BTG 70 - Are you soft?

Hey guys, what's going on? David Avalon and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. Let's get to the news. Last night we had the UFC 297 with the main event of Sean Strickland versus Driscus Duples. I don't know how to say his last name. Uh again, spoiler alerts. If you're planning on watching it later, you might want to tune out. Otherwise, the winner of that match was by split decision and it was Driscus. He edged out the champ. Now, there is some controversy. Some people feel like it should have gone towards Strickland saying he won rounds one, two, and five. Other people felt that just did enough to win round two, three, and four. So, it's it seems like the second round is the one that's really in question. Uh, I'll have to go back and take a look at it and see my final thoughts in it, but no one in at least it seems the consensus is that's a it was a reasonable call. Like, it could have gone either way depending on how you favored it. Strickland was using a lot of jabs and taps pretty much. That was most of the strategy going through the fight, which he did really well. He marked up Driskus pretty quickly with those jabs on his eyes and he was all swollen up. Driskus was more looking for power shots and he did land some, not many from uh what I can recall, but he did land some enough to cut Driscus I Sean Strickland open and he did land uh some takedowns particularly in the fourth round which was a probably the biggest round for him and this also answered a lot of uh questions about Driscus if he could fight championship rounds. They said he had bad cardio and that he wouldn't be able to last. And he actually did really well, right? Like he totally took the fourth round, which, you know, wearing championship rounds. In the fifth round, they kind of traded at the end and, you know, they stood there and they held their ground. So, um, yeah, he, you know, he held up and congrats to him on being the the new champion. They definitely should run that one back. I feel if when you have a split decision victory, uh it definitely warrants getting another go at it. We also had on the female champ Pennington winning over Silva and not an exciting match. Uh yeah, it's weird because I mean Raquel Pennington's been around for a while. So again, congrats to her. you know, it's not easy fighting professionally for many years and she's been in the game for a long time. So, she got her chance and she took it. She won. So, congrats to her. But it does feel uh with all due respect like that that division, that title was a little light, right? Like I would have normally considered her like a top 10 fighter, not like a number one fighter. um or even top five to be honest. So, I'm not sure what's going on with the women's division where um they're not getting you like a a pana would I would feel would hand it to her, right? I feel like there's a there's a level jump that somehow she got in there. But hey, you know, she got the fight, she got the opportunity, she won. So, all credit to her. In other news, Gordon Ryan once again out of competition. He and I I tal I talked about this a few episodes back, but he got hurt and he decided he wasn't going to compete until later this year. And now he's saying that his stomach condition has gotten much worse. and now he's only planning on competing once, which I'm guessing would be for the ADCC super fight coming up later this year. I think that's very unfortunate all the health issues that he's going with being such a young guy. And again, I don't know what he's doing, what he isn't doing, but we can guess by innuendo and by appearances that there's definitely a lot of peeds involved. And he has never shied away from saying that he doesn't do them or whatnot. I don't listen to everything he says, but I've heard some things where he's like, "You would be a fool not to do it in a sport that isn't uh illegal to do it." And when he's doing ADCC or most grappling events really, they don't test for peed. So, um, whether he's doing steroids, testosterone, or EPO, whatever, he clearly is doing something, right? I mean, if you look at him when he's 15, he's already shredded, but he's an ectomorph. Very lean, skinny dude, uh, tall, limb, and as he goes and he gets older, puts on muscle, which, okay, you're a young guy, it's to be expected, but he's kind of changed body types, right? Where now he's more like a a messorph where he's just put on a good amount of weight. And I mean, he hasn't been able to get up to a certain weight. like I think he gets stuck around 220s from um what I've seen which is probably the I I think it's probably one of the reasons why he's having so many health issues. I know they say he has like the the the story that I heard it was because the they were taking so much antibiotics because they were getting staff all the time when they were training in the blue basement and New York that they were taking it like a prophylaxis which you're not supposed to do like you you take one course of antibiotics and then you stop because it can be bad for you as it starts to destroy a lot of your gut bacteria which is what they say has happened like he they took it for so long that they destroyed all the good gut flora and then it allowed these other bacterias to take place and that's what causes his bloating and all this other stuff and that it's a reasonable explanation. It does make sense. Um however all those other teammates who were doing the same thing don't seem to have struggled as much as he has. Now everybody's different. Maybe he just got it the worst. I feel like yeah, that's probably the main thing, but then when you add other factors, it could complicate things, right? Uh if you are trying to do your best to gain as much mass as possible and you're trying to eat, you're doing all this protein and you're taking, you know, testosterone and steroids or whatever else that they're doing. I feel that has to play a factor like it's going to I know they I' I've read posts that are saying oh no like it would actually help you here. I'm like well if it was helping doesn't seem like it's doing all the help that you need right just from an objective viewpoint he's been suffering from this for years. Uh so clearly whatever it's been he has been doing hasn't been enough to overcome it you know. Uh needless to say, he's still been very successful regardless, which is impressive. It just goes to show how talented he truly is and uh how determined he is to overcome or train through a lot of this, right? I feel though he's kind of doing uh a Jon Jones to himself in a way where instead of Jon Jones has legal problems, right? Where he's getting into drinking and driving or, you know, he's hitting the the spouse or something like that, right? He's getting into all sorts of problems outside the cage that prevents him from being able to perform, right? But basically, Jon Jones is his own worst enemy, right? He's he's always beating himself. In this case, I feel like Gordon Ryan like physically is beating himself, right? Uh whether he's training too hard or, you know, he's doing the wrong things from a supplement or medical viewpoint and that's keeping him away from being able to be on the mat more. Uh and this is going to go into the topic of the day here, which is there's a fine line between hero and fool, right? When you try to push so hard that you go past that thin line between idiot and heroic, right? It's it's a very thin line and it's hard to tell. Yeah. And you don't really know until you've crossed it, right? But when you do that, you're going to put yourself in a position where you're going to start losing. You're going to start getting injured. uh you know in certain cases you get into legal issues, right? It's hard as an athlete to be able to navigate that line because we want to be on the heroic side of things, right? We want to be able to do amazing things. We want to be able to shock and awe, you know, and and really put out everything that we have. So, we're getting right up on that line. But one hair across and now we're in trouble. The problem is that the athlete is not going to be able to make that call effectively at least especially a young athlete I would say right like I had someone asking me the other day you know uh that he got hurt like four times in the past three weeks you know like it was like a dislocated shoulder and then something with the wrist and then like and it just kept stacking up and to me this is when You need the coach to step in because if particularly if you're a fighter or competitor, your level of pain threshold or toughness is going to be exceptionally higher. You're not going to want to tap as quickly as other people will because you have to have that spirit of die, right? Like I would rather die than be dishonored. I know I've had that like I've told this story probably a few times already where I was ready to die and sacrifice my life to win a match and die immediately afterwards. As long as I won, I would be fine dying, right? Like and this is not for like a million dollars or to save a family. No, it was just to win like a $10 trophy, right? Uh that's the type of mindset a hardcore competitor is going to have. So, we're going to land on stupid a lot and we're going to cross that heroic line pretty often if you allow us to. And as a coach, I don't necessarily want to pull that away from you, right? Because if you have that type of conviction, you're fighting to the bitter end and beyond. I don't want to take that away from my fighter, right? So, I tell athletes, if you have that and you notice that you do get into problems a lot, well, you cross that line, right? You then need to have a coach or somebody of authority with and that you delegate the power to pull you, right? You know, they get the cane and they take you off stage and you have to give that person that power where they can see and at the same time you have to be honest with that person, right? So like if you're going to training, coach sees you limping, you know, he's like, "Are you okay?" And you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm fine." Right? Uh you might say that, right? Because that's what this young fighter told me also that he would lie to the coach. The coach will ask him, "You okay?" He say, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." And that's also to be expected because in the fighter's mind, and Ive had this before, I will get into a training session, I feel beat up, I don't feel great, right? And that's the type of condition where you're getting in hurt that you're likely to get severely hurt, right? Or you might be hurt and then you're going to leave injured, right? So that's a point where if the coach was able to read that, he should say, "Okay, you're on light duty today, right? You're not doing any heavy sparring or any heavy work. We're doing a lot of technique and drilling just to keep you busy. Get a good sweat going, build some skill, but we're not going to put any uh high load on you." Right? Because what happens as the fighter we have built such an ego for ourselves that when we are in a position where like oh you know I don't feel super great one side of you is going to say hey we should step out of this training session the other side is don't be a and the the side that says don't be a generally wins right if especially the the tougher you are the more ego that you have when You hear that voice in your head, you're like, "Oh, hell no. No, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to prove you wrong." Right? Because that's why you fight. That's why you compete. You're trying to prove. We're always trying to prove something when we're competing. So, of course, the side that says, you know, oh, you're going to be a weak or you're you're, you know, you're being a right? That is a challenge to your ego is going to respond to it immediately. the other side saying oh you know let's take it easy today let's not get hurt that's soft right all right that doesn't win titles directly at least right so that is why the fighter always gets pulled towards becoming a hero and they start approaching that line and at a certain point they'll cross over and get hurt right and they become the fool and usually from my experience every time I've been hurt in training, it's like the last five minutes. Like you're so close to the end, right? But it's just like the fatigue starts to build up. You start missing a step and then wham, injury territory, right? I don't think I've ever been hurt at the beginning of training. It's always at like and when I say the very end, I'm talking about the last five minutes of every training session. That is like the danger zone, right? Uh because again, it's not a coincidence. It's kind of like how they say, you know, most car accidents happen within a mile of your home. And people like, oh, that means the home is the most dangerous. No, because that's where you're most commonly there, right? Uh, in this case with training, it's because you're the you're most tired, right? If you're finishing up the training session, you've fatigued significantly, right? So now you're fatigued and you're responding a little less um quickly and maybe you're a little weaker now, so you're not able to push back as hard as you used to. And now there's also more sweat on the mats. So now there's a more likelihood of a slip and your partner is also in that same condition. So you're compounding the two of your guys fatigues where you can create a collision or an and some type of catastrophic error where someone's going to get hurt. So without all that being said, what we will want is to be wise enough to know the difference between being a hero and being a fool. And also recognizing long term sometimes when you listen to the angel it says take it easy. Although you might feel like oh you know that's that's not being tough or whatnot. You've probably heard me say this before, but you don't want to be tough every day, right? If you have to prove your toughness every time you train, you're bound to get hurt. There's just no way around it because being tough means you're always pushing that line. So, to me, there are certain days that we're going to challenge that line and we're going to get as close up to it as we can, but it's not every day, right? Because if you're training toughness every day, you're going to get brittle and broken, right? You you need to That's why like in my opinion, if you're being wise, you're not sparring every day, right? Especially we're talking about MMA, full contact. If you sparred every day, man, you're going to be beat up real fast, right? Typically, most gyms I see are doing twice a week. In certain cases, even just once a week, right? We might we might do like technical sparring on some days, right, where you know we're not trying to power out things or or whatnot, but on a full contact like heavy spar, yeah, like twice a week is in my opinion plenty, right? Uh you could do other types of, you know, live situationals and stuff like that, but full-on sparring is brutal on the body, right? So, uh that's one thing, right? We have to understand like we shouldn't have to challenge that line every day. Right now at certain phases of a fight camp, you know, your coach might be trying to build that toughness and get you gritty. So you might be doing it more often, but they as a coach, you also have to be able to recognize that I have to be sure that I don't cross that line with this guy, right? Like I got to get him really close but not over, right? uh because obviously if I get him over now he's going to get hurt and that's going to put the fight in jeopardy. That could put the career in jeopardy. So we have to be really cautious about that. So there has to be I feel oversight over the athlete to make sure that they stay in check, right? And as I said the athletes will lie to you, right? I've had it happen to me uh with one of my guys, Jason Suarez, right? You guys probably have he's got courses on the on the website. He's I feel like one of the best products that my brother and I have created the freestyle fighting academy. You know, exceptional young man and probably the toughest sob I've ever come across. He was recovering from a motorcycle accident which could have claimed his life, you know, and I imagine most people would have died. He had broken ribs. He had internal bleeding, you know, he had, you know, fractures all over his body. It was just a total mess. And this guy managed to crawl his way out. He would first wheelchair his way to the gym to train and he would just hit the heavy bag off the wheelchair, then he did it on crutches. And my brother and I had suspected that he would never be able to train again because that's what the doctors were telling us. So our idea was, well, we're just going to make sure that he stays involved, that he can, you know, do as much as he can, but he's never really going to spar again. But Jason kept showing up and he came at a certain point was able to get on the mats again and then we're like, "Okay, he can only drill though. He can't do any sparring." And then one day I'm running the class and Jason comes in, he's doing the training and then I start separating people for sparring and he goes, "Okay, I'm in." I'm like, "No, no, no, no. You can't spar." Right? He's got a giant scar coming from his abdomen all the way down to like his groin, right? where they had to do exploratory surgery in him because he was internally bleeding. So, like that's still relatively fresh. I'm like, "No, no, there's absolutely no way you can train." And he goes, "Oh, no, no. Uh, your brother said I could spar today." I'm like, "My brother said you could spar." He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ask him." I was like, "Oh, okay. I guess you can." And he starts sparring. And my brother walks in, sees Jason Sparring, and starts chewing my head off. I'm like, "Whoa, what are you talking about?" He He said, "You gave him permission." He said, "He lied to you, David." Right? And fortunately, no ill effects happened to Jason. He got his lie worked, right? But it just goes to show like the extent that a fighter will go to to be able to return and to train and to prove to himself that he's still capable of doing it, right? That he's not weak, he's not soft, right? And to the point where the guy is like, you know, I think at that point maybe it was like two, three months out of his deathbed and now he was trying to he was sparring again. So as a coach, you also have to know your fighter, right? You have to know the type of guy he is and you have to understand that they will lie to you. They will deceive you whether it's a lie outright or a lie by omission, right? Uh they will try to return to the mats and you can't be angry at them. It's just because the the ego that the fighter must have in order to support the in strenuous lifestyle that they have is going to make them do these things. So, you have to be able to see through that and know when your guy is uh in peril of crossing that line and being able to pull him out. And when I say pull them out, it's not like, okay, go home, he can't do anything. There's always something they can do safely, right? Like I said, you could do calisthenics, they could maybe have him go through a stretch session, they could just hit the bag, or they could just practice technique. Just do something that's not going to push them over the edge. Obviously, stuff like hard sparring or maybe very strenuous drilling or whatnot could put someone in danger uh if they're fatigued or they're sore or there's something injured. But just pull them from the hard stuff and keep them busy, right? And I would also frame it in the the because what the fighter wants is not to feel weak, right? So, if you're going to pull them out, don't say, "Oh, you're a weak today, so we're going to put you on on baby duty." Right? Because you're going to really challenge his ego where he's going to want to prove you wrong or you're going to break him down and make them feel weak and soft, and that's no good either, right? So, you have to be a little sensitive uh with this, right? Even though a lot of people think, oh, fighters are fearless or tough, they're crazy. Like, no, they they're human. They have the same fragile egos as most people do. Some of them more so as I've as I've said because they tend to people who become professional fighters usually come from challenging backgrounds, right? Like it's not a normal thing to want to step into a cage with somebody and go toe-to-toe with them and beat the hell out of each other, right? So there's there almost always there's some sort of internal strife going on and that's kind of the struggle that they're going with. So, you have to be able to as a coach, you're you tend to have multiple hats. You know, you're you're coach, you're, you know, you're the cool uncle or your dad, you know, you're a psychologist, right? So, you're doing lots of different things here because ultimately you're trying to craft better human beings, right? And I know some people feel like, oh, martial arts shouldn't be about, you know, the zen kung fuy type stuff, right? It should just be about fighting. In my opinion, that's totally missing the point, right? That's a fight gym, right? If you just want to be a fighter, to me, you're an athlete, which there's nothing wrong with, but you're not, in my opinion, building a better human being, right? There's plenty of athletes that are dirt bags, right? Uh, and we've seen all the scandals from all various sports of them doing crazy stuff. To me, a martial artist can become a role model, a good human being, right? uh somebody who's virtuous and has values that other people would would want to have. All right. Uh in my mind, one of the famous martial artists is George St. Pierre. It's always a great ambassador for the sport, right? Damen Maya, another one. You don't hear any bad things about these guys, right? It's they're the kind of like the Kiana Reeves of the of Hollywood, right? There's no tabloid articles about K Reeves. The guy's just a really and he's a another character who's had a hor horrible tragedies in his life, right? But he still endured and managed to make a a great impact through his work and also through his charitable work as well. Any case, what I'm trying to say here is that as an athlete, as a fighter, you are going to be in position where there's going to be sometimes that you feel like, oh, you know, like you're on the edge, right? Like, should I sit out of a training session? Should I take it easy or do I push past this? Right? And do I go hard? Right? Uh and that is a perilous place to be, right? Sometimes I feel like if you're a pro fighter, you are probably going to air on the side of getting hurt, right? Whereas if you're a casual, you're probably going to heir on the side of being safe, right? So, if you find that you never ever get hurt, chances are you're always going towards a safe side, which then begs a question if you're leaving a little bit on the table, right? I feel like uh so it depends on on the individual. So, I'm talking because I obviously was a fighter before, so I aired on the side of her, right? Like I would push and I would hear that voice to me, oh, you're being a I'm like, okay, no, I'm going to go. I'm going to keep going. And then sometimes you get away with it, but then sometimes you get hurt. And the times that you get hurt definitely set you back much more than the times you get away with it. Right? So if I'm only learned in recent years how to be able to pull back, right? Where I either limit myself on time, like I only I only do five maximum six rounds. I won't go any more than that, right? Um, I tend to sit out the last rounds because, as I said, that's where I've noticed traditionally that's where I get hurt, right? Never in the beginning. It's usually at the end. So, if I feel like I'm starting to get worn down a bit, I'll step out, right? Uh, I try to avoid going against really, really big guys, you know, like 250 plus pound territory because it's also where you get hurt. Uh, so I've now that I've gotten older, but also I'm not a competitor anymore. So the mindset has definitely changed quite a bit. I don't, like I said, I'm not trying to prove my toughness right now, which makes me less likely to get hurt. But if you're a young athlete, it's going to be harder to do that. That's why you need to have your coach and make sure that that coach understands his responsibility u in this if he accepts it which is to be able to look after you and see like okay this guy he's trained like three times a day he's coming into a fourth training session and he looks ragged out right like I'm going to pull him out of this session right and by letting the coach do that in a good way it takes the responsibility from the fighter so his ego doesn't feel challenged, right? Because his coach is authority figure is seeing from above and say, "No, no, you you've done good today." All right, let's uh let's go light on this session. We did a bunch of heavy sessions. Now, we go light and frame it in such a way so it doesn't make the guy feel uh weak or soft, right? We want our fighters to be hard, right? Like they mentally have to be very cutthroat. So, um, this is something that I feel like when you are a fighter that is training yourself or that you're self coached, you definitely have a lot more problems with, which is why I feel like I had a lot of problems with it because it was pretty much my brother and I for most of our career, especially towards the end of it. So, we didn't have that type of oversight, right? We didn't have a old master, you know, who could be give us that wisdom of saying, hey, take it easy today. It was just us and we were both young. So, it's just like keep going. And we also had that wrestling mindset where just say you crash your head against the wall and then you keep going until the wall falls down. So, uh it's one of the drawbacks of being selfached, right? It's much harder to temper yourself. It's much easier for somebody to temper you, right? Where they can see from the outside. they're they're not emotionally compromised and not they don't have their ego compromised. So they can make an objective call on your condition and say you know what take it easy today. But so this is speaking to the people who do have issues of getting injured and um and crossing that line I I spoke about of being a hero to being a fool which is to if you find that you are on the wrong side of that line allow yourself to be safe. Just try it out once where you when you're feel like uh this might not be the greatest idea and you and you're on that precipice of taking the step towards hard training or taking a step back. If you always go forward, try once going backwards and then see how you feel, right? And you might surprise yourself. You're like, "Oh, this is not that bad." Right? If you're on the other way around where whenever it gets tough, you back out immediately, then you might want to ask yourself like, am I getting out because I actually feel hurt or is it because I'm a little scared of pushing myself? Because if you've never crossed or got close to that line, then there's also, you know, not to undo everything I just spoke about, but there is something to getting close to the line, right? like it makes you feel alive and it also is going to let you know because you might think the line is here, right? And you're like, "Oh man, I'm getting close." But you don't realize the line's actually over here. All right? So, if you never get close to it, it's kind of like a mirage, right? And you're like, "Oh." But if you get really close, you realize, "Oh, you know what? Like, there's actually more to this. I have more room to go before there. I'm in trouble." That's also going to be if you don't know how to determine that safely, that's also when a coach who understands you could guide you there, right? Like they'll know like, oh, when he's about to break. And um normally I would say this is something you want to challenge when you're younger, right? That's why I feel like toughness training is best done at a young age. That's why like when people are are wrestling, they're starting from like five, six, seven years old. But anywhere in the teenage years, even the early 20s, you can do a lot of toughness work and recover because even when you do cross a line, you get hurt, you're rejuvenating so quickly that it's only a minor setback. But when you're in your mid30s or your 40s, you cross that line and that could be a few months, worst case, even a year uh before you get back in the starting line. So, uh, I feel that as you get older and the more experienced you are as an athlete, the less you have to train toughness, like you don't lose, at least from my experience and from what I've seen of other athletes I consider tough, you don't lose toughness, right? Like once you earn it through a trial by fire, it sticks through you because you have the memory. You have the experience, right? That's why experience matters because you have that confidence of knowing I've been in the before and I'm able to get myself out of it. Right? So I don't have to prove I'm tough every day. I proved it already. Right? The the only thing you could try to do is to try to go beyond what you've done before and essentially like I said advancing the line, seeing how much further you can go and creating a new barrier so to speak. But otherwise, if you've done crazy stuff, you know, you've you've done these toughness challenges, don't put yourself in the position where you have to challenge it every day, right? Like that's just a recipe for disaster. That's my take on it at least. Uh hopefully you guys gain some value from that. If you do, make sure you guys like, comment, and leave your thoughts below. Thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.