BTG 93 - How much mat time does a Pro need?

Hello and welcome back to the Breaking the Guard podcast. I'm going to keep today's podcast short. I'm going to talk about just a few things. One, UFC 303. Two really big things stand out for me. Obviously, the main event, Parchowska versus Potan. I'm gonna spoil it. So, if you're not ready for that, tune out and come back later. Otherwise, not surprisingly, uh, Alex Pereira once again shows that he's got ridiculous power and knocks out Jiri twice. The first time he sat him down with a hook at the very end of the first round which uh got saved by the bell and then in the second round first strike lead left high kick knocks out uh Jiri. So pretty amazing stuff to pull off. his power, particularly his hooks are just so damn punishing. And he doesn't look like he's like really putting a lot into it. It just shows the amount of power he's able to generate, you know? Uh it's not brute forcing it. It's super impressive and obviously he has it from his legs as well. Um, it is interesting that Jerry was making claims before the fight saying that uh, Alex Pereira was using witchcraft and dark forces and spirituality to win fights. He can see the aura of negativity or black magic around him and he wants a clean fight with no spiritual influences. And uh Alex answered fine which he's like I do believe in spirituality just like everybody does so why wouldn't I uh you know what I believe is what I believe or something to that effect. Um but that shows more to Jerry's mind state which he already thinks he's at some type of disadvantage spiritually which to me translates to a mental disadvantage. He believes that he's gonna lose because the other guy's cheating. Uh yeah, that that's an interesting one. I'm not really uh one that believes in magic uh so to speak. So that's a a curious uh thing to layer into the fight, especially because these are things that we really can't see. We can't really observe. What I do see is that Jerry reached for that kick with his hands down uh when Alex Pereira threw it. So, if I was going to blame anything, I would say your defense was lacking. You looked down and you reached down. Of course, the headkick was going to start you. Um, yeah. So, not a good headsp space to get into. The other thing I think is interesting that nobody really tries to take down Alex Pereira. Now, I'm not saying that would be an easy thing, but it definitely seems better than trying to trade hands with him. Uh, because his power is just monstrous. Uh, and it doesn't take much. Just one graze of the chin and you're flying to the canvas. But it's also interesting because he's I mean if he continues fighting I imagine that he's gonna look indestructible and untouchable until he's very touchable just like most of our champions that we've seen over the years. Fedor I think is a prime example. He looked like a guy that couldn't be stopped until he was stopped and then he became very easily stopped there. So I think Jerry definitely has something that there is an aura but I don't think it's coming from black magic. I think it's coming from extreme confidence and it's you know exuding onto everybody else that they see someone who's so self-confident in themselves that it is intimidating. Uh and that just to me is a champion's aura, not black magic, right? Uh so and the only way you're going to be able to overcome that is to have an aura of your own. Uh you have to have that confidence in yourself that you're going to be able to show everybody that you're the boss and that you're the new champion that's coming up, that you're the real deal. You're not going to beat it by trying to undermine the champions aura. You have to have one greater yourself, which obviously is a difficult feat. Uh but again, kudos to both of those gentlemen for stepping in on short notice and uh making a a hell of a knockout. The other fight is the co-ming event, which is an even crazier fight. It was supposed to be um T- City, right? Brian Ortega versus Diego Lopez. And Diego Lopez has been skyrocketing up, doing really well. and they were supposed to fight at 145 lbs. Uh it looks like maybe a day or two ago they the report said they called Diego Lopez at midnight to let him know that uh Ortega wasn't going to be able to make weight and they were going to have to do a catch weight at 155. So he started rehydrating presumably at that point. Then 3 to 4 hours before the fight, Ortega calls off the fight because he says he's sick and he's in a hospital, can't fight. And Dan Eay, who's a Vegas native, says, "I'll fight. I'm ready." And they make the fight at 165. And they both agree to fight. And they end up fighting having a great fight. Ortega end ends out winning, but it was like two rounds to one. So that uh Lopez won the first two rounds with Dan E winning the final round, which is impressive considering it was although he says he was in camp because he has a fight like three or four weeks from now that was supposed to be three or four weeks from now. Still, you're not preparing for Diego Lopez. You're preparing for somebody else mentally. you're you're getting yourself set up for a fight three or four weeks from now and you accept it on four hours notice. It's pretty bananas. So, uh again, huge balls, right? Like you talk about a guy who's a savage or was like very self-confident in himself and his abilities. Dan Eaggan definitely is that dude. At the same time, Diego Lopez also a guy with huge balls, right? He was supposed to fight at 145. He takes he gets woken up in the middle of the night, says 155. He's like, "Fine." And then they go, "You know what? Your the guy you were supposed to fight is not fighting anymore. We're going to put somebody new instead at 165. Still fine." So, both of those guys are cut from a different cloth. Very tough mentally and uh obviously they showed it. Uh they had a solid fight for sure. kind of uh wild that they didn't get fired the night there, but I definitely hope that they threw a lot of money at them for stepping up like that because I was telling my wife beforehand, it's not in the interest the best interest of the fighters to do that, right? As far as from a winning perspective, no, you know, you're the the fight camp being 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks, right, is mostly, in my opinion, for mental preparation, not so much for physical preparation. Especially nowadays, most athletes are in shape year round. They're not at their peak, but they're in shape. and to get to their peak, you know, maybe like six weeks is all it'll take uh at most to be honest. So, the all the time is mentally getting yourself prepped to be in a fight with a particular individual, a particular setting, particular set of rules, uh working on the strategies that you're going to employ. So, it's mostly mental preparation if we're being honest, right? Because like I said, the true martial artist is prepared year round. They're at a good high level baseline and peaking is what the camp's for, right? Physically at least. So these guys moving different weight classes, different opponents, and not even blinking an eye. It's impressive because that's a testament to their fighting spirit. But a fighter will do things that are not in their best interest career-wise, at least from a a from a win-lose perspective, because they're a fighter. They're not they they don't have it in them to say no. Okay? Just like some guys don't tap. They just don't have it in them to tap. They're going to keep fighting until the bitter end. Whether that's a knockout or an arm getting broken or being put to sleep. You know, I've been on a couple of those exchanges. It's And it's not like I'm being stubborn. is just I believe I have a win. There's a path for me to win, right? Uh and uh a fighter is always going to have that belief in my opinion. If they don't, it's troublesome, right? The the coach, the agent, the manager, whoever is uh a secondary to that fighter is the guy that reigns them in, right? You you have a game dog on a leash. someone's holding that leash because the dog is gonna fight everything, right? Whether it's a bull or a chicken or, you know, a moose, it's gonna go after it. It always believes in itself that it's going to win. Uh, so I know there's more to it than just winning and losing, of course, because there's financial incentives. And I'm sure there's also, you know, I scratch your back, you scratch my back type situation here where Dan shows up, you know, on 4-hour notice, he's going to be given some bigger opportunities because he jumped on this live grenade, right? Um, so yeah, I mean, that's just hopefully, like I said, that that's all been layered in so that they're both well taken care of because that was a very risky situation. I'm glad nobody got seriously hurt or anything like that. Um, but just something to consider. Now, the last thing I want to talk about that caught my attention, I saw on flow grappling, there was an article about one of the ACC competitors, um, Chrisjack, who gave a little tiny preview of what his training day was like. And I'm interested because I always like seeing different styles of training. And my first impression was this is light work. Uh so I basically let me get into it and then I'll give you my full opinion. He basically talks that his schedule being 7 weeks out. He wakes up around 8 o'clock in the morning, has coffee, light breakfast, then he uh goes to train uh at noon and he's training with B team right now. So does an hour and a half to two hours of a hard training session doing a lot of wrestling. That's primarily the focus for him, which for most people ADCC, you're going to go heavy on wrestling and working on positionals and whatnot. It's all like standard. So that so far so good. But then after training uh he relaxes, eats and yeah. Okay. But then evening I rest, I lift or I drill. I lift three times a week. Uh three days per week I lift weights. Two nights per week I go back to the gym or I tape study or I drill or I just hang out with my girlfriend. I mean, when I saw that, I'm like, dude, you're barely training twice a week, twice a day, from the sounds of it. I mean, when I wasn't in camp, I was doing more than this when I was in my 20s, you know. So, um, a little underwhelmed by this routine here. And I feel like again, gut feeling, you're leaving a lot on the table, right? I mean, you're talking about at most 3 to 4 hours of physical activity. That's not a lot for a young dude. That's, like I said, that's really scratching the bottom of the barrel. Uh, actually, that would be the bad analogy. I mean, you're barely getting a couple inches into the barrel in my opinion, right? Like, there's a lot more you should be able to do. When I was just a young competitor, staying in shape, it was two training sessions a day of mat time. Those were hour and a half sessions uh with positional drilling, wrestling, rolling, MMA sparring, whatever. But there were two round uh two sessions usually one around 10:30 and then one around 6:00 to 7 uh in the in the afternoon. So there's a big break between them and there would be a middle session which was like a weightlifting or cardio. Uh and when I wasn't in training I was always studying tape regardless. Uh so at the minimum I was putting in of like physical work the minimum would have been three. If I just did the two Matt sessions, that would have been it. And of course, whatever studying I was doing of video and journaling and stuff like that, I'm not going to count that as physical output, but it's also very important, right? Uh 100% in my opinion. So, I I like that he's doing that stuff. It just doesn't seem like he's doing enough, though. Lifting weights three times a week. Yeah, that's good. That's what you should be doing uh as an athlete in my opinion. Uh you could do less too, maybe twice, but uh at least some type of weightlifting I think is very beneficial. Not something that I did a lot of in my competitive career to uh at my detriment in my opinion. I did some but not really with the right focus in my opinion. I was doing like strength and conditioning sty stuff, which I think it's better to get that from your actual wrestling and MMA or jiu-jitsu. Just build the raw strength in the gym and then you can translate it however you need to. That's my take at least. I know everybody has different opinions, but regardless, but drilling twice a week is not a lot. I drilled a lot every day pretty much. Uh, and as I got older, it was more drilling than anything else. Um, so, okay, to be fair, when I said I was doing two hour and a half sessions, they weren't all sparring sessions. One of those was usually a drilling session, right? So there was definitely drilling happening every day because yeah, if you spar, you know, 3, four hours straight, every day or not straight, but let's say 4 hours total of sparring, you're going to be pretty banged up. Even as a young dude, it's going to be hard to pull yourself together. Um, yeah. So, reading this, like I said, my first take, man, this is light work to me. This is kind of like hobbyist uh highlevel hobbyist uh training. Not to insult anybody here and I'm sure he's a nice dude and all that. Just doesn't seem like a lot, right? And now I'll give the counterpoint to that which is more is not always better. True. Um, I always felt banged up. Still do, right? So maybe there's something to it like uh I did come from like a wrestling school of thought and he talks about him being a butt scooter. So definitely uh we had different origin stories and wrestling is all about pushing yourself to the limit, hardcore training uh to the point of breaking you and uh that's kind of expected. Whereas uh jiu-jitsu is more about technique and uh not as heavy into the physical toughness aspect. So, there are two sides of the coin here, right? I I know I'm giving my take, but I just feel as somebody who's going to go into the world championships as a professional athlete and you moved to a different city to train with a different team so that you can be ready, I feel like there would be a lot more training. Uh the guys I see that I'm like, "Yeah, they're doing it right." I see guys from like uh Team Lloyd Irvin, they're training hard. they're putting in a lot more hours. Um, ATOS's guys I've seen, they definitely put in a lot of hours. The New Wave guys, they put in a lot of hours, right? Like they are doing volumes that I'm not able to do now because my recovery is no longer sufficient. I like break apart after a couple days, right? So like the the type of program he's talking about is within my reach. Like uh I can do his program as a 40 almost 43 year old guy who's got a good amount of wear and tear without too much alteration. Right. Uh I'm lifting about two times a week now. I, you know, I'm doing my my walking stuff every day. Uh, I train martial arts. Uh, not daily, but near daily. I'm getting like four to five sessions in of hourong sessions. Uh, so I'm and I'm not destroying myself to do that, right? So like extending an extra half hour of the mat time to maybe an hour is possible. Adding an extra weightlifting session totally doable. I was lifting, you know, three times a week, not just a couple months ago. So I was just changing routines around. So, I feel like the fact that I I would be able to do this routine uh without that much of an alteration is not great. All right. Uh now, for me to do this type of routine would probably be like a sevenwe camp, right? Like he's talking about like I I might be able to maintain that for seven weeks, but I wouldn't be able to do it indefinitely, right? Um, but as a young dude, this would have been like my standard, right? Like my offseason workout. Yeah. You know, I lift three times a week. I train every day uh to one of the training sessions and, you know, every so often I do an extra session. So, yeah, I I mean, I want to like it because it would be a lot easier. It it would definitely make becoming a professional athlete a lot lower of a bar. I just don't think it's uh optimal. Not saying you can't do great things doing this. I'm sure some people are doing just this and maybe they've done well. I just the people I've trained with that I've seen are like killers. They're not doing that. They're putting in as much time as humanly possible, especially when it's a camp, right? It's one thing like you're you're off camp, there's no event coming up, you're just staying in training. This is a solid routine, right? You nothing. You're just keeping yourself prepped and building your skills. This looks good. Like, this is a good skill building program, I would say, right? You're not putting too much physical abuse in yourself. you're getting a good amount of mat time in, but and you should probably have a lot of recovery time there. So, you'll be pretty fresh. And, you know, uh if a lot of guys don't have, you know, um the the wealth or the income flowing in that they can't work, you could work a 9-5 and still do this routine, right? Um and maybe that's his case. And then if so, okay, my bad. I don't mean to harsh you. If that's if you're doing a 9 to5, then yeah, this is pretty much probably all you're really going to be realistically be able to do. But if you're full-time, man, you got a lot of free time on your hands right now, right? Um, yeah, I would say you would definitely need to crank it up. I would be I don't like two-hour sessions. I think personally they're too long because you're not going to be very physically intense for two hours. It's just not possible, right? Kind of. We talked about how Chel Son has this thing that he hates five five minute rounds. I agree with him. It's not realistic. You're pacing yourself now. So, it's not really like a real fight because a real fight it's not going to last 25 minutes in the street. Uh, usually it isn't, right? Um, so pacing is completely changed. I feel like when you're doing two-hour sessions, it's kind of like that kind of deal where we there's a lot of break I'm guessing then and a lot of intervals of slow and then high and slow. It just feels that you could be a much more efficient with your use of time in a 90-minute session, right? So again, personal preference. I feel like 60 90 minute training sessions are more optimal. And also because I'm usually doing two a day, right? So two two hour sessions you can do. I mean the most training I've done as a 17year-old or 16 I think was or maybe 16 or 17 I'm not sure. I was in summer camp in the Jim Robinson 28 day intensive camp. Those are six hour days, right? You're doing hour of cardio in the morning, then a two-hour technique session, then a two-hour sparring session, and then an hour of weightlifting or cardio at night. So, that was 6 hours. Now, I'll tell you, that's about as much as you can physically handle. And in 28 days, I went from completely out of shape because I didn't prepare. I, you know, you come out of school and your wrestling season ended around like what I guess February or something like that. And then did some freestyle. But then when school ended, I kind of goofed off and I wasn't doing any physical training. I remember the week before I I went started trying to run a mile and it took me like 10 minutes to run a mile, which is not good, right? As a young man, you should be running like seven minute miles, you know? So, I was like, "Oh crap, I'm really out of shape." And in two weeks in that camp, I was already in tip-top shape. So, again, young kid, you can skyrocket really fast with six hours a day of training, right? And your body can handle it. That's the main thing. Yeah. you feel beat up the whole time because you're just constantly recovering. But like you achieve a baseline pretty fast and I remember at a certain point after those two weeks then I started going faster because the first couple weeks it was like about surviving training because I was so out of shape. I'm like I just need to not get kicked out of this camp because I'm so piss poor. Uh I did better than I expected with the wrestling stuff, you know? Like the wrestling seemed like my conditioning was really good. It was like the cardio stuff. I was like lagging a little bit. But after the two weeks, then I started excelling and moving my way up and winning practices and getting like where they give you like uh red shirt day. I forget they called it something where like you were like the wrestler of the day. I remember I won it a couple times which was pretty cool out of a a large group of like top like talented guys in wrestling and high school level at least. But uh just a little sidetrack there, right? Young guy, 6 hours of hard physical training is just about as much as you're going to expect, right? Uh and that was sustainable for 28 days straight, right? So, uh conceivably could have done more, but I would say that's probably about as much as you can expect. So, uh, him putting in three hours, not great, right? Like you're leaving a lot on the table there. Uh, I would expect, like I said, for most guys, four a day, that's where you should be getting to. If you're And if you got some additional capacity, then yeah, you can push to five and six. Like I said, if you're you you got to take advantage of that time that you can put in, right? There's a reason why a lot of guys are juicing. And it's not because they want to be big and strong. That sure that helps, but that's not the main reason in my opinion. The main reason is recovery. Because you're going to be able to recover from your workouts faster, which is why they get stronger faster. But that also means they can do more matt work, right? Uh like right now at my current condition, I don't recover fast enough to be able to put in lots of hours on the mat. So my skill progression is slowed because I'm not getting in as much time. Right? So when you're younger and you do recover naturally very fast, that should be the time that you put that you're putting in as much time as you can on the mats. So this idea that oh I'm just going to do like two a day uh two hours a day and this rest and that's you're you're leaving a lot of growth on the table, right? Like your body can handle more. And uh again I might be talking out of turn. I don't know how old this gentleman is here. Maybe he looks young. So, I'm assuming he's a 20some. Uh, if he's in his 40s, okay, then I'll shut up. Like, okay, then you're doing good. You're doing better than me, right? If that's the case. But if you're a 20some, man, you should be putting in four, right? Uh, of least, you know, four of physical training total. So 3 hours of mat time I would say would be like the minimum that I would want to see for a grappling athlete, right? Uh or a martial artist. So we're talking about, you know, maybe hour half, two hour training session and then an hour of drilling or maybe two, one hour and a half sessions, right? I think split into two sessions like I said one in the morning one in the evening very doable right I think it's also important for another reason which is if you only train in one session and like he's doing afternoon it's 1212 well are you going to be fighting at 12 not the finals your final event is going to be at night it's going to be like 6 7 depending on how late the show goes and while it sounds trivial it is important to train at the time of day that you're actually going to fight. It's why uh I mean a lot of fighters like the morning sessions and I do as well. And if you do tournaments, they are in the mornings. And I did fight at 11:00 in the in the morning once at Bodog for MMA fight. And you better believe all our training sessions were in the morning so that my body knows it can be prepped and ready to fight in the morning. And that's why I like two. If I have two sessions, I'm covering my bases. I'm getting morning and then getting evening, right? And I've had fights where I fought at 11:00 at night. Uh, and if you're not fighting at nighttime or training at night time, you might find that you're not as really physically prepped or mentally prepped, like your body's ready to tune out. So, another reason why two is better than one, right? Uh, so I would feel morning matt session, evening matt session. I'm not saying they have to be grinders, right? like he his uh one matt session does seem to be a grind, right? From what I can read here, it's like a lot of wrestling, a lot of situationals. Yeah, that's going to suck. That's going to be a tough one uh for sure. And especially if you're putting it smack dab in the middle of the day, then you're not giving yourself a lot of recovery for a secondary session. Um, so that secondary session would probably be a lighter one, like a like I said, hour of drilling and whatnot, which you know, he says he does twice a week, which is better than zero times a week, but I would say that would be like six days a week, right? Uh, in my opinion, that would be like a constant. Every time I was doing hard sessions, I'd probably be doing a drill session later, right? Or at the very least just doing some flow work on the mat, something, right? I am saying that you want to get as much matt time as you can while you can. And if you're leaving a lot on the table, I feel like you're going to be at a disadvantage when you face your competitors who are not uh I mean your your competitors, the guys from New Wave, the guys from Matoss, the guys from Lloyd Urban, like those guys are putting in as much mad time as they can. And I believe it's for the same reasoning because they can. they want to get as much because that's where you're going to get the most growth. Um, now maybe your body's not used to it and you feel that you're going to fall apart. Again, if you're like that standard 20some athlete, you can handle it, right? Um, it obviously sucks as far as like you wake up and you feel banged up, but that's the the name of being an athlete. The idea that you can show up at 100% and feel amazing, man. Like that's not a feeling I've ever had as far as like u not feeling any soreness or whatnot. But that kind of disappears the moment you start fighting or you start competing. It it it only lingers when you do nothing. I feel like the more you are physically active, your body just shuts that off. Um, and you know, am I the best grappler in the world, the best fighter in the world? Not objectively, right? No. So, uh, you could take my advice with a grain of salt, but I have been at the top of the heap, pretty close, right? I have trained with a lot of people at the top of the heap. Uh, so, and I've seen what they do. I understand what they do. And it was very similar to what I was doing. Uh, so I don't feel like my advice is bad. I think it's sound and I would recommend that to everybody, which is you need to find, especially as a young person, ways to get as much Matt time as you can. Layering in the weight training, great. I think that's the honestly one of the big missing pieces of my game would have been raw strength. And mind you, I was never a weak guy. I've never felt really overpowered uh at my weight class. I fought absolute. So, there was guys that were stronger than me. Uh Paul Harris is probably the only guy that I felt was like way stronger than me and he was 20 pounds heavier than me because he didn't make weight. So made sense. He was not on my weight class. Um so but still I could have been a lot stronger and knowing what I know now about strength it would have made my life a lot easier. So, uh, I would say, yeah, putting in two to three days a week into strength training is an investment in your future. It's going to protect you, uh, from getting injured as long as you're doing it wisely, and it's going to make applying force a lot more efficient. The mat study, yes. Tape study, yes. Journaling, yes. All great things. Like, he he hasn't said that he's not He's doing the right things as far as he's got all that covered. He's just not doing enough in my opinion. Right. I felt like if I was just putting in three hours a day of physical work as a professional athlete, what am I doing with the rest of my day? I got like 12 hours of free time, you know? Uh it's it's just a lot of time, right? You might say, "Well, what's the difference between four to six, right, um, hours versus like three?" Like, it's a lot, right? Because you you do need time to recover between these things, right? And if you're doing, you know, four to five, um, that's usually going to be two to three sessions. So, you got to space those sessions out, right? And then now, like, okay, I have an hour and a half and then I'm going to give myself like two hours break and then an hour and then another 3 hours break. So like now like your day is filled, right? And you're doing significantly more physical volume and in between sessions that's where I'm studying tape and you know getting my rest time, maybe doing recovery work like your your your sauna or your your cold plunge or all this other stuff. Yeah, that's my take on it. You know, like I said, I would love to be wrong. I just don't think I am. All right, so no hard feelings. I I I wish you know this competitor the best. I would like for him to prove me wrong. Uh uh because I think it would definitely be make it a lot more approachable and I would like the idea of being able to reconsider my process, right? Uh but from what I've seen, it's going to require more work than that. That's all I have for you guys. If you have thoughts, opinions, questions, go ahead and let me know and I'll do my best to address them.