BTG 65 - Wasting Time on Conditioning

Welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast with me, David Avalon, as your host. And today, uh, well, yesterday we had, uh, you know, the I think the last pay-per-view car of the of the UFC, uh, which was headlighting, uh, Colby Cington and Leon Edwards for the middleweight title, which had a lot of anticipation. There's a lot of drama building up into it. And later on, I'll talk about the importance of conditioning for fighting. All right. Uh, but let's get off to that fight because there was a lot of drama beforehand and uh a lot of smack talk going in many different directions. You know, it's getting very tried and old for me. The insulting of friends and family and stuff. And in this case, uh, Colby went in a new direction, which was to insult the dead. The other thing is so bizarre, but he basically made a comment after they were he's going back and forth saying that I'm going to drag you into hell and then we'll say hi to your dad. Uh, and the reference apparently is uh Lyn Edward's father was murdered uh many years ago, at least to my understanding. So, not very cool, right? That seems like again one of those lines that you probably shouldn't cross. It's and I don't even know what it brings to the table, but it was enough to get him pissed and threw a water bottle at him and then there was more BS drama. And then uh on the other side, the other people smack talking were the future uh fight which was going to be Sean Strickland and uh Driscus Duples I think it is and they were talking crap. And uh again, another line that I didn't think was going to be crossed. Uh I think Strickland was making fun of Driskus saying that oh he like you know he's gay with his coach or something something to that effect. And then he strikes back saying oh well apparently you got molested by your dad. It's just a very weird thing. And that pissed off Strickland. And uh maybe there's some truth to it. I don't know. I don't I mean he's crazy enough for anything could have happened to him but man he's like these insults that people are going after it's very weird cuz I mean if it was true that's a terrible thing to to taunt somebody with right that would be like taunting a rape victim for being raped and it's like uh that's not you know insulting or funny it's just being cruel. Uh, and that later escalated to what looked like a staged fight to be honest because in the main event, during the main event, I think they showed Strickland and he was sitting just in front of uh, Driscus, which again, why would you put these two guys so close to each other if you didn't win fireworks? And the funny thing was that uh Stricklin points his finger gun at him and shoots and then just cuz like dodges it and then he starts telling him to like it it looks like he's saying hey look at me boy and at that point Stricklin turns around and uh Gilbert's family is right there. So Strickland goes hey move over. So he had his son move over and then he jumps over, starts throwing elbows and becomes a whole uh commotion, but like I said, the timing for was perfect for it. Like the the camera just decided to shine on them and then they get into a fight where nothing really happens. So to me, it seemed like a stage thing to get more attention. And it works because I'm talking about it and I don't like it. But it's just annoying, you know. I think the fight was already interesting as it was. Uh I don't need the WWE shenanigans in my book. But uh let's get to the main event there. So Kobe Cington, Leon Edwards. You would have thought that uh Colby would have really pressured hard to score takedowns and take the fight to the ground out of Leon's wheelhouse. But that's not what happened. It's a mostly standing affair where he was basically outpointed the first four rounds and in the final round they finally got some ground work going but it didn't even go uh I think uh if I remember correctly at one point Leon had him in a triangle even so and a one- arm choke from a red naked so uh definitely didn't go the way that you would have thought it would have and Leon just shows he's legit you know, he's defended his title against two very tough guys and didn't made it well, besides his first fight with Usman, which was not obviously not an easy fight. Uh, his last two def his defenses, let's say, have been much easier for him and he's done a great job. So, he's a legit champ and kudos to him uh for retaining the belt, right? It's a hard thing to do on the co- main event uh is I think Voy Baal and Bana and Bana dominated and again he also retained the belt. So it was a good night for the champions. What it was not a good night for was for legacy should have been champions. Ferguson ended up losing to Pimblet and Patty the Batty and not a fun thing to watch. Uh, and I think now that makes seven in a row for um Ferguson, which really he should be hanging those gloves up. I mean, he should have hung them up a couple years ago, but it's better late than never. I think at this point you the guys who know your legacy know you, you know, you could have been a champ. you you should have been given a title shot much earlier in your career when you were on that massive winning streak, but unfortunately the way the game is didn't work out that way. Uh but hanging in there longer is just not working. You know, it wasn't like Patty looked like a machine and, you know, would destroy anybody. He's just a n better uh than a guy who really shouldn't be fighting anymore in my opinion. and you're just taking more damage unnecessarily. I'm hoping you don't need the payday to keep fighting uh for that because it's just not looking good. And even his own father was saying he doesn't have a coach, you know, like he has people who are quote unquote coaching him like uh he's got uh David Gogggins, I guess, a conditioning coach. I don't know. I mean that was the only big name I heard from his corner which is kind of weird you know David Gogggins is not a fighter he is a ultramarathon runner and very strong conditioning guy but again the condition doesn't transfer well right didn't there clearly so uh yeah when you have celebrity coaches who want to jump in just to ride your coattails is typically not a good idea, right? It's not for you that this is happening. Uh it's definitely I mean maybe it helped them in life, but it's not going to help you in this fight. You needed real fight coaches and even then there maybe there's not much they could do just because you're a little along in the tooth, right? Um yeah, so not great. And then uh Bryce Mitchell uh lined up with EMTT Smith, everybody remember. And EMTT, man, that was a scary knockout. And I mean, he's always had power, but the way that shot landed was brutal. It sounded like a baseball bat cracking, you know? It was just a really, really hard knockout. And fortunately, uh, Mitchell was already said he's fine, all that. So, that's good because it was a bad knockout. He was in seizure mode and all that. Not pretty, right? Uh, so yeah, that was uh the main event. I think I may have missed one, but that's okay. I want to get into conditioning because it's always I brought it in because of course we had somebody using a guy who's known famously for his conditioning, David Gogggins, but that didn't seem to improve uh Tony's gas in this fight. And I may have talked about this recently, but it's always worth warranting because a lot of people love to focus on it and they feel like they're going to make huge improvements in their game if their conditioning goes up. And for the most part, I would say that the way you're going about it is not proper. Let me explain here. All right. If you think your fight conditioning is going to improve dramatically by improving your cardio by running a lot, by swimming, by biking, by rowing, or anything else? Probably not. Right. Your fight conditioning is going to be improved by exposing yourself to fight related circumstances. And a lot of that, especially for beginners or people who are just encountering like fatigue from training, like maybe when you go to roll, you could do like two, five minute rounds and then you're toast. So, you're like, "Well, I gotta run more to improve my cardio." That's it's not a direct transfer because again, just think about it. If we brought in a marathon runner to train, and he's never trained before, that guy runs better than anybody and he's going to gas hard, hard harder than you when you start rolling. And so, is that guy's solution, the marathon butter, oh, I got to go outside and run more. It's like, no. Right. So it's I mean and you can do that for you know variety of sports. Get a you know a world class cyclist or a marathon runner or a swimmer you know whatever and you put them on the mats where they're not comfortable and guess what they're going to suck. So more than likely your conditioning problem is not because uh you don't have enough cardio. It's going to be up here. Right? It's in your head. you are still stressed by combat and as a result you're gassing out because once enough stress and anxiety build it's wearing you down and exhausting you faster. Right? So, you have like a set amount of cardio whether it's this much or this much, but you're draining through it because you're stressed. And that is natural and normal because most people do not like being in combat. And it's a stressful condition. And even when you do like being in combat, you're going to be put in situations which are not optimal, which is going to stress you out. Your best way of overcoming that stress is by being able to relax and accept the conditions that you're in without maximizing your anxiety or flight or fight response. Right? If you don't like being back mountain and you're freaking out inside your head because you're like, I got to get out of here because he's going to get a choke or I'm going to lose a fight and points or whatever. At a certain point, you're just going to cardio tap or whether you physically tap or you're just going to open up your neck and let your opponent submit you because you're just, you know, dying of from, you know, the stress of it. So you need to be able to relax in the middle of a chaotic situation and put yourself together so that you can escape without using up all your energy. Right? So uh basically what I'm saying is not so much an energy problem as it is an energy usage problem. Right? Uh so you could have more energy but if you're depleting it so fast it won't even matter. Uh so how do you get comfortable in the uncomfortable? I would say experience probably going to be one of the big ones, right? Uh the other thing I would say is just accepting the condition that you're in. So if you do a situational drill where we say you're going to start from bottom mount and then we're going to go and this is not like a scored thing. We're just doing this as a drill. You're probably going to find that you're not as stressed as you would be if it was a competition scenario and someone had your and someone just got your back, right? Or mounted or whatever. Why? Because we have framed it in our mind in a very different situation. On one, we're just doing a drill, a game, right? So the stakes are low. On the other, it's not a game. The stakes are high, right? So all we have changed are mental attributes because physically we are both in the same position. It's just mentally we perceive them as very different. So if you're able to change how you perceive bad positions, you're going to be able to change the way you respond to it from a stress standpoint. So the way I like to tell myself uh how to work out of bad positions is simply am I getting hurt? Uh for example, if I get mounted right, am I getting hurt right now? No. Uh there's no I'm not getting any strikes. There's no submission currently. They just have their knees on top and their hips over my hips. Not a great position, but am I getting hurt? No. So, why would I freak out at this point? There's still many things that have to go wrong in order for me to start getting hurt. In this case, like he's he's going to have to set up some type of submission, which is going to take a few steps, right? Or if he starts to strike, then I know it's my way out because now his hands are no longer controlling me and I'm not going to be able to move better, right? So for me like and again someone passes my guard of sight control again not a big deal I'm not getting hurt right I respond more when things are happening that could lead to an ending situation for example someone starts wrapping their hands around the neck okay now it's a time where I might you know freak out a little bit more but in a useful way because if I relax when someone has her arms around my neck I'm going to get choked out, right? So, that's a time you do have to fight hard, you know, because at that point you're running out of options, right? Uh so, we want to reserve our flight or fight response or, you know, that adrenaline pump, that panic, so to speak, for a point of time where it'll be useful, right? Until then, our energy expenditure should be very efficient because you want to be able to last longer in this fight. So that's important, right? Because a good submission artist is going to work like a boa constrictor. When a boa is going to kill its prey, it's not, you know, spasming and, you know, doing sprints. It's just slowly winding around and slowly constricting inch by inch until eventually it kills its prey. It doesn't gas out because it's going slow and every inch it moves in is an inch is taken away from its uh prey ability to survive. A good submission artist is going to act in the same way when they especially when they're going for chokes. If a guy tries to like gun a choke really quick, uh if he misses the choke within the first few seconds, it's usually over for them because the choke is only going to get weaker over time if you peaked early. But if you built up slowly and you allow the choke to slowly set in, then you're slowly draining your opponent's energy. And normally you're fighting off their strongest point of resistance which is at the onset of the choke. And then they are fatiguing as you're building up and you slowly increase the pressure. So rather than going straight to 100, you might want to start like a at a 50 or 60 and then just build your way up like 62, 64, 66, 70, 78. And and you can build it that way because again you don't need 100% choking pressure to choke someone unconscious. Could probably get there around 80, right? So there's no reason to jump straight to 100, especially since you know his defense is going to start at 100 more than likely because they're freaking out. You rather start low and build your way up so they fatigue early. So as they're fatiguing, you're still building and that's when they're going to be in a lot of trouble. You don't want to go the other way, which is you both start at 100, but now you're both draining, but his defense is going to be enough to keep him alive, right? So, oh yeah, that's just from the other side of things, right? Uh how I want to pace myself as well. So, mentally being able to change how you handle stress is going to be far more important than the amount of conditioning that you're doing outside of martial arts training. That's not to say that there's no use for it there. Of course, there is. But the crossover is not the again, what I'm trying to say is the the problem of gassing out is usually overconumption of energy, not lack of energy. Right? If you learn how to conserve your energy better, you're probably not going to have as many conditioning problems as you have. Now, if you find that you're the type of guy that's very explosive and you explode everywhere you go, that's probably the issue. You're exploding too much. You need to ramp it down a bit. You want to use those explosive burst wisely, right? Um again, you're a guy who panics when you're in bad spots. You got to train that out. And that's again a mental thing. Um, now if you find that you have a hard time pushing the gas pedal and as a result you tend to play more of a slower pace game, then that's where I would think conditioning could play a role where if you don't like exploding because you feel like if you start exploding you gas, so instead you just play like a slow steady state game, then that's where I say you you might want to do some sprinting and some, you know, hit interval training so that you get used to using some explosive bursts without, you know, emptying the tank, so to speak. So, that's where I would say, okay, you have you know how to conserve energy, but you've you've gotten so good at conserving energy that you don't like using energy at all. And there is times where you want to be able to sprint or explode. So in those situations again we we gota like you talked about well have I talked about it yet? I maybe but uh you have to be able to sprint to explode and to go in areas where you fear being it. Right? In this case you've got in that situation you've gotten so good at conserving energy that you're scared of using it a little bit more uh loosely. Right? whereas I'm gonna go hard for like 30 seconds here to try to pass this guy's guard and you're like, "No, I like doing that because if I go hard, I'm gonna be tired and then I'm gonna end up losing." That's where I would say, "Okay, this is a conditioning problem now." Because you're afraid of testing your conditioning, right? So, that's where you could say, "Okay, maybe, like I said, hit interval training sprints, you know, other heavy intense output type uh exercises could be warranted so that you get used to getting that hard pump but then being able to continue and slow back down, right? Because you have to understand you can't explode the whole time. It's not possible. You have you your explosive energy again is going to be, you know, 30 seconds to a minute tops. So, if you just try to explode for the full 10-minute round or whatever your round is, you're not going to make it all the way through. You're going to have to finish early. So again, in jiu-jitsu, you have to be a little bit more cautious with how you use your energy, right? Uh but if you're spending a lot of time off the mats doing conditioning to improve your conditioning on the mats, you're probably not using your probably doing too much. I would say if I was going to give you like a timeline, you might want to do these type of conditioning things two or three times a week. And again, less than 30 minutes, you probably don't even need that much. Think 10 to 30 minutes would be plenty, right? If you're if you're doing it well for sprint related stuff or even for a long-term like long distance running, 30 minutes of of running is a lot, it's more than enough for fighting, right? Um or swimming or rowing, 30 minutes is a good work interval for long distance. And if you're doing like intervals, again, 10 15 minutes would also be plenty, right? where if you're doing like 30 on, 30 off, stuff like that, 10 minutes would be plenty. 15 minutes would be a good amount. So, you don't need to do hours of conditioning. Uh it's just again just a little extra and that is just to make sure you have the capacity to be able to explode there. The more important part is going to be how well you use the energy that you have. the efficiency. All right. So, um that's why when we look someone like Tony Ferguson, he was known for being a beast, you know, like in his heyday, it wasn't a guy like, uh he has a lot of issues gassing. I think he's just gotten old, you know, and it's harder to keep up. And I'm sure a lot a lot of changes a lot of things have changed in his life. You know, besides that, he's suffered a good amount of loss. So, I mean, there's a lot of confounding variables as to why he's no longer the way he used to be and because he's not that guy anymore. And I feel like you can't force being that guy, right? Like you can think, well, there was a time I really was hungry for competition and I I really believed in myself and all that and everything was just jelling. You can't stay like that forever, right? Like that's a state of mind and that's a state of being that you were once in. But that doesn't mean you can get back to it. In fact, like I if you've heard me before, I tell you, you can't. That person's dead. There's a different person now. You every moment we're becoming something different. We can't return to where we once were. And I think a lot of people struggle with that, particularly fighters, because they always want to be back to what they consider was their prime. And you can't go back there. That's the whole point, right? It's only going forward. It's one way. So either you become something better than you were or you're not going to uh you're not going to get the type of results that you were hoping for. So, um, roundabout way of saying conditioning is normally a mental problem, right? It's a energy usage problem. You're not being efficient with your use of energy, which normally translates to you're too stressed, right? You're being put in situations where you're freaking out and you're just blowing through all your energy and as a result you feel like you need more conditioning. But again, another metaphor here, it's like if you have a gas tank and you have a giant hole and this is leaking everything out and you think the solution is just to pour more gas in there, right? Like that's not going to really work out well, right? The hole is going to take all that gas that you're pouring in, right? You need to patch the hole first and then we can talk about increasing the volume of the gas tank, right? But if you have a giant hole in your gas tank, which is going to be stress, it doesn't matter how much gas you put in there, it's still going to get drained faster than you would want it to, right? So, um, and we again the reason the ways we talked about overcoming that one is changing how you perceive the stress. Like I said, for me, I always think of damage or threat, right? If someone has a very strong position, but they're not in able to inflict damage, I'm not worried. They're they just have a position, but they're not putting their weight on me, they're not striking me, they don't have any submission threats, it's not a big deal. And then I'll wisely move my way out of that position. Of course, there are situations like when someone does have a submission. That's the point of time where you should be in full uh panic mode and full flight or fight, you know, where you're giving everything your all because that's where it's warranted, right? But other than that, you shouldn't have that same type of freaking out response the entire time you're mounted, let's say, right? Because you you would just gas out really quickly and get chewed apart, right? So you got to save and be smart with your use of energy and with your use of stress. Let stress be your friend, not your enemy, right? So use the stress to get you out of bad positions but not to wear you out. Uh that and also 21st and please stop fighting. I think you're done, sir. I would rather see you leave with, you know, your faculties still somewhat intact and not destroy yourself continuing to fight, right? Uh I mean, you gave it six tries, you know, I think that's enough. Uh it's hard to see a guy who was so good lose to these people who were well beneath him, but it's just he's, you know, he's passes Bryant. Anyhow, that's my take. Uh you guys can let me know what you think. Thank you, and I'll see you guys next week.