70 - EP 70 with Combat Therapist: Fighting the Right Way; Blending Bodybuilding and Battle

Yeah, it's great here. I'm probably gonna leave for a while until early next year again, but yeah, I've been been kind of nomadic recently, at least.

Yeah. Do you find it hard to stay productive moving around so much?

Honestly, no. You're never gonna get the same, just grind, be able to put in 4 to 5 hours of consistent work on like a large project. Yeah. But at this stage in everything that I have It's kind of built up to the point, or to the point where I can maintain or grow through the kind of random content that I'm creating via traveling. And obviously I have incredible business partners that are able to actually, you know, do a lot of the stuff consistently on the ground that enables me to kind of move around. Um, but yeah, really I think the travel or moving around It definitely sparks ideas in my mind where I would never have it if I was in the same environment every single day. And I also think there's an aspect to it where my spirit is just, hey, you need to get going, you need to like do something new and, and, you know, move around. I definitely feel less— I definitely feel I like being at home. I was consistent for ages, but at this point in my life, it's like, yeah, on the move. On the road.

Yeah. And I feel like with your message as well, it just wouldn't make sense if you're like in an office cubicle for your entire business development. I think what you're doing makes sense to the message that you're sharing. So yeah, and you're right, when you are moving around, you do get those, you get different inputs, which allows you to be more creative.

100%. The more inputs, Like, people get upset about travel, I guess, uh, because they think you're running away from yourself. And for sure, some people use it like that, um, but there's not many things that I've done in my life as a younger guy, you know, 20 years old, 21, going through a backpacking trip through South America. I learned so much, and I had to be independent in a lot of ways in, you know, uh, an environment like that where, for instance, I had to have my first altercation with like an aggressive homeless person who had a knife, and I had to deal with that at that age. And it's like anything, you get exposed to different cultures. I've had business ideas because I've seen something that happens in a different country, and then it sparked something in my own head, uh, to then, you know, either take back or implement in a different way. Uh, so I, I highly rate it as a thing for a young man to do.

Yeah, 100%, I agree.

Uh, so where are you at in Australia?

I'm in Vic, so just outside Melbourne. So, but yeah, it's only mainly because I'm super close with my family, so I move around a fair bit around Oz. Like, I was at Volkanovski's gym a couple of months ago training there, which was good. Um, so yeah, I'll probably— I do need to— I think I do need to head up to the US at some stage just because there's so much opportunity there, as you, as you've probably realized, and especially for combat sports. Like, there's so many gyms up there, it's massive. So yeah, but it's just— I do want to make sure that like cash flow, things like that, is really stable before I Because I, yeah, even I noticed when I've done like 6 to 8 weeks stints in other, even in other states, it is a little bit disrupted in terms of especially if you're in like that growth phase. I think if you're in like a main, as you were saying, in a maintenance phase or like that trickle phase, it's a lot easier to navigate. But if you're really trying to, to build things up, it's a little bit more challenging.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. There's so much nuance with any advice that you hear online or in life. There are stages of your life where that might apply, but if someone's 5 years ahead of you and they say you got to do this, but it would only work for them at their position, your context of your life, uh, maybe you do need to grind a little more, you know. Um, that's definitely something I've noticed, and I, I really try to not do this myself, uh, but at least like I know what I was doing a couple years ago before, you know, this point and it's not too different to what I'm doing now. But there definitely is a, an example of people that have been successful now from— I think you even maybe have tweeted about this— abusing stimulants, getting up and just getting the work done for hours and hours and hours. And now they have a 4-hour morning routine for what they're doing. And yes, morning routines are good. But it's just interesting because if you're in a growth phase, you really, really, really want to ride that momentum. And where it might make sense for the next 2 to 3 months for you is like monk mode or whatever you want to call it, where there are no other distractions and you are just putting in that work every single day. But then you can chill at a different season, a different season, a year, a different time where everything has got to a point where you can maintain or just grow via the kind of chill work each day.

Yeah, yeah. And that's something that resonates with me a lot in terms of like seasonal work. Lobo talk— I think I got that idea originally from like the way Lobo navigates his seasons of the year. And yeah, it just, it makes a lot of sense. Even the way that people consume things and purchase things, it changes based on whether it's summer, autumn, winter, or spring, which is really interesting.

Yeah, we're just coming into quarter 4, which for Americans is like where they do something, 75% of their retail spending for the year or something ridiculous. Yeah. So there are these macro seasons and energies that affect everyone, which I think we can implement to our own lives. But I wanted to ask you, what was training at Volkanovski's gym like? What's that environment? And yeah, can you really tell the difference between gyms?

Yeah, it's, it's one of those things where I think it was a really good experience because I got to see first day that I rocked up there, I was literally standing next to him and then we're in the same session. So yeah, looking at— because bear in mind, them, them and City Kickboxing in New Zealand, like, they were voted the best gym in the world in 2022. So I think the biggest thing that I saw is he's at the top for a reason. And even now that he's had so many title defenses he's still flying in some of the best fighters in the world. So at the time it was actually during Rodriguez's camp. So he had 11-time taekwondo world champion from New Zealand come in, Van Roon. He had Craig Jones come in. So he's got all of the best guys that he could possibly get in his camp. And even though he's so dominant at the top, he's just— he's still extremely hardworking. Um, even the conditioning that they do, things like that, everything's just really on point. Um, and he actually doesn't do a lot of conditioning outside of the Combat Sports Gym, which I found quite interesting. Um, because I, I connected with his strength conditioning coach and learned a ton from him. Like, I got him to train me for 6 weeks when I was there and sort of just use that as a learning experience. So you'd be surprised how basic his training actually is, um, in the scheme of things. But yeah, he just does the— he does the fundamentals very, very well. They are very wrestling-heavy gym also. Um, and then we just saw, we just saw the game plan come together beautifully. Like, the tacticians— because he's got Eugene, who's, um, Adesanya's head coach, things like that. His corners: Craig Jones, Eugene, Joe Lopez, and then other, other athletes that are specific to the fight. So he's just doing everything at the highest level. And there's— that's— it's no coincidence that he's been able to— like, he is the pound-for-pound number one at the moment. And I don't think that's any coincidence, just seeing it through that lens.

100%. Do you think that fighters could succeed with a bad corner? Because I always think about these things, like how many very, very high potential fighters or athletes in general, because they don't meet the right coach, they can never get to that level that they could. Where it's, it's like an individual sport, but it's also a team sport. Like actually at the end of the day, like the best corners tend to match up with the best fighters. How impactful is that and how do people find the right coach in whatever area of life that they're trying to improve in?

Yeah, I think that's huge. The biggest thing— we can use the example like we just obviously explained Volkanovski's setup, but then you can compare that to McGregor's team where obviously it's a unique situation because he made more money than anybody else fighting other than Floyd Mayweather and all these high-paid athletes. So you need to factor in the fact that you're fighting another— you're fighting other people. So once you don't have— you're not fighting out of the hole that you once were in, it's very, very hard to stay committed and dedicated. That's why I think Khabib, through his religious beliefs, was allowed— was able to maintain that level of intensity. And Volkanovski, I just think, has this different greatness that he— like, he's always— he's always wanting to strive for a certain are the pinnacle. Um, but I think, like, in my opinion, McGregor's team had way too many yes-men. Um, I think that once he got really scientific around the second, uh, second Nate Diaz fight, I think that was actually a detriment to his, um, combat sports performance. You saw him getting a lot stiffer, not moving anywhere near as well as he was in the past. Obviously he was aging as well, but I think with the Eddie Alvarez fight, that was probably one of the last sort of hurrahs where he was moving the way that we saw him when he was, when he was younger. Obviously it ended up becoming— if you look at how much time he had to spend entertaining and selling pay-per-view versus actually training, that's where it becomes really hard. So yeah, it's, it's a tough one. 100% your team matters. Your team matters a ton. I think people think that fighting is such an individualized sport, but if you don't have a good environment that you're training in and high-level guys on a consistent basis, it's very hard to continue to improve. That's That's just what I've seen in my experience.

Yeah. What is, what is coaching doing then? Is it someone that's just intimately more knowledgeable with the best, most efficient movement patterns, striking patterns, and you have someone that's individually, uh, specified on each of those? Like, you have your striking coach, you have your strength and conditioning coach, um, I guess are there people that like, could you learn that yourself to teach yourself, or is, is a coach pretty much necessary in these high-level endeavors?

Depends how far you're wanting to take things. Obviously with the internet now, you have access to really high-level guys, especially with combat sports, because most of these, like, as an example, Gordon Ryan, who's one of the best grapplers of all time, has instructionals. Find me an instructional of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, these guys teaching you how to play basketball. Doesn't exist. So it's one of those things where through the internet you can get access to basically the minds that these guys have. So, but it's once again with coaching, as you know, it gets you from A to B faster, but also everybody's personality is a little bit different. So the coach that you resonate with is going to be based on who you are as a person as well. So I don't think, I don't think every single coach is going to gel well with every single athlete. And that's why coaching is more of an art. And I see this within strength conditioning, I see this within injury rehab. It's not just, all right, if everything's perfect on paper scientifically, people are going to get better. It's also the art of coaching and actually building that relationship with the athlete and client as well. That's, that's a hugely underrated thing that I think especially like newer people in the field just don't appreciate.

Yeah, I tweeted about this yesterday. Coaching— any communication, but coaching especially— you have to consider your transfer of energy. I'm like, any coaching client that wants to improve in something, some people will be demotivated to go to the gym, so you have to insert motivational energy there. Some people need a hard talking to if they've lost discipline. Some people just need gentle encouragement. And some people just want to talk, and then they'll continue and do it day in, day out. And that's a meta skill which is very, very important for any work, not just coaching or just like navigating your, your office space, is understanding, being able to read people's energy, uh, from a distance and then also through communication. I think what helped me with this was I, uh, worked as a bouncer in nightclubs for you know, 3 and a half, 4 years when I was studying. And you can, after a while, instantly tell. There'd be 200 meters down the street and I'd look at someone, and from the way they were walking and just the feeling that I would get, it's like, ah, this guy's gonna give us trouble at the door. And not, you know, 99 times out of 100, it was the case. And so the body language of people is very it speaks more than their words do as well. And I think fighting is probably very similar in terms of, um, communicating athleticism and just this undercurrent of whether someone's going to be a good fighter, a calm fighter, an aggressive fighter. So it's very, very interesting as a sport. And I want to hear you talk about fighting as really the ultimate chess match. It is like the most pure measure of athleticism. Like every—

the high—

it's the highest stakes that we can have without fight to the death, really, at this point, especially MMA, where there's pretty much do anything you want in the ring. And I think there's a higher cerebral level to the sport as a whole, which people don't appreciate because maybe there is a there's a stereotype of like, oh, you want to see people beat each other up. And it's like, yes, the animal part of me does enjoy the spectacle of that. But really getting into the depths of it, you know, you, you, you, you place your foot in the wrong direction, you're not going to get as much torque. And then maybe you don't knock someone out and you get knocked out yourself. Like, it's really millimeters. And that's what makes it so beautiful, I think.

Yeah, it's one of those things. I think there's two types of people that are interested in combat sports. There's your like brawler types that just want to see people smash the shit out of each other, and then there's the types that are more of the martial artist purists. Like, they actually enjoy learning the skills and intricacies behind fighting. So guys that are more on that side of things, they're the ones that are wanting to develop their skills to the nth degree. They might not even be someone who wants to necessarily take their competitive fights to the highest of levels. But that's why I think, as you were mentioning, from like a, a chess mask, uh, perspective, that's what resonated with me the most. I looked at it from basically because I've played, uh, football for like 20+ years, that had my like field sports aspect covered. But then I looked at it from, okay, well, if I want to be able to help as many people as possible with their injuries, what's the most complex sport that I can basically dabble in and learn about. And I found that to be combat sports because you're using every single energy system. You're grappling, striking, you're doing everything in between if you're a mixed martial artist. So you shootboxing— those transitions add 4 more elements to the striking and grappling disciplines in and of themselves. So I looked at it more so from me becoming a better practitioner and also something that I wouldn't just get bored doing. So physiotherapy chiropractic, all of that stuff where they're just working with desk workers. For me, that wasn't stimulating enough to put as almost like my life's work, whereas combat sports, I was like, if I can, if I can blend that with my football experience, I'm a very, very well-rounded practitioner in the field of like injury rehab and high performance. So that was sort of, that was my motivation. I wasn't someone that was like picking fights when I was younger, things like that. It was more so just like the biomechanics, anatomy, movement of those sports really resonated with me and the skill sets that I wanted to develop.

Yeah, that's really good. So that was Aussie rules football, I'm assuming?

Ah, soccer, the real football, mate.

Ah, great, great. A fellow football enjoyer. That's awesome. Um, what position did you play?

All over the shop. I started like— I was— when I was younger, I played, um, in the middle, but then played a lot on the wing, like I was obsessed with Ronaldo when I was younger, wanted to emulate everything that he did. I think a lot of players were the same, um, and like seeing him in '06, '07, like there's just— it was just a different level. The speed that, that, that he had at that time was just insane. So yeah, it took up a lot of— I spent a lot of time playing, um, yeah, it was actually an injury from the sport itself that basically transitioned me into combat sports, funnily enough. So yeah, it was an interesting journey.

Yeah, that's, that seems to be the case with people that delve deeper into actually how the body works, and you have to resolve your own issues, your own injuries, uh, whatever that may be. So what, what injury did you suffer and how did you kind of figure it out?

Yeah, so it was actually, so I had a shoulder dislocation, really bad one, um, when I was playing. I think I was 18 years old, and at the time, like, I was at, I was trialing at 2 big, youth development clubs. So Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City, so simultaneously training between the two. And then this was sort of my almost like black pill towards the healthcare system. So I saw the best of the best sports docs, physios, things like that, was getting little banded exercises, pink dumbbell exercises, wasn't getting any better. Got one MRI, came back clear. So they're like, oh, you're probably just not doing the exercises properly. Kept doing it diligently. Got cut from both of those teams. I was a player, I was a player where I didn't have a lot of natural raw talent. I had to work for every single bit of it. So me missing 6, 8 months, that was a big detriment to my development. So yeah, second MRI, labral tear, same thing. Went back to physios. I don't know why I continued to trust. I just thought it was the only option that I had, to be honest. And yeah, just it was very, very slow progress.. And I just started, like most people that get really interested in health, I started researching things myself, took matters into my own hands. And yeah, I even did— that's why I actually went down the physiotherapy route because I was like, is it the people that I'm working with or is it the actual system itself? So I went and did my master's of physiotherapy just to almost, almost to give myself receipts. So if I was to— because I don't know if you've seen some of the stuff that I talk about, like I'm always shitting on traditional methods of injury rehab. And because I've got that credibility, they can't really say, oh, he's a, he's an esoteric health guy. I've actually got the accreditations, so I can say, and I can push back on it in terms of the system as a whole.

You think that system doesn't work at a macro level? They're focused on the wrong things?

I don't think it, I don't think it works for people that are wanting to get to the highest levels of athletic performance. Main reasons being, and this is something that I experienced myself because I thought there was a lot of people that were falling through the cracks. I was getting maybe like 65-70% of clients better, but there was always that 30% that just wasn't hitting the mark. And I saw that from number one, I was seeing 70 clients a week and that's industry standard. Secondly, I was doing 20-minute follow-up consults, which I thought was too short. Let's say they come 5 minutes late, I need to assess, treat. So soft tissue work, dry needling, and then prescribe exercises in like a 5-minute window. So even like the exercise prescription, when I was studying, bro, like I was doing— we did maybe 3 hours total of exercise prescription in the entirety of the, of the full course at a master's level. So really, it was just ridiculous. And yeah, it just— for, for higher level athletes, I think that you need a a far more individualized approach. You need to be working with somebody who has a strength and conditioning lens. I was lucky enough, the first ever job that I had, I had the blend of strength and conditioning and physiotherapy. So I was learning a ton off of the strength and conditioning coach. I think physios are really good at diagnostics, but at the same time, you can just get a— you can get an MRI worst case, and it's going to tell you exactly what grade tear you have and all those other things. So it's like, well, the diagnostic thing isn't the hard part. It's how do you get someone who's had 5, 10 years of issues back to high-level performance. And that's something that I think is missing within the current model. And that's why a lot of people just don't return back to high levels, right?

Yeah. I mean, don't have to convince me to say that what most people or what most legacy institutions are teaching about health is just BS. I think part of it is nefarious. Part of it is the big pharma thing. You know, there are industries and foundations and groups that will fund one set of information over the other in order to, uh, influence these scientific studies and therefore the public narrative about things in order to be more profitable and sell different things. But I think also that there's just an inevitable path that happens where some people get it wrong, still people get better, uh, in spite of the wrong advice, and therefore people say that it worked. And then just the, you know, the trends of society at, at whole will be like, oh, this, this new wave of medicine is the way, or this new way of movement is the way. Uh, but specifically with the shoulder, I think this is one that's, you know, if we could give people the 80/20 for the shoulder, uh, maybe the hips as well if you want to go into that, lower back pain, let's say the 3 main pain points that people have today, the shoulder specifically, it needs to be above your head. You know what it was? It's a different discussion to talk about whether we evolved directly from monkeys or whatever, but anatomically the shoulder operates similar to them kind of swinging above their heads like vine to vine, tree to tree. The shoulder is always in this elevated position, grabbing down. There's gravity pulling down and opening up the shoulder socket. But most people today, they barely even raise their shoulders once over their head unless they specifically have a lifestyle that encourages that or do it consciously with exercises. So, you know, how is, how is the shoulder working really? And why should people be hanging on to things?

Yeah, it's a good question. I like to look at the shoulder as like it's not just people think shoulder and they just think the pinpoint localized area. I look, I like to look at it's like what are all the attachment points that actually derive around the shoulder itself? And a big one is like your thoracic spine. So you can do all the direct shoulder mobility stuff in the world, but if you can't extend through your thorax— like, as an example, even just here, like, if I'm, if I'm slouched over, this is, this is the as much shoulder flexion as I can possibly get. Whereas if I've got extension, I'm not changing any angle. So when you're, when you're going through shoulder flexion, as example, getting up overhead, this— the, the top of your shoulder blade actually blocks any further movement if you don't have adequate thoracic extension. So I like to look at things from— and that's why I don't like prescribing one or two exercises for, for an injury. It's like with your shoulder, rotator cuff needs to be on point, and that's including rotator cuff strength and stability. So being able to stabilize, whether that's overhead with a kettlebell, there's so many different things we We could go on about the shoulder for like 30 minutes if we really wanted to. But not only do you need to be strong through the global muscles, but rotator cuff strength, you need stability, you need thoracic extension rotation. You need to also be able to reach through the shoulders. I think this is something bodybuilders should have a little bit more of in their programming because I see the classic, like, you look at barbell squat, you're really compressed, you're not getting much reaching mechanics through the shoulders. Same with bench press. Like, everything's just shoulders back and down, shoulders back and down, because apparently that's the best way to move through the shoulders. But I think there's an element that's important. Let's say you're doing like a 3 to 5 repetition maximum bench press, but if you're wanting to truly work the shoulder through its entire range of motion, you need to, you need to protract, you need to rotate. These are really important movements. And I think I posted about this the other day, like, a really good litmus test for your shoulder mobility is how well you can actually rock climb overhead. Because that has so many different demands and angles that you're working through because the shoulders are very, very mobile joint and it has a lot of movement capacity. So rock climbing, obviously the difference in variables in terms of the rocks that you're grabbing and things like that, like if you can rock climb well, that is a really, really good baseline shoulder mobility and strength because you have to stabilize through the shoulders up overhead as well. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, 100% makes sense. I think those— all those primal movements— I, I speak about this. If, if there's one thing, or maybe one group of things, that you could really try to do into longevity, into old age, is if, you know, every weekend you go on a little hike or to a park and you climb up and down some trees, over some boulders, jump over a stream, that kind of stuff, there's no reason why just one day you're gonna stop being able to do that. And, you know, God willing, we'll be 90 years old and, and slowly probably climbing up trees and down trees. Like, that's not an impossible standard of movement. And I think people get into their heads now that age, even across like, oh, he's in his 30s, his, his body's breaking down with age. It's like, is it breaking down with age, or is it breaking down due to the style of movements that you were either doing or not doing?, in your day-to-day life and the consistency and frequency of that. I think that that's much more important, uh, in terms of like, as you said, rock climbing, pull-ups, even tree climbing. That stuff is going to be more impactful for your shoulder health than putting your elbow on your knee and holding a 2-pound dumbbell and doing these like 90-degree rotation. Like, it's so silly now that I even describe it, thinking about it. And I'm sure there are direct use case scenarios where that's going to benefit people. But the primal movement in every aspect that we can is going to be probably more beneficial.

Yeah, and it's combining, combining those primal movements with basically— I look at gym equipment, whether that's isolation machines, barbells, dumbbells, whatever, it's all a tool. Like, I don't have any marriage towards one piece of equipment. Isolation machines, you're going to be able to isolate a muscle group more. Barbells, it's more convenient. Most of the population, most of the gyms around you will have a barbell. So instead of being like, oh, you need to, you need to use this methodology of movement, it's like, use all of the tools for their benefits. It's probably going to be easier for you to load up a heavy squat, deadlift, things like that with a barbell versus trying to do calisthenics, bodyweight stuff, and it's going to be much more time efficient. So I like to look at That's why I've got no bias towards one system. I know there's like functional patterns, go to all of this different stuff. I like to take all the best things from each of those systems and then generate my own system. And I think as somebody who isn't as experienced in the health scene, in my opinion, I think you can— because people do a really good job of marketing these movement philosophies. If you're, if you're not very aware of why certain things work, you just like, you just take it on and take it as gospel. Whereas I think there's benefits to a variety of traditional lifting, bodybuilding. Like, athletes shit on bodybuilding. I think there's a lot of use case for bodybuilding for athletes, and then vice versa. I think there's a lot of use cases for athletic movements as a bodybuilder as well. So it's, it's like, because the gray area doesn't sell and it's not as sexy, it's, it's harder to actually hit that home and sell that going forward. But that's something that I've tried to basically tie up in the message that I'm trying to share. Like, I I know all of the, like, the biggest thing as well is like root cause of injury, stuff like that. Like that's the main direct response as marketing professionals. That's the pain points that they hit home. But me ethically knowing what I know, like I don't, I don't like going down those avenues. Even I don't care if it takes me much longer to grow, but be ethical about and actually share what I think is the truth based on everything that I've learned instead of just like using movement philosophies and even just like people's health at the end of the day. If you're, if you're scaring people because they're in pain, I just think that's like, I don't know how people sleep at night doing that personally.

Yeah. And that's a fantastic philosophy to have with business, with growing your social media in general. And I think that people that either jump on trends, a trend will end, you know, a trend will end. That's the nature of a trend. And so do you want to ride that wave Or do you want to slowly build your own wave, which you're doing phenomenally? What are you like, over 60K now? So it's, you know, it's really accelerating with— yeah, no, that's awesome. And I remember you having several thousand seeing your stuff and it's entirely doable not to hitch your wagon to these other things that may not be 100% efficacy, but as you said, are a tool., in order to direct you, open your eyes to some information, something you might not have considered. And always in being open to these things, and when you don't identify with one particular philosophy, you don't hitch your ego to it. If you hitch your ego to this is the truth, then you're going to end up denying or just simply not accepting other information which may help you, may help your potential clients. And if you didn't have that egoic attachment to it, then you would be able to absorb that and be better off for it. And that's true really for any line of work. Doctors do the same, whether this is what we were taught at Harvard Med School, and if that's not accepted, then they'll, you know, throw out any other information. But let's talk about the marriage of bodybuilding and combat sports in general. I know personally people that are much more muscular than the average who start, let's say, jiu-jitsu or whatever else, and they have an innate advantage because they have that inbuilt strength from lifting weights for years. That's undeniable fact. Like, sometimes they can just pull themselves out of chokes and things like that. Uh, I think there is a conception that technique beats muscle, and it does to a degree if other things are equal. You always want to know the technique, and I'm, I'm speaking from really contextual conjecture because I'm not deep into training. I've really mucked around on the bag, uh, kicking it a bit and talked to friends about it, but I, I can, you know, smart enough to conjecture these things. Technique will help, of course, and you should be training that, but I think that to discount the muscle on the side of things and, and view lifting, and particularly bodybuilding— because what is bodybuilding? Building more muscle. More muscle, more power output, more success in the combat arena, right? So how do you see those two philosophies clashing? Is there a negative to one or the other? And how would you blend them in terms of what you recommend?

Yeah, I actually made a, um, like a 30-minute raw video on this in my Telegram, but the best way to basically look at it is it's a continuum. Do you want to be 100% all in in bodybuilding? Do you want to be 100% all in as a fighter? Obviously, if you're going down the full bodybuilding route, if you add any combat sports to that, you're going to diminish optimal gains potentially. And it's the same thing as a fighter. If you're training as a fighter you're probably not going to be doing just hypertrophy-based training in your regimen for strength and conditioning because it's just too much of a recovery spend for you to invest that much time when you should be spending a lot of your time getting better at your sport. So everyone's going to fall somewhere in the continuum, and it's purely going to be dependent on your goals. If you're a hobbyist, that— and the thing is as well, what we need, what we need to realize with muscle growth is there's diminishing returns with that. But the amount of skills that you can learn between both grappling and striking is basically never-ending. So Let's say if I was, if I was talking to a 16-year-old, even 18-year-old who was quite a young guy and I was to give them advice, it would be add as much muscle mass and strength to your frame as possible. Once you start getting diminishing gains, so once your lifts start stalling, once you're getting sick of doing the repetitive nature of just lifting in a gym, then start blending in your combat sports because you'll be stronger than a majority of people in the gym. You're doing it as a hobby and your ability to put on more muscle begins to then diminish. So it's not the worst thing in the world for you to just like build the biggest base you possibly can and then add some of those elements into your training. So then even like, let's say even if bodybuilding was 80% of your goals, let's look at what combat sports, what gaps combat sports would fill. Number one, you're working and stimulating your brain in different ways, like to a point, there's only so much that you can learn from like a skill acquisition when it comes to like a bench pressing pattern. It, it becomes— once you've mastered it, there's not much more to progress from there. So you get that cerebral element. But even as a conditioning tool, me personally, I can't walk on a treadmill and do steady state 45 minutes on an incline treadie. I just find that extremely boring. So nothing's stopping you from— it is doing— yeah, doing like conditioning in combat sports hit some pads, grapple, things like that. So you're working on your conditioning, and then you can just tweak the intensity of those sessions based on your ability to recover within hypertrophy. Like, there's guys that can— there's guys that can be doing 3 full body bodybuilding sessions that can still make significant increases in strength and hypertrophy if they're training properly. Like, if they're going to positive muscle failure, if they're training with enough frequency per week per muscle group and they're continuing to beat their logbook week on week, they're still going to grow. So it's more so looking at it from how far on the spectrum do you want to be a bodybuilder, how far on the spectrum do you want to be a combat sport athlete, and then choosing the way that you train based on those principles.

Yeah, cool. I think another important thing to mention when you are balancing the two is, uh, intensity and your length of your training sessions. If you are training combat sports, sparring, just training sessions, 3, 4 times a week, you're gonna have less physical energy in order to use for bodybuilding. Does that mean you can't do bodybuilding? No, it does mean that you have to be smart about it and make your session shorter but more intense. With lifting. You don't want to be lifting for an hour and a half because there is, again, diminishing returns at that point. What you can do if you are tired is literally 15 to 20 minutes of a very intense set or a couple exercises that hits the muscle group that you're targeting, and then stop. Because as long as you're going to positive intensity and close to failure at least, or failure itself,, then you're going to get a hypertrophy response to some degree. All of the extra sets that you do past that, that you may— that's literally not necessary. And this is Mike Mentzer's, uh, philosophy in general, is, is heavy-duty intensity. If you have one set all out, everything past that is a waste, and it's taking out of your recovery. I think people make the mistake, and I've seen this, of trying to do as much lifting as as they usually do, and then also throwing combat sports sessions, uh, on top of that. And combat sports sessions will tire you out way more than lifting will, uh, that's just the nature of it. Um, so balancing that, you know, if you have— but it's all also blending in how much sleep did you get last night? Did you have time to be in bed for 12 hours? I know combat athletes and sport athletes, they're in bed for 12 hours plus with an hour and a half nap each day because they're able to do 2 training sessions and schedule their life that way, which is awesome. But if you have less sleep, then don't go as hard in the training sessions, either for combat or bodybuilding. Did you get enough food, hydration? Like, you get to— with experience and time, you get this sense of how your body is feeling, and listening to your body will ultimately be one of the best information points, to go off in terms of recovery and, and how much output you can do.

Yeah, and it's— that's why I like to speak from principles instead of saying, oh, you should be doing 3 to 4 combat sports sessions, you should be doing 3 to 4 gym sessions. It's like, it depends on what your goals are, but just understanding that. And even like, as an example, if you get more conditioned by training more combat sports, that's going to help your recovery as a bodybuilder as well. Like, the whole cardio kills your gains— so long as you're in a— in even just a marginal surplus you're going to be growing. So the whole trope that, oh, cardio is going to kill your gains, it's actually going to help your recovery, especially if you're wanting to blend the two together. And even the more you train as a combat sport athlete, your movement will be more efficient, so you will actually recover better from the exact same session that you do today versus 6 months from now. It won't be as hard of a session because you're more efficient and you're used to the, the demands of the sport as well. So that's where it becomes, as you mentioned, sleep, nutrition, all these other things I look at those aspects when it comes to injuries as well. So that's why it's like people ask me, they send me a DM, I've got this shoulder injury, what exercise should I do? I'm like, there are so many different factors that are involved. I can't— like, if I was to send you an exercise, I'd be doing you a massive disservice. I'd be just pissing in your pocket and making something up.

So yeah, yeah, it's, it's important that, um, people people, if you don't have, uh, someone telling you what to do in front of you who can actually gauge where you're at, where your sleep is at, recovery. And it's the same with— I get a question, how do I lose body fat? Well, that is a— there are some obviously big rocks which I will tell every person, but it's like, how's your sleep? How much light are you getting? How stressful is your environment? Um, what are you eating? How often, what time it is. Like, it's, it's, it's really endless. And I think, uh, it's that— is it the Dunning-Kruger effect? When you, when you actually understand how much there is that goes into it, uh, you're less likely to instantly be confident to give someone— like, you, you are confident because you know the advice is right over years, but you just know that there's so much that goes into it that, like you said, you don't want to just give them one exercise and expect that to be be a catch-all. Um, so does bodybuilding itself make you stiff? Because I believe that it's not the bodybuilding itself, it's the repetitive. If, if that's the only movement that you're doing for your shoulders is a bench press, yeah, you're going to get stiff. It's not the fact that you do bodybuilding as such, it's the fact that there is no other mobility. Because you, you posted a, a picture recently and many bodybuilders do this as part of their posing routines, they'll bust down into a full split right on stage at their, you know, peak, peak condition, lowest body fat. Um, that to me inherently disproves that bodybuilding itself causes stiffness, and it's more so the lack of— and I've found this in myself as well— it's a lack of movement outside of you doing the bodybuilding that causes you to be stiff.

Yeah, I think it's It's one of those things that fighting athletes, they— the biggest things that they shit on when it comes to bodybuilders is that like they're stiff and slow. Get a bodybuilder to start training for 12 months in a boxing gym, obviously you'll probably lose a few gains, but he's going to restore a lot of that motion. It just comes down like if you're not training for the— through the full range of motion, let's be honest, there's a lot of ego lifters that are training in conventional gyms that are— you're right, like just doing barbell bench press, barbell squat, things like that. If you're going ass to grass with a squat. It doesn't even need to be a barbell, like it might be goblet, whatever the case is. If you're training through those ranges of motion, you will have access to them. So a big thing that I think, right, isn't in enough bodybuilding training prescriptions— and it's what, like, I'm working with a few guys now who purely have bodybuilding goals. I'm giving them a lot more rotation than they typically have in their training. So most push-pull-leg splits, upper-lower splits, full-body splits most of the core training that they're doing is mainly sagittally, so like flexion extension of the trunk. So like you're kneeling cable crunches, things like that, instead of giving them rotation. And you can even— you can give shoulder rotational exercise as well. You can get a cable, do those, um, do cable rotations. There's a ton of rotational exercise that I think would be some of the only missing gaps in traditional bodybuilding prescription. So in, in to shorten things up, like, I don't think that it makes you stiff if you're training through the full range of motion.

Yeah, so stiffness— I've mentioned this before— stiffness and tightness is weakness. It's weakness of the muscle to be able to pull you through or sustain you or hold you in those extended range of motion. And the body tightens up because it's— it knows it's weak there, so it feels a little scared to go into those, because that's when you don't have the muscle that is going to take the physical forces and then your joint gets stressed. And that's how people get injured is because they're weak in those end ranges, which is going to put gravity or shearing forces in a direction rather than being on the muscles, it's on the joint. And then the joint isn't designed— the joint isn't designed to take the loads the muscle is. So that's where people get injured and things like that. So I think the, the rotation thing is pretty interesting. I found that I've had better back musculature gains in incorporating rotation. You'd imagine most things, barbell, it's up and down. Most of the, even the back machines, you've got two hands kind of equally placed on a bar and you're pulling it up and pulling it down and then going up again. There's no rotation of the spine. Rotation of the spine is the most important thing for power output, for running movement. And you need that, that kind of S-wave like a fish does, got flowing side from side, and that requires rotation. This was an issue with me, is like I— for years it was just, you know, predominantly weight training and there was no rotation. But with, with back exercises especially, I've found that if you go one-handed and then pull right up and then twist, there's an extra 15 to 20% of back muscle activation because your back is doing the rotation. It's not just doing pulling your arm back, but then boom, there's an extra 15 to 20% that you can get, uh, from doing that. So very important for— and I guess the same is true for, let's say, a dumbbell chest press. You bring it down and then you're going up again. Traditionally, what you can do is go one at a time. You bring it down and then you kind of twist over to the right if your right hand is coming down, and it opens up that chest and shoulder, and you're getting a bit of rotation, activating the muscle as well, the back muscles as well. And that itself, I think, obviously going lighter and getting used to it before you add weight to these extra new ranges of motion that especially for something like punching is going to be super valuable.

Yeah, and it's, it's one of those things where you make your mechanical tension hypertrophy sets, use your compounds, the things that are working in those, those lower rep ranges. But for your, uh, your metabolic adaptations, getting that pump, you can use some of these methodologies to really— because you look at, you look at the golden era of bodybuilding, like the Arnold days, look, you look at his rows He is completely bent over getting full maximal strength through, uh, stretch through his erectors, rhomboids, all those muscle groups. So a lot of people say that it's unsafe to train like that, but it's unsafe if you're not exposed to that for a long period of time. If you go into like arching your back, all these rounding your back things like that, if you haven't done it and you go straight into heavy sets of that, of course if your body's not used to that load, it's it's going to feel like shit. But if you gradually build into it, you can work through very safely spinal flexion. Like, your spine is built to rotate and bend. Otherwise, there wouldn't be segmental vertebrae. It'd be one block, similar to your thigh bone and femur. So, right, the way that it's built, it's built for like that. It's built like that for a reason. You're just not training it properly. And then you either go from never training it and you try and add all this rotation in and you feel terrible, you're like, oh yeah, the spine's not meant to rotate. You just haven't adequately added that to your training process.

How does the neck fit into all this? I know you've put together the most stellar neck training guide that I've ever seen. So first of all, thank you for that. Thank you for putting that out into the world. I talk about training neck, it's much more limited in my, uh, understanding of it, but It is, I would say, one of the largest underappreciated muscle groups for aesthetics, but also for general health. If your neck moves, if your neck is strong, your skull is going to be strong. You're going to get better cerebrospinal and blood moving through the skull and the brain. And I think neck pain is another pain point that, that people have in the Western world today. But Yeah. How was that neck training guide as a project to build? Where can people find it? And what would you say is, is your understanding of the neck in its role in combat sports, but health in general?

So we'll start with like the benefits of actually neck training in the first place. And you're right, it's a very underrated, undertrained area of the body. I think mainly because people don't know how to do it safely. And that was a big mission behind why I produced this.

Yes, it's scary.

Yeah, it is, because you're like, oh, even societally, it's like, oh, I don't want to break my neck. There's always just that fear around doing something bad towards, uh, just loading up the neck as a whole. But if you look at the reason why I made it is because it's not just important for fighters. Fighters have been using neck training since the very start of martial arts. But I looked at it, it's like, yeah, yeah, you're right, like aesthetic, for aesthetics, it's important. Like the presence that you can have just from adding a a few inches to your neck is crazy. Like, you've— everyone's probably seen the difference in Tanning Tatum, skinny neck versus having his normal neck. Like, it's a huge, huge difference. So there's the appearance, obviously. There's also the protection of your— 'cause then if you think about it, in terms of your entire spine, your neck's the only aspect that isn't heavily muscled with core stabilizers and things like that. So it's quite a vulnerable area of your body. So it needs to be really, really robust. And especially if you're a fighting athlete, That's a non-negotiable. But I think anybody, like, even, even pushing your head into a bench when you're doing heavy bench press, you're loading up the neck in that fashion. So from a safety standpoint, even injuries, like, if you, if you don't have a strong neck and you don't have a neck that can work through its full range of motion, then that's— especially with a lot of people that are working in an office, you're like this the whole time, forward head posture. So there's that element of just like building a robust neck. Like, I've heard of people, it saved them from car accidents. They would have died in car accidents, but because they had very, very strong neck musculature, they survived. So it could literally save your life in certain situations. So yeah, obviously there's a combat sport element. If you're grappling, your neck's put under a lot of, a lot of tension. When you're a wrestler, you're next put into awkward positions. When you're striking, it helps— it can help reduce concussion rates just by being able to absorb blows as a whole. So that's why I chose 'Cause I've always been very reluctant to put out like a product where it's more so principle-based and it's not individualized. A lot of the work that I like to do is around an individual's specific needs. But what I've basically done is taken, if you've never trained neck in your entire life, all the way up into your, I've even got like bonus combat sports specific stuff where if you're a wrestler, you need to, you need to do a neck bridge if you're a wrestler because you, you might get put into that position. So if you're not prepared for it, you're just underselling yourself from a training context. Strikers, I don't think you need to do wrestler's bridges. And I saw, I've seen Tyson, Anthony Joshua, stuff like that doing it. Tyson actually attributes neck bridges a lot to his neck injuries that he had, that he has now chronically. So I think as a striker, not as important. Um, but yeah, like basically the guide goes through starting through Building range of motion first, then isometric, so working the muscles but not shortening or lengthening them, just building some baseline endurance foundationally. So mastering your body weight, adding bands, adding plated resistance, giving you some like what I call the Yoked Athlete Series where we work on traps, some other areas of the body that surround the neck that I think from like a visual standpoint are really beneficial. And then we've got like the combat sports specific phases, so it's, it's just something that I wanted to give to as many people as possible. I think 3 or 4,000 people have already redeemed it, which is awesome. And this is only version 1 as well. I'll be making many more versions of this in the future based on— because I sent every single copy manually so far just to make sure I'm getting everybody's feedback so that I'm building a really, really good resource for people. Like, it'll be almost like my magnum opus so that if if someone's like, oh, what's his, what's his work like, what's his skill level like, they can check out that guide. And I think it's quite— I, I— it's— it cost me a couple grand to like design it. I videoed every single exercise myself in this gym that I'm sitting in. So I spent a lot of time just to try and help as many people as possible train their neck safely, because it can be a daunting and scary process to start with.

Yeah, that's awesome, man. Much, much respect for you to do that. I think I've noticed in myself that there's just, as Mike Tyson's comment with the compression of the neck, wrestler's bridges will compress that area of your neck unless you are really fully extending and holding the tension there. The more weight you add, the more weight, the more gravity you put on the wrestler's bridge compared to, you know, just holding your hands there, or if you got part of your body on a bench or something like that, it's inevitably a compressive force if you don't fully extend your neck. Uh, and I'll try and demonstrate this on the video on my end, but there's like a, a shearing force where your vertebra will be compressed together. And again, that's when you get the muscles aren't taking the load, the joints are, but it's, it's really like a mental cue to extend and push up and then take the load and then do flexion. And really it's kind of similar to the postural cue of, um, having a string when you're standing up, having— imagining a string attached to the very top of the back of your head and that pulling you up at all times. And kind of also the cue of having a tennis ball between your neck and your chin and kind of tucking down. So you're tucking down and then extending back and up at the same time. That is very, very important. And I imagine with the amount of Restless Bridges that he did, he just had too much compression over time that has now led to these, these issues.

Yeah. And I think it's as well, like, if you're 30 years old, never done a Restless Bridge in your life versus someone who started practicing this at 5 years old, your starting point is going to be very, very different because you haven't accumulated decades of just general movement capacity and movement mobility in that. Because that's like one of the highest level neck exercises that you can do. And even I tried adding some speed-specific exercises in the actual neck training guide itself. So as an example, doing like kettlebell drops where your neck has to quickly contract and relax, that's commonly a missing thing in a lot of rehab protocols where Yeah, you're getting really strong through the muscles, but you're not working them through the velocities of, as an example, combat sports. If you're, if you're copping a blow, you're getting punched in the face, your neck has to contract and relax very rapidly to control that, uh, that head movement as a whole. So that's sort of my philosophy in regards to just like loading up tissue. It's first getting that range of motion, then adding the isometrics, so working the endurance-based aspects of your muscle group. Then adding the concentric and eccentric, so shortening and lengthening of the muscle, then adding speed to it, then adding more ballistic demands to it. And that's how I approach majority of injuries from like a high macro level.

Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. I wanted to ask you, is the sauna a recovery tool or not? I'm very interested in your perspective here.

I think— I don't think it is. I think it's a— it stresses the— I think there's a lot of benefit to it, and it also depends on what you're using it for as well. Like, I see obviously a lot of fighters use saunas to cut weight, things like that. They're a beneficial tool to dehydrate the body, but fundamentally the reason why you're staying in the sauna for 20, 25, 30 minutes is to stimulate shock proteins. You can— the literally the name shock proteins, you're shocking the body. So yeah, I think there's much better ways. And you, you look at like Khabib says, takes massive, massive naps, sleeps a ton of time. Like those are true recovery methods. I think sauna, if you're, if you're more of a, uh, someone that needs that sort of stress added to their bodies. If you think about it as well, how many people actually like remineralizing when they're hydrating? Like they're probably drinking tap water or just like water that doesn't have any minerals in it. Um, so if you're not, if you're not putting those minerals back in your body, you're dehydrating yourself, you're stressing yourself with shock proteins. There's also like links with, um, a reduction in male fertility as well with chronic sauna use also. So there's like, that's obviously if you're using it a ton, but I think the whole, even ice baths as well, you're shocking the body. So to then say it's a recovery method. Yes, you may physiologically feel better, and that will give you a, like, placebo sensation of recovery. But at, like, a— at a true biological level, it's not a recovery tool. And I personally don't use it as a— I use it as a mobility tool. Like, I— it's really good for vasodilation, getting blood flow, uh, through the body. I prefer to use it for that instead of me thinking, oh, I'm jumping in the sauna because that's going to help my recovery.

Right, I think, uh, again, there's nuance within this. Recovery from the blood flow is definitely an aspect of it, and if you're not going in there and roasting yourself to a crisp, I think that's different to going in there to where you have a full body blood flow and sweat and then you get out. You know, if you're pushing yourself to the point where I you know, mentally, there is the mental aspect if you want to be able to push yourself through hard things, and doing that occasionally is very valid and good. But if it's 4 or 5 times a week where you're cooking yourself to the point of nearly passing out on the way out, then yeah, that probably is, uh, not ideal in terms of recovery and not ideal for various, uh, amount of things. Same with ice baths. I, I would never do an ice bath every day. I don't, I don't. Like, I, if I have one in the house, that would be a different story. It's a bit of an effort to, to fill up a thing with ice or go to a— go to somewhere with a plunge. Uh, but I think it has benefits to do occasionally, and you do feel great after. But I think the inherent biological feeling of, oh, get out of this fucking cold because it's so freezing, is an indication that, hey, maybe your body isn't enjoying this. Maybe this isn't something that we intuitively, primally desire. Um, I don't know, I, I, it's more of a— I think there are valid benefits to it because in general we should— like back in the day we would be experiencing that just as the nature of the elements. And so you should expose yourself in that sense. Sometimes you'd be really hot if you had to walk through a hot summer's day. Uh, it didn't have air conditioning everywhere. Uh, maybe walking through a blizzard to the next camp or whatever it is so occasional stress to increase the parameters of your total tolerance, not something that should be done every day, especially for women. I think women do not— I know women do not tolerate physical stress as much as men do, and, and it's not as physiologically beneficial for them. So giving the advice, yeah, sauna, cold plunge every single day to women is, is, is probably not as good. Sauna is less intense than the cold, but yeah. I want to talk hydration a little bit. The people that, uh, listen to me probably have heard me talk about how hydration is fundamentally, uh, an issue of electrolyte balance and intake more so than it is the amount of H2O water molecules, uh, that go in the body. Highest quality spring water has naturally occurring minerals from the earth within it, and that's the benefit of spring water and how it rehydrates you. I obviously have Sol Salts, uh, that I make, which is a salt and potassium and magnesium mix, which I add to my, my water, especially more if I'm in the sauna or training very heavily or have had a, you know, a sweat session of whatever kind. But, um, how do you find hydration plays into combat sports in general? Because I think that a lot of people, even high-level fighters, are draining themselves through these weight cuts. They're saunering, they're They're sweating out all of these things and then maybe drinking something like fucking Prime now, which is a terrible, terrible hydration product.

Yeah, I was just about to say that. If I can give one piece of advice, don't drink Prime. Even Prime-sponsored athletes, their dietitians and nutritionists tell them not to drink that shit. They actually fill the Prime drinks with different, with different drinks inside of it so that they're still hydrating. Really, really doing the branding stuff. So yeah, it's It's not my— in terms of like weight cuts, all those aspects, that's not my expertise. I'd rather refer— like, there's a really good guy in Australia, The Fight Dietitian, who works with Volk, Adesanya, Leon Edwards. Like, he is probably the authority in that space. And a lot of what he says is very similar to what you mentioned in terms of like actually getting adequate minerals. If you're just drinking plain water, there's not going to be a ton of benefit to doing that. Um, and yeah, just I think as far as fighters, it is— it can be a challenging thing, especially if you're cutting a ton of weight, because obviously dehydration is part of that process. But yeah, it's making sure that you are making sure you're getting adequate sodium and potassium balance into the body so that you are actually hydrating. And it is— the reason why I don't want to give specific advice on that is it's not my domain of expertise, and it's one of those things, especially around fights, it's almost like an art. Just as it would be with like injury, um, rehabilitation. Like, you need to really, really know what you're doing. And I'm lucky enough to have a network, but I'd rather refer on to guys that are working with the best fighters, as an example, because it's a unique sport. It's probably one of the only sports that you do purposely get dehydrated before, before a fight. I don't, uh, or before a sporting event. Um, obviously there's some other Olympic weight class, uh, sports out there, but it is unique in that sense where it does become an art and it does become very individualized to the athlete.

Yeah, for sure. I think most people would benefit from adding some level of high-quality salt to their water in order to make sure the minerals are going in, in general. We had a couple audience questions here which I think we should get to now. Who are your favorite combat athletes of all time and why?

Yeah, it's a good question. I, I don't— like, I don't have any bias towards mass. I think I liked— I like fighters in their prime. So Prime McGregor, I love the way that he moved. Like, it was just— I think he had that enigma around him as well when he was at his peak. And like, he's been massive for the sport. The sport is only 20-something years old in terms of like the UFC. So what he's done for the sport and just that aura that he had, he— I, I genuinely thought he was invincible throughout his prime. So that's a like, that's a huge, that's a huge one. I get a lot of even just some of the old school fighters in boxing. Like, I think for me, I think boxing is the most aesthetic sport out of all the combat sports. Just the way they move is just extremely slick. So Usyk, Um, even Tyson Fury, like, considering everyone thinks like, because his physique is not athletic looking, the way that he moves at his height and weight is just phenomenal. So yeah, there's a bunch of like— I don't, I don't personally have any favorites. I like taking the best things from each of these athletes and then trying to either add that to my game or just like take bits and pieces biomechanically from the way that they're— the way that they perform. So yes, I don't really have any bias towards one fighter. I've been the same sort of with, with every athlete. I just appreciate good movers as a whole. Like, Adesanya moves extremely well. Volkanovski, I think, is one of the most well-rounded fighters I've ever seen. The ability to strike at his level but also be able to grapple and do everything in between— like, he has very, very few holes that a lot of people— like, in combat sports, usually they've got like one main dominant, uh, whether that's striking or grappling, but then their secondary and tertiary tools aren't that great. Volk is scary, scary, scary well-rounded. So obviously a fellow Aussie as well. So I'd say if I had a favorite, it'd probably be Volk because I've literally seen him train. I've, um, obviously built relationships with his team as well, so there's always going to be a bit of bias there.

Yeah, Volk, uh, really allowed us Aussies to get around him, which is awesome. Um, do you think— this is a tangent of that question— but in your experience, do you think that the best athletes or best combat athletes all have some kind of insanity to them, or is there a place for a purely, you know, disciplined, this is what I'm doing, by-the-book mentality? I'm sure there are examples of both, really.

I don't— I think to, especially in this day and age, you need to have gone through some sort of trauma, whether it's something that you make aware to everybody. As an example, like with Mike Tyson, he didn't want to get bullied, and that turned him into an absolute machine. So, and we've seen publicly a lot of the issues that he's had mentally, but those same issues turned him into the absolute animal that he became. So I think even just— even athletes at the highest levels across the board, a lot of people say, oh, you need to have like these positive mindsets, things like that. Michael Jordan had a chip on his shoulder the entire time. He made up problems with other athletes so that it drove him and motivated him. So even like with Messi, he's— I think he's genuinely on the spectrum of autism. The way that he just behaves. So that, that, that quote unquote disadvantage is something that makes him exceptional at what he does. So I don't like— I hate the prescription of where having certain things like whether it's a tendency to be more OCD or have autistic tendencies, things like that. I hate seeing that as especially in modern medicine as that being a disadvantage, because if you plug that individual into the right field, into the right skill, into the right activity,, they will be absolute masters and lap everybody else that's doing that exact same activity. So instead leveraging what your proclivities are, if you're somebody that can't sit still, you're probably not going to be a good operational worker within a business context. So yeah, I think it is, it's huge. It's huge. There has to be some mental aspect, especially if you're fighting other human beings. Like it, it's the hardest sport on earth. So you do need to have some, some reason as to why you're, uh, you're training and fighting.

Yeah, uh, 100% agree with that. It's all about leveraging what you specifically have gone through, sometimes creating mental things that don't necessarily exist but motivate you all the same. And that can be done in a quote-unquote negative way, it can be done in a positive way. And we can also rewrite any experience or trauma that we've gone through in order to propel us rather than keep us down. And I think that's the takeaway really from there. Another audience question: How can we develop through combat sports without sparring too much? My brain has been affected by sleep deprivation and causing me memory loss. He wants to still be able to develop without taking too much brain damage. Uh, yeah, how does someone do that?

Yeah, it's a good question, and I like to look at it from the pillars of skill acquisition. So obviously the top of the tree, high-risk, high-reward training, is going to be sparring. Inevitably, if you're preparing for a fight, you need to simulate that as closely as possible, and that's a given. For those of— the thing is, at the end of the day, like me personally, I am someone who doesn't want to do a ton of hard sparring because I I think personally my biggest asset is, is my brain. So I want to make sure I'm preserving that as much as I can. So I'm more inclined to be doing what are, what are skills that I can be doing that still give me some level of decision, uh, decision making, which could be like your— it could be touch sparring, uh, shoulder sparring. You're still getting the same dis— like from a striking context, you're still getting the same distance control inputs, you're getting the same hand movements coming towards you, but then you're not getting the hard blows to the head. Like, a lot of pro fighters, they don't do a ton of sparring, um, in the, in the mid to back end of their careers because they've already— you probably need to test yourself a couple of times and get into like those war situations in, in fights. But once you've learned that you can actually do that, there's not much more benefit to adding more of that, in my opinion. Am I frozen here?

Uh, yeah, video's paused. One sec, you're still here. Yeah, let me reset it. Ultimately, most people are not going to be professional fighters, and will it benefit them to be getting punched or kicked in the head? Probably not. Even with jiu-jitsu, I hear a lot of people, uh, from just rolling with— all it takes is once, and this is not to put fear into people's head, whatever, all it takes is one spastic to kimura you aggressively and then your shoulder's fucked for a decent amount of time. And like, okay, you wanted to take hobby classes and improve and that's great, uh, but what what is the trade-off there with now you can't weight, weight lift, or you have shoulder pain for several months?

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, with sparring, touch spar, you're still going to get skill acquisition benefits. I think like shadowboxing is good if you're a, a beginner beginner as well, because you're still improving your technical elements that you can then bring into sparring. But then just do a ton of touch sparring. It's not the end of the world. You still get those inputs. And then if you're wanting to do once a month, once every fortnight, once every 3 weeks, a proper sparring session, you can do that. It's the same thing with— I think with jiu-jitsu, it's like, it's choosing your sparring partners. If someone's a spastic, just don't— I don't, I don't give a shit about egos when it comes to training. If I'm going to injure myself and not be able to train for the next month or 2 months, especially if once again, like, if bodybuilding is your main goal, then just say, just say that you don't want to train with that individual. Like, I think, I think that's fine to do, especially when you're when it's your health at the end of the day. So yeah, it's just choosing the right sparring partners and tapping. Like, if— especially if you're a newer, newer fighter, like, don't have a massive ego and try and like avoid tapping, all of that stuff. That's usually when— whenever bad stuff happens, it's because you've tried to escape a little bit too late, which is a very, very advanced technique, um, that if you're trying to minimize and like preserve injuries, that's probably the, the smartest approach to take.

Very true, very true. Is there anything you wanted to mention before we come to the end of this episode of the Soulcast?

No, not really. I appreciate, appreciate you having me on. Like I said, I've got the neck training guide. I'm working on a few other projects. I think one that would resonate with a lot of other people similar to the neck guide is having So my philosophy when it comes to mobility is doing as little basically pointless mobility drills that you might see on Instagram, trending on TikTok, things like that. I want to start building out full, full like upper and lower body hypertrophy systems that also help, uh, improve your injuries at the same time. Obviously that won't help for very acute injuries, but I think those that have maybe like niggly shoulders, um, niggly knees, things like that, I'm wanting to build out That's like the next thing that I'm working on. It's obviously not as clear-cut as me just whipping it up in a week. It's a longer-term project. But yeah, if you're interested in just general, like a no bullshit approach to injuries and actually not getting sold on some of the marketing gimmicks that I— because like half the reason I've grown in the first place has been me basically pushing back on a lot of what people think about the healthcare system as a whole, like chiropractic. I've said some things about chiro, said some things about physio as my own personal domain. Like, I wouldn't even identify myself as a physio at this point. So yeah, if anything to do with injuries— a lot of people have the misconception that I just work with combat sport athletes. I work with absolutely anybody and any goal. That's something that I'm wanting to be very, very well-rounded in what I do from like a, from a service standpoint. Obviously my specialty is in fighting athletes, Um, but yeah, like all of them, I'm almost like fully booked with everything. So that's why I'm coming out with these newer, um, more so like program structures, but it's just going to take me a bit of time. So yeah, other than that, um, yeah, I appreciate you having me on and I hope the guys that were listening got some benefit out of just learning whether it's bodybuilding, whether it's combat sports, and just like blending those two things together.

I'm sure they will, man. Well, thank you, The Combat Therapist. Uh, we'll get the link to your Twitter, it's @CombatTherapist. Uh, we'll put that in the show notes. Thank you everyone at home for listening. This has been Soulcast. Thank you, Combat Therapist.

Thanks, brother.