BTG 148 - PGF and Struggles with Strategy Implementation

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I not going to talk too much about the UFC cuz I didn't watch it. I just saw some of the highlights uh afterwards. Honestly, I just wasn't invested in any of the fights in particular. Even the main event when uh you have Max uh Holloway and Dustin Porier, these are two guys are are kind of on their way out. It's so there's not much story to me in my opinion like and uh I won't spoil it if you haven't watched it but whoever wins is still doesn't really have that much of a future in the division from my perspective. Maybe I'm wrong but uh so yeah and the rest of the fights uh I guess there were some interesting matchups. Uh, I will say the the bookies probably lost big on this one. I'm glad I'm not a gambler. But, uh, moving on from the UFC, we do have the UFC. Well, actually, let's move this week coming up on Wednesday, the PGF, which is the Professional Wrestling Federation, is holding its first uh event here in Las Vegas. Well, not it's first event, but the first event of this season. This is now season eight. They've done seven seasons. You guys might have recall I was uh you guys called me out on a few of them cuz I was sitting on on the sidelines watching. Uh I'll be there to watch it on this one, but they've changed up the format which is a lot more friendly. I think it's going to be a better telling of skill than of toughness. Their previous seasons they shot through one week where competitors were competing up to three times a day for five days straight in the submission only five minute rule no overtime format which pretty much is a sprint. Uh and the people who won that were obviously killers. you had like Andy Vera Varela, Ryan Akin, these are the type of guys that want that and obviously those guys are killers. Like you you can't get through that type of grueling uh tournament without being a killer that you have to be really tough. This time around they're doing it once a week. So they've spaced it out significantly. So now it's going to be a proper season in a sense. I believe it goes I'm going to be getting it wrong, but it's at least four to six weeks of competition and every Wednesday here in Vegas they're going to be holding a new episode that's going to be I believe on YouTube live on the PGF channel. Uh, so you can watch that or you follow I think it's PGF World or Brandon McCarron who's the the organizer, you'll be able to find the info on it there. And they have four teams set up. There's a team Mika Sapilli, Robert Ddale, Hen Kuto, and Andy Varela. So all teams organized here in Vegas. And I I feel now that this is going to be a better representation of the coaches. Previous seasons I from my understanding the competitors pretty much came out the week of the event and you were very limited to the amount of exposure you were getting to your coach. Pretty much he was just calling shots on the sidelines. He probably unless he did a lot of homework didn't really know your game too well. So, it was more generalized coaching and learning on the job. This time around, I imagine they're going to be sticking around in Vegas for the whole time training at that coach's gym. So, they're going to be able to get actual instruction for them and real tuneups that will help them in each progressive match. So, I do like that all the coaches are local here. They're all great coaches, so they should uh really be able to help the athletes more. The prolonged rest is also going to make them a lot more effective, although they're still going to have to grind because I I still believe, if I understood it correctly, it is going to be three matches. If it's following the same format, then I believe it would be five weeks because I think it's five blocks where B pretty much everybody's competing against everybody. Uh, if I recall correctly, I could be wrong, but if that's the case, then yeah, they're still going to be getting matches in, but at least it's going to they're going to get a week of recovery. One thing that I thought was a little weird is that they're only doing one weighin. So, it's one weighin over whatever the time p span is, four to six weeks. you can get some guys who are going to be huge, right? Because I believe the division is lightweight, which would be 155. So conceivably you could have someone cut really hard, maybe overextend themselves in the cut and maybe suck on day one, but then he's got a week to recover and could balloon back up to whatever weight they normally walk around at and then be a powerhouse coming in in week two, three, four, five, six. Right? So I'm not sure why they made it that way. that it's definitely going to incentivize everybody to cut to as much as physically possible. And at 155, you could have someone coming down from 195 uh if they know how to do it, right? And uh I'm pretty sure a few of these guys are going to be in the 180 pound club. So, and the spectrum in this uh tournament for all the athletes definitely varies widely. There are some guys who look like they walk around close to 55 and there's going to be other guys that are really probably walking around in the 180s, 190s and making their way down to 155 once to make that cut. That's at least if I understood the way they cut it correctly, which talking to a few of the competitors that seems to be the case. So that's a weird call in my opinion. They could have just made the weigh-ins once a week. Even giving them an allowance like, okay, we don't want guys cutting every week, but maybe give them like two pound allowance or, you know, whatever the case is. Yeah. But just once over a long span of because yeah, I understand when you're competing five days in a row, obviously weight cutting would kill them there. And honestly, nobody's going to really try to cut too hard anyways in my opinion if you're competing five days in a row because you're going to you're going to be sweating a lot as it is already. So, you're going to have a harder time just rehydrating. But since they've changed and given a lot more spacing, now the cutting can become a real factor. Yeah. So, uh I'm not sure what the thinking was on that process if I have it understood correctly. Now, if you haven't watched it before, PGF is a good format. I I believe it was one of the more entertaining or let me rephrase. It is the most entertaining submission only format I have seen. EBI in my opinion kind of sucks. All right. Uh when the athletes are going after it, it's great, but when you have people who are playing tactical, then we're just waiting for the overtime and see who can escape faster. And that is very lame to me. I don't care about that. That doesn't really it's not a great showing of who's the better athlete. It's just whose practice position was more, you know. Uh, so I'm not a big fan of the EBI rule set. I think it kind of sucks. Um, it's too easily gained. However, Brandon has done a great job with this where in the regular season there is no overtime. You either submit somebody or you don't. And if you don't, you get no points. And to make it past the playoffs, you have to acrewue points. And you can get points by either submitting with what they call either a break or a kill. A kill is any choke. So if you get a triangle choke, renegade choke, guilting choke, etc., it's six points. If you get a a break, arm lock, leg lock, you know, shoulder lock, whatever, that's three points. So they heavily incentivize chokes over breaks which is interesting. Uh but it is a factor, right? So that's one thing. And then you could also score points. I believe if your opponent is DQed, you will get two points, right? And there there is no as far as the actual match itself. There is no points, but there is passivity warnings and and stalling warnings where if they feel that you're not progressing the action or if you're disengaging, they're going to give you a shot clock at that point of 20 seconds. And if you don't take action within those 20 seconds, you're going to get a a stalling point. And I believe if you get five stalling calls, is it five? I think or five warnings rather that you're going to be disqualified and if that happens your opponent gets two points. Now I've seen two of the seasons live. That's never happened. I do see that sometimes that now there is another factor which is that if somebody has more stalling calls than the other the winner will get points. I mean the the one with less stalling calls will get the victory. So it it can be a factor there. and they're pretty trigger-happy with giving stalling, which on one hand, great. Sometimes I think it's a little silly. I know there were a few situations in the last season where someone had the back mount and they gave the the stalling point to the back guy with the back control because he wasn't going for chokes enough. That's a little wild to me. It's like, hey, look, he has a dominant position and obviously a defender is doing a good job defending. the onus is on the defender in this case, the guy backmounted to get out of this position and not rely on the referee to save him, right? Or the time to save him. So, I feel that there's a little few areas they could tweak it up, but overall the rule set does encourage and incentivize submissions because that's the only way you get in the on the board. And if you just decision your way through every match, which you wouldn't, you would just be getting draws basically every match, you're not going to make it to the playoffs. So, and plus you're not scoring your team any points. So, you're not going to make any money because uh it's four teams and whichever team acres the most points, they're pretty much doing it like dual meet style. like you know team Dale will go up against team Varela and then based on the points each team acrews the the winner you know advances and the winning team gets a bonus that all the athletes in that team get paid on. In addition, the points that you earn individually will also get you into the playoffs. And if you win the playoffs, of course, you win the grand prize, too. So, if you want to make money and if you want to win, you have to get submissions. There's no way around it. And that's assignment is understood because in previous seasons, people were going for kills all the time and they were trying to get submissions. And the matches are relatively shorter. If I recall, I believe they were like six minute matches. Uh, I might have that wrong, but it's it's not a who's number one like 15 minute match or 80C like 40-minute match. Like these are short matches, so like you have to get your finishes in. So the pace is faster. You It's not like, well, I have to like wear them out in the first 20 minutes and then in the final 20 get them. Like no, like you have like six or eight minutes at most. So like you have to start looking for the kill pretty much from the moment that we go. So I do like that rule set. The athletes in there is a good mix of people, a lot of younger guys. Uh the only ones that will be familiar to people from previous seasons I believe is Jet Thompson. He's a returning star, right? Jet did really well in the last I think he he took second to Andy, but he was a big problem for a lot of people. He scored a lot of points, a lot of Aayoki locks on that guy. A really good submission guy. He's probably one of the bigger guys also. So, um, he's obviously a favorite. He was the number one draft pick from team Dale for I think 7,700 with a max bid of 15,000. So, um, obviously he is the favorite of that tournament, but you have a lot of other guys that some flew under the radar. Um, because you have to remember this isn't a points tournament. So, for example, I one of the guys you've seen me train with and I film instructional with like I just did an armbar course and my UK was Jordan Worth who's going to be in the tournament as well and he's one that flew under the radar that uh Team Kuto picked up on the cheap to me which is a great bargain cuz he is a very tricky guy and he's a kill or be killed type of dude. He's going to get kills. Like, I'm pretty sure he's going to get a few submissions in this tournament. He has a very tricky game and you're pretty much guaranteed to have never grappled anyone like him before. And he's very unorthodox. So, if I was a coach, I would have been grabbing him pretty early. Uh, he might not win the overall tournament, but he is going to get points for the team, that's for sure. So, uh, you have Jordan. Uh, another one that got in mid- price, I think is pretty good is Chris Oibo. He was, uh, black belt under Dale. I've known the guy for years. He's also very strong submission guy. Pretty solid all around. So, he's another one. And there's a few other guys in there that I've been able to train with. They're all tough, but none of the bigger names, not like in the previous season where we had like a Hinata Kuto or Andy Varela or like Ryan Akin. To me, these are guys who her names were more built up. This season is guys that are up and coming, which I think is going to be great because you're going to have guys who really want to prove themselves and they know like this is a big opportunity. So, they're really going to go for it and I don't think people are going to be trying to play safe. You know, the previous season we had guys even like PJ Barge who's a bronze medalist and uh he didn't have a great showing at PGF. Like it just like for whatever reason he just didn't hit well, you know. Uh even Hanato didn't hit too well in PGF. Like it took him a bit to warm up into the rule set. So, I feel that with the the young guys who are used to more of these submission only formats and with the more time they're being given to get accustomed to it are going to do a lot better. So, I think this season is going to be pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to watching it again here and not having to marathon it for a week straight. I can just come in on Wednesdays. I believe it's Pacific time, 400 p.m. where they start. And again, you can watch it on YouTube. So, you you might catch me on there uh in the background. So, I'm looking forward to watching that. And I I feel that's a better format team-wise because the team is actually going to be training together this time around. It wasn't like like I said last time or like in other tournaments where they organize teams but none of these people have trained for each other for more than a day or two, right? Like Aayiga does a team and most of the people are just, you know, a bunch of mercenaries put together. Uh I like it when it's actually people who are going to be training with that coach. So we get to see that coach's pedigree, his influence and strategy and technique. But uh that's that. As far as myself, I have been keeping myself accountable to the promises I made to myself for my birthday. I I've done my sprints. I've done I did one this morning, actually. Well, by the time you guys watch this, it'll be yesterday morning. But, uh, I've been doing those assault bike sprints, 30 seconds on, over 500 watts output, and then 30 seconds rest for eight rounds. And those suck, man. They are very challenging. Granted, the first few rounds are pretty easy cuz you pretty much have full energy reserves. So, your first I find that the first four sprints are pretty straightforward. It's after the fourth sprint that's when it starts catching up with you where now like you're starting to get that buildup of lactic acid and it's harder to to push through. Like I could feel the burning in the hamstrings. My lungs are burning and yeah and it's a short workout for right now. It's just uh eight minutes overall. four minutes at work, but it's like sprinting four minutes, you know? It it does kick your ass. And I want to build up to 16 rounds. I hope I can get there. Uh, and I want to be able to maintain that power output of over 500 watts. Like on my first one, I I didn't maintain 500 watts in the last few sets. on the second one I did on the one I did uh uh previously I I faltered as well. So once I could consistently maintain 500 watt output for all eight sets I'll add a ninth set and then 10th and so on. But I feel it's probably going to take me a couple weeks to get the cardio in place. At least it's explosive lactic acid uh capacity cardio. Um but uh I'll be working on it and I'm also doing some long form uh lower state. So, I've been doing the walking, which is just like zone one, zone two, just for time and recovery. And I did do a few short runs. I did one on the salt bike, just 10 minutes, but comfortable, keeping my heart rate around 130 for the for the most part. So, like zone 2, three, and u I'll be adding those as well. So, and I've been training now. I did martial arts five days last week, five days this week. I've shifted the lifting. If you see me on social media, I'm just doing power. So, just explosive lifts once a week. It feels like that's definitely helping me be able to come on the mat more because I'm not so beaten down. And since I'm dealing with lighter weights now, rather than putting 300 lb on my back or 400 lb on a deadlift, it's now just 400 lb and I'm benching explosively or 225 benching explosively. So, less strain. And uh I feel that that will be good for me for this training cycle right now where I'm just trying to get a lot more cardio, a lot more fast twitch. Hasn't translated quite yet on the mats yet, but uh it's only been one week. Uh let's see in a few weeks how that turns out for me. I I I would expect after week three I should be making some gains on conditioning that's translates onto the mat. I'm also telling myself training wise to try to pick up the pace more. I do have the tendency to play a lot where I let people get bad positions on me and then work out of them. And uh sometimes that makes me a little too passive because since I'm allowing people to work, I'm kind of relaxing, which means I'm not using a lot of energy. And uh I want to I for me to build conditioning, I have to force myself to work harder. So on Saturday, I was training at Kutos and putting a little more pressure, but not enough in my opinion. I was trying to be more active everywhere. But I still found myself giving people some positions to catch them in traps, you know, giving them the turtle. And that never fails to get people off guard. They always think they can get the turtle and me and go to the back and they get chemo. So, I got to stop doing that a bit and just I I feel like I've worked a lot on defense from back mount and countering from back mount. I've gotten pretty damn good at it now. Um, so, but now since I've been training it so much, I I keep falling back to it a little bit. So, I got to pull myself away from it. Stop giving back exposures for free, right? and only get the back exposure when it's absolutely, you know, necessary for survival. Otherwise, I should be just defending like I normally would. But this is what I mean. Sometimes when you when you play a certain strategy for so long, that is your normal. So now I have to like create a new normal. And in this case, uh I want to start playing a more top position dominant pressure game. I don't want to be the one playing off my back. I also that also means I have to wrestle more and I haven't wrestled a lot in the past few months. Actually, probably in the past year, if I'm being honest, not a lot of wrestling on my part. So, I got to and that's part of where I know that when my cardio is not great because wrestling requires a lot more explosive cardio. And I know that when I get into wrestling exchanges, I'm start huffing and puffing. You know, grappling exchanges pretty easy to get through, but wrestling exchanges can be pretty rough in an extended scramble. So, I need to be able to work that more. So, I got to shift a little bit more into what you guys heard me call like a game strategies, right? Like I've been playing a lot of like B game, C game, even D games, right? Like games that I'm not particularly great at and they built up now. They're a lot better. there. I don't feel like they're in my D games anymore, but I got to return back to some a game strategy. And it does require a little bit of a shift. And it's going to be a process. I have to remind myself every time before training, hey, we're going to focus on being more explosive. We're going to focus on being on top. We're going to focus on attacking the entire time. We're not resting, right? We're not giving away positions for free. I'm not like giving up like turtle for free, you know, to try to catch people. We're playing a more conservative game. So, I'm I'm going to try to play more of a comp game now so that I can build that stamina because my comp game is a lot more energy intensive. So, it's probably why I've liked to play this other game being possum a lot because it's a lot easier conditioning wise doesn't take much. But now that I'm trying to focus on this conditioning, I got to got to stress myself more in training. I got to push myself more in training. So, I I relate all this to you because maybe you've gone through this before. Maybe you are going through this now and you're having a hard time making a shift. Especially if you've been in the game for a long time, you realize like there's things that you do well that you just for forgotten about just because you you moved into something else and you just never came back to it. Uh so it's just to tell you you're not alone and also that it takes a concerted effort to get it back right and I write it down in my journal what I plan on working on. I tell myself before I go into training, what I'm trying to do uh or not what I'm trying to, what I'm going to do, right? And um after training, reflect on what happened and how I can improve on it. So, you have to stay on top of yourself there. Especially if you've had a habit of playing or you've had a strategy, you've been playing for a long time, it could be hard to move away from it. So, you got to work through it actively. It's not going to happen accidentally or just by telling yourself once. like you have to drill it into your head before you can get it back to uh or you can switch your strategy into a new one. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys for this week. I'll see you all next