BTG 61 - Best Way to Train

Hey guys, what's going on? David Avlon here with another episode of Breaking the Guard. I have uh just come back from about like a 10day trip in New Mexico, just touring around and seeing the the natural beauty in that state. So, I haven't been super tuned in to a lot of the news that's been going on. Uh, but I will touch on a few items and the topic of the day is going to be what is the best way to train. So, before we get into that, one of the things I saw because he trains with us in Bellator Patchy Mix had won the title by getting a rear naked choke on Serio Pettis. So big deal for him obviously and uh I get to see him train at the gym. Uh Jake uh coaches him quite a bit and uh the guy is phenomenal as a grappler. Really, really good. I've seen him, you know, guillotine just about everybody in the gym. I mean, he's got razor blades for forearms and great chokes. Uh and obviously it translates very well to his MMA game. And we've seen now he has KO power as well. Uh so he's an interesting one to watch because uh now I think he's 18 or 19 and one. Uh he's been on a hell of a streak and it would be great to see someone like him uh fight some of the UFC talent. That's one of the unfortunate things that we have with the current way that MMA is structured is you only fight in your league and there's no chance of really fighting someone outside that league unless you break a contract and switch leagues. You know, other promotions like in boxing, you know, you could have title unification bouts where the WC WBC fights a WBA or whatever the case may be. Um, which is always very interesting because we get to see these champions collide. Whereas like in the current MMA world, you're either, you know, 1FC fighter or you're a Bellator fighter, a PFL fighter, a UFC fighter. You know, I get it from the business side. You know, if you're especially if you're the UFC, there's not really much to gain from beating other promotions champions because you're so high up at the totem pole that a lot of people just brand MMA as UFC, you know. Um, but it's unfortunate for the the fans because these crossover bouts would be very interesting. And when they do happen, for example, when Michael Chandler went from Bellator to UFC, he became a superstar. Um, and that's Justin Gate, another example, Eddie Alvarez, right? So, it would be great if these promotions would allow that. But what I do find interesting is I know like the the smaller leagues always want to cross over, right? like Bellator doesn't have a problem or 1FC I think has also expressed that in the past. The UFC has never entertained that at all which goes to show that they on the risk analysis like we have not much to gain from you know our champion beating their champion but we have a lot to lose if uh our champion loses to theirs. That being said, still would like to see someone like Bachi get tested against a lot of the UFC talent uh with his level of grappling. You know, he could be like a Kabib in those uh uh weight classes, you know, because I think he's a 135 pounder if I'm not mistaken. He's a big 135 pounder at that. So anyhow, uh I always like seeing someone who doesn't shy away from being a specialist or you know ground worker and just dominate people, you know, so congrats to him. Um now speaking about, you know, being a specialist and whatnot, that well jumps right into a segue into how to train the best way possible. Of course, this is a going to be a wide net, but I'll give you some uh let's say just a framework of what how you should consider spending your time, right? One thing is going to be where you're at in the age spectrum, right? Uh and really all age is going to tell you is how much training volume you can do. If you're like 13, you could pretty much train as long as you want, right? There's very little consequence as far as recovery toll, right? Like you'll just wake up and feel great the next day and continue to train that way. As you get older, that recoverable volume gets less and less, right? So once you start hitting your 30s, you're going to start feeling it. particularly at least for me when I was like early mid30s I think I was like 33 and I started feeling the effects of um hitting what you would call overtraining right like that doesn't overtraining really doesn't exist for the most part until you have a a recoverable volume limit that just starts to hit and I guess most people will probably feel it in their mid30s and then as you get to your 40s and then beyond you're definitely going to feel it. So, when you're talking about age, you just have to worry about how long you're training for or not necessarily how long or how intense. It's said like the best way to say is just the volume, right? Because if I'm just walking, I can walk for four or five hours, no problem. If I'm sparring, you know, five, five minute rounds might be it, you know. So time doesn't necessarily say that's the limit versus how intense and how long it is, right? Uh and that's going to be a person by person basis. You can't really give a formula for everybody because everybody's recovery is different. You know, some people say like to me, oh, they didn't start feeling, you know, issues with recovery until they're like in their late 30s. But then again, like someone like me is has a lot of mileage, right? I I was running the odometer pretty heavy early in my life, you know. Uh so you have to play that, you know, by ear. But now, as far as what you do with the time that you have, I would say where you would spend your most time is going to be in drilling. To me, that is like the 80%. And I know some people differ like my friend Kadale says the opposite that you don't need drilling at all. I believe in drilling, but drilling doesn't have to be what most people consider drilling or how I see a lot of people drill, which is not good. All right. Uh, for example, the the basic idea I think most people have at drilling is you just do the same move over and over for reps and you know, you do a certain number of reps and then you're done and then you just keep doing that over and over again. I mean, that it has elements of truth, but there's also issues with that. Okay? If I'm just doing the same move over and over again a thousand 10,000 times, you are going to get better at it because you're giving yourself more experience doing it. But if it's only in one specific case, like let's say I want to get better at the triangle choke and I'm only doing let's say closed guard over hook triangle choke setups. my skill set is going to be limited to that particular setup, that particular position, you know, in whatever application I'm doing it in. And without the opponent resisting or doing some other motion, it might not translate really well into live combat, right? So, I think there's a few things you have to consider when you're drilling. One is what skill sets you're trying to improve within that movement or that technique. For example, if you're doing the triangle, maybe the thing that you need to work on is the finish more than the setup, right? And in particular, what parts of the finish are you having trouble with? you know, is it that you're not able to get the arm across or perhaps you're trying to finish it without the arm crossing and focusing pulling the head to the side, whatever it may be, right? So, there has to be more of an intention in the drilling versus just doing it. Because I know in the past, and you know, I've done it myself where we just have a set goal for a number of reps that you're trying to get for that day. like, well, okay, we're going to do this takedown a 100 times. And when you're doing that in that fashion, now instead of thinking of I want to do this move to the best of my ability, focusing on these particular parts of the move, now I'm thinking about I just got to hit a 100 today so I can get out of here. All right? And now your intention is very different. And as a result, if you're just thinking about, hey, that number, you're going to start getting a little sloppy towards the end as as you start getting fatigued. you're starting to rush the move because you just want to be done, right? And that's going to obviously be counterproductive because the whole point of drilling is that we want each rep to be the best rep. So my last rep of 100, if I was doing 100, should be the best rep of the whole set. Now, if your goal is hitting numbers, then you're going to have issues, right? because now the motivation uh the incentive is to finish uh that rep set versus getting quality right so I believe when you're drilling you should have a a very good intention which is to execute the best technique possible and uh you know I think going for numbers it while it's useful to count as far as just to understand like oh you know just like how boxers will have you know punch stats and they'll see, okay, in a round I did 100 punches and, you know, 20 power punches, whatever. That's the usefulness of getting reps in. Not so much in, okay, I hit 100 reps now, I'm great. I think if you wanted to keep some sort of metric, it would probably be more useful and less distracting to use time, right? Uh if I know I have like a 100 reps to do, I might try to just crank them out as fast as I can to be done quickly. Whereas if I have a set amount of time, it doesn't matter how fast I do it, I'm just going to do more reps, right? So if anything, by having a time limit, you're not going to try to go fast uh necessarily. you're going to try to do it well because it doesn't matter if you do it fast or you do it slow, you're still going to be doing it for 30 minutes. So, you might as well do it right. That's my take on that anyways. I rather have time as a limiting factor. And maybe you keep track of the numbers or have your coach or your partner keep track of how many reps you're doing just as a cute statistic to have uh so you know, you know, as far as how quickly you're able to do the movements and how many reps you got overall. But I think the time is more valuable than the actual rep counts. And again, there's a lot of forms of drilling besides just doing a one movement. Again, we go like closed guard over hook triangle setup. I could have resistance added to it. I could say, "Okay, when I go for this, I want you to do the this to stack up and then I'm going to have to pull you back down or maybe switch to the plata or some other technique." and we could layer and like choreograph different counters and techniques uh so that you get used to encountering the common resistance and overcome it and I feel that's a part that maybe some people lose out on drilling. The other thing I will say is that with drilling, and this is one I see a lot because most coaches when they run a class, they might start off with some drills doing stuff that they've that the students already know how to do part partly as a warm-up and some fitness as well, you know. But, uh, when people drill and I see them talking, I know you're not really drilling, at least to not my definition, because to me, drilling means executing at 100%. Right? So obviously if I'm doing a hard drill session and me and my buddy are chitchatting, we're not going 100%. Because if you're going 100%. There's no time or energy that we can waste on chitchat and our focus has to be purely on the execution of the technique. So drilling is not meant to be done slowly. It's also not meant to be where you're trying to figure out how to do the move. Right? To me, that's why I designate as practice, right? Whereas practice is when you're learning the technique. So you might do it slowly so you can focus on the different elements of the move and how to position yourself accordingly. Normally you do this when you're first learning the move or maybe when you're trying to tweak the the move that you thought you knew, but there were holes in it. But when we go to drill, that's when we're going to execute to 100% of our ability. And again, drilling is going to build speed, proficiency, power, right? uh and reinforce the techniques that you've learned. So, if you can't execute on 100%, then you still need to be practicing because you still don't understand the move well enough to even be able to execute the move, right? Uh and there's nothing wrong with that, but you just need to practice and you're not there. You're not ready for drilling yet. That being said, you don't have to have 100%. No, I mean, first of all, nobody has techniques 100% perfect, right? There's always I feel there's always a little something extra that we can add to the move. It's kind of like approaching a limit, you know. So, uh most people are not even in the 80% range in my opinion of technique uh perfection. So, as long as you have a working understanding, which might be in the 60% range, you can drill, right? And as you get better, hopefully that proficiency in the technique goes up and up. So those drills that you do will help reinforce and build your skill level up, you know, because all tech not all techniques you can do super slow. Like some techniques need some speed and some power. Like especially if you're doing takedowns, it's hard to do takedowns really slow because sometimes you need some falling momentum and some pull. And if you try to do it slow, it just doesn't work out. like you need to execute you know quickly. So uh again that's going back kind of to intention as well with drilling. Not only is the focus of the session again on my preference based on time, it's also going to be based on effort which is 100% effort, right? Drilling should be exhausting when you're going at a hard pace, which is another thing to also consider because if I'm doing drilling at 100% with no breaks, I'm just going rep rep, you know, and it's maybe we're not even going back and forth. is just all me. You're going to get fatigued with no doubt about it. And if you start to get fatigued, we all know your technique is going to break down. And then what's going to happen? Your drilling is to start going to be counterproductive because now you're getting bad reps in. So, we don't want to have bad reps in our drills. You remember I said in the beginning, every repetition should be better than the previous one in theory. Uh, so if you're drilling like just trying to crank out as many reps as you can and even if you're going with a focus on time, but you're still just going back to back, you're not going to recover at a and at a certain point you're going to hit a limit where you hit fatigue and now you start getting sloppy reps. So there has to be enough rest interval between uh your reps that you're able to hit at 100%. And a great analogy to this, which is another area that I see a lot of people have issues with in conditioning, is sprints. When you tell people, okay, I want you to do sprints, uh, let's say 25 yards. Some people will just sprint and then sprint and sprint and maybe give themselves like five seconds between a sprint and then just sprint back and forth. At a certain point, probably after four or five sets or reps rather, you're going to start jogging. It's going to be a fast jog, but it's not a sprint. And the reason why is because you've essentially exhausted yourself and hit a level of fatigue where now you can no longer sprint at 100%. So, it's going to become a jog, a fast jog, but it's going to be a jog, right? You see this a lot in particularly with buddy sprints, right? Where you have like two guys, one guy sprints, comes back, then the other guy goes, comes back. There's not enough rest interval there, right? Because basically you're getting a one to one rest ratio if you're at the same speed as your partner, right? Like it takes them five seconds to complete a a sprint. You're going 5 seconds. So you're only getting 5 seconds rest. And typically for the anorobic, you know, explosion like that with a sprint, you need at least a 3 to one, right? Basically, if I'm sprinting for 5 seconds, I need 15 seconds rest at a minimum. So, when we're doing drills, it's the same type of effort, right? Because I'm telling you, it's 100% effort. And for most techniques that we're doing, and especially if you're thinking of takedowns or very dynamic uh movements, it's going to be sprintish pace, right? So, you're going to need that type of recovery. And if again, we're going oneonone, guess what? It's just like the sprint, right? I'm my if it takes me three seconds to complete a move, my buddy's taking three seconds, I'm getting. So at a certain point, we're both going to hit a level of fatigue where we're no longer able to produce the movement correctly. Uh so there has to be some rest factored in there. And the other thing is we don't want to be too robotic with our movements, right? And it's this is not something that we typically see as much in boxing or kickboxing as we do in wrestling, right? Like if I told a boxer, I want you to hit a 100 jabs and drill them. They're not going to just sit still and go bing bing bing, right? Like that's not going to happen. They're moving around, shall, you know? They move around again, right? So it's a bit more dynamic. They're not staying stationary. They're not doing the same setup every time. They're moving around, right? So it becomes a little more natural. Whereas sometimes if you say like, "Oh, I want you to shoot 100 double leg shots," they would just literally clinch, drop, shoot, boom, and then not move the guy around, you know, not change the angles a little bit. And those little angle changes and movements add time, which gives you some recovery. So, I would tell you, you want to be able to factor in a 3:1 rest ratio, right? So for every second of work you're doing, you should have at least 3 seconds of rest before you execute again. And this is in particular uh for explosive movements, right? And for the most part when we're drilling techniques, I'm trying to be explosive, right? Uh if you want to be athletic, you know, and you're facing a top level talent, you don't want to be doing moves sluggishly or slowly. You're trying to go 100%. Right? So that's another recommendation. So we're we're factoring in our when we're just talking about drilling, the intention is to work over time for every rep to be the best rep at 100% level of execution of our ability and factoring in rest, 3 to one rest ratio, uh so that we're fully energized for each rep, right? Um, so all important, right? And when we talk about sprinting, by the way, which is a good conditioning exercise, like typically the way I would do it, I would sprint a distance and then I walk the distance back. And usually that works out that it takes about three times as long to walk it back as it does to sprint. So by the time you walk back, you're ready to sprint again. Okay. Uh, so again, drilling, we talked about those three things. The other things, like I said, is just mixing and considering counters and different variables. You don't always have to do it exactly the same way. Of course, there's going to be a lot lot of crossover, right, between doing, let's say, closed guard over hook triangle versus double wrist control triangle, right? The setup's a little different. Uh, and there's some skills that we learn there, but the finish is going to be about the same, right? So, there's crossover in the technique. So, it will add one to your versatility because I'm going to be able to learn different setups while still working on the overall thing. And when you consider adding opponent counters and defenses, that's going to make you act quickly because when we are fighting or competing, we don't want to have to think. Thinking is very slow. And if you have to think, chances are you weren't prepared. For example, if I go to you right now and ask you, "What's 5 plus 5?" I think for most adults that have done some level of math, the answer 10 just spits out automatically. You don't have to think about it. You're not putting out your fingers and going 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, right? That would be very slow if I had to physically count. It would take a long time and I would get trounced in any type of mouth math competition. It's the same thing when you're fighting. If I go for a triangle choke and then the guy postures out and I have never seen that or never prepared for that now I'm going to be stuck thinking well how do I act now like where do I go next versus if I had drilled that scenario then I would have reactions to go against right so you want to train all the different counters in your drilling so that you can be quick because you you won't have to think it would just be like 5 plus to you, you just automatically react. But that's only come to you naturally if you've trained it in by instinct which drilling will do great because remember the the idea behind drilling is that besides building the speed, power, technique, stamina which are all very important. We also need to try to get that idea, that movement, and trying to get it stuck in our brain, particularly like deep in there, so that when we see this pattern, the way the opponent is lined up, how I'm lined up, our brain will fire right away. Boom. Oh, switch to right. So that we just go into it without having to think. when you see people who are, you know, quoteunquote scrambling and they're doing, you know, awesome counters or whatnot. To you, it might look like a quoteunquote scramble because it's like, oh, he just fumbled into that. But to them, they have drilled the scenario. They have seen the scenario, you know, so many times that they know how to react. And then the other opponent's good, then he's doing a defense, and I'm doing a counter, then a defense, and a counter. Ultimately, you land the move. But if you want to be at that level of looking ahead, it's going to come easiest to me in my opinion through drilling. Because basically what we're doing, we're putting ourselves and giving ourselves a lot of exposure to a technique or a position or a type of movement repeatedly, which is going to help reinforce the retention of that technique. For example, if I wanted to master doing, let's say, a flying triangle choke in normal combat and sparring situations, you're not going to be in the position to do that a lot, right? So, your your amount of exposure is going to be very limited. So this is again in my opinion why I think not drilling is not good right because if I wanted to specialize in a technique and I don't drill I am basically relying on rolling and live sparring to be able to execute that movement enough to get good at it and I'm going to have very limited exposure because maybe I'll get the opportunity once or twice in a match in a in a in a in a sound of sparring. Whereas if I'm drilling, I can get out like 30 minutes of it, you know, and go and go and go and I'm, you know, the first couple reps maybe I'm learning how to get it better and then I start getting the timing and you'll feel it in drilling how some things start to click and now the move starts to flow a little better. Right? So again, that to me, that's one of the other benefits of drilling is you're essentially overexposing yourself to a position that you normally wouldn't be able to get into easily in a sparring situation. Now, that doesn't take away from the importance of sparring, right? To me, the way I see it, uh, to learn techniques, there's like four phases. The first is observation. The second is practice. The third is drilling. The fourth is sparring. Right? And they all play a role in their learning process. Which one observation is I have to see a move to be able to learn about it. Right? So, normally your instructor teaches you a move or maybe you watch uh a video and you see it or maybe you even have an idea in your head and I'm observing in my, you know, my mind like a move I could potentially create. Then I have to practice a move and actually see how I can recreate it physically, right? Like we we observed it mentally and we have some idea of how this move could work. Then we do it physically and practice it to try to get that concept, you know, manifested. Then third, we drill it. So now to the best of our ability, we try to execute the move at 100% on a choreographed situation where our partner being somewhat compliant. And then fourth, we do it in live combat, whether it's in sparring or fighting. And that's going to be our feedback loop because after we spar, we're basically going to observe in our memory or if we're being real serious, we have someone filming our sparring session and we can watch and see what went right and what went wrong. And whatever went wrong, we could then observe that and go to step two, which is to practice to fix the mistakes and our concept of the move. then drill the new iteration of our understanding of the move and then spar again. And this is the feedback loop, right? So that's why sparring is important because it gives you feedback, right? When you actually do it to somebody now, you know, oh, okay, this is where we're wrong, this is where we're right. We got to re uh observe that, repractice, redrill, and then try again. Right? So that's the relationship there. So for the most part, that's why I say drilling is probably about 80% of what you're doing. The other 20% is going to be between observing, practice, and sparring. So, that's kind of how I would break down as far as learning martial arts techniques. So, when you have free time and you have a partner to work with, I think one of the best things you can do is just to drill. pick out a few things you need to work on and drill and have again intentions. You know, how long is the drill session for? What is the focus? What things are we trying to improve on? What situations, what positions, and and focus on that because again, the goal is should be specific on what you're trying to improve. If I do a drill session, but I'm doing new techniques every time it's my turn to do a repetition. I got I just go, "Oh, we're just gonna drill takedowns." So, I do a double leg, then I do a head inside single, then I do a drop. And I'm all over the place, right? That's more of a warm-up that you're doing, right? You're just doing different moves. If I want to get better at something, I have to again in my opinion, right, repeat that move, re repeat it again with better execution, repeat it with better execution, and each rep, I'm getting better each time. That's the goal, right? Um, so, and again, people ask me like, how do you prepare for ADC? It's mostly drilling, right? Uh, not as much practice sessions, right? Because we had a game plan in mind there. So, so there's of course some strategic work being placed as far as especially for ADCC like you're focusing on taking the back and scoring from the back position getting submissions from the back position for the turtle rather and also learning your turtle defense turtle recovery so that you don't get scored on don't get submitted right and working on the you know the weird intricacies of the rule set for ADCC but most of the the time was spent in drilling It's a great way to get in shape uh for conditioning. It's also a great way to build your technique and skill level. And a 30 minute drill session or an hour long drill session is brutal. It's it it's a heavy workload, right? Uh if you're a casual student, you might be like, "Oh man, that sounds boring." And yeah, it is. It's not fun, right? That's why most people don't like drilling. It's very easy to say, "Oh, drilling sucks." All you really need to do is spar all day and that's it, right? Or just flow roll all the time. And the of course sparring and then and flow rolling is a whole other thing. Have their uses. I do it as well. But it's not going to make you a champion, right? You need to build that speed, power, proficiency, and that is invested with time. Right? Again, uh that doesn't mean there's no place for that, right? Like when I spar, I do flow roll type things, you know, often, especially if I'm going against somebody that I am overmatched toward, right? I'm going against someone who's much smaller than me or that I have much more skill against, right? Then I'll just mess around and I'll flow roll. And flow roll is basically a period where you're just doing lots of, you know, uh, experimental moves and observing in real time to see like if you can come up with something new, a new angle of attacking something, right? You're again playing, right? Versus actually fighting. So you're not going really 100%. you're probably going like 60 70%. And you're just trying to see what possibilities are there. And you've kind of also detached yourself from your ego. You don't care about winning. You know, it's it's not about uh attaining victory. It's about learning. And it goes both ways. You might learn from you doing something silly and your partner reacts very wisely and then that's the takeaway, right? And you would be happy with that. So, I do believe, you know, having that element of play as far as flow rolling has its uses. But if you spent 80% of your time flow rolling, um, you're not going to be in very good shape. First of all, because it's very easy to do flow rolling, it's very fun, right? Which is a hint. It's probably not the what's going to take you to that next level, right? because it doesn't really push any boundaries or or physical limitations that you need to be an athlete, right? Uh so, but there is an element that you you're going to want to incorporate that particularly if you're on a higher level. Right now, I've been a black bel. I've been training now I think like 26 something years. So, I have enough time where it makes sense for me to do that to try to figure out new things. If you're like a day 20 white belt and you're spending a lot of time flow rolling, you're I in my opinion, you're probably wasting your time, right? Like you have things that you know you need to work on because you don't even understand how the game works yet, right? So, uh the drilling is going to go much further for you in my opinion. So, uh if we go in the beginning without getting this thread too long here, right? one uh age will determine how much time you have uh to put on the mats and to train. Okay, so that's by person basis. Ideally, you should be able to wake up every day and feel good and ready to perform. Now, if you feel like you're a little sore, overworked, and that training, sometimes that little soreness, it goes away when you start moving actually. But if it's more than that where you just feel fatigued, then that's a sign like maybe I should hold back on training today, which doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, I can't train. It just means uh don't spar today or do don't do anything heavy today. Instead, maybe you just do a lot of practice that day, right? And uh that would be good enough, right? Uh otherwise when we train again those four phases that I talked about observation, practice, drilling, sparring, right? I would say again for me 80% of the work for an athlete is going to be in the drilling section and maybe you have like 5% in practice, 5% in observation, 10% in sparring. That's just off the top of my head. It sounds about right. When you're at a higher level, you don't really need to practice that much compared to um working on the things that you know you need work on. If you're a beginner, then that might change entirely. Maybe you're doing like 20% practice, you know, and then less drilling and you might spar probably about the same because you're going to get a lot of feedback cuz chances are when you observed, you didn't observe well and you didn't get a full picture of what that move was. So when you drilled you, like I said, your body really get 50% of of move perfection, right? So the sparring will show you right away like, oh man, I got this really wrong. I got to go back to the drawing board. So even when you're new, sparring is important, right? Um, but the basically the amount of time you might have to invest in practicing will be more in the beginning as there's a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected and as you get better there's less mistakes to be practiced out and then more things to work on drilling. Uh, so as far as the training dynamic, that's how I would say like a Matt session would be right now. There's obviously other things you can do outside of training. You know, uh strength training important, right? Something I didn't do enough of in my opinion that I probably paid a price for, I did lots of conditioning. Uh I didn't do a lot of mobility, flexibility training, another thing I paid a price for. Uh and finally, you know, your sleep and your diet are also huge, right? So these are all things you have to consider. They all play a huge role. And even something as simple as sleep plays a dramatic role in your ability to recover and retain information. If you're sleeping 5 hours a day or you sleeping really bad, you know, maybe seven, but you're waking up a lot of times during the night, you don't feel rested when you wake up. When you wake up, that's going to cost you. not just in, you know, your energy levels, but also in your ability to recover and to train well and also to retain the information. Sleep's super important. Um, it's underestimated and it could be the one thing that makes a big difference in your ability to train well. And it might not be like, oh, you know, you get one great night's sleep and now everything changes. Like, it's kind of a cumulative effect, right? you get great sleep for like a week or two and results will show. Kind of like diet. You can't eat well one day and then you got a six-pack, right? Like it's cumulative. You got to eat well for like 30 60 days and then you notice a significant difference. Um so these are things off outside the mats in particular with strength training and with um cardio and conditioning things to consider. with strength training, if you're going heavy, it's going to be hard to train uh intensely on the mats, right? Particularly if you're, like I said, you're going heavy, right? So, you're doing like five rep sets and below, it's going to take away from your ability on the mats and it might even make you more injuryprone because you're not fully recovered. there's some fatigue and then you end up sparring and you strain yourself because you've already pushed yourself over the limit. Again, speaking as being older, right? If maybe you're 20, like I said, if you feel fine, you're probably fine, right? U so you have to factor that in accordingly. Um but it is important because you remember like you'll get if you've never worked out a day in your life and you start doing jiu-jitsu regularly, you're going to get a lot stronger than you've ever been and you'll feel like, "Oh, I'm strong enough." And I mean, you could be, but you're also leaving a lot on the table because there's only a certain amount of stimulus you're going to get on the mats for a particular load, right? If you're 150 lb guy, chances are you're training with 150 lb people. The load I'm used to moving around is 150 lbs. And I might be able to do that well enough, but if I train with loads that are 200, 250 pounds, now I'm giving my body a higher level of stimulus that it will ever get on the max just because I'm not working with that type of weight naturally. And as a result, then you're going to start feeling like really strong. And I can tell you firsthand experience, it translates really well, right? Even things like I always say this all the time, but like bench press is so underestimated. Like a lot of people think, "Oh, you just need legs and back." Like there's no real objective in grappling to pushing. And I'm like, "Well, unless you're staying on top the whole time, you're going to need to push people around to get them to move off your back. Particularly if you're in bad positions, like someone's on, you know, trying to pass your guard or they they mounted you and you need to push them off. You got a good bench, it's hard to hold you down, right? And you could become kind of like a Derek Lewis and just stand up and throw people off. you know, that comes from having a strong push, right? So, I feel like all the muscle groups are very useful because we pretty much use everything in grappling and fighting. Uh, but there should definitely be a program for that. I do basically the main lifts of chest, bench, deadlift, squat. uh those are like the principal focus ones because those uh movements translate roughly to everything that we're doing. Of course, doing accessory lifts, you know, working triceps, biceps, and all that other stuff is going to be great, too. But if you build strength and you could also do different I know like I use tools sometimes like rather than pulling on your typical like V bar here I might pull on a a griped which is like a grip device but it looks basically like a torpedo right and you're grabbing it. So now you're grabbing wide. So now you're getting used to a long large grip like if I'm grabbing an ankle and pulling. So I'm getting a little bit more grip. uh activation as well as, you know, maybe slightly changing how I pull. So, you can do stuff that's specific to like the type of movements you're going to be doing in combat, but even if you don't, it will translate pretty well, right? Um, so there's that. And I think for most people, lifting two to four times a week would be sufficient. If you're again, the heavier you're going, I would say the less days you'd be lifting. If you're going to lift really heavy, maybe you're doing two, three times a week. If you're going lighter, you could go like four times, maybe even more, right? Just depending on the intent. As far as conditioning, if we're doing cardio, you know, versus sprinting, um, versus like a steady state, it's going to be different. One thing I would say, it's good idea to invest in having a heart rate monitor because that's going to really tell you where you're at, you know? Uh because sometimes people are sprinting but they're really jogging and they're not working that high heart rate range, right? Where you're like 150 160 plus. And that's really where you would be at the sprint capacity, you know, and like 150 to like 130 is like you'd be in the middle more cardio range, whereas below 130, 120, it's more like steady state like walking essentially. So they all have their purpose. So, I tend to subscribe to that heart rate range training where on days where I'm going to recover on a brisk walk, I'm working that low range. Whereas, if I'm trying to build some more endurance on the cardio aspect, maybe I go jogging or I use a rower, keep myself inside that 130, 160 range. And then if I'm working sprint, then I'm either sprinting, doing stairs, you know, or I go on the rower, but I'm going to go ham on it, you know. Now we're looking to get to like 160 plus, you know. There's lots of ways you can work that. I'm not going to uh bore you with that. But those types of training also have a good crossover. And just like with the weight training, if you're going sprinting, you know, every day, it's probably going to take a toll on you, right? Like so the more intense again the higher the heart rate range the less you'll probably do it throughout the week like you could walk every day with little consequence and it will be beneficial for you without you know adding any real fatigue whereas you know sprinting will definitely add fatigue to you and wear you out you know so that's a general overview of as far as how I approach training But you remember the things that you do off the mat should complement what you do on the mat, right? You don't want to hurt yourself, strength training or, you know, doing conditioning by sprinting too hard and like pulling a hamstring or something like that. That becomes counterproductive to the goal of it, which was to improve your martial arts ability, basically your physical ability, right? So, you should always have that in mind, right? Like don't cross over that line. And I say this because I'm telling it to myself as well. Because sometimes, you know, I I doing the strength training. I'm getting into it. And then I really want to test myself. But if I go too far, then I hurt myself a little bit, then I'm like, crap, now I can't train. And what was I doing here? Right? I'm not a bodybuilder. I'm not trying to be a powerlifter. I just want to be a better martial artist and overall a more healthy human being. So keep that in mind. Like if the things that you're doing off the mat take away from your the mat time, you might want to reconsider what you're doing off the mat because everything off the mat should be to make you better on the mat and allow you to stay there longer. All right, so that's uh my take on how to invest your time in training. And uh again, if you just tuned in right now, I don't know how you do that, but if you did, a summary, right? Um factor in your recovery time based on your age and your personal ability. Invest consider that cycle I talked about, which is uh observe, practice, drill, spar. And in my opinion, you're talking somewhere in the 80% range of the time is drilling. And in particular, when we talked about drilling, we focused on the intent, which I would say base it on time versus basing it on a rep number with the other intention of executing to 100% of your ability with each rep being the best rep. So, don't try to go rush it or be sloppy. Give yourself a good recovery time. One win to three best ratio. Uh add variables, different positions. Uh have the opponent resist so that you get used to countering things because again the benefit of the drilling is that you're getting a lot of exposure to a position so that you'll get the experience needed to be better at that position and react accordingly. All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Again, if you had any questions about some of the stuff I said or want me to elaborate more, feel free to to write me and I'll spend some extra time on that as well. See you next week.