could sense the frustration in him. There was no fucking quitting this kid. I have yet to see, from an MMA grappling perspective, I've yet to see such rapid development in anyone that's come through my door. And because his challenge point was fucking right up at the end. He he wanted the challenge. He was not dissuaded if anything, he he had a stick up his ass, and he was coming back and he was gonna fucking fix this. But you can imagine other athletes that just this this is not for me, or I'm not where I should be, or this sucks, or my coach is setting me up for failure, or whatever, and they're out the door. It's for sure. Alright, my man. Next week we have uh we're really geeking out next week, we have Dr. Brandon Thomas, professor of ecological psychology at Whitewater. He has, as far as I know, zero experience or interest in fighting. So we'll just be about that.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I'm gonna ask them to design a practice then. No kidding. I think it goes super well. It doesn't go super well. I'm going to SBG camp tomorrow with Rory. Um, people from all over the country get together. We train for three days. I am teaching a lesson on Saturday afternoon, um, completely alive, all of it. And so it will be interesting. Um and then I come back and then I will take, I will do that phone call with you while I'm on the road to West Virginia and Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, and I know you talked to him a bit more, but let's maybe try and get I'm in Mexico the week after. Uh let's try and get uh Mr. Baker.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah, John would love it. I'll I will see John when I'm in Pittsburgh next week, hopefully. Although it's it's gonna be crazy. I'm moving my daughter and the draft and I'm teaching a seminar, but I hope to see John for some of it. If nothing else, for a meal or beer.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_01

Well give him a love and we'll get him on the forum for the show. We'll do.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Talk to later, brother.