BTG 96 - Pacing to Win

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. On today's episode, I wanted to talk about the importance of pacing and not just in the competition sense, but also in training. I find that people, especially when you look at uh the way they train, the pacing doesn't match what they're going to compete at. And if you fight at a much higher tempo when you're competing, but you train at a low lower tempo, you're not matching. And I feel like you're going to probably lose some performance in competition. because you're not giving yourself realistic training simulations of what you expect to do in competition. All right? Uh for example, if I when I fight, I'm always trying to go 100% get a quick finish, then I should be training in that same fashion where I'm going 100% on every round trying to score finishes non-stop. Now I don't think that's a good strategy overall for most people but if that's the strategy that's how you train for it right but if I am you know training relaxed rolls flow rolls and doing that type of stuff then when I go to compete I expect to be able to go you know balls to the wall it's unrealistic and you might find that you're going to fatigue really fast and you're like oh how come I didn't have that gas tank because you didn't train for it. The way to train in the wrestling circles is 100% balls to the wall. The Dan Gable is the epitome of this message which is I have to be taken off the mats, right? I'm so tired after training that there's nothing left and that someone has to literally grab me and pick me up because I'm spent. That would be 100% training. Now, that isn't wise for longevity in my opinion. I mean, Dan Gable himself, I think, has multiple neck fusions and he retired pretty early uh for a competitor, right? Because that type of training wears on you. But like everything, there's moderation and you got to be able to sprinkle that in there with that level of intensity. If you train with the idea that you want to have gas left in your tank on a normal like every day, you never push it to the red line. That is a problem. There has to be moments in your training where you're going to the very end and then beyond that, right? Just like a gas tank, even though the line for E is right here, you know, there's a little extra reserve they don't advertise, right? And you can go a little bit beyond that. Um, it's always been the case for any car I've owned. All right. So, uh, you have to do that, right? You have to be able to push beyond that because that's where you're going to get some toughness out of that. And you're also going to get some like mindset as far as understanding that you actually have more, right? and then your tank itself will physically expand to accommodate that, right? Uh which doesn't happen in the automobile, right? Uh so I think that's important. Um the other thing to think about is you have to understand the the rules and the format of the competition that you're competing in to know what the appropriate pace is. for MMA old school rules where there were no rules. It was just no time limit. You just fight until it's over. The pacing is different, right? Because if I go 100% first, you know, five minutes and then I'm dead tired, there's no bell to save me. There's no recovery round. So, if I'm in a bad spot, I'm going to be heavily compromised. And that's why guys like Hoist Gracie did well early. He was playing the long game. He just knew if I can get somebody to the ground, they stay on the ground with me long enough, they're going to get caught, right? And generally most people were uncomfortable being on the ground, so they're going to fatigue faster than me and I'm going to have the upper hand. That is a a good strategy for someone like him, right? And I think most people adopted that. Although certainly a lot of people had more of the Street Fighter mentality was finish quick, right? It's like three minute explosion trying to get, you know, knock out and then get out of there fast, right? Which also has it advantages in a tournament format because you're going to have more energy uh saved for your next fights, right? So, you have to factor that in as well when you're competing. If you're just going for the win, you could win your first match, but then you're spent for matches two, three, and four. This is something that I went through in my first runs in ADCC, right? Where I was going for points. That was my strategy. I always had I mean, I would find submissions and go for them like heel hooks or whatnot, but it wasn't the main initiative. My main initiative was to win and the most reliable way for me to win was with points. If a heel hook presented itself to me or some other submission, I would take it, but otherwise I'm trying to get the the win. And I went to decisions on all those matches and my first uh tournament at ABCC in 2005. I won by decision, I lost by decision, I lost by decision. all regulation 10-minute matches. On the second ADCC, I won a decision. I lost a double overtime decision. I won a triple overtime decision, and then I lost a decision. Right? I realized after the second one, I was at a very distinct disadvantage because I was putting in so much more matt time than everyone else, right? Where the average match is 10 minutes, overtimes are five minutes. So in that second ATC I did 10 10 55. So we're talking about 30 minutes. Then 10 555. Now we're talking 55 minutes and then 105. So um it's 70 minutes of grappling if I did the math right there. Right. Uh yeah, 70 minutes of grappling, four matches, right? That's almost double the time that you're supposed to have. But I used a lot more energy than most of my competitors did because I was going so much longer to win. And I made the realization like I'm going to have a hard time because the guys that are winning ADC or like Roger Gracie or you know Marcelo Garcia or even Robert who won the overtime with me but he submitted everybody else in pretty short order. So if I wanted to win, I needed to find ways to finish. That way I would have more energy left in the tank, right? Um the next ACC I did 2009, I had three submission finishes in my bracket, right? And they were all quick within the first five minutes. Uh and I lost a decision, a close decision to uh Andre Gava while I was hunting for the submission. I had two strong submissions that I went for there. Um, but that made a big difference. And what what changed was a bit of my pacing and my focus, right? Uh, working harder to try to get the the finish, right? So, there's intent and there's also pacing. Uh, and these are both things that you have to have dialed in. And that depends on the rule set and the format of the structure of the event that you're going to be competing in. You have to have those in mind. I I would compete very differently in a no time limit format versus a three five minute round format, right? Which is interesting because now like if you guys saw on Friday, I covered the CGI rule set that they revealed they're doing three fiveminute rounds on basically the main thing they're they're judging on is aggressiveness and effective aggression. So that is promoting a style of play that is very fast-paced, right? They want you moving, moving, moving. They don't like your aggressiveness is favored over effective aggression, which is interesting, right? Um, so that just tells you that they don't want you being too calculating and trying to hold and be conservative with your actions. They rather that you just blast, you know, and go for it, which should be fun for the spectators if the competitors play to the spirit of the rules, right? But if I was training for that rule set again, I would be pacing myself much harder, right? Where I'm going at a much faster clip. All right? Because I need to at the very least be ahead on the judges card and ideally get the submission so that I can get out of there quicker. If I'm doing three fiveminute rounds each round for the round of four, you know, now you're talking about 60 minutes, not including overtimes or whatnot. And the finals is 55, so that's 25 minutes. So, it's going to be over 60 uh 70 minutes there. So, uh there are those type of things you have to consider, right? And that pacing that you're going to have to do is going to be done in training, right? Where you want to try to push yourself as hard as you can in the the round so that you can see how much energy you can expend while still being effective. Because there's going to come a certain point where you're going to realize that when I push to what I feel is my 100. I drain within maybe 3 minutes and then now I'm like 70% combat effective. Right? That's not great. Right? So there's one or two things that we can do. Either we have to build conditioning, right? so that I can keep myself at a higher uh effectiveness or I got to dial back my output. Right? Ideally, we would increase the conditioning which you've heard me talk about many times before. Part of it is going to be physical. A large part of it is going to be mental, right? Your perception of stress. But there's definitely a physical component to it as well. And dietary, if you don't have enough energy in you, you're going to have issues. But usually that's not a problem. You know, it's funny because people think that um they skip a meal and oh, you know, I don't have enough energy in me. But meanwhile, unless you're running on like less than like 5% body fat, you have a lot of fat stores on you, right? You're your body is not without ways of producing glucose if you have used up all your supplies. So it's more of a energy demand issue, right? And what I mean by that is you have energy in you, right? You will you have a lot more energy in you than you think you do. However, there's only a certain flow rate that my body is able to provide. And when I use up all my reserves and my demand for energy is faster than the flow of energy, that's when you're going to start cardio tanking, right? Because you're like, and like, "Oh, I have no more energy." So, no, you do. It's just not getting to you fast enough. You're using it faster than is being provided to you. This is where pacing is important. Okay? If you know how to appropriately pace yourself, you can pace yourself at or just below the flow of energy, right? Where I work hard enough to have a very strong pace but within my energy demand but within the flow that my body's able to provide. All right? And somebody who's able to work at that capacity will seem like they're tireless. All right? And in a way they are. Normally, that's going to mean that you are moving at a rate where you're using fat reserves as your energy. Because as you guys may know, as far as uh anorobic, like you're going to hit a wall pretty early within the first few minutes if you're using up all your ATP stores and you're doing your explosive bursts, right? So, normally that's not going to be able to last too long. But if you're working on an aerobic level or you're using uh your fat stores for energy, you're gonna have indefinite supply, right? You can run a marathon for hours and still perform at a high level. So that's again where the pacing is going to come in. And this takes a little bit of learning to understand how hard I can work while maintaining a high output. There's also the nuance where there's going to be points where you're going to have to explode and go into really, you know, fast twitchy uh type of energy system, which is fine as long as it's within a small window. I can explode for, you know, 30 seconds as long as I dial it back down and get to a lower level state of energy consumption, right? And again, this is also pacing. is not simply staying at the same rate the entire time, but it's knowing when to peak and when to drop back down. When to peak, when to drop back down, right? And staying within your body's limits. This is only learned through lots of training and experiencing it firsthand. Right? Ideally, our goal is always to be within the flow of energy where I'm never tanked, right? like I'm always I always got something left in me and I'm always performing at or very close to 100% effectiveness, right? Um the and the more you push the envelope, the more you're going to understand. So I feel it's easier. Most people are very conservative and they stay well below that or well above the E, so to speak, on the gas tank analogy, right? So they're leaving a lot of room. I would tell you do the opposite. Try to go over because you're going to find out really fast where the limit is that way, right? Whereas if you're very conservative, you'll undersshoot every time and you won't really know how much more you got. But if you go to empty, you'll learn pretty fast. Oh, okay. My limits here now. I can start dialing it down. Let me go down 5%. Go down 5%. Another 5%. Okay, now I found the sweet spot of the rate that I can work at. and then start to build from there. And ideally, we would build that tank a little bit over time, but you're going to have some limits for sure. Well, understanding that is important. When you can dial in the the pace of your output, you have a very big advantage because now if you're able to dictate the pace of the match, normally that's going to put you in the upper hand, right? because now you're controlling the demand of energy that's needed. And if your opponent is not able to match your pace, it's going to be a problem for them because now it's a battle of attrition where he is slowly draining, slowly losing energy or maybe quickly losing energy whereas you are doing fine, right? Especially when you can make your opponent work very hard while you're working very little, right? So, and that is very possible in many positions. For example, if I'm in a dominant position, generally that means I don't need to put that much energy to maintain it. I have a mount, cross face, under hook, good clinch position. I don't have to move that much to make my opponent fatigue. I could just drop my weight into him, start grinding the hips, start really jamming my shoulder to his chin, and start slowly threatening his arm. He cannot get out of that position slowly, right? He has to explode. So now he has to peak while I am coasting. If I can make him try to peak long enough while staying coasting, he's going to hit a wall at a certain point, especially if he overexpends himself, then I can decide to peak and he can't keep up with me because he already used up that one two minutes of explosive burst and now I get free reign to attack at full power, right? And this could be grappling context, this could be a striking context, right? like or a wrestling context, wrestling especially because wrestling is very explosive, right? So, if you can make someone work really hard on wrestling scrambles where you're not working, usually with wrestling it's kind of hard not to explode at the same time because if somebody's, you know, exploding for a takedown, generally it might sprawl has to be explosive to get out of position. There's certain positions where you can drain somebody a little bit in wrestling. Like, so when someone's hanging on to a double or a single and and their body's compromised, that's a position where they're fatiguing themselves and I'm just letting body weight do work. Those are winning positions. Like, you'll see this in MMA a lot where a guy's in the cage and the guy's just trying to hang on to a shot and the guy is just chilling there in the sprawl. And to me, a good guy is strategic there. like I'll let the guy hold on to that leg for a long time, as long as he wants because he's wearing out, you know, and it's taking very little of me, taking a lot of him. Um, so if a guy wants to hold on to a single when he's like sprawled out with his leg like that, like let him hang there, you know, and uh after a minute or two like that, you just you really drained a lot of the reserves of that guy and then I could start going hard, right? I think I'm making my point pretty clear here, which is controlling the pacing of a match is not just about understanding your cardio limits, the rule sets, the the amount of matches you're going to have in the day, but also understanding how to use it strategically. Knowing when you're going to peak, when you're going to coast, knowing against your opponent how to try to flip that when he's peeking, try to be coasting. So then you could peak after he has exploded and take advantage of that opportunity. So uh something to think about and also to play with with training as well, right? Like one of the things that I like to do is to switch up pacing or tempo. And you could really take advantage of this in striking. For example, if you start a round where you're very paced, hanging back a little bit, striking from a distance, you know, counter striking for a bit, you kind of set a very slow pace. And if you're able to control that by using good range, your opponent then adjusts, okay? And then they're going to try to blitz and find a way in. If you decide on the drop of a dime to switch the pace where now instead of moving backwards and counter striking, now you start moving forward and you start making blitz, you completely change the pace, right? And now it's like the opponent is fighting a new person because now rather than chasing somebody, now they're backing away from somebody, right? And instead of, you know, watching for the counterattack, they're the ones that are being uh attacked. So, this is another like change in pacing that can really mess people up. For example, on on ground game, if you've been playing a very slow and tight game, you know, where I'm forcing the half guard, getting chest to chest and trying to pass that way versus then going into a standing, you know, positions doing like the roto brothers like uh stomp passing or if you're like me, I do the throwbyss to cartwheels. That's a very fast and loose uh passing style. These are different paces. They require different energy consumption. They require different uh movement patterns. So, that's another way that pacing controls how uh you play the game. And being able to change your pace in that way also fatigues people because it stresses them out. Because when a guy can get a handle on the type of pace that you fight, he will slowly adjust and either he could outwork you or he'll he or he might be able to match you, right? And then he's in a comfortable position. But if your pacing is always changing, it's hard to understand the right flow rate to work at. And that generally fatigues people more because they start overexpending themselves and just the stress of the pace changing as well will get them uh weakened. Anyhow, hopefully that helps you guys. Uh I know I was saying this because sometimes I suffer from not pacing properly. I am in the position obviously that I've been training for so long that I usually have a lot of technical superiority over people that are I'm rolling with that are are newer. So I find that I end up holding back more because if I went full pace 100% I'm just demolishing people. Uh, and that's one not that fun for me in the sense that uh it's going to be a lot more physical on especially when I'm working with someone who's smaller that it's not going to be enjoyable for either for them and I'm going to end up breaking my toys. Uh, so I tend to hold back a little bit and I play a much slower pace and allow them to work a little bit more. But then that becomes counterproductive when I'm rolling with guys who are hammers and that I need to go harder on, but I'm used to playing a slower pace. So now I don't know how to play faster, right? And the other thing is that it's much more it's easy to play a slow pace, especially when you're controlling it because you're using very little energy and it gives the illusion that you have a lot more cardio than you actually have, right? Uh, so this is something that can happen especially if if you're you find that you're the the advanced guy that you play a lot slower. You're so much more relaxed. So you feel like you have infinite stamina and you kind of do at that pace. But when you fight higher level opposition and now you have to pick up the pace, you the limits of your conditioning will be apparent because then you're going to realize, oh, if I don't slow this pace down, it's going to be a big problem, right? So, you have to try to find ways to always push the pace, right? So that you don't have this false uh idea of where your conditioning lies, right? Like you're always exposing the limits of your conditioning so you understand where it is. Anyhow, I hope that helps.