BTG 146 - What I have learned in 44 years

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. On today's episode, I turned 44 years old. It's July 7th, Monday. I am officially 44 and I feel very sore still. I was telling my wife one of the things I and I've mentioned this many times over the course of many podcasts how recovery keeps getting harder and that definitely seems to be trending with me. Although to be fair, I'm also lifting heavier which naturally is going to incur more recovery cost. I did I've also been doing a harder style of lifting where not only is it heavy like strength lifts, I'm also doing pauses now. So I'm holding at the hardest position for like two seconds which increases the level of difficulty by a high margin, let's say, because I am I did deadlifts on Monday and man like I've been feeling it the whole week. Now, to be clear, I'm just sore, not hurt. I can still train and I have trained martial arts four times this week and uh no problems there, but I'm just constantly sore. And I was talking with my wife about I might have to switch this up just because I I might I for a while I had dropped deadlifts because I I tweaked my back a little bit doing a deadlift. Although that was more of a technical issue than it was a the lift itself. But now, at least with this style of lifting, it's just taking a lot more toll to recover from. And I'm I'm not really sure I'm gaining a lot out of it, you know, as far as like I could just replace it with another exercise. While it might not have all the benefits of a deadlift, for my purposes, it's going to be planting because I don't need to break any records or or hit a another PR. That doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is just functionality and specifically with health and for my sport. So the deadlift motion, while it has some good applications towards lifting people off the ground, it's not something I typically do to be honest. So, it probably wouldn't benefit my style really uh of grappling or fighting as much as maybe somebody who was a freestyle wrestler that was doing like reverse uh lifts like Alexander Carolyn. It's not something I do. So, it's not something I really need. I can get back from bent over road just fine with with much less cost recovery wise. So, uh, I think now just talking through it and just explaining to you guys, I'm definitely just going to cut them out, just swap them out with another exercise instead. And I also want to focus now more on explosive cardio because I've noticed as I start to train more, with most people, my conditioning is is fine. like I never have an issue with it. However, with guys who are very athletic and like to use speed, I can definitely feel myself get a little worn out when we start sprinting. You know, I start getting into some crazy scrambles that are going for a long time, like, you know, 30, 40 second scramble. That's when I start hitting a wall. And uh I want to try to erase that, get that wall out of there. And I've been averse to doing it because it's not fun. For me, the the lifting is pretty easy to do as far as the commitment. I know it's going to suck for like the one minute of lifting that I have and then I get to rest for like 5 minutes or so. So, uh it's pretty easy in that sense. Whereas when you're doing a aerodine bike or an assault bike, there's no part of that experience that's easy. It's designed to suck the whole time. So, it takes a lot more motivation to get that going. But, uh, I can see it's an area that I could use some improvement in. Now, I haven't been doing lactic acid capacity style workouts, which I did in the past that benefited me. So, I announced it here so that I'll force myself to do it and um I'll start adding those rounds back in. I'm going to reduce the amount of strength training probably to like just like once a week. I think that's I mean last month I only lifted twice a whole month and I lifted better in my last lift on Monday than I did before. So I'm not losing any strength regularly. I gain some strength in the in my absence, but uh yeah, I don't I I'm good with my level of strength. I don't have an issue moving people around. So, if I can just maintain it, just do it once a week where I can recover in a couple days and then be like optimal for the rest of the days and try to throw in some sprinting rounds like twice a week to get that cardio up and then just steady state cardio, you know? Uh, I'll probably do tempos instead of running would be great, but running sucks for me, uh, for my knees or whatnot. I mean, it's been good, but I'd rather not push it the tempo I can do without having to worry about any collateral damage. So, I would plan for that. So, I'm just thinking of goals for myself as far as 44. uh what they want to do differently, less strength training, more uh sprinting and high heart rate training. Uh more just low heart rate training, just cardio in general. I want to build more flexibility. I' been, you know, doing my mobility exercises and stretching before every training session, which has helped. my amount of injuries over the past year were far lower and not from training uh not from martial arts training at least. So that's been great. But I could use some more flexibility. I was trying to work on some well a couple areas I noticed it. I'm like, man, if I was more flexible, I would land this. One of them is the triangle chokes. Like I can get into triangle chokes pretty easily with my game because I'm always going for kimoras and framing off arms. So the arms are usually in a bad position for my opponent. But it's my leg dexterity or flexibility that prevents me from getting in there. And sometimes I can get in a little bit. I can get my the trap as far as going over the shoulder, but I can't make a nice figure four. And even, you know, on the calves, I can finish some people, but on the tougher guys, I just get kind of stalemated there. Um, if I had better hip rotation, and that's specifically what I need more of is, you know, bringing the foot way up here, that would make it easier for me to catch those. And also platas, which would be plentiful as well. The second area I noticed with with back control. I've been playing a bit with straight jacketing people to try to pin the arm. And the only problem is, you know, I can go from a seat belt trap trap, get this arm set, but I can't bring my leg high enough to hook over. Like my foot doesn't come up too high here. Not without an assist. But if I let go, obviously I lost a wrist. And that makes um arm trapping very tricky for me because I have very limited I guess that would be like internal rotation of that hip and the mobility and stretching that I do does not really improve my flexibility. It just maintains it and opens it up so that when I go to practice I'm already as loose as I need to be. But I need to be more flexible. So, I need to do specifically a mobility routine that is working on improving my existing flexibility in particular with my hips. So, that's another goal I'm going to set for myself and at least a couple times a week working on that to open up those hips. Uh because yeah, that's an area that would help. I I could use some more back flexibility, particularly with lower back and middle back because those are little tight areas. I'm not sure how much ground I will get there, but it's it would help me in certain situations, but the let's keep the focus simple, the hips internally. That's what I want to open up more than anything else. I feel that I would get a lot of value out of that because I know I can get into those straight jacket pins all the time. I just can't capitalize off of it. And I can set up triangles very often, but just harder for me to get a nice clean bite without that leg dexterity in play. So, that's another factor. uh outside of that things that I've learned over the the past year besides those things. Um, well, I continue to be impressed with the level of growth that there still is in this sport. It's almost 30 years now and of me training And there's still things going on that I'm learning about that I'm not good at. Some things that I just don't know despite being a student in the game and working on things constantly. That's pretty amazing. You know, I I'm not sure if that's something that's common with all sports and I I'm just not that dialed in to to be able to see those subtle shifts and intricacies. I'm sure in basketball and football like all the sports the athletes should be getting better. I just wondered like by how large of a margin because I feel like in grappling there is still big shifts that are happening on a regular basis that change how people's uh approach to the game is right and it's not like oh like we made a little tweak and we got like 5 10% better. It's like big changes that, you know, it can revolutionize your game in an instant. I know I've been playing more now with the inside camping positions that, you know, Gordon, I think, just released a instructional on it. I've had the fortune of being able to train with him and he was actually doing it to me and he taught the group that I was with what he was doing. So, I had an early exposure to it. Um, and I've played with it quite a bit, but I started doing it more since he kind of reminded me. And Jake plays a very similar game. I think Gordon has some more conscious detail of it now. In fact, I think Gordon credited Jake for like uh some of the discovery of that type of passing. I know Roger gets a big credit of it also. But uh so I finally, like I told you guys before, got that part of Jake's game into my game. And it's especially for older guys, it's a very practical way of passing because it's low energy. You're just holding positioning. But some of the solo shifts of the head high, hips low, or hips high, head low, and when to use those added another dimension to that passing sequence of inside camping that makes it a lot more effective. So, that's just one example of a position that I just started playing with and or started playing with more and uh that I've gotten a lot of uh positive results from. So when people tell me they're bored of whatever they're doing, it makes me wonder like are you actually studying what you're doing or are you just doing it? Are you not are you being conscious of everything that you're doing the details how to improve yourself while you're doing it? Like are you optimizing constantly or is good enough enough for you? If good enough was enough, then yeah, I would have been bored decades ago, right? Like I was good enough probably within the first 10 years to handle most people. Uh so when someone says they're bored of doing something, I feel like you're just not trying hard enough or you're not dialing in. Uh, I mean, maybe I'm just wired that way, but whatever I do, I get obsessive with being better at. If I'm cooking, I'm always trying to optimize my recipes. My wife complains all the time because I experiment with things that are already good and then I want to make them better. you know, when uh I was making this flowerless chocolate cake, which is just dark chocolate, eggs, honey or sugar, whatever, and um salt. And we got it dialed in pretty good on the first try. But then I made like 10 different versions. And she would get upset like, "Oh, I don't like this one. I like the first one. I don't like this one." And then finally I get to one that's better than the the first one. I'm like, "Yeah, but you see now maybe you understand like I had to go through a bunch of bad iterations even though the first one was good enough to get a better product, right? I'm not afraid of that process of, you know, the the grind, you know, of going through mistakes even though you were at a good place. I might have started here and then I dropped off a little bit and then I came back up. Like I I'll make that jump into the the crater if it means I can climb higher at the end of it. And I do my best to take that approach to everything I do that I care about. Obviously certain things that you don't care about optimizing that you maybe like, you know, taking out the trash or something like that. Like I'm not going to I'll rack my brain on that. But anything where I invest serious time or money into, I'm going to want to be better at doing. So, it perplexes me when I think about people who are like, "Yeah, I got tired of this. I want to do something else." Like, I I just don't see how I could, at least with the hobbies that I've chosen or the pastimes that I've chosen. I don't see how I would get bored because there's always something else to learn. There's always something that can be improved. And I don't know if it's a thing of being creative or of humility or perhaps it's just uh ambitiousness and thinking you can do better than you what you already have. All right. I always believe I can. I I believe there's always a better outcome and I'm going to seek it. Whether I get there or not is another matter, but I am going to seek it. That's the path I'm on. That's the destination I have set. And the journey I'm going to travel is going to be towards greatness. And whether I get there or not is irrelevant to me. As long as I'm pursuing it, ideally in a path that's victorious. So even if it's not well I can at least let others know hey that that didn't work for me maybe it's not going to work for you you know I feel life is that journey right we we all want the best life possible for for ourselves and hopefully for others but we don't really know the best way forward we have ideas we have clues right we can see from other people maybe our parents or you know family, your friends, like somebody's life that you like and you would like to emulate. It doesn't mean you could do what they did, but it's a possible avenue to get there. And barring any other information, that might be your best path is to emulate someone else or recreate the steps that they did to get to where they have been. It's probably why I like sharing everything I do. Uh, so hopefully you guys if you enjoy the stuff I talk about, the stuff I teach, that you will get the same type of success and mileage that I did on my journey using those moves. And I think that's probably the greatest thing that I can do for myself is helping other people. I get the most joy out of that. And I've talked about that before. I think recently the best achievements were not the things I did for myself personally rather like the things that I was able to show others and guide them on that on a path to success right and that's why for me that kimor trap system is probably the best thing I've done because anywhere I go in the martial arts world people know that and they tell me about you know how it's helped their game. I was training at the UFC Performance Institute and I bumped into Phil Row and him and his coach Julian and they were all talking about how they use it all the time and this and that. I was training on Saturday at a hybrid jiu-jitsu and I bumped into Tammy Musamechi and she's like, "Oh, the kimora guy." And then she kept saying, "Hey, look, I just got another kimora. Like I'm getting kimoras all over the place since you're here." You know, just making a joke. But uh to me, it's a great thing to know that I've had a positive effect on someone else's life because the martial arts for me was a life-changing event in my life. Once I started getting into it, my whole life reshaped and that required somebody leading me and showing me a different path. And you know, in this case, my brother was the one that got me into it. And then my first like significant coach would have been Tears Balls, you know, my wrestling coach in high school. That really turned me around from being, you know, a lazy fat kid into being a young man that understood hard work and sacrifice at a earlier age. and uh that completely reshaped my path for the better. So to me it holds a very dear place in my heart which is why I feel like I it's like an obligation and at the same time a blessing that I could be able to do that for others. So uh for you guys tuning in, thank you for tuning in and I appreciate all of you very much. That's all I got for you guys for this week. and go enjoy the rest of the day.