BTG 189 - Which Physical Asset Do You Pick?

Welcome to breaking the guard. If you had to pick one asset to maximize your potential in martial arts, what would it be? Weight, strength, speed, flexibility, or stamina? That's going to be today's topic for the podcast. And let's just dig into it. Starting from the top, wait. This is often underestimated by people who are bigger because they don't know what it's like to be the small guy and also by smaller people because they write it off, you know, as oh, like it's not a big deal. You could beat them by technique and they try to dismiss it as an asset. But it truly is because when you really think about it, weight is your passive resistance. It's work that you get to do against your opponent that doesn't cost you anything. I'm sitting on top of you on half guard. My weight does all the work, right? I don't have to really like exert myself. Whereas you by feeling my weight are exerting yourself whether you know it or not. Strength on the other hand is active resistance. Now I have to engage my muscles and that takes a energy toll on me. But whether I'm pushing you, pulling, you know, twisting, that's going to be strength. It's not the same as weight. Then we have speed. being able to move very and like let me define speed because there I'll say it in a broad sense not only are you fast like you physically cover distance very quickly you also have fast reaction time right so it's a twofer there or we could split them up I'm not sure but we'll just keep it simple right flexibility gives you lots of angles to attack from. You also gain access to new positions, new techniques. So, it is a a useful attribute. And then finally, stamina. Being able to go for the long haul gives you some unique advantages and strategies to win, which myself I have exploited time and time again in my competition career. Now, let's dig in even further. I got to thinking about this because recently I saw someone talking about, you know, weight strength uh differences and advantages in a very similar post. This is not an original concept by me, but I then trained with somebody who had lost a good amount of weight, probably 20 something pounds. So, they leaned out significantly to the point now where they were just barely heavier than me by a pound. The difference in my ability to move them around skyrocketed. Right. I can just And this is someone who's also very strong and still felt strong, but my ability to move him around was a lot easier. And what I noticed was I guess this guy is also a really good wrestler. He still was very hard to hold down, but his ability to hold me down went down significantly. And to me, that's easy to answer. It was the weight. The weight changed, right? And losing that 20 lbs. Now, that passive work of that extra 20 pounds is no longer there. and it was making my life a whole lot easier. That is something that you have to keep in mind particularly when you think about strategies because if you are a top guy, weight is not something to be underestimated. As a bottom guy for grappling, weight's not that great really. It's generally going to slow you down a little bit. It's going to make you use more energy when you do when you actually move. And generally, it doesn't bundle with flexibility. So, you know, not particularly great. Gravity is working against you when you're when you're on your back. So, you if you were a bottom player, you wouldn't want to maximize weight in my opinion. But as a top guy, there's a good argument to be made for it. You get very heavy now. You get to do a lot of work on people without even trying. And you combine that with technique and, you know, conditioning, you could become a real problem. Now, you might say, why wouldn't you just want strength? or like I said, the more strength you use, the more energy you're going to consume. So, it's not the same as weight. And if you're flexing the whole time, I'm squeezing constantly, you're going to get tired. So, it's not in the same realm as weight. However, strength is a big advantage, particularly if you are a bottom guy. I would say when you're strong, it's hard to hold you down. You can just get up the Derek Lewis style, right? It's not a whole lot of technique. You just roll to your fours, tripod up, and if you're a strong dude, man, it's hard to hold someone down that way. And if you don't have everything in place, getting your hooks in right, you know, so you can anchor yourself, you know, obviously it's very doable, but when we're talking about MMA, it's a little sweaty, you're a little tired, you miss your opportunity to get a good position to anchor someone down. and they're popping up to their feet. And this is evidenced in MMA by how hard it is to hold people down. Scoring a takedown is not enough, right? Is being able to pin them after the takedown that's going to mean make the takedown significant in my opinion. So strength is going to be one of the dominant roles in that escapability getting back up. Other than that, yeah, if you're strong, submissions are probably going to work better just because you have more muscle to squeeze with, right? Or to pull. Generally, our submissions are constricting motions and everything is I'm usually pulling. It's very few submissions if I can think of any honestly besides maybe like a punch choke or something where we're like in extension and even that we're kind of closed in. So, it's mainly pulling and obviously legs for like triangle chokes and arm bars and hip extension. But you don't really need a lot of strength as the attacker unless the opponent has a lot of strength and you have to overcome their strength or go like trying to arm bar, you know, armor arm wrestler, right? like they're going to be able to curl in and twist really well. So, it it'll give you a challenge, but I think in those cases, technique is a lot more important than strength, right? You can make up for lack of strength with great use of technique. On the escaping side though, uh strength can get you out of a lot of bad jams. So we have that and again I'm talking more grappling now. And we think from striking perspective on these things. Weight makes you harder to move around which pro and a con. If we're thinking wrestling really harder to move somebody who's very heavy. Being a heavyweight makes you a much better wrestler in the sense that it's harder to take you down and harder to get you off balance. Um, and I don't mean I think heavyweight balance is probably not as good as a lightweight, but to be able to shift them to be off balance is usually trickier because there's a lot more weight to shift. Um, and just any type of lifting motion on them is going to exert a lot more to generally when you're heavier, you're going to have more mass to absorb impacts. So, like body strikes and whatnot are going to take more in certain situations. Uh, and you're just going to hit harder. You have more mass, right? That's why we see in heavyweight, everybody has a knockout punch. It's not because they're better technicians. It's physics. You have more weight, you have more mass, uh you're going to be able to apply more force even if the acceleration is slower. Right? So from a striking perspective, there's a certain amount of mass that would be optimal if you're able to accelerated enough to make it make sense. You might think, if I'm a 500 lb guy that can't get out of bed, I probably can't punch hard, right? Because I can't even move. So there's somewhere, you know, like 250, 260 where you have an optimal physique that is somewhat proportional to your skeletal frame so you can support it and still apply a lot of force from a striking perspective. strength in striking I don't really think translates that well being a powerlifter well that's a little different but just being strong in the weight room doesn't really translate into being a strong puncher right that's going to get into our next thing which is speed. Speed and striking is what's going to dictate a lot more of your power in my opinion. Obviously, there's some muscular expenditure that's going to play a role, but I feel the speed of it is going to be far more important. That's the acceleration component of it. So for striking, speed is a huge factor, especially when you consider hand eye coordination and just being able to overcome your opponent's reaction time and also be able to read strikes coming in. Those are going to be speed components for striking. Speed is probably one of the most important things you're going to have. And I think that's why as an aging fighter, it gets harder because your speed generally starts to decline. Not so much just physically, but their reaction time. And that makes it really hard to be able to fight somebody who's really fast. And whenever we see even like in smaller divisions of lightweights where there's a guy who's just a lot faster, you can notice it right away and you're like, man, that other guy's in a lot of trouble. It's just the speed advantage is too great. Where now it's going to be very difficult to do a striking fight with somebody who's way faster than you. Not impossible. You can still use technique and timing to your advantage, but you're at a significant disadvantage. In wrestling, speed's important. If you can't see your shot coming, they're going to get to the clinch. And if they get under your hips or get whatever clinch they're looking for before you can set yourself up, you're going to get tossed and you'll have a hard time defending takedowns as well as performing them if you don't have speed on jiu-jitsu. Not that important. We're already in close quarters. We're contained. It's not really that important to be fast. It helps of course and you could spring surprise submissions on people like jumping an arm bar real quick or something or a quick guard pass, but you could easily get by and arguably better with slow movements that have a lot of weight applied versus speedy movements. And especially at the higher levels, we've seen that the slow tight game works much more reliably than the fast and loose game. So to me, if you were a jiu-jitsu stylist, speed would be a small concern of yours. not entirely neglected, but it's not on the top two. Endurance, that's important for everybody. If you're a striker, you're a wrestler, you're a jiu-jitsu guy, you need endurance. How much is a different question. In striking arts, endurance is important. I think the exertion is much less. Reason being, when you are striking, you're using your body weight. You don't really have to resist your opponent's body weight. That's not a factor at all. It's just you. Your ability to move around, your ability to generate power comes from your own two feet. The only times that you encounter someone else's body weight is in a clinch. And even then, it's not their full body weight, right? They're they're standing vertically. So, you're getting some pull and push, but not anywhere near the same as when you're in a wrestling situation, someone sprawl on top of you or when you're on the ground and someone's on top of you. So the physical strain is significantly less but the perception of peril may be higher just because you could get knocked out, right? A kick lands on your head or you eat overhand and that anxiety can wear you out. But from a pure physical output, striking doesn't have the same toll as wrestling does or as jiu-jitsu does because you're just not working with the body weight. That's not to say that it's negligible. I I just think it's easier. What you have to focus on is like I said more power generation and speed and you do have a concern of running out of that explosiveness if you overexert yourself in striking. Whereas mo jiujitsu is a marathon in pacing. Wrestling has sprints of higher exertion, but in striking it's also like intermittent sprints. But you could see sometimes when someone overexerts on a finishing combination where they got somebody rocked and they just empty the tank and they throw everything they have at that guy and somehow the guy survives. the bell rings, you know, they overexert themselves in that sprint. And if they're not well conditioned, it's a bad day for them because now they got that pump, the lactic acid's building up, hard to move around now, and uh it can be a challenge to come back from that. So obviously there is a concern for energy expenditure. It's not I I'm I don't mean to downplay it. I'm just saying if we're being real, uh wrestling match is far more tiring than a a boxing match is. Right now, I've already alluded wrestling stamina is important. It's also much more limited. That's why wrestling matches are shorter than every than boxing or than grappling. It used to be six minutes when I was in school, then it's seven minutes. I'm not sure. I think it's still in that six to seven minute range. They're much shorter rounds. And it's because if you want to see someone exploding, they're not going to explode for more than a couple minutes, especially consecutively. It's one thing to sprint. Remember, when you sprint, there's no resistance. this is you. But now you're sprinting with someone on top of you. That's wrestling, right? It's exhausting. Uh so for wrestling, stamina is a huge, huge asset. And I've won lots of matches just by cardio. I wasn't the most technical, especially when I was wrestling in high school. I was very limited in my technical ability, but my endurance was sky-high. And as long and my brother was the same and we both knew as long as we could keep the match somewhat close in the points that we weren't getting blown out, we could be losing by four points or three points. that third round was going to come by and that was going to be the round that we would take because we're going to be able to continuously apply pressure and break that opponent down so that we could win by attrition. So, wrestling stamina is important. And when we think about MMA, wrestling is a big part of it. And if you don't have that stamina, you're going to have a hard time because if you are trying to go for takedowns and you're not able to score them, you're going to run into some problems when you gas out. Or even if you are scoring them, but you're just wearing out, you're going to have a problem. You also have to factor in that if you're defending takedowns and you start getting tired, your takedown defense gets limited substantially. I also have to go back to striking here because that's another point to render. Anytime you take hits to the head, you're getting tired. the the sense of fatigue is not what a lot of people always assume, which is, oh, you know, we have like an energy level and our energy levels are really low. That's not really how it works, right? We have more commonly energy bottlenecks, right? And you've heard me talk about this before where our body has lots of energy reserves, right? Unless you're like under 5% body fat, you're chances are you're not running into an energy crunch where like you need to eat something because you're so low on potential body fat that your body can use to produce ATP and move you around. It's usually that you're not able to produce energy quick enough and you're using it faster. you're also not getting the electrolytes you need and other things of that nature. So there's that, but there's also a signal issue, which is when you start taking hits to the head, your body's ability to signal your limbs and your extremities starts getting interfered and will give you the feeling of fatigue where now you're just not moving as quickly. Why do people stumble? they're losing ability to connect to their limbs, right? So that is like a perceived fatigue, but it can be incurred just by taking hits. Uh so having endurance and durability there allows you to survive those moments, right? The chin is a another factor, right? But that's not really something you can build. So, that's something that if you were given that gift, you have a thicker skull or something like that, that's going to go a long way. But it's also one that's it seems to be only perishable where it doesn't get better over time, it just gets worse. So, you really want to protect that. Let's go into grappling now. And grappling endurance is important. We've seen people get broken in grappling. Uh we've seen Gordon use this quite a few times where he'll just drag people into the deep waters. And again, notice the type of game that he plays. Slow, topheavy pressure until the opponent gets exhausted, defenses break, and then he goes into the finishing route. He's not exploding everywhere. He's not passing fast and loose it especially in the his most recent matches or his last matches I should say. All very methodical and slow. Nothing really fast. So you don't need fast twitch speedy stamina. You do need the ability to do marathons. And in particular, I've mentioned this before, stamina and endurance is a lot more mental in my opinion than it is physical. And that's not to say, oh, you don't have to run anymore. Don't do sprints. Don't jog, you know, like three or four miles because David said it doesn't matter. Like that's not what I mean. That all still matters. But you could have that. You don't have this. None of that matters. And the easiest example I've given many times, we get a marathon runner and we put him in a wrestling match and that guy is going to gas out. Just is he's not used to the exertion. He's not used to the environment. He doesn't know what's going on. The stress perception of the activity is extremely high. That will wear you out faster than anything. And even in your own sport that you're comfortable in in a training room, you can probably do 10 rounds. I throw you into a competition and one match and you're ready to call it a day. It's just your perception of stress. So when I'm talking about endurance right now, I'm talking about the physical systems that are optimized. Like you you don't have a big bottleneck. your body's good at buffering the lactic acid and generating ATP and you're well nourished blah blah blah but the mental part is still going to be the a big factor in your ability uh to endure. So, it's important in grappling, but it's not as stressed. I can pretty much at will grapple anybody, and unless they're a world class guy, chances are they're not going to get me tired and I could roll with them indefinitely. Wrestling, I will get tired. I could do pretty well, but you know, after a number of rounds, I'm going to fatigue because it's just a lot more exhausting. And then striking, my stress perception of it will get me more tired. And the reason being, I haven't done a lot of striking in the past maybe 10 years. So, I'm not as comfortable being on my feet. It's more like a ring rust issue that I have to work out. But right now, that would probably get me tired faster than everything else. And it's not even from the physical thing. Like I said, it's just from a a perception issue. And I'm sure if I if I got back on the routine of doing striking for a month, it would wear out and then it wouldn't be a big deal because I've used to do it before. not an issue and I talked about this with even with wrestling is that you know there was months back I wasn't resting much and resting was getting me tired just because like I'm on my feet I was getting stressed out now I've been doing a lot of resting this this this year so doesn't really bother me anymore now it's just the actual exertion of it that gets me uh let's look now at the whole picture because I've talked about all the different elements, right? Again, weight, strength, speed, flexibility, and endurance. I've never had the benefit of flexibility. So, I wouldn't pick it as the skill set I would maximize simply because it's not something I've ever had. I don't really know what I don't have. And I've also trained with people who have a lot of flexibility. And it's more of a nuisance than it is a problem I can't overcome. Not to say that it's not dangerous, but there's, at least for me, easy ways to work around it. Speed. I'm pretty fast, especially for a 44 year old. And I don't feel like I've lost speed, at least in the martial arts context, of being proactive and aggressive. I do feel I've lost some reaction time and that I don't know. It's I'm not sure. I haven't measured it. I don't know. But it just feels like and it could be just because I get tired and I'm I'm attributing that when you get tired your reaction time goes out the window too. So that's another factor. But I was never well at least I never considered myself the fastest guy. Uh I also know how to counter speed because I have encountered I I've if you looked at the people I trained with, they were all smaller than me. I was the biggest guy at FFA when my brother and I got started. um that was pretty much a constant for most of my career. So I was used to working with people who were faster and as a result I became faster myself and my game was actually more of a a speed game. So I know how to work against speed and I'm I don't think I'm the fastest person. I've seen people who look way faster. So I I mean I could tell you right away my actual attribute during my competitive years is endurance. That was the thing I had in abundance that I knew I had better than anybody I competed with. And I done, you know, I I ran a lot. At one point I was running five to seven miles a day uh when I couldn't train. I had a broken nose. So like I couldn't grapple. I just ran. And uh you know, a lot of people like to say, "Oh, running doesn't work." I don't know, man. Worked for me. I could tell you what I That was a easyc in 2007 where I did one, two, three, four, five, six overtimes and I wasn't tired. You know, uh I fatigue was not a reason that I lost. I didn't have grips. my forearms were totally gone but my legs and like my breathing were not affected. Uh so stamina is for sure an important attribute weight. You see, in our thing, it doesn't really matter as much because we have weight classes, right? So, you're not really going to enjoy a significant weight advantage over anybody unless you're cutting and you have to be cutting substantially to be able to enjoy an edge over somebody else. But if we're in this survival mode, like no weight classes, weight would be a factor for sure. I wouldn't want to be a 150 pound guy when there's 250 pound people. Even if you have every other skill set maxed, fighting off a guy who's 250 when you're 150 is a big problem. Heck, fighting off someone who's 200 when you're 150 is a problem. Uh so definitely important. and strength. Like I said, it's optimizing that weight, if you will. So, yeah. Man, it's hard to pick the winner. If I'm picking right now, it's going to be endurance still. I would say endurance and then strength. The reason being, uh, at least for me, I know my technical level is really high. If someone was going to beat me, they would probably have to get me really tired. And if they're able to do that, it would make it a whole lot easier on them to beat me. So, I always want my stamina to be a very strong part of my game. Close second is strength though because even when you are in bad spots, strength will get you out. Strength is like the ultimate escape tool. When you're very strong, you can make space when there wasn't any. And since I've gotten stronger now than I was when I was actually competing, it's a it's a mark notice that I can tell like, oh yeah, I can do things I would never do before because I know if I this risk that I take, I can just get out easily because I I frame, I push, uh I stand up, it's not that difficult. So when you have a very submission hungry game that you know you will end up in compromised positions, you have great strength, you're not really as concerned. So you know you can just move people out of the way. And you couple that with the stamina, you're definitely going to be good. I just have to make a guy busy and exhaust him. So those would be the two. stamina still king and then strength. If I kept going down the ladder, I would say weight would come next, then speed, and then flexibility dead last. That being said, we're not playing a video game where you can only put a certain amount of points on this attribute. And flexibility is one of those skills that you can develop your whole life. And all it takes is time. And most of us have plenty of time. If you put in like five minutes a day to building flexibility, it will add up. 10 bigger cuz you probably only need like five minutes of stretching on a particular muscle group to like improve it over time. If you gave yourself 10 minutes now, you can work a couple different ones. Right now when I'm training it's 30 minutes I give to mobilize the whole body but it's not designed to really increase flexibility. I mean, it does a little bit, but not to a point where every day I'm doing full splits. Now, it's like, no, like I'm getting like millimeters of or very fractions of a degree of range of motion, but I'm just trying to prevent injury. If I wanted to work on improving flexibility, then you would spend another session on just long stretches on one particular area to try to open that up more. As a young man, I would definitely say that should be the goal. Start really young. That's the easiest time to build flexibility. It's much harder later in life. Um, usually you have either very tight muscles and joints or you have anatomical structures now that are not allowing that to open up that easily. Not impossible, but it's just a lot more work. Whereas, if you're younger, you can really mold that flexibility a lot easier. To me, that would be a for sure thing I would build into any would be athlete, any person really. Be flexible early, work on building strength early. You do those two things and you'll be set up well later in life rather than what most people do. You know, when you're younger, you generally have enough flexibility and strength to be fine, right? But the gaps will reveal themselves over time. And then when you're older now, you're like, "Oh man, I wish I would have paid attention to this, but now you can you have to do a lot more work to try to build that up." And I inherently think you're not going to have the same capability as someone who spent their life building it up. So I would say get in the habit of of having that early in life so that it doesn't become a hindrance later. Anyhow, that's my take on this. Endurance is king. I would say strength is second. Weight, speed, and flexibility would fall under that ladder. That's my take on this. You guys can let me know what you think. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you next week.