Learning to Fight! Conversations in Combat Skill
The Primal MMA podcast is back and rebranded as the Learning to fight podcast.
Same convos bringing together coaches, athletes, and sports scientists to discuss training and practice design for Mixed Martial Arts. Exploring the science of skill acquisition, human motivation, and sports psychology, the podcast seeks answers to the question, can we get better quicker?
Now with Coach Adam Singer of SBG Athens
Learning to Fight! Conversations in Combat Skill
Learning to Fight - Episode 34
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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 & Rory Singer — Co-owners and head coaches at SBG Athens, BJJ black belts, long-time MMA coaches, with years of developing novice to elite level fighters. Students 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.
No, I know.
unknownWe know.
SPEAKER_00You boys squabbling already talking shit already.
SPEAKER_02We didn't want to talk until you were here.
SPEAKER_00Oh.
SPEAKER_02Everything all right? That dude sent me a that dude sent me a video of his live work, and it was it was basically what I thought it would be. It was devoid of live. You know Richley, Richie, that can cut us out. Um the guy we were talking about yesterday that they were saying is a super popular coach on uh John John Gillis? Giles. Who's talking about?
SPEAKER_00What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_02Someone posted something on the on the WhatsApp group of on and his workout. And uh the description of the workout was um oh the uh is that the Muay Thai guy holding the I think he's a strike, he's a striking coach. And so the the workout that he posted, the video he posted was just pad holding, which is fun. And the class was three three-minute rounds of themed shadow, not sure what theme shadow boxing is, 40 minutes of drills, so I like that, and then three times three of pads using the drills only, which I mean that's a traditional workout, but it sounds like a good workout, right? It's got a warm-up, 40 minutes of hard work, maybe, and a finisher. So if if you're telling me you do nine minutes of shadow boxing to warm-up, and you do nine minutes of pad work to cool down, and in the middle is 40 minutes of live work, that's you know, who the fuck am I to say that the the 18 minutes is not well spent? So I asked him a question. I I said, Can you tell me what the drills are? And he said, drilling phases and sequences for 40 minutes. So I'm like, all right, cool. I wrote any live work and he said my drills are always live. So I asked him to send me, like, I didn't see it on his Instagram, so I said, Can you send me a link to a video? You don't have to cut any of this shit out. It doesn't matter. He's he doesn't he doesn't follow our show. Um I shared a I shared a video, you can watch it on a WhatsApp group, and it looks about as live as you'd expect. It starts with one guy holding his mitts up and the other guy throwing, and it basically is like carving up a corpse.
SPEAKER_01It just happens to be a live corpse, but so the person's alive, but the drill is most definitely not. Right.
SPEAKER_02The the human beings taking part in a drill appear to be alive. But the drill that's pretty badass, not gonna lie. Yeah, he started. I mean, yeah. I'm watching it right now out of the side of my eye. The only thing that's there's no real consequences. The only things landing are, yeah, it's it's nonsense. Yeah, it's it's it's not what what I would call live, that's for sure. So you guys can you guys can watch that later. I think I think Adam just commented on it that um he said about as a lot about as live as Millie Vanilli. So I have been I have I have been on like three or four different people, and people are not responding to me at all. Man, because they can't. But I'm being very nice. Like I know it's Scott, Scotty. You said the other day we need to go hard.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I I I go back and forward that I woke up in a good mood today. I'm just uh I'm in a good mood today. Good. And I come I come in peace. So I Although your your man, your man never your man let the uh conversation peter out when you're asking him, Dilgone stick guy.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, he's uh he's not gonna no because I've countered his very politely again, because I think you have to be somewhat polite because we are trying to engage, and if you just go hard and just start tearing into people, then they're not gonna engage. So hey, hey, buddy, I'm still waiting on an answer. I'd love to know more about why you think Steph Curry, who shoots a billion shots every day, still only has a 40% shooting accuracy, which makes him one of the best ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm not discounting how good he is, but as soon as you put a person in front of him, he's not nearly as good as when there's no one in front of him. So maybe there's more to it than just shooting a thousand shots every day.
SPEAKER_02What if I counter you that a thousand shots made is what's required to have a 40% with someone in front of you? Like, I mean, that is that is how I would counter, right? I would counter that some level, because like Scotty always talks about how every engagement just looks chaotic, it looks messy. But what if it takes some level of clean coordination so that under pressure it only falls this far? And so if he only shot 500 shots a day, his shooting average would be 30% with someone in front of him. Is that a that's a logical argument?
SPEAKER_01Sure. And then so then where what is that, what is that number? And then if then he goes out and he shoots 40%, then what what more does he need to go back and you know if he goes back and shoots another thousand every day, will he shoot 41%? No, I mean there's obvious, I think, and I'm just gonna go.
SPEAKER_02It makes one of the best, he's one of the best three-point shooters of all time, for sure. He may be the best shooter of all time. So, but let's say you have a player on that same team who shoots 30%. Then logically, if they're looking up to Steph Burry, then they would say, Oh, I'm not shooting enough shots, and therefore I have to go in and shoot more shots. And I'm sure there is a trade-off between time and energy and fatigue and practice time, but it would make logical sense. And so let's bring it back to fighting. You guys can answer this. Why does it not make logical sense for me to say if all of my young guys look if I can get them to look great on the hand pads, then when I put someone in front of them, we know it's going to degrade. But the higher we start, the same degradation still ends up higher.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that the argument for repetitions? Yeah, I think that's the argument for repetitions, but I think because we what we understand about skill development, that's not the that's not the point. It's not the point of creating these really stable, stable movements. The point is being able to maintain and regain stable stability. So it's actually it's uh it's not riding the bike straight. It's being able to uh ride the bike on bumpy roads and keep stay balanced. That's the skill. So it it it maps back on uh um Carl's uh analogy about walking on flat dry surface will not help you walk on ice because there's different task demands.
SPEAKER_02Okay, but part of the task demand of riding a bicycle is leg strength.
SPEAKER_00And so is but now we're going, yeah, that and I don't I think there's no argument there. We all think it adds to capacities, right?
SPEAKER_02Right. So is there a valid separation between what we are calling skill developments and capacity and coordination?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think that's a fight, I think I think that's what we're pushing back at. Just call it what it is, it's capacity, but coordination of what?
SPEAKER_01Of uh we want to be coordinated within the realm of the thing, like doing I want we want our fighters to be coordinated in when someone is throwing at them and they can perceive and and when they're moving around, they they can hit and no amount of coordination of a dead task that's beholden to the dead task is going to give them that coordination in the environment of fighting.
SPEAKER_02Right, but what if what if they are if they let's just stick with a one-two, the simplest thing, and I'm not talking about the micro details of a one-to- can't isn't it is it accurate to say that someone who can just stand there and throw a clean one-two can throw that same thing at a person in front of them?
SPEAKER_00If if the conditions are the same, so this is I think we're getting closer to what we're talking about now, right? Is that we think the skill part is in the the adaptability of that one-two, right? Not necessarily the the the the the technical or the the efficiency of the one-two itself. We think, and I think most coaches would actually agree with this if you pinned them down on it. The skill part is the difference between the the technique in and of itself and being able to adapt it in real time. That's the skill part, that's the critical, crucial part. So holy grail we're all trying to get to, right? Right. And so what we're saying is you don't actually need to do the technical stuff, that'll emerge over time. Let's just really work on the adaptability part. So that's the skill part, and I think that's the part that most people that I think the community is generally missing. And I don't necessarily just so I'm gonna I'm gonna um concede a point. I think you can build that technical thing, that one-to-but that's the the skill part still needs to be developed, and that's the that's the adaptability part. Because we'll agree there's better and worse ways to throw one-two. And agree in a fight, it's never the same one-two, it can't be the same one two, it can never ever be the same one-two. So there has to be a deviation from that ideal. That's to be uh in the moment adaptation to that one-two to make it effective. That's what that's what we were always talking about. You can't get that from the pad. You cannot get it from the pad. Now you can say, well, the pads can move around and you're somewhat adapted to the pad, correct? So is there a litter, are you nudging a wee bit of that um adaptability space? Maybe, maybe, but I don't think it's that strong. I think this is the crux of the argument. That the difference between the technique and the skill is that little uh that little area, that little space of adaptability. And we don't think you can get that from pads.
SPEAKER_01If we take a day one student, and for I don't know, three, three weeks, let's just say three weeks, we have them hit hand pads, or just even in the air. Just we really just break them down to what what we want it to look like aesthetically, just a nice one-two, three weeks. Right. So let's wait, let's just keep it as simple as possible. Just one, two, something that looks like a one-two. Sure, but it's gonna look so then there has to be some aesthetic aesthetic we're looking at that we're trying to get this. We're not gonna put that dude into any kind of fight environment with just his one-two, and then he's gonna throw that same one-two.
SPEAKER_02And it's not even gonna look remotely like it because there so fight environment, I I think is is too far, but is there not some intermediate drill that we would do first? So I'm saying we do something first, we do shoulder tag first, or whatever that is, right? Or or body buck punching, straights only. We know what that looks like. Is there not a phase we could put before that where they build some coordination since they've never moved like this, they've never done anything on their feet that would help them with that live test?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, some type of live just trying to.
SPEAKER_02I'm asking, is there some coordination building exercise that would help them? Okay, why don't we do that?
SPEAKER_00I think we do do that. I think everyone does that. I think we are saying it's probably not um, there's probably a better way to do it. And that always leaving a little bit of room for that decision making. And we see decision making as being continuous, and I don't want to get too wordy here, but it continues uh decision making is not a thing, it's not an input. That's what we believe, right? That's that's where our research is taking us at the moment. It's not um input process and calculation output, it's just continuous.
SPEAKER_01And it needs all things as much as that's possible.
SPEAKER_00It needs as much as possible. Yeah, that's what we that's that's the skill. We're talking about skill here, right? We're not this isn't in the learning and uh learning to look good fighting, or learning to be uh do learning to do technical things. Yes, but I'm asking, is skill all we do? Skill is what we're the skill is yes, that's our that's our endeavor is to make skillful, skillful athletes.
SPEAKER_01And won't then the athlete organize all those other things, become coordinated and all those other things, with to to the end thing being fighting. That's the question. Yes, well, that's what certainly what we've embarked on. Sure.
SPEAKER_02So there have been a lot of shit. We don't do a lot of other things. So then part of the argument is when someone talks about a coordination phase, they are talking about this linear idea. And I I think that you would have to just keep coming back. Every time you have a new thing you want to add, you'd have to come back to the coordination phase, and you'd end up doing a lot of dead repetition work.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I I think we we have the the we have a coordination phase too, right? And so anything where the system's always going through the like if we take uh new's ideas of coordination control skill, right? They're not rigid. You're not suddenly out of coordination and it's all control and it's all skill. It's it's when you're adding new things and one. It's constantly, it's constantly in these regions. Um what we are what we are what we are saying is um we think this is a more effective way. Now we can be a little like and then because we are making these claims and we you know kind of investigate, scratch down, try and understand what's actually going on. I think the case becomes better. The case becomes more robust that we should be working on this adaptability piece, this decision-making piece. And when we strip the adaptability demands and the um perceptual demands, and now I'm getting worried and the the decision-maker demands from the from the activity, we're probably leaving a lot on the table if we want to become skillful. And you know, you see these um like McDojo life and stuff, and and it's all fighters on there laughing and and scoffing at these it's all this bullshit breaking boards and running around and all this shit. But for me, it's not that different. Not that different. I mean, it's really not that different. It's either it's either doing the thing with back here, it's either doing the thing or we're doing something else. And maybe there's better something else's and worse something else's. But none of it beats the thing. You know who I like to bring up today, um, and I I think he's fantastic, is Tony Jeffries, right?
SPEAKER_02Right, you love you love him. Claims him a little bit. Because I don't feel the same way as you do.
SPEAKER_00No, I know you don't, because I just think he's he his message is about bringing people in a box, and he's making a damn fortune, and I cannot hate the man. I think he's got tremendous uh charisma. He's always sending a good message about safety, which I really like. Um but it's all kind of bullshit as well. But I really like him. So it's curious to me why I pick my battles, and I really like him. Like I like his stuff because I think he's not he's the he's got a very disarming way of coming over, and he's just trying to get people into sport and and and do you know boxy things and feel like they're they're getting their workouts and stuff. I don't think I I don't think I think he thinks everything he's saying is what's gonna make a good skillful boxer or a good skillful fighter, but I think the cohort and the demographic he's going over, I think he's fantastic. Which is odd because there's other coaches that just that they stick stick right in across. I think they're making greater claims. Now, on Tony Jeffries, uh I don't know if I sent you the real, he was on some kind of interview or something, and he had all the different like a tournament of all the different uh training activities. Right. Speed work, jump rope, footwork drills, ladder drills, hard sparring, technical sparring, and then he went through them all, and unsurprisingly, the most the best way for boxing is the technical sparring, right? That's what he ends up with. So even Tony and I we were on the we were agreeing, like there's the tech sparring or the the live interaction, and then everything else. And we may disagree on the value of everything else, but he's also agreeing that it's inferior.
SPEAKER_02But every they all do, every single one. Let's let's go to any of these people that that we are trying to have discussions with. I won't name them all, but we're all on different because I don't even know. I don't even know who we're all talking to. It's like the it's the community say again, it's the community in large. Yes, so but even the Mount Griftmore will have they will all agree, and maybe some of them will, but they'll all agree that some type of sparring, and I'm just calling everything sparring, right? All live work is sparring. Sparring is the best training methodology. They all will agree on that.
SPEAKER_01No, I will they know, but they they will all agree that it's necessary, but Luke Howard the other day on on that thread had to say that you know, we he's he's on the bot the the the glove on the fucking stick, and we need to do this before we do this, and then we do this. And I'm like, well, no, you don't need to do this because what are you doing standing in front of something? What coordination are you actually building? Your feet aren't even moving, this thing isn't moving, you're just bobbing and weaving on either side and going underneath. Well, then we put it into this phase, and then we build from this phase to this phase, so it's all linear. So he would not agree, he would not agree that we at least I would assume he could correct me if I'm wrong if he'd answer my freaking you know questions, but he won't. Uh, he would probably not agree that this is that the fighting's the most important because the fighting needs to be serviced by all this other dead bullshit.
SPEAKER_00But if we're to be the most generous we can be, it's okay, there's a place for that. And this this goes right back to uh Coach Matt, right? If we're to be the most generous, then there's a maybe a time and a place to bring new people on or learning a new movement or skill, and that might be that might be a part of it. But that's not the conversations we're having because we're seeing elite level fighters doing all this bullshit. And and so are we still having the same conversation? Do they st are they still need to refine their coordination patterns? Something they've been doing for 20 fucking years. Right.
SPEAKER_02So that's that was my thing with Bisping. And he's standing across from this this fighter. I don't know who that fighter was. I I should have looked him up. Uh he's probably an elite fighter talking about they gotta do you gotta do your footwork patterns. And Bisping says, I put out four cones, and he shows what he's doing on the cones. And first off, maybe he's just been out of the fight game so long, but that's not how Bisping moved when he fought. He actually was a tremendous mover, and he's saying I go one and I three, and then someone calls four and I do this and that, and you gotta do it. And it's it's the same question I ask of the baseball players. I'm like, how is the same tool that an eight-year-old is using the same tool you're using? Like, you're telling me in the 25 years of playing baseball that that same tool works for everybody? So, sure, maybe a beginner on day one falls over their feet and you want to say, here's how you move. But Jesus Christ, an elite-level fighter, come on. It just doesn't make any logical sense to me.
SPEAKER_00So the logic here would be most coaches would agree that live work is superior. We we hope. You can get them there, right? I think so there. I think we always do it.
SPEAKER_02We I've done it, we've done it with football coaches, we've done it with basketball coaches, baseball coaches, all of them. So yes.
SPEAKER_00Most coaches believe that the the live work is superior, but they're also saying that live work plus dead work is better than just live work. And that doesn't make any sense to me. Like if you've got if you've got uh five hours a week of live work, and you say, okay, well, I think three hours a week of live work and two hours a week of dead work will be will uh elicit greater gains. Okay, that's a that's a thing to be made. I I don't believe that because that doesn't make sense to me. If we're saying live work superior, why are we taking it off the table and putting an inferior work? Okay. Their claim is the inferior work plus the live work will make uh come out with a better product. Now, if you say five hours a week of uh live work and an extra two hours of dead work, then I'll be maybe maybe you'll get something out of that. But we're talking hour for hour, minute for minute, rep for rep. The liveless, the liveness is is really where it's at. And I think we can get and get more coaches here, but they there's they seem to think that the dead work is additive. And that's what we're pushing back on. Right.
SPEAKER_02I and I do think what you end up with is because I was just saying about the other day, the coach has a two-hour block, right? So it's no gym in America has a practice that starts at nine o'clock and ends when it's over. Because I think if that were the case, when the coach starts designing from the top down, not the bottom up, all of a sudden they're like, oh shit, I don't need two hours. You know, I don't I don't need 45 minutes. Last night my class was 50 minutes, and I was like, because we were on a three-minute clock with 30 seconds rest, and I'm like, there's there's nothing else of value that these people can do now. They are done. Now, if it was an hour and a half practice at the 45-minute mark, I say to myself, shit, what are we gonna do for another 45 minutes? Okay, we're gonna hit hand pads or something. Or I would have started with 30 minutes, but then the live work suffers. I want the I want the live work to be done fresh and fatigue over the time of the live work.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to enter the live work fatigued. No, you're surely not gonna get the most out of it. So I don't understand why we're doing 30 minutes, you know, so many practices with let's run around and do 30 minutes of strength and conditioning, and we're gonna do all the stuff and exhaust ourselves, and then we're gonna get to wrestling, or we're gonna get the that's because your gym, I mean, because the gym schedule says this practice lasts X amount of time.
SPEAKER_02And so I think some coaches hand handcuff themselves, and maybe they would say, Yeah, I would love to do live work, but we can't do live work for two hours.
SPEAKER_00And I totally agree. You can't do live work even if there's light sparring, you can't probably do uh two hours of getting tapped and brought it into the it's hard, it's hard to it's hard to stay focused.
SPEAKER_01And how much extra capacity do you need for something that's three threes or three fives or five fives? You know, isn't the idea to build capacity, the highest level of capacity for that thing? How much extra is building that capacity for that for that thing? At what point do you have enough?
SPEAKER_02Well, also, we we also know, like if I came in and I said, okay, we're gonna do 10, five minute rounds of MMA, go. The first couple rounds they warm up, then they they get their good work, they choose their good partners, they get three or four rounds of good work, and then they coast the rest of the time. And so I don't I'm not saying there's no value in posting, but let's be serious. At that point, sometimes it's just going through the motions, and I don't know what the value of unfocused going through the motions is. Still better probably than hitting hand pads.
SPEAKER_00Well, if we're going to if we're if you're going with the assumption that every rep we do, we're programming something or updating a representation in the head, in the brain, then we should be trying to avoid coursing or any kind of like lackluster practice. Right. Perfect practice makes what's that saying? Practice. Perfect practice makes perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect or something. Yeah. I haven't said anything like that ever. Yeah, something like that. So then indeed every movement we make in practice should be as close to the ideal as possible.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00Now if we go back to the Tony Jeffries thing, I think if you got like if we take all the different like like that, take all the different things that coaches and fighters do, and we um and it can be different for everyone, rather like this hierarchy of effectiveness. I think most coach I think most people would end up with the same thing. Sparring, tech sparring, light sparring is going to be the superior once. So I think that's the case that we're making. Okay. Can we find a way to do that sustainably, ethically, and get as much of that into practice as we can? And I but that that seems to be just like controversial for some reason. Yeah, sacklets. The sacred cows.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And to die on the hill, every they're all prepared to die on the hill.
SPEAKER_02Well, you're questioning your I I think I said this with pre, I don't mean to repeat myself, but uh on the pre episode. But it's like when I have a discussion about evolution with someone who's very religious, I'm not just questioning their their feelings on evolution, I'm questioning how they spend their time, what their life is shaped like. Like to them, I'm questioning what they do on Sunday mornings and Tuesday night Bible study and their friends and their mission outreach and their all of it. But that I'm not doing that. But when you ask, when you talk to one of these coaches, you are questioning their form of life. I do an exercise with people sometimes. I call it prisoner's dilemma. It's not the game theory prisoner's dilemma. It's just if you had three 15-minute sessions a week to train for your sport, what would those look like? And everyone says some form of sparring. Not everyone. No, you're right.
SPEAKER_01I've asked that question to some folks, and I got answers that I was not prepared for about to do it there 15 minutes, and it just blew my fucking mind.
SPEAKER_00You can also tell you can also tell it's cultural and sport-wise. I mean, we like yeah, maybe it's algorithm, but five out of every six uh reels that come on, it's someone doing some form of bullshit on the pads or whatever, right? But we don't really see that in grappling. Yes, we see the dead drilling and whatnot, but if we saw if if five out of six grappling um reels were someone rolling around the floor with a grappling dummy, we'd kind of find that absurd. But yeah, except that except there's little difference in that for me than hitting hand pads.
SPEAKER_02The best female, the best female jujitsu player in the world right now.
SPEAKER_00That's that's Pete Grift.
SPEAKER_02Right. She just released, and I didn't when I first clicked on it, I was like, who is she who is she grappling with? What are they is something wrong with them?
SPEAKER_01And I was like, it's a fucking dummy. Don't forget the guard pulling with nobody there.
SPEAKER_00So I think we do see it. Guard pulling. She has to know that's a grift.
SPEAKER_02Why? They pulled her out of she they took her out of school in eighth grade. She may not know anything but how to submit other girls.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes I get discouraged.
SPEAKER_02I mean, have you heard those gymnasts speak who get pulled out of school at six, six years, sixth grade or six years old or whatever? You don't want them discussing world politics and stuff. So, you know, I I tried, I have tried to put up more content. And every time I record it, when I watch it, I'm like, this just looks like sparring. Like, there's no, I could put a long description of what they are supposed to be doing, but it just looks like sparring. And so I don't just want to put up a bunch of sparring footage of beginners. So some assholes like, well, you see, they all suck. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, they've been here for they've been here for four months just doing live work. Give them give them a chance. But I I no matter how good my drill is, once I say go, it looks like sparring. Because it is. Because it is, but it doesn't make for good Instagram reels.
SPEAKER_01No, doesn't make for crazy like look at look at this, which look at this thing. Like somebody did, and I'm gonna teach it now. My guys are gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02Which I think, Scotty, is is to your point in jujitsu. Most thing, unless it's someone saying I do this, then this, then this, here's it's a kata, it's just it's always smart.
SPEAKER_01But that's about what you see on Instagram. Is the kata is the all the moves in this dead environment against this willing person, and then it looks wonderful, and you're supposed to go back and drill it a thousand times, and then you're gonna go grapple live. Who's the guy?
SPEAKER_02Who's the guy that hates us? Robert, what's his bunch of them? No, but there's a jiu jitsu, a high-level jujitsu guy, who just put out a video on what CLA was, and he said CLA is a theory, and I'm like, Oh, that's the one I asked you about.
SPEAKER_01You guys didn't know. Oh, yeah. Remember, I said it's a theory, is it this? Are you the part of the problem? Deagle or something. You're a part of the problem. Calling CLA a theory and just about how you have these discussions with your students. Like, could you fucking know what you're talking about before you start talking to other people and then putting it on Instagram so other people can fucking put fire emojis on it? Like, fuck. Ignorance. There's so much ignorance. Do better, but it gets the likes and the clicks.
SPEAKER_02Right. And and he's and he's great. I mean, so he's just it's a didn't we just went through this with Tackett, William Tackett the other day or last week, who was putting up videos like, hey, he should have pointing at uh Grippo missing a footlock finish or something. It's like he should have drilled this more on a mic. Uh unless he was drilling it against that guy in that situation. What's the difference like how would that have been different? Because experts don't know how to get out of footlocks.
SPEAKER_00I think I take the attack it wheel as a bit of a win for the Eco Bros because there's we've been talking about this redefining uh what drilling is, and it's morphed from volume of repetitions of root repetitions of muscle memory to getting a rough idea down and going down and trying.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I have seen that, I have seen that shift as well recently. That this is this is the I think Richard Dawkins had this issue for a long time when he would discuss religion with people. And they would like he would talk to a Catholic priest, and the Catholic priest, because he couldn't argue with Dawkins, and and he he must have known who he was talking to, would almost be willing to remove all the important tenets that made it Catholicism just to not be illogical. So he'd say, Well, it's not really that, it's not really this, it's not really this. It's just about loving your neighbor. And Richard would be like, No, I love my neighbor, you might love your neighbor, but it's based on all of that other stuff. And I think the same thing is gonna happen here. In the face of challenges, people will say, that's not what we really do. We just do a couple reps to make sure that they know what they're doing, and then everything else is this. But that's gonna be a bastardized version of an ecological approach more than anything.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're not really uh squabbling over the utility uh shrimp drills up and down the lines anymore. I don't see that argument much.
SPEAKER_02No, no, and and whoever said you can't do anything, like whoever said you can't show a student something and you can't say, hey, get a couple reps of that on the trash mat before you you try and do that to you know your partner in live training. It's just what do we think the utility of that is? What do we think it's doing? It's not flipping people think it's doing. That's the filter. Yesterday I had a student, I have a student who's uh a young, very young man, not a great athletic background, and I really like him. His jujitsu is just taken off. Striking wise, he's still very gangly. He looks sometimes like when you see you ever see two basketball players getting a brawl on a basketball court. Scotty, you ever see that? Uh no. So it's guys whose arms are too long for their bodies at this point. Like they just don't know how to control them. And so I was watching last night having some things, and I just said, hey, I just said, I know, and maybe it's over constrained, but it's like, I want you to just keep your hands in eye level. I think you say the same thing to beginners. I want your hands healed. I don't want all the this, I just want you to throw everything from here. And he did a couple rounds with a higher-level guy, and and it it took care of the problem. Now, I don't know if that's sustainable, but I'd rather do that than put him on the hand pads and say, let's clean up your one-two. Because it'll just it will fall right apart. And then what was funny was he said, all right, I felt better punching, but I kept getting teeped in the stomach. And I said, Well, that's just because you're you happen to go against the guy with a good teep who decided that the place that was most open was your stomach.
SPEAKER_00Give me a few minutes, boys. My one of my uh fighters tomorrow night, his opponent's missing weight. I need to deal with this two minutes. Yeah, go go deal with it.
SPEAKER_02Because Rory knows you know what I'm talking about. But I think it was an ineffective constraint for him. Um, but yeah, I could have, I could have taken him out and said, okay, I'm gonna uh let me see your one-two here. Let me make it straighter, make it cleaner, make it, and as soon as he got in front of that same guy again, it would have been the same thing. Sure, but we've seen that enough times. We're like, hands up. And and we ended up having a conversation last night on on Messenger. He said, I was having a really hard time with that front kick. And I said, Well, I also have a hard time with that front kick. I've been doing this for a hundred years. I said, are you having a hard time because you can't see it, or you're having a hard time because you don't know what to do with it? Because I think those are two different interventions, right? Agreed, agreed. That's I think that's the idea of afford to uh constrained to afford or constrained to what they call potentiate. And I'm just summing it up as constrained to see or constrained to do. And he said, I just can't see it. The guy was fast, it was clean, it was, it was the guy he was with heist, who has a really good front kick. I said, Okay, so so we'll you know, and he's long, he's almost as long as you are, Charles. And so I'm like, okay, well, next time we're together, we'll we'll do some drills where you are seeing front kicks from people who are just not as fast, is not as good. If we have to put a mark on the front kick, like there are all kinds of ways we can help you see it.
SPEAKER_01Basically, Pay, you're trying to get him to eventually you just want to be able to have him pay attention to the things that might give away that this front kick is about to happen. Yeah, I mean, we don't know what will we don't know what will help him. That's not no, we just need to pick up. So maybe it's like, hey, pay a little attention to his knee, maybe pay a little attention to his hip.
SPEAKER_02But I can't, but we can't do that. That's too much. So we'll just do is give him more exposure to front kicks that aren't as good as the prof as the amateur fighter he was training with, right? And so I don't care if if it's the hip or the knee or the foot or something that happens up here, he'll figure all that out without ever knowing it, hopefully. I never figure it out. I'm really still not good at it. I can't I just don't see it. I I just my eyes, I would rather get hit with that than get punched. So I pay less attention to that straight line.
SPEAKER_01And maybe you take away some of the other things that a partner can do so that so he can pay a little bit more attention to being kicked as opposed to pay attention to being kicked, I might also get punched, and now I just don't know where to look because I'm too late with this to have all he's gonna have 100% because he's just gone to head contact.
SPEAKER_02And so if I had just gone to head contact, the only thing I'm paying attention to is his hands, right? It's all I'm paying attention to.
SPEAKER_01And how much how much work on the hand pads, how much work on tie pads, how much shadow boxing is gonna help Charles ever better see that front kick? None. And how much of you know, offense defense? So, you know, just I know you're gonna throw one, two front kick, but then later you're gonna one two front kick, you're going fake jab and front kick. Like, how much programming is gonna help?
SPEAKER_02So what? But we can take what you just said and make it live and say, okay, Charles, your your partner now only has a one, a two, and a front kick. They will sequence them any way they want to, they will use them any way they feel like it, but all you have to do is pay attention to the straight line, sure, and see if that works, and if that doesn't work, shrink it down a little bit.
SPEAKER_01If it doesn't work a front hand and the front kick, or a front hand and that rear kick thing so that we're we're constraining what he's gonna see so that he can start to maybe better perceive the one or two things that are coming, and to me that's far superior to any of the other things we just said, and could be done safely and repeatedly and with a bunch of different partners, and anything else.
SPEAKER_02And it at some point he may see them really well and start doing something, but he doesn't necessarily know what to do, so we'll show him. I mean, it's only a couple answers to a to a teeth, so I have no problem showing him and helping them with that. Um, we could put a body pad on him if the fear of getting kicked overwhelms the system, right? Because I don't like if if he's going with people who are front kicking him in the in the liver and now he's just he's afraid of those, then we could put a body kit a body pad on him. Um, so yeah, there's I think there's so many ways that we can manipulate the alive engagement that I don't see how we even ever get to the dead engagements, or it's not the that's a oxymoron, right? The dead work. I just don't see why we would have to. And if the if the dead work is me just having him do a couple reps of against uh a front kick so he can feel that. I I mean so he has confidence at least to know something. Sure.
SPEAKER_01Or bring an elbow in front of it, like hey, you couldn't. I don't want yeah, I don't there are ways you you could also just not be there. Like right. And I think that was the how do you dead rep just not being there, except to when it's coming, you get out of the way.
SPEAKER_02Like so it's it's funny you say that. The first solution he came up with last night was to keep moving away from Heist's rear leg. And at the end of the round, Heist said, I was able to hit you with what I hit you with because you were moving the same way the whole time. And Charles said, Well, I was trying to stay away from that leg. And I said, Okay, that's a good solution till it's not. Now we have to have more. So it was really enjoyable back and forth with a young fighter and think just thinking about how do we help this young fighter. And I never got to the point where I was like, oh, well, let's just do one, two front kick reps over and over and over until he can defend those. Because as soon as it's under pressure or somebody else, it falls apart.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you add movement, you had other techniques, you had just the anxiety now of a live round. It's just it just silly after a while.
SPEAKER_02And and and and let's be real, what the hell what is a front kick anyway? Oh are we is it a karate front kick? Is it a teep? Is it some weird thing that this person does that other people don't do? Is that a savant, tofly?
SPEAKER_01And then if if you get to a point, you it becomes the if we if if if the heads and the shadow boxing and all these other things can fix, can help us perfect movements and and coordination and stuff, then why not just add more of that? Which that's one of the yeah, less decision making ads, less live, less variability. At what point do you just not even do live practices? Why when you said earlier about the prisoner's dilemma, you know, I asked the coach about that, you know, what would you do with 15 minutes? And his answer was drill. And I know when he says drill, he means dead rep drilling. You know, the same thing I said to a friend, and I won't put him on blast because I want to talk to him one day about this, but Mike, you spent eight hours doing this thing with all these athletes, and you actually never did the thing that you were coaching. Like they never did any, they maybe 10 minutes of live work in eight hours. How, how does how is anybody gonna get better at this?
SPEAKER_02Right, but now you're getting like this is the same, this is the same thing. Like, how you can't then you can't sell an eight-hour seminar. And so now you're now you're for eight hours. I I get that, but you're fucking with people's livelihood, and I get it. I would say, hey, listen, your athletes are gonna pay a hundred bucks for eight hours of bullshit, or they could pay a hundred bucks of two hours of great. Which would you rather have?
SPEAKER_01I know what the athletes want because I know my own my own athlete was like, Yeah, you know, after eight hours and you know, hardly anybody sweating. Just think I you see the most about, you know, so many of these seminars and stuff, these jujitsu seminars, is a bunch of people who haven't even broken a sweat. I just I don't want to go somewhere for four, three, or six and collect techniques and then not actually even engage in any real way with the material.
SPEAKER_02It just So what do you say, someone? What do you say to someone who says, you know, if I get one thing out of this seminar, it was worth it.
SPEAKER_01I say that that's great, but there has to be a better way to figure out that one thing.
SPEAKER_02A more time-efficient way.
SPEAKER_01Giving away a Saturday and a Sunday or three hours to go to a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminar or an MA, and like you didn't actually do any Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or MMA, you were just moves.
SPEAKER_02You heard Forrest say that there is still a huge market in Vegas for some elite level fighter to come in and show what he does, which is absurd because I can never do what he does because I'm not him.
SPEAKER_01I'm not like I'm not no one's that person. It's like we talked about the other day with Volkanovsky and and uh the other guy, like rough, rough. It's it's the the idea that I'm gonna you know go to a Lomanchenko seminar and I'm gonna move around like Lomanchenko only if he just Lomachenko. What'd I say? Loman. I thought I said somebody else. I'm sure that guy's somebody too. So I'm never gonna move around like Lomo, not even if he shows me how he moves around. I mean, no amount of reps are gonna make me look like that, move like that. So are there pieces to take from it? The angles and whatever, and can we put those into an alive drill where I am forced to move in certain ways that at least Yeah, but it's it's never gonna be him. So what's the point? No one's gonna ever look like Duke Craig Jones Jiu Jitsu. That dude's a savant on the mat from everything you hear about when he's rolling live with people. Like I'm not he I'm never gonna have his jits. So what do I gain from that?
SPEAKER_02I I like the I like the argument when we talk to someone that that believes in repetition, that why that number? Like, like, is it because a thousand sounds cool? Is it ten thousand because you read Gladwell's stupid ass book? Like, where what is or do you start with I I it would make more sense to start with no number, and then when you see what you want to see, but that's not you know, that's not enough. So it is like Kobe shot a thousand shots every morning. Why? If he if he made a thousand shots then can he just do nine hundred? Hasn't he proven what he wanted to? So I I think that that is a hole in the idea of repetition work that I I want to always ask. Like, why, if you think this is so important, then why aren't you doing more of it? And if it's just an add-on, then why aren't you doing less of it? Because I'll grant that's the one thing I'll I'll grant Thornton in the idealized I method when he taught it to us, it was I just want to see them do do the thing right, like whatever right means. You know, that could be a couple, that could be the problem with that is everyone suffers for the students that take longer. Because I you show me something new, I can do it in one or two reps, and then I don't want to wait around for some blue belt who who can't do it. So what what I'm bored? You and I, I remember every seminar we would go to, we would be like, okay, what like what do we do now for the next five? We got it.
SPEAKER_01Because we're both sitting there just dead rep in it. Yeah, we were both fairly good at jujitsu, and we are pretty good at jujitsu. So, like, how many, how, how much of that do you need to do? At what point do you have it? And it and then how how is more better against this corpse? How do you find out?
SPEAKER_02How do you even figure out how many? Like, how did how did Steph Curry come up with a thousand? I I don't know if it's Steph Curry, but the the Kobe story about X number of reps every day. Like, how did he come up with that? I wonder if there's some kind of success ratio or or failure or time or a metric from the game. Like, I just wonder how people come up with these numbers. Like, how did Lloyd come up with you gotta do it five thousand times?
SPEAKER_01So much that he had like you had to like mark shit off you have to like mark shit off or something.
SPEAKER_02I yeah, I I think that that was I think that was part of it. And the people that did more reps were like more. They were bad like they were the they were the favored children. So I just wonder, Scotty, you got everything taken care of?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think so.
SPEAKER_02What do you do? We we we face that situation all the time and sometimes we So my guy Rico's on weight.
SPEAKER_00My I don't have him cut much. It's like a 10 pound. So he's uh he's on weight 55, he'll fight at 55. Sorry, fight fight at 65 probably. And it's like here's my thing. If his opponent cuts from 200 pounds to 155 and makes it, I've uh there's no you you you uh fulfill the agreement once they miss, so putting a rehydration clause he will they can weigh in at 160 and uh rehydrate to 168. So we'll we'll wait and see. I'll be prepared to go at 170. But if he's coming down from 85 or 80 pounds and trying to get a 55, then then yeah. This is pro-rap. This is uh amateur ready to go approve.
SPEAKER_02So uh advanced or whatever. So we just we just we had two incidents recently. One worked out for us, one worked out against us. The one that worked out against us, I think it also told our fighter that that wasn't his weight class. Like he was fighting at 35, he he had to deal with she's like a horse. He had to deal with an opponent that did not make weight and he didn't want to push too far and lose the fight, and he just got outsized. Yeah, um, my our other guy, I did not like Rory, myself, and Luke, who were the three MMA coaches, we were all like don't don't take this fight. Like, don't like this is this guy is is going to be huge in the cage. Our guy's a 125er, and he isn't a big one twenty-fiver. And his guy missed weight like early in the week, we knew he was gonna miss weight, but in early in the week, he was gonna miss weight by a lot. And so we're like, just call the fight off now. And our guy was like, you know, sold a bunch of tickets, a bunch of people are coming. Yeah, he is well, he is well loved. He sold a ton of tickets, and he just did not want to do that to the people supporting him. So he gave this guy every opportunity, and the guy came in, but it worked against the other guy because the other guy just could not keep the pace up that he was used to. So our guy just weathered a little bit of a storm and then put him out in the third.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I'm a bit of a stickler for weight, but and I think this is a guy's uh ninth amateur fight, so and I get it. Some sometimes they miscalculate weather, but if it's if it's bitten off too much too more than he can chew, then okay, so we want to make it a bit uh bit fairer.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, what pisses me off is my guys are generally undersized because I don't want them cutting a lot. Yeah, they're all cut different, they're generally undersized. But if if if the fighters make weight, that is what it is. Sure. If he's 30 pounds undersized and he they both made the contracted agreement, then it's that's what we agreed to.
SPEAKER_02Good for him. Be the biggest guy in the smallest weight glass. What pisses me off is when like they know anyone that's had more than a couple fights knows or should know, they should know each time point what they were previously, right? So they should every fighter as they go through amateur to pro should have an XL table where they know what they are every time interval. So eight weeks out, seven weeks out, six weeks out, and and even the week up. And so when you look at your table and you know that last time you made weight, but this time at the same moment you are 10 pounds heavier, you should be calling the promoter and calling us so my guy can make a decision to stop cutting weight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's where I'm a little pissed off because it's in Indiana and they're about my my Rico's on weight. And he's not big, he's not a huge, he's tall, taller, he's not a huge 55er. He's cut he's been walking around at 65, 66, which is where I want my amateurs 10 pounds over.
SPEAKER_01So no, it's bullshit. It's not on purpose.
SPEAKER_00It's it's it's the it's yeah, it's just it's it's and I don't I don't want to be I don't want to be the the the the the coaches oh well yeah it should be fine or whatnot. I mean they're trying to fucking knock each other out, so right. Yeah, I took your counsel yesterday. I just want to throw that out because I I guess I d uh Rory's head had already made my decision, but just a little and I'm not name any names. Uh I got uh it's more in the boxing world, but there was some kind of event on In Illinois, and the guys hit me up looking for kickboxers. I've got a couple of my guys who just the the one who's preparing for fights, they normally fight at 145, they're they're walking around about 170 because they're they're weren't planning on fighting and said, Oh, you know, that's not a bad opportunity, we'll we'll take a kickboxing match. And then there was all sorts of fuckery this week. And at one stage I had two of my guys fighting each other, and anyway, I get texts got the guy's obviously desperate to keep the card. I got a text yesterday saying he's got they've got new opponents and it's a total walkover. They've only got uh uh a month or two training. My guys, like, we take this seriously, and then he's sent me, Well, can you maybe a gentleman's agreement that your guys don't go too hard or whatever? I'm like, no, man, this is fucked up. This is fucked up. Plus, it was his guys, it was his own guys. So no, that was the right call.
SPEAKER_02That all smelled that all smelled wrong.
SPEAKER_00I can't even talking out two sides of a mouth, right? Fight your safety, and then yeah, you know, it happens. He knocks some one of my guys go out and they hurt this kid, uh, and then what happens? No, you're an asshole.
SPEAKER_01You end up being like, so you know, because you're a a decent human being, that if you start a fight and then beat the shit out of someone, then you're the asshole because you know how to fight. So if you know that your guys could possibly hurt some people because someone else is not looking out for their best interests, then no, we that's what we do. We don't allow those things to happen. But it's not enough to just take care of our people if if we know that there's some shenanigans going on elsewhere. I couldn't walk into that with a clear conscience, even if my guys themselves didn't know that this was gonna be a cakewalk because I want them to be prepared because the other person could be lying. You still know that it's a possibility that your dudes are gonna go out there and just put the hurt on someone. What is first of all, what's the point of that for your people? You know, like it's a key.
SPEAKER_00I feel a bit like this sometimes when you have these prospects fighting journeyman in cans, right? To pad the record of it, but the they're all experienced. It's going to be a one-sided woman, but okay. But the the the journeymen or whoever's accepted that fight at the pro level, that they they know where they're signing up for. They know they're going into big dogs.
SPEAKER_01They're gonna have money, they're paying some bills. You know, we just had a we just had a a brat, we just went to Newbreed with about I took five kids and like 11 or something adults, but one of my kids just went from like 15 to 16, he's only been training for a short period of time. He's undersized, come to figure out that not only is the dude he's competing against quite a bit heavier because otherwise he wouldn't have competed, but this kid who's in this zero to six month weight uh division, beginner division, is basically a juvenile blue belt, but just likely moved up again, so from kids to white belts. So maybe he's only been a white belt for zero to six months, but he has not been training for zero to six months. And I'm thinking to myself, what is the point of you coming out here and beating up a kid who's been training for about zero to six months and just happened to have gone from 15 to 16? Now, I gotta accept the fact that I didn't know that that was going on. I missed some of the rules, I didn't have all the rules and stuff, but like, how do you leave them at feeling good about yourself? How does your coach allow you to sandbag? Because what experience are you gaining if you just go out there and just murk someone? You get a you get a gold medal, you get maybe there's a belt, there's a sword. Like, how do you feel good about yourself? And as a coach, how do you feel good about allowing your athlete to go smash some other kid who's got six months of experience when your kid's likely been training for a good couple of years, just happens to have just become a teenager? Just that's the absurdity of it all. I won't be that fight.
SPEAKER_02How does the IBJ JF let the greatest flyweight fighter of all time compete in in you know, as a purple belt or brown belt just because that's what they are in BJJ? Or how do you let Ed Ruth, one of the greatest wrestlers in NCAA history, put on a blue belt and compete for some some guy who's training jujitsu two or three times a week. Like jujitsu is is terrible when it comes to sandbagging. You can be a black belt and judo and enter a white belt IBJ JF, I think.
SPEAKER_01No, you have to go blue belt. Oh, hooray. Right? Not that that's any better. But at least the one thing I at least understand about the Ivy JJF, which I have to give them some credit for, is now I get why if you enter if you are a kid and you earn one belt. So if you're a kid, you get your white belt when you start, and then you earn your gray white belt. No matter how old you are, no matter how long you've been training, the moment a kid earns their first belt, the second they enter the teens or adults, they can no longer compete as a white belt. And now I see why. Because that kid that Cole competed against probably has only been a white belt for maybe zero to six months. But I bet he's been training for five, six, or seven years. So technically he didn't lie, but you're not a normal white belt pulling jumping arm bars and throwing footlocks and just like that. You're not a white belt. You're just you haven't been training for six months. And if you have been, then you've been training like 20 hours a day, eating Cheerios off the mat and being homeschooled. Like, so at least the IBJ Cheerios out of a bowl, but they're eating with their hands. Yeah, but and on the mat, I thought. But like at least the IBJ Jeff takes into account that people will, there'll be a bunch of fuckery moving kids from kids to adults because you know we had Gabriel. We had to make him a blue belt because people got tired of getting beat up by a kid on the mats.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's always gonna be an element of fuckery, but unless the real egregious fucking cases of sandbagging are called out and there's a kind of consequence, then then the fucking conversation's mute unless it's in police.
SPEAKER_02I think that the IBJJF should have a master's one for regular ass people and a master's one for all those adult black belts that aged out. Because can you imagine being a guy who started training at 25, now you're 35, you have a black belt, and you're gonna go compete as a master's one. And the guy across from you has competed from 20 to 30 as an adult, maybe 20 to 35 as an adult, and now decides to be a master's. Those are not the same things. And it is, it almost stops normal people from competing in Masters 1.
SPEAKER_01We have to continue to compete also. Like there was a young Sanjay was in my not Zanja, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right, exactly. That's my point. Exactly. But we have adult brown belts who don't want black belts. They're 33 years old. They don't want black belts because Masters brown is their peers. Masters black is a combination of killers and hobbyists. And it almost puts them it puts them out of the out of the sport. We we had a brown belt who loved competing, and but he had to be a he was a black belt. It was time to give him a black belt, but he's never competed again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, jujitsu needs better skill criteria, whether it's any yellow that's going to take a long, long time to you know get traction. Short-armed dinosaur.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01So you just you know, you you find the the the the the ones and or the the WNOs or the the the other where you should just match up with someone. Yeah. Which is what, yeah. Like more, I think there should be, you know, more people should have those types of tournaments because then you'll still you'll there's still people like that who want to compete.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I agree. And those guys sell tickets and stuff, so it's good for it's good for those organizations.
SPEAKER_00Uh if we go back to the striking part, there's a it's just a comment that's popped out at me in a few of these discussions recently. That the the the the the critiquers, us who are talking about, you know, the all the flowery shit, um, the burden of proofs on us. I'd push that back and saying, like the if there was a higher fidelity between what we're seeing in drills here and in fights, then I think there'd be a better case. But I think the burden of it.
SPEAKER_02Say that say that again, Scotty. Say that again.
SPEAKER_00Say that again. So we'll see something online, the perfect the perfect combination, the duck under the weave, or whatever, you know, the really flour things. If we saw high fidelity, if we saw that happening routinely and frequently in fights, then yes, I think the burden of proof would be on us. I actually put the burden of proof back on the other way around and say, okay, there's there's a huge we spoke about this all the time, there's a huge disconnect. Like what we've seen there, there the the if we're talking about fidelity, does it transfer? We just don't see it. One of the coaches, one of our one friends and his the the young lady um did a great job at the UFC recently, right? Uh she won our fight. Uh big favorite. I did a little scratch in there. She was a three-time IMMAF world champion. And they've been working on uh cross to the body, right? And she folded our opponent with us, which was great. But it was across to the body. It wasn't a four it wasn't a four-piece with a fancy bald weave. It was across to the body. Okay, right.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00That is not that is not a case to be made for for drilling across the body to the body.
SPEAKER_02But this is this is the same discussion. There's what Roy and I was talking about when you were gone with seminars. Nobody wants to go to a seminar where they throw one, two leg kick and and and the coach is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna clean up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make your basic techniques as good as possible. And nobody, nobody even wants to sit in a class like that. So you end up with one, two, slide out, leg kick, cross, hook, cross, which I sent you guys on Instagram the other day when this guy did this weird slide out kick thing. And I'm I'm like, what? Like, when I have never in my life seen a person throw a two-piece and slide out on an angle and then throw a three-piece. Never in my fucking life.
SPEAKER_01Was that to do with the hook that moved like nine feet away and then the leg?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I'm like, so so now we're now we're in the now we're at the point where even if the ed reps did something coordination-wise, you're extending that definition to a ludicrous point. I do this, they do this, I do this. Let's rep this out. Well, what if they don't do that? Run a different program? Are you programming for everything? And how many reps does it take to have all those programs and make those choices? It starts to fall apart.
SPEAKER_01It starts to fall apart under under that type of logic for sure. That's what I mean.
SPEAKER_02It falls apart under logic. It doesn't, it falls apart. It doesn't ever even happen in the fight. Because when you throw the you throw the one and two, people move.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you remember they back up or they go, yeah, they do something else. How many A, then B, then C, then D, then E. And like you said the other day, we were talking about either I think it was on the on the WhatsApp, it was just all those drills become in service to those drills. And then the decision making is completely removed. Yeah. So then what is what is someone what what level of skill is someone attaining if skillful movement has has a piece of decision making in it? There's there's no there's no skillful move. There's no there's no skill developing. It's just kata, epon, shadow boxing. No one's learning actually how to do the thing unconstrained, so to say.
SPEAKER_00I'm starting to get more comfortable saying uh decision making is skill.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I well I I agree. It's there just it's inseparable, right? I think that we agree that perception and action is talking about decision making.
SPEAKER_00Perception and action is decision, yeah. Decision making is perception and action. And it's continuous.
SPEAKER_02And so so making bad decisions, the person would look less skilled than someone making good decisions. And you agree.
SPEAKER_00It's so minutely discrete that it's effectively continuous. Yes.
SPEAKER_02To make the online adjustments. So so then the the last thing we'd want to remove is decision making.
SPEAKER_00Which is the liveness.
SPEAKER_01And foreign, which is what everybody is which is what interaction.
SPEAKER_00Everybody stuff came full circle. And your point about seminars, right? And they need to teach flowery things. I think most people like I'm not gonna take brush the seminar bubble too much. It's good for the community, it's good to get a good together, get your photo taken in a new Facebook profile picture, and blah, blah, blah, and uh meet meet and greet, and all that good stuff. But I think we said uh Rory and I agree, or we all agree that the average number of stripes thrown in an exchange is probably one and a half.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's yeah, I think it's one and a half because that gets you that gets you zero to three. I guess zero is not an exchange, so it gets you one to three. So two somewhere like you know, it's under two, let's say.
SPEAKER_00Let's practice that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but that's boring as shit. It is boring. You know, it's funny, the the best dead seminar I ever went to was um, and I did a few of them, was training with Rob Kamen. And it was all just it was very simple. It was very simple. There is a now again, over the course of four hours and two days and stuff, he was forced to put in a little bit of blowery stuff. This is what I do, this is what I did when I fought so and so. And that's I think people are there for that and it's fun. Like, sure, I I'd love to see the combo that you finished with or whatever. But the majority of it was was very simple. But you also noticed that Rob Kamen, while he was alive, was not doing seminars every week all over the world like some of these other guys are. Because most of the seminar was kicking each other in the leg. And he was old gas, no bricks, huh? Yeah, he put on we did a lot of almost live work. He put on the techno music, German techno music, and he was dancing around the room, and it was a lot of fun. And I would go to a I would go to Rob Kamen seminar today. Even right, Rory dances. I would go to Rob Kamen's seminar today. Well, he's dead, so I don't think it'd be a fun seminar. I might still go to that seminar. I would go to one today because it was fun. So I get what you're saying, Scotty. I would, there are some fighters if they did a seminar locally. I would just like to be there just to spend some time with them. Maybe I pick up a trick or something that I never thought of. Maybe I see, but you wouldn't be though.
SPEAKER_01So earlier when Scotty was away, you'd said something about if you go to a seminar, someone says, I picked up one thing, right? And that's great. I don't know how many white belts beginners at any of these seminars are picking up those one thing. So yeah, I I go to a seminar, I look at those differently now, but then again, I also look at it through a lens of someone who's been doing martial arts for 30 years. So I have a lot of the movements already. So I can add some things into my game, but I don't think that most people going to those seminars are necessarily adding things to their game, especially if there's not any live work being done to put those things into their game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it's just not the it's not what we'd consider to be learning, but I mean, take uh is San Shai, right? I think he is I'm such a San Shai fanboy. He's skill personified to me. But when I watch his and his seminars are packed, seems to be two things going on there. They're all shadow fighting, and the rest of the time they're watching San Shai. I'd love to watch San Shai. Even shadow boxing, I'm just uh such a hard one for him.
SPEAKER_02But um I went to a seminar with Ninja and Shogun once, and neither one of them spoke English. And when you asked the question, the he would you'd ask Shogun, we'd be walking around, and you'd try and ask him a question, and his answer would be, Look Ninja. Look, look Ninja. Basically saying, Look at Ninja do it, and that's the best he could do because he didn't speak any English. But it was fun because it's fucking, I don't think people even remember Ninja and Shogun, but they were they were awesome and it was fun. But I would have much rather sparred with them at that point in my life than that would have been even more fun. I do like that. Is it Shan Shy that spars some people in his seminars? Yeah.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02So I mean, I I would go just not at not at this age, but I would go just for the opportunity just to move around with him. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_00I went to a Bang Ludwig seminar. We go off the bad star. I wasn't allowed to join because I didn't have a white t-shirt on, but to buy a white t-shirt and get my like a white bang t-shirt or just uh you didn't like a white white, he had to be white, everyone had to be in white, and then um I did some really we we built some really, really nice 15-piece combos.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever seen in your life?
SPEAKER_00I go get it.
SPEAKER_01This have you ever seen a 15-piece combo thrown in your life? Ever. I have never.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the Little Seminar.
SPEAKER_02In a fight. I have seen in boxing when it's at the end. When when one fighter, when one fighter is circling the drain, and the ref the ref is watching very closely, and it's just David Benavide.
SPEAKER_00I tell you what the finishing combination is. It's left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right.
SPEAKER_02Mostly. And and then maybe a liver, maybe a liver shot. Yeah, I mean, that's yeah, that's yeah, I guess sometimes it's uh right, left, right, left, right, left. With a lever, with a maybe a liver shot in there. Yeah, it's it's one guy, it's one guy shelled up and the other guy taking him apart. At boxing, their average combo may be two, you know, two and a half. Because it double double jab sometimes. But yeah, you never see.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna do a little bit of scratching in that. There's probably there's probably some data there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think I think that'd be I think that'd be cool. I think that'd be uh interesting to look at.
SPEAKER_00Hey boys, I need to I need to get going here. Oh next week. Uh well I'm just saying, I need to go, but I can leave this running if you want to keep going. No, I'm gonna go to work.
SPEAKER_02Rory and I bitched and moaned a little bit while you were gone, so we're good. And I'll see you next Friday.