Month: February 2025

Where, where were you at? You went somewhere, didn’t you? I went to, Riyadh, Saudi, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Damn. Yeah.

I have, two uncles that live and work there with their families, so I went to visit them. I met, like, some cousins I’ve never, you know, met in my life. Trips. Yeah. One of those trips.

Yeah. As soon as I landed, they’re like, teach us boxing. They had focus mitts ready, gloves, and they’re right off the plane. Jet lag be damned. They’re like, teach us boxing.

And so I taught a lot of my cousins boxing for, like, a week straight. And You were there for a week? I was there for, yeah, about nine days total. How was it overall? Just It was just such a different culture.

So interesting. You know, it’s like no alcohol there. So when you you walk around downtown at, like, three in the morning, there’s kids and families walk around because Oh, yeah. Yeah. There’s not, like, stumbling drunk people.

There’s no, like, lewdness or anything like that. That’s always good. Yeah. It was very, very interesting. Coffee shops are open till, like, four or five in the morning.

What? Restaurants, like chain restaurants, open till, like, two or three in the morning. Just a completely different culture. Yeah. Riyadh is where they’re doing all the, like, the UFC stuff and The night WWE too, I think, goes up.

Yep. Boxing has been there. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Number seven. Number seven. Yep. Are we keeping all that in there, or was it recording? Yeah.

Nice. There you go. I just keep everything in there. But, yeah, I think UFC goes there, and WWE is going there, surprisingly. But, damn, I’m jealous.

It was fun, man. The the night I was the last night I was there, there was a UFC event where Israel Adesanya fought, and where he was knocked out. I don’t know if you thank you. Where if you happen to see that one. Oh, yeah.

That was That was in Riyadh. That was in Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Totally. Like, not only did I not hear about it for some reason, but it was at, like It was in the morning.

Noon. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Yes. At 10AM. My my my, my Carlson, Gracie, like, Muay Thai group tech, people all of a sudden start freaking out. Like, what do you mean? Yeah.

It was kind of a shock. Yeah. Yeah. He just got dropped. It was insane, man.

And just It felt bad. Me too. Me too. Like, to see that it’s always sad to see that kinda, like, fall from great, you know, for a while, you’re invincible. That’s just fighting.

He looked fine too the whole fight, but then just well. Overhand right, I think it was or something? Or, like, straight right? Big shot. And And he switched stances right in front of him.

He didn’t give enough distance. Izzy likes to switch stances constantly. When you do that, you need to create distance because you kinda reset. You, like, switch stances. You reset.

So that guy attacked during the reset period. So yeah. That I’ve never seen that eye poke too had something to do with it. I don’t know if you saw that. Yeah.

I did. I’m sure it did. I’m sure it did. Yeah. Because he was like, I’m good.

And then he got clocked and then yeah. Mhmm. But it is what it is. Yeah. It’s like seeing that because he was I mean, he was just, what, two years ago, the champion?

Yeah. And then now he’s, what, lost? Three in a row or something like that? Strickland, GDP, and then And now this yeah. Yeah.

Three in a row. Which I don’t even know much about. What was his name the guy had beat him? First time I’d ever seen a fight. See, that feels so bad because he Me too.

Me too. He completely dismantled his he didn’t dismantle him, but he did, you know, clean knockout. Yeah. So, but now his name is, you know, all up there now in the ranking. So good for him.

But, yeah, poor is he. He’s one of my favorites too. I like watching. I like anyone with an interesting unique style. Right?

We see a lot of cookie cutter, like, you know, average or above average striking, above average grappling, above average wrestling. And it’s like this hybrid MMA style, which is great. Yeah. But I like the fighters like Izzy have their own unique style, and that’s what makes those fighters interesting, and that’s what makes them garner a lot of fan support. And he’s flashy.

He’s well, he’s not flashy. He’s very just, he’s a showman. Yeah. He’s a showman. And people like that as much as we, you know, people don’t admit it.

It is fun to watch someone entertaining It is. That fight. So it’s boring, like, wrestling all the time. It’s not boring. I mean, I we appreciate it.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. It’s fun to watch people that, you know, try to entertain the crowd, I guess. Exactly.

But also are still very technical when it’s needed. What was your style of fighting that you thought? MMA. I liked for so two of my pro wins came by leg locks in the first round, a heel hook and a toe hold. I really liked going for leg locks.

Mhmm. Especially when I was fighting, they were still considered, like, taboo. Like, leg locks were you know, traditional jiu jitsu gyms, they didn’t teach leg locks till you were, like, a purple or brown belt. Mhmm. They felt they were dangerous.

But how silly. Like, we could choke each other and, you know, kimura each other and arm lock each other, but for some reason, leg locks are too dangerous. Yeah. Just had a weird stigma around it. So I went for them a lot, because people’s defense wasn’t really there at that point.

I liked striking. I liked I didn’t like to get hit. I was like a striker who didn’t like to get hit, very similar to a Machida type, striker. A lot of movement. I don’t know.

I just had, like, a very free flowing, fun, loose style. I liked watching guys like Dominic Cruz, if you remember him. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was inspired a lot by those kinda lighter guys that moved around a lot, had a fluid movement.

I thought that was fun. That way I wouldn’t create patterns that my opponent could recognize. So it’s kind of, like, controlled chaos, so to speak. So I really liked fighting, in in that style. So, yeah, I mean, Dominic was fun to watch too.

He was he was all over the place. He, yeah. And what happened to him? Is he retired now? No.

He’s still there. I remember I saw him fight I remember he lost to Henry Cejudo. But even before that, like, in the later stages of his career, he was doing very, very well. No, he was a man. Yeah.

I really liked watching him fight. But yeah. Art of Wellness Episode seven. We got Coach Rami again, back by super popular demand. I’m here.

Thanks for doing this again. Of course. My pleasure. Second episode with you. Lots of more nuts and bolts in injury prevention, training for MMA, boxing.

I wanna talk about all that stuff, but I wanted to start with what what you feel the biggest misconceptions are about training for combat sports. So one of the biggest ones, which we touched on briefly in the last or, actually, we we talked about this. Yeah. We did. We talked about that.

Sparring. Right? Which is like hard spar needing to constantly bash your your brain in to prepare for a fight. There’s a misconception that you can spar to simulate a fight. Nothing is like a fight.

Right? You can’t spar to simulate a fight. And that’s where MMA is lacking. If you see other high level sports, like, let’s say, basketball, you see NBA teams, they’re not constantly just having scrimmages or playing games to practice. They do drills.

They have control. Yep. It’s a scientific approach where MMA is still in such a early stage. The training isn’t as scientific yet, and the teams and coaches that do have, a more focused and organized approach to training tend to have better results than the old school. Like, okay.

Let’s just get in there and see who’s the toughest. Right? Right. That doesn’t lend itself well to having longevity in the sport. Mhmm.

Another one is that you have to train through injury no matter what. Like, no matter how serious the injury is, you have to show up, and it’s all mental. And We’ll talk about that. Yeah. Yeah.

So that’s something we should definitely chat about. I mean, we can talk about it now, honestly. So pain like, how do you deal with a fighter? We talked about it a little bit last time. But how do you distinguish between it’s a pain that you feel they should sit out, or maybe go see somebody about?

Or it’s just pain they could train through? This is something I’ll kinda go back and forth on with you. Yeah. Because I’d love to hear your your opinion. Personally so let’s say somebody’s hand hurts.

If somebody’s hand hurts, I feel like they should still train because we could train your other hand. So if your left hand hurts, let’s work your right. Let’s work your footwork. So something like that, I think we should train around. That’s my opinion.

I’m curious to to hear what you think. But if something like your back is really messed up or, you know, your knees are really giving you, issues, stuff like that, it’s more delicate. It’s more it’s tougher for me as a coach to train around more serious injuries. Yeah. I have one student named, Sophie.

She was a athlete. I believe she played volleyball and basketball growing up, and she’s Okay. About to have her first kickboxing fight Oh, cool. In, March alongside with five of her teammates. And, sometimes during practice, her knee would kinda just, like, pop out, and it was the old injury.

So we’d be doing, like, stuff not that intense, you know, movement, maybe sparring, and not even going that hard. Her knee will pop out of place, and she’ll be in excruciating pain. So I told her to start wearing, like, compression gear, and that’s that has been helpful. But stuff like that is tricky for me because, you know, I’m not a doctor. I don’t know if I should say, hey.

Sit out for a month or, let’s that that is, like, the challenge. I feel like coaches. I like that. I mean, she should definitely see a physical therapist like myself. Yeah.

I agree. I agree. So has she had that recently? Do you still train her, you said? Yeah.

She’s my student now. And she’s for the past, like, I would say month or so, we haven’t had any issues with her knee. But it’s happened twice while I was there, maybe more so while I wasn’t there. Twice while I was there, I’ve seen her knee like, I’ve seen her be in pain because of her knee. It’s from a old injury.

Nothing we have done, caused that injury, but, of course, through training for combat sports Yeah. And the unpredictability of the movement Mhmm. It can aggravate her old injury. I would say she definitely needs physical therapy. So I’d be more than happy to check her out.

But, you know, pain’s kinda weird because I always say pain is strange. I mean, if especially in your shoes, if you’re a coach and you see somebody struggling with pain, and especially the fighter they’re telling you, the the your your student, they’re saying, like, hey, you know, this is kinda weird when I kick or when I punch. Mhmm. I would say send them to me right away, honestly. Just to see what’s going on.

If there’s any, like, red flags that they need to be checked out or need an imaging, like like MRI, X-ray, whatever. And, you know, pain the way I explain it is, in the clinic with me, is if pain is lower than a five out of 10, with exercise that I’m giving them, we could work through it. Mhmm. If it’s higher than a five out of 10, you might need to modify some things, back off of that activity, and then we’ll come back to it. I see.

That makes that makes perfect sense. Yeah. But regardless, if if you guys are, like, you know you’re not sure whether they need to see somebody, have them see somebody. Yeah. I would just go with that.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. What are injuries you think that people shouldn’t train around? Like, what are are there any specific injuries that you’ve come across where you’re like, okay.

You should not be training with this type of injury? Let me think of an example. I mean, back is a good one, but it depends. You know? It depends how severe the pain is, what their range of motion is, their strength, how they’re presenting.

Usually, let me think of somebody that recently I had. Jujitsu guy with I think he said, like, seven out of 10 back pain. Oh, wow. Yeah. It wasn’t super high.

I mean, it’s high enough. But he had pain with twisting, with bending, all that stuff. Yeah. Obviously, in jujitsu, you’re, like, twisting yourself up in a pretzel sometimes. So I would say for him, yeah, let’s back off of the activity.

We’ll come back to it. You know, the physical therapy process is essentially, we back off a few things. We don’t stop it if needed, but we modify it, back off if needed. We treat the area with certain, you know, hands on stuff. Right.

Rehab exercises, targeted rehab exercises, let the pain desensitize, kinda settle, and then gradually reintroduce that that activity. Again as a form of graded exposure. You know what I mean? So That makes sense. Once the pain has subsided or has gone down to, like, a two or one, we start reintroducing that same motion that hurt them in the beginning.

I see. I see. So and it’s a it’s therapy. It’s a process. You know?

We we build them back up to do that irritating activity again. I see. Yes. When they do it again, when they throw a punch, like, initially, maybe a punch would hurt them. You know, it would hurt their shoulder.

They go through the whole PT process. They throw a punch with me in the clinic. Like, hey, Jerry. It doesn’t hurt anymore. We keep doing it.

We keep building up their tolerance, pain free. Send them right back to the the coach, the whoever, the trainer. Are you okay? You know, that’s the whole process in a nutshell. But, yeah, that’s what people need to be doing if they feel like, you know, something’s kinda bugging them.

So I would say for you, if somebody is even concerned about something, you know, just text me, you know, and I’ll be there to to check them out. So No. I appreciate that, man. I should take you up on that because that’s something we’re dealing with all the time, you know, small injuries to more significant stuff. And it’s always a question as a coach because, you know, you’re not a doctor.

As many coaches like to pretend they are experts, you know, in the human body. Yeah. We might know some stuff from our experience, but that’s not our area of expertise. So, yeah, that’s always, I think, a tricky thing for coaches, managing injuries. And your students think you know everything.

They’ll come to you, hey. This hurts. And it’s like, I do not know what to tell you. Right? And that’s when people like you are so valuable because that’s not our area of expertise.

You know, if you’ve trained Muay Thai and jiu jitsu for twenty years, it doesn’t mean you’re an expert on managing injuries. You might have some anecdotal stuff that you’ve picked up along the way, but it doesn’t replace actual knowledge and expertise. And, you know, like I said, if if you feel like someone’s just has something, just, you know, send them to me, and I’ll check them out for sure. Is there somebody recently well, besides her Mhmm. Anybody else that you’ve noticed that, you know, maybe you have to, like, train around certain things or a different example you could give us?

Yeah. I have a student named, Wilkie. He’s a great student. Shout out to Wilkie. Shout out to Wilkie.

And he had, like, a a bone spur in his foot that had to be removed. He basically had, like, an extra bone in his foot. Right? He had to remove it through surgery. Yeah.

And now he’s come back. He’s been able to do kickboxing, jiu jitsu, everything, which I’ve been really impressed by because he had his surgery in November. And I was training him yesterday in jiu jitsu, and he was rolling and everything. But for quite a while, he couldn’t train at all, like, directly after the surgery. He came back and did, you know, modified stuff, and that’s the cool thing, like, about having a small private gym is that Yep.

I could take him to the side, work drills, ask him, hey. Is this aggravating your injury? Is this hurting? And we slowly worked our way back up to now where he’s boxing, kickboxing, and doing jiu jitsu, actually Awesome. With no issues so far.

So, you know, you’re always worried about somebody coming back from a surgery, and you don’t wanna you don’t want them to be missing training for, like, two or three months. Yep. And, you know, they’re always eager to get back into it. So you have to be you know, on one hand, I’m so excited when students wanna come back to training right after injury. That’s Yep.

The best thing as a coach to have a student with that mentality. Yep. But you don’t wanna be pushing that in the case that they could hurt themselves further and now you’re responsible. That’s that line we have to tell because, you know, if you keep picking at the scab, so to speak, of, you know, if you keep irritating that injured area Mhmm. You’re not letting it heal properly.

So Right. You know, and that’s that’s our job is if somebody gets surgery Mhmm. And they’re not sure they can go back to MMA, jujitsu Right. Boxing, kickboxing, whatever. You know, I was talking to Melanie about this last podcast is we’re the buffer between, you know, the surgical process and getting them back into their sport.

So, like, we make sure we make them hit all these goals and milestones in order to send them right back to you to to tell you, hey, he’s he’s ready he or she is ready to go. Right. They could throw a kick now. They could throw a punch. They could grapple.

They could clinch. They could do whatever pain free. We’ve tested it in in the clinic. He or she is good to go. So I see.

Yeah. We’re that we’re that buffer between the process. Because some people just get surgery, and they try to get right back into well, hopefully, not a lot these days. Right. You You know, you get the odd person that’s like, oh, yeah.

Surgery. Let me just jump back into my sport. Or, you know, minor procedure or whatever. And they still have pain. Or they still, you know, something doesn’t feel right.

Right. That’s when they when we come in and we make it feel, like, normal again. And then send them back to the sport. So That makes sense. Hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so training I mean, training and injuries kinda go hand in hand. It’s hard to we talked about it before.

You know, it’s hard to kinda train hard and also not have some sort of stuff bugging you. Sure. And, you know, you mentioned injury management last podcast too, whereas you can’t really prevent injury, but, you know, we could do our best. And this is where, you know, I talk about pre hab or rehabilitation comes in, which is essentially being proactive in your injury prevention or trying to prevent injuries in the future. You know, pre hab meaning, you know, certain mobility work, targeted strengthening exercises, you know, correcting movement patterns to reduce the risk of injury in the future.

You know, it’s kind of being proactive with hopefully not letting something happen in the future. So do you guys do any prehab work? You guys warm up and stuff, right? Sure. Yeah.

We we do a extensive warm up, that consists of several rounds of activity that gradually increases in intensity so that by the time the, you know, main portion of practice has started, everyone is warm, is loose, their body is warm, and we’ve had very few injuries in our practices. And I think that having a good extensive warm up, is has been, like, a really good thing for us. It’s really helped us prevent injury. Yeah. I was thinking as you say this, a business idea for you Yeah.

You should create, like, a prehab, like, guide for combat sports athletes. There’s a lot of stuff I wanna do. That would be that would be such a great resource. I really mean that for coaches, and especially from doctors like yourself who are more knowledgeable about combat sports. So there’s the trust.

Right? Because sometimes there’s also a lot in mixed martial arts and combat sports where we don’t trust certain doctors for maybe bad experiences that we’ve had with our athletes, you know, recommending surgery that they don’t need, pushing prescription medication that might not be the best case scenario for that athlete. We touched on that last time. Yeah. I know you’re afraid of the pharmaceutical reps coming after you.

Me too. You know? Both are. Yeah. They just disappear.

Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah. Suicide by gunshot to the back of the head. Right?

Yeah. But, yeah. I mean, it’s important though to talk about this stuff. But, anyways, flexibility and mobility in a fighter, I want to talk about too. So, how important do you think it is?

And I’ll kind of give you my take on it. Yeah. To be because a fighter is different than, like, a you know, different sports have different demands than people. Yes. You know, a kickbox the kickboxer needs to throw a high kick, and they need some good hip mobility, hip flexibility, all that good stuff.

So how important is it for you, you think, to be flexible and mobile enough to be a fighter? So important. Super important. Right? So important.

So it’s so underrated as, like, a physical, you know, attribute for a fighter to have because I noticed the fighters that are flexible and mobile usually have less injuries Mhmm. And they could perform techniques more efficiently. Mhmm. So, like, fighters with really tight hips, they could probably throw a high kick because they have enough, like, active flexibility to get that leg up there, but they have to use way more effort to get that high kick up there. Whereas people who come to me very flexible, their high kicks, their triangle chokes tend to be more efficient and effortless because of that base that they have of being very flexible and having mobility.

So, I think it’s so it’s it’s it’s not focused on enough. There is a big emphasis on things like strength, speed, power. Right? Which is important too. Very important.

Right? Very important. But we’ve also seen some of the greatest fighters in history not have a lot of power from Muhammad Ali. You know? Yep.

Khabib is in one punch knocking people out on the feet. A lot of fighters don’t have that talent, that, you know, natural talent of having very heavy hands, and they’ve still excelled at the highest. I mean, Aronson Silva, he knocks people out, but he’s not a, you know, he’s not like a Jeremy Stevens. He’s not like a Mike Tyson. He’s not one of those people that could just close their eyes, swing, and then you’re done for.

Yeah. But flexibility, I think that also helps fighters have longer, healthier careers. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, flexibility, mobility.

I mean, shoulder mobility I mean, just going down the list. Like, shoulder mobility, you need to be mobile in your shoulders to throw a punch Right. Right. To grapple, to clinch somebody, for takedowns Mhmm. Guard transitions, all that stuff.

Ankle and knee flexibility is important for, you know, changing directions, your footwork, all that stuff. And, hopefully, you know, you know, I don’t know the how coaches are these days. We talked about it before. But, hopefully, they’re focusing on these things to help the fighter, you know, be more mobile and flexible to throw a kick, to throw an effective punch, because that’s their job. Yes.

Exactly right. So, so I think it’s extremely important as well. But, yeah, I mean, most of that stuff, people don’t wanna do it though, you know? They just wanna it’s not as fun. They just wanna start throwing kicks and punches.

Exactly. So how much time do you think you dedicate to that yourself as a fighter? Good question. I think I always urge, fighters. I’m like, hey.

Listen. In your down while you’re doing something else, let’s say you’re watching TV, you’re watching a movie. This is a good time. You’re already just sitting. This is a good time to work on things like mobility.

I know, like, in PE, like, let’s say in our schools, we learn just a horrible way to we’d be cold, and we’d start static stretching. Right? Terrible. Probably injuring ourself left and right and decreasing flexibility, I would imagine. Is that is that true?

It’s not helping. Yeah. Okay. Well, it’s not good for, like, you know I mean, the whole strength and conditioning, world always says static stretching before, you know, a power sport or whatever will affect your power output during the sport. Oh.

You know? So, you know, will it really if you static stretch like crazy before a sport, it’s probably not the best idea. You could do it a little bit. It’s fine. But there’s better ways to warm up for a sport than just, you know, stretching out your hamstrings like this for thirty seconds.

Yes. I agree. I know it’s like before kicks, like, active stretch. Like Yep. Dynamic stretch.

Get dynamic stretching. Right? Like, kicking your leg up with, like, a straight leg high up into the air. I see that having better results than people who hold static stretches for Mhmm. Long periods of time.

And I know personally because I did that every day in, you know, junior high, high school, and I was not flexible at all after fifteen years of stretching every day. I’m more flexible now, but the injuries that I that I’ve, like, you know, that I have through combat sports have done things like tighten my hips. So I have areas of my body that are very flexible, but it’s not balanced. I have Have you had surgeries? I don’t think we’ve have we talked about those?

I had, I broke my my ankle in several places when I was really young, like a teenager. Okay. Not with fighting, though. But not with fighting. Yeah.

No. No. So no, like, surgeries from fighting? No? No.

No surgeries from fighting. No. Well, that’s good. Yeah. But, you know, things like people holding submissions a little too long, and now when people apply that same submission, I tap earlier than my 16 year old student who you try to get him in a keylock or a kimura, and he doesn’t tap.

And you’re almost, like, tapping before him while you’re applying the submission. Like, are you sure you’re okay? I have a student named Pedro. Shout out to Pedro and his mom. Got it.

Shout everybody out. Beautiful. Yeah. Today’s a shout out. Yeah.

Give us the Check this out. Pedro and Marina. Thank you so much for this beautiful mug with my beautiful self on it. Thank you very much. Pedro is, I think he’s 16 now.

15 or 16. He’s so flexible. So when we’re drilling, I’ll use him, like, as a demonstration part. Okay. And here, you know, you’re applying the Kimura, and he’s not tapping.

And I’m like, anybody else, I’m I wanna tap just looking at it. Right? Yeah. So he is so flexible that applying submissions on him is actually challenging. So I see what a a benefit it is to be flexible.

Like, you could literally hold off longer in a competition. He might get out of a submission just by the person giving up because thinking, okay. This doesn’t work on him. He is that flexible. You know?

He’s like Gumby. Good for him. Whereas me, because of years of maybe wear and tear, so somebody applies a Kimura, especially in training, I’m gonna tap pretty early. I feel it much earlier Right. Despite my experience, than someone like Pedro who’s so flexible.

Yeah. So definitely important. Super important. For sure. Going back to, like, fighters with pain, when you identify a fighter who you feel has too much pain to continue Yeah.

How do you deal with how do you handle a fighter who doesn’t wanna take time off for an injury? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That’s tough. That’s tough because good fighters usually always wanna be training.

I always tell That’s what I’m saying. Yeah. It’s so tough. Because I always tell my when I see people being lazy and not training, I remind them that your job as a fighter is actually to train. Fighting is the end result, but your job, your day to day is to train.

Right? You’re you’re not fighting seven days a week. You’re fighting maybe three times a year. So really, what is your day to day job? Your focus is training.

So when you tell them you can’t do that anymore, that just, like, it’s it’s a soul crushing thing. Right? Because you’re it’s their identity. It’s part of their personality. It’s part of who they are.

Mhmm. And now you’ve removed that. So we have to keep them engaged in combat sports in some way. This might be a good time to film study, maybe to watch people with similar body types to you. Yep.

Let’s pick up some techniques. Let’s pick up some ideas, some things that they do well that you’d like to add to your arsenal. Right. You know, Mike Tyson’s coach used to have him watch film every day. He thought it was that important.

That’s something, again, you see that in football, basketball, film study that’s assigned and required. Yep. Combat sports, how many fighters, even at the highest level, are required to study film? A lot of young fighters now don’t know who, you know, BJ Penn is. Even people just from, like, fifteen years ago were at the top of the game.

Right? Yeah. So I think it’s really important, and you could always be doing something to improve even if it’s not very physically challenging. So shadow boxing, just using your footwork, practicing footwork, practicing your pivots. There’s always something you can do unless you’re really debilitated and done for and, you know, extremely injured.

I think there’s something you can do. So Always. That’s, like, the way I try to spin it. Hey. It’s not that you can’t train.

You just can’t train the same as when you’re healthy because you’re injured right now, and we have to be smart. So but I feel like there’s always something you can do. Always. Yeah. Even with, you know, dealing with people, like, let’s say someone comes in with me, you know, they’re post surgical and whatever.

Right. Hip surgery, knee surgery. You know, surgeons put them on a certain protocol to where we can’t do certain things for a certain amount of weeks. Right. So and I always tell patients, like, yeah, it’s it’s boring, you know, for these next four, six weeks because we can’t do much due to your protocol and to your restrictions because of your surgery.

Yes. But, you know, during this time, we can work on other areas. Right. Right. You know, make your your weaknesses your strengths.

Maybe read more. Focus on recovery more. Manage your stress better. Because all those things impact your pain too. So, like you said, I mean, when something’s taken away from you, you know, make something make something of it.

And focus on other areas of your life that you could improve on. So I see it all the time with people dealing with injuries is they can’t do something for a while. So I’m like, alright. Cool. Let’s let’s chill for a bit.

Let’s do some other stuff that we could make our strengths, and we’ll come back to it stronger and better. Right. So that’s a a great way of putting it. So how do fighters how do you think fighters mentally cope with with injuries? Like, what’s the mental game?

Do you see it, like, in real time when somebody is just struggling and and you’re like, hey, man. Let’s, you know, let’s relax for a little bit. It’s okay. Absolutely. You see the toughest people you know, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen people break down in tears once they realize they’re injured and maybe they can’t compete in, you know, in that competition, you know, set, let’s say, hey, we’re set to compete in two months, you get injured, you you just see, It is really tough.

As a coach, I care so much about my my students and my athletes. So it breaks my heart too Yeah. To see them feel like they’re not accomplishing their goals. They see it as a big setback. But I think the more experience you get, the more you realize this is part of the game.

Being injured, unfortunately, at some point, there’s no fighter who has survived their career without an injury, without taking time off, without having to manage. And I think that’s part of being a fighter. Yeah. I think, being a fighter is very little about, you know, being in that ring or that cage because that’s fifteen, ten, twelve, twenty minutes. Right?

So 99.9% of your time is all this other stuff from selling tickets to promoting yourself on social media to dealing with injuries. This stuff that there’s not really, like, a guidebook how to do this stuff. Right? So, again, that’s where your coach should be more than just an instructor teaching how to punch and kick. Your coach hopefully has competed, and has dealt with these types of situations themselves so they could pass on their experience to their athletes.

And that’s why it’s so important to have coaches who have been there and done that. Doesn’t mean they need to be a UFC champion, but if you had a fighting career or you competed significantly, which I think all coaches should have, even if they lost every single fight they ever had. O and 20. Yeah. Hey.

You’ve been there. You have a lot of experience to pass on to your students. In fact, there’s a team in London, Ontario, Canada called Team Tompkins, and the head coach was Sean Tompkins, and he trained, Sam Stout, Mark Hamonick. I don’t know if you remember these names. These were great fighters back in the day.

Yeah. He the coach himself was o and five as a pro MMA fighter, Sean Tompkins. Wow. Yet he had several fighters fight at, you know, championship level. Yeah.

And he was an experienced he’s at least been there five times, you know, more than the Yeah. More than the average person, you know, I love kickboxing coach or whatever. Love kick. Never even, you know, been close to a ring before. Right?

You know, I had to make fun of at least one gym, but Keep going. That’s fine. We’ll keep calling them out. I had a I had a chain gym. I had people work at a local chain gym.

I won’t mention the the chain gym, but they unfollowed my gym after the last episode. I started posting the clips about it. Really? So yeah. So Dang.

I know they’re watching this, so shout out to them. Here I am again. Yeah. Making fun of you. Yeah.

I’ve heard Yeah. But it’s true. I stand by it a %. Combat sports is a very serious thing, and it should be taken seriously. Like, people are putting their health in your hands when you’re a combat sports coach.

Yep. So I don’t think you should be, a pretender coaching people to do something real. Right? You need real experience. Right?

Like, imagine going to a doctor, like, hey. I’ve never had patients before, but I’ve watched a lot of Grey’s Anatomy. So I’m like I got my YouTube PhD or whatever. Exactly. Right.

Google Doc. Yeah. So, no. I stand by that and let people be, offended. That’s I’d rather people be offended than have athletes trusting in these coaches, and then they get hurt and then they get disappointed.

So Yeah. Yeah. Back to your main point, you you see it. You see the emotional impact of injuries on fighters, and I think coaches are unqualified therapists. We’re unqualified doctors.

We’re unqualified everything, right, as well as coaches. Mhmm. So I think the best coaches know how to kinda pick you up when you’re down, help motivate you, help you see this as part of the game. It happens. So Yeah.

I mean, yeah. It’s tough to deal with people, but, you know, it’s what we do, and we love it. So For sure. Recovery. Mhmm.

Recovery and fighters. I mean, people in the health and wellness, area love talking about recovery these days. You know, we got people with the sauna stuff Yep. Cold plunge people, red light people, all that good stuff, all that sciency, fancy Right. Tricky stuff.

What is some do you do fighters or your your students ask you about recovery ever? And what do you tell them? Yeah. They they do. You know, I I know things that have worked for me.

I like to do things like, I like to go to sauna at my gym. I like to do, like, heat therapy. I hate cold. So I’ve done the Really? I’ve done the cold stuff.

I hate it. I would rather fight Khabib ten days in a row than, you know, be in Iceland. Warm weather weather people in your night. Exactly right. So, actually, when I was in, Riyadh visiting my family in Saudi Arabia jealousy you went through, by the way.

I don’t wanna go so bad. Yeah. At my cousin’s fitness gym, they have a a hot tub, and then right next to it is, like, a freezing cold, like, you know Oh, cool. Yeah. Like, the cold version of a of a hot tub.

And he challenged me to go in it. And one thing I found really surprising was how difficult it was to breathe in it. You almost start hyperventilating when you’re in there. It’s like such a shock to your body. It was cool after, I mean, I felt awake, like you had 20 espresso shots.

Like, you’re just, like Yeah. Wired and super alert. I don’t know the science behind it. I’m always worried about health trends. I remember for a while, everyone was doing, like, cryotherapy.

Right? Everyone was doing cry and then everyone was doing this ice bath. You know, Joe Rogan shows this old, roided out ass jumping in the, hey. I do this every morning. Like, Dana White was on interview.

Hi. When I go to a hotel, I make sure they have a cold plunge. I’m like, shut up. You’re obviously on steroids or HGH or something, and that’s why you look the way you do. I met Dana, like Oh, you have?

I met him at UFC forty three when he was, had the little, like, bit of hair. He had gapped teeth. He was he was so polite. Oh, thank you for coming out. He was not the Dana we see today.

Right? He was much smaller and stat different person. Right? And now he’s, like, this health person giving health advice, and I’m always wary of that sort of thing. So Yeah.

You’re the expert. What do you think about these trends and these you know, we see, like, waves, like cryo, cold plunges. Yeah. What what do you think? I think I mean, the the usual I mean, people don’t like to hear this answer, but, again, it’s the the basics never go out of style.

So, like, the foundational stuff of recovery is still more important anyway. You know? And the hierarchy of recovery, you know, top three things I would say, based on science is number one is is sleep. Mhmm. Number two is most likely is nutrition.

Mhmm. Number two. And then number three is load management or managing your training effectively. Like, progressing things in a smart manner. Right?

Like, you don’t wanna be training full on, full intensity every week. Mhmm. You’re just killing yourself. You know? You can’t recover.

I see. So if you’re you gotta get those things down first before adding in any red light therapy, plunging your balls, or whatever people do. All that stuff. You know? I’m not saying that stuff is bad.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying if people jump to those things besides and they’re sleeping four hours a night Mhmm. And they’re super stressed. I wanna throw stress in there too, is number four. So sleep, nutrition, load management, or managing your training smart, and then managing your stress.

If those things are just all over the place, you’re gonna feel like shit all the time. Period. You could cryotherapy, and you could cold plunge all you want. You’re still gonna feel like crap. Makes sense.

So I would say get those things down first, which, you know, I would think most great athletes do. Then you can start adding in whatever you want to do. And if it feels good, keep doing it. It’s fine. Maybe it’s placebo ing you or, you know, a placebo effect.

Right. Right. That’s fine too. You know, as long as it’s not hurting you Mhmm. And you feel like it’s better for your recovery, do it.

You know? There’s some good science on those things. But the best science is on those four four things I just listed, which is, again, a sleep, nutrition, load management, and I would throw in managing your stress levels as well. I like that a lot. It’s so interesting, the the similarities, because in combat sports, there’s a similar way of thinking.

You see every day, you see, like, on Instagram, you’ll see, like, this cool new submission. But if you look at the statistics, the most commonly used submission to get a finish is the rear naked choke, the week one submission. After that, I believe it’s, like, arm bar. So, yeah, there’s thousands of really cool, really, exciting and flashy submissions. But the fundamentals, the basics, that’s what carries you.

And it’s Always. And I feel that’s kind of, like, without being an expert, I always was a little doubtful or suspicious of these very trendy health things because it’s, like, you’re not telling people, like you said, to sleep, to eat well, to manage stress. People don’t like to hear that, but yeah. Because it’s not as glamorous. It’s not as exciting.

You know? People wanna wear a gas mask and jump into a ice bath and, you know, do all this stuff. Yeah. Like, oh, this is gonna help me. It’s like, you know, you slept two hours last night and you were drinking all week and, like, you don’t need to do this.

Eat in the favela every day. Yeah. Yeah. Drink water and get Yeah. Eight hours of sleep and Trust me, you’ll feel better.

I don’t know about you, but, like, if I sleep, like, four hours four five hours these days, like, every night for a week, I’m I’m dead. I’m miserable, man. I feel like crap. We’re old men now. Yeah.

I’m miserable. I’m miserable. I’ll, like, be drinking way too much coffee, and it probably doesn’t even have an effect at certain point. I’m just, like, grumpy and my appetite’s all off. My Yeah.

Yeah. I’m thinking your digestion’s off. Everything goes off. Man, I will hold off making important decisions. I’ll be like, you know what?

I didn’t sleep well. Mhmm. And I have an important decision to make. I’m gonna get sleep and actually address this tomorrow because I know that my cognitive ability, at least for myself, has suffered greatly. Yeah.

From from lack of sleep. So, yeah, I I like that. You know, I think a lot of times these trendy things can be a Band Aid. You know, it’s they’re not really focusing on what you really, really need do. It’s a band aid.

Right? So Yeah. But, again, you know, like, I’m not trying to bad mouth those things. I’m just trying to emphasize that having those four things down first Mhmm. Then you could add in you know, those those are more supplemental things, like supplements.

You know, like taking whatever people take these days. Right. If you’re eating like crap, you could take all the creatine you want. Yes. But, you know, it’s not gonna help that much, you know.

Yeah. So get those things down first before, you know, jumping into gas mask, cryotherapy, like you said. I don’t know. I was making stuff up. Yeah.

At least, yeah. I’m just winging it here. I like that one. Is there any other, like, flashy recovery things you’ve seen? I’m trying to think of other ones.

Yeah. You know, the the ones that have been prevalent lately have been, like, the red light therapy Yeah. The cold punch been all over the place. You know, it reminds me of in strength and conditioning, like, ten years ago, everyone started doing battle ropes for everything in battle. And I’m like, those are cool.

I like battle ropes. I like them too. Yeah. Yeah. It was just so funny.

Like, all of a sudden, everyone’s just doing but I’m like, to get in shape for fighting, you need to spar. You need to shadow. But, again, the basics. That is a cool thing you can add to your training regimen. But somebody put it I forgot who said this, but they said, let’s say you have let’s just make up a number.

Let’s say you have twenty hours a week to train. I’m making up, this number. Mhmm. The fighter who spends nineteen hours of those twenty working their actual skills that they’ll be using in the ring or the cage Mhmm. Will be better than the guy who spends five hours sparring, five hour and then, you know, ten hours on the really cool trendy strength and conditioning stuff.

We’re not competing in CrossFit. We’re competing in fighting, and skills pay the bills in fights. The best fighters are the most skilled. Sometimes they’re not even in the best shape. I’m sure there’s fighters who can outperform somebody like Anderson Silva in his prime when it comes to, like, bench press and sprints and vertical jumping.

Right? Mhmm. But his skills were incredible. Right? Even when he was closer to 40 than 30, he was still beating people much younger, much bigger, much stronger Yep.

Because he had such great skills. So the more time you can dedicate to building and refining and sharpening your skills, the better. And that’s why I worry about the trendy stuff is it takes people’s focus away. They almost mark it completely secret. Like, oh, this is the missing thing you need.

It’s like, no. You need to jab. You need to, you know, you need to pivot. You need to keep your chin down. These things are more important.

The other stuff is, like, icing on the cake. Icing supplemental stuff, like I said. Yeah. Let’s build the perfect fighter. Okay.

So we talked about mobility, flexibility. Right. Right? Which is very important. Mhmm.

What else would you throw on there? Endurance, probably. Right? Not getting tired? Absolutely.

How important is that, would you say? Oh, man. You see fighters like, Nick and Nate Diaz who are not explosive, are not very fast, but their endurance allowed them to put a pace on their opponents that their opponents could not keep up with, especially in the later rounds. Mhmm. So endurance also gives you confidence.

When you are fatigued in a fight I know this person. When you are fatigued Okay. Your confidence is shot. I remember This happened to you? Oh, yeah.

In one of my fights, it was my third pro fight, at the end of the first round, and this was probably the fight I had done the most strength and conditioning for. Like, I worked with my strength strength and conditioning coach two or three times a week religiously, and we were man, I thought I was not gonna get tired in the fight. After the first round of five minutes, I was like, how am I gonna fight the second round? I looked over. My opponent couldn’t get up, and he ended up getting carried out in a stretcher.

I was like, yes. What? Yes. And no one knew besides me that I was so exhausted. I was like, man, how am I even gonna pick my hands up this round?

I thought you were gonna say, like, he’s already standing up over here. But he was he was even worse than me. Thank goodness. We’re doing push ups or something like that. Standing up in the corner, like, not breathing heavy.

But No. He was he was I don’t know. I I beat the hell out of him the first round luckily. So I looked over and he just wasn’t getting up. And Was it from fatigue or damage?

For him, I think it was a mix of both. Yeah. I I I struck him quite a bit. It wasn’t like anything crazy, but it was just a accumulation of strikes. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I was very accurate. Wow. Yeah.

With, like, 100%. So you’ve never had the opposite where you look over and that guy’s just, like, ready to go and you’re done tired. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. That’s gotta stop.

I kept the poker face, so no none of my teammates or coaches knew I was fatigued. So when I watched the video back now, it it’s that’s a fight that’s on YouTube too. It’s, Rami Dawood versus You could see Did you watch that last time? I think I did. Watched, I don’t remember.

Oh, we watched my fight when I was 17, my first ever amateur fight, I believe. Right? When I was, Could we pull that one up? Just It’s Rami Dawood versus. He’s a guy wearing pink polka dot shorts, so you won’t this guy is the only guy too who I’ve not become friends with after the fight.

He kept, like, talking shit, wanted to rematch. That’s unfortunate. Yeah. It was really I’ve been friends with every other one of my opponents, including one who turned out to be a literal then I, you know, dissociated. I I that was oh, sorry.

This one. That’s the shout out to What’s your No. What’s your name? No. I’m not being very sarcastic.

Yeah. Maybe take that out. Just so people don’t know. Right. Maybe take that.

Was Romeo. No. The guy that for this fight was, so it’s me versus And sometimes I say comment like that. People will not know that I’m being sarcastic, but they’ll say no. But Especially, yeah, on YouTube.

Yep. Exactly. Right. Especially nowadays with, yeah, people throwing up signs. This is a clip.

Yep. Well, I’ve edited that out. Yeah. So this is When was this? What year is this?

This was 2012 maybe. November of twenty twelve. And I watched all of his fights, and all of his fights, he immediately shoots for a takedown. And in this fight, he didn’t. Oh, yeah.

So I was shocked. I was waiting for him to take me down. And because he’s a wrestler, he didn’t shoot. And so this round had a pretty good pace. Like, we there was not one moment of us just stalling or inaction.

So the pace of this round, really, really fatigued me. But luckily, he could not continue after this five minute round. Wow. I finally woke up and realized he wasn’t gonna take me down. So I initiated the clinch, close distance.

He landed good knees to my body, which fatigued me as well. Very, very aggressive pace. He took this fight on short notice. Okay. So I feel like that was one of the reasons he came out Yeah.

Guns blazing like, okay. This is my shot to to finish the fight. I see. And it was a good strategy. It was really, really tough.

He was gonna see another good knee to the body. And I became the wrestler with no wrestling background. I’m like, okay. Let me try to take him down. He sees Yeah.

Clinching, throwing his knees. Finally, once I got an under hook, this is one of my good takedowns here. I I do, like, a outside trip. Oh, nice. Able to finally calm him down because, yeah, he was really, really aggressive on the feet.

So, yeah, the the fight goes. It’s it’s a whole, you know, like, four minutes or so that’s gonna Of this. See here. Yeah. I mean, it’s a lot have I go for leg locks.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s a it’s a good it’s a good fight. But after this fight or after this round, pardon me, you could see it. If you wanna fast forward to the end of this round, you’ll see the the scenario happen.

So, yeah, it was a it was a good fight. I I encourage people to to check it out. It was very exciting. Very, very fast paced. We’re bantamweight, hundred and thirty five pounds.

Then at the end, I’m going for a leg lock. I thought I was gonna get him. So I put a lot of energy into applying this leg lock. Finally get out. He goes for one himself.

Round’s over. I am exhausted here. I am so so he’s noticed he’s not getting up. Yeah. He’s even more nervous.

And I didn’t notice that at this point. So I’m putting my hands up like, how am I gonna fight in this second round? I started looking over. I’m like, you know, okay. Is he tired?

I was thinking about throwing a punch or two there. Yeah. Mhmm. And so finally when I found out that, no, he’s not getting up. You’re like, oh, thank God.

Yep. There it is. That’s more relief than happiness. So, like, thank God there’s no second round. That was basically what I was going through.

So you said this fight you trained the most for. Right? I did the most for sure. Exhausted? Do you think you overtrained?

I think I overtrained. I think the strength and conditioning that we did was not sports specific. I think, again, if I was competing in CrossFit, I was ready to go. I was battle roping up a storm, tire flipping, sledgehammer on the tires, so I was ready for the CrossFit. It looked cool.

Yeah. It looked great. I was physically like, I remember my weigh in picture for that. It looked like Bruce Lee. On that one.

Yeah. Man, I was I thought I wasn’t gonna get tired all three rounds. Mhmm. I was exhausted after this first round. So Wow.

I really learned a lot about realistic training and sports specific training. And at the time, strength and conditioning at this level for pro fighters was relatively new. So we’re dealing with coaches who hadn’t really worked with combat sports athletes for that long. So they were training us the same way they train a football player, a track athlete, a baseball player. They didn’t really know how to train us fighters.

Yeah. So you’re you’re probably a little overtrained, I would say, and you weren’t doing more sport specific things. And again, that goes along with what I mentioned before, which is training management. You know, managing your load, your loads, especially for a fighter, you want to peak at the right time. Right?

You don’t want to be exhausted going into your fight where, you know Absolutely. So probably whoever that was, that coach, you know, wasn’t well versed in training for MMA and also, managing, you know, recovery and load, for you. You’re absolutely right. I remember in this fight, my my calves were sore because several days before the fight, my strength and condition coach was having me do full on sprints. Like, we did one of the hardest workouts of the training camp maybe several days before the fight.

So I’m going into this fight sore. I didn’t feel fresh. I felt fatigued. Again, I looked like I was in shape. And I I was in shape, but I think overtraining was a big part of it.

You know? At that time, we were thinking you can’t train enough, and the more you train, the better. And now I know that is not the case at all. So let’s say there was a a second round in that fight. What do you think you would have started doing I would have the second round?

Attempted to clinch immediately and take him down, get top position, try to, you know, be as heavy as possible, and until I gained some energy, and then I would have picked up the ground pound, maybe looked to pass guard. Sometimes staying in a fighter’s guard is better because when you pass the guard, that’s when you’re gonna create a scramble. Scramble. Yep. So you see fighters sometimes stay in their opponent’s guard on purpose because that’s where you could really slow the pace down.

Mhmm. Like, if you get mount, the fighter on bottom is going to move very aggressively to get out because they recognize that’s such a bad position. Whereas when you’re in their guard, they might think, oh, okay. Maybe I’ll land some elbows from here. Maybe I’ll get my triangle choke that I always hit in practice.

So you can slow that pace down a little bit. So I would have tried to do that, just recover for a minute. You know? All I needed was a minute or so to recover. Yeah.

And that minute break between rounds, it goes by so quickly. Like, it does not feel like it feels like ten seconds. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I would have fought. I wasn’t gonna give up, but my arms were just dead.

I was like, how am I even gonna cover my face this round? You know? And I’m a yeah. It was it was mentally, that really gets that really hits you when you say twice. About that.

Yeah. Yeah. That you’re fatigued. My confidence went from, like, a 10 at the beginning of I was like, I’m gonna kill this guy Yeah. To when I was fatigued, my confidence is probably, like, a three.

Man. Yeah. It’s it’s so going back to your question, building the perfect fighter, is endurance important? It is so important. To be able to set a high pace and maintain it and know that you can maintain it for the duration of a fight Mhmm.

Is such a confidence booster. Yep. So we got endurance. Yep. We got mobility, flexibility.

What else do you think we need for the perfect fighter? So are we talking physical attributes? Yeah. We’re talking physical attributes first. First, and we’ll go into more mental stuff.

Yeah. So we said mobility. We said Endurance. Endurance. Yep.

I think, you know, speed and power is amazing. If you have both, that’s wonderful. So that right there, physically, you have a very, very capable fighter with with those qualities, with those attributes. Those three things. Let’s go for mental stuff then now.

Mentally, what do you think a fighter needs to be successful? I think, confidence is so important and true confidence. Again, not not delusion, not arrogance, not a overinflated ego. Real confidence that’s built by training and having finding success in training and competition is you can’t beat that. I mean, some fighters when you they’ll talk to you after the fight when they face people like the Jon Jones, Anderson Silva’s, they will admit after the fact that I knew I was done as soon as I walked in the ring.

You just can tell that this person is supremely confident. You could feel that. You could feel, you know, in weigh ins right before the fight’s about to start. You could feel what level of confidence your opponent has. And when your opponent’s confidence is far greater than yours, it is it’s terrifying.

Do you have an example of when you felt like your confidence wasn’t on your opponent’s level? I remember in my first amateur fight that we watched, the last time I was here, I remember I thought you know, I felt like Superman. I’m 17 years old, you know, super delusional about my abilities. And I remember when I saw my opponent, he was, like, nodding as if he, like, couldn’t wait for the fight to start. Yeah.

I was like, woah. What’s why is he so eager? What does he know that I don’t know? And that kinda messed with me a little bit. So sometimes that that poker face, that just even if you don’t have the skills to back it up, the confidence can really get in your opponent’s head.

So I think confidence confidence in your abilities is best. That is such a factor in in combat sports because you need to know when you’re in a bad spot or when you lose a round. You might lose the first two rounds. There’s one round left. You still have to believe wholeheartedly that you are going to win this fight in the third round where you see other fighters, they break as they lose.

They mentally break. They think they can’t win. Yeah. If you think you can’t win, you’re right. You know, you’re gonna perform Yeah.

In that way. Right? Unfortunately. Yeah. Okay.

So you got, yeah, confidence. What else? What about, like, mental resilience? Let’s say, like, nothing’s going wrong in the fight. Like, when you’re super confident Mhmm.

But something’s going wrong. Right. How important is it to be resilient against, you know, things that aren’t going your way, would you say? Super important, I would say. Yeah.

Super important. You know, the the mental aspect of combat sports can’t be emphasized enough. It is so, so important. You will see mediocre athletes do very well because of, you know, the things that we’ve talked about. Yeah.

Yeah. Again, this is not the the NFL combine. You are not being judged solely on your physical capabilities. Fighting is very much about your confidence, your poker face, you know, your ability to take a hard shot and not show that it has phased you. Yeah.

I always tell my students you could feel any way you wanna feel. You could feel, oh, man. That was a crazy punch. I don’t know if I could take much more of that. But don’t let your opponent know.

Don’t show it. Right? Right. So the poker face is so important. The composure is so important.

Mhmm. How you look between rounds, your body language, you know, are you, like, slumping and, you know, all of that is so, so important because you might feel like you had a bad round, but then you look over the corner, you see your opponent and their body language looks defeated and you’re realizing, okay. I actually I can beat this person. Right? So it’s like a chess match mentally.

Right? It’s I was gonna say as a fan, you can see that. You know, even through the TV, you can see, like you said, between rounds, somebody’s just, like, you know, hands on knees, slouched over, just gasping for air. Right. And the other guy seems more, like, composed and ready to go.

But it’s definitely something you can see visually, you know, even through the TV as a fan. But, super important. Yeah. Very important. Anything else, the perfect fighter needs?

Coachability is so Okay. Being able to be coached and being able to adapt and adjust. Great fighters can the greatest on the fly can change their strategy. The good fighters, they come in with a game plan. If it doesn’t work, you see their their confidence is shot, and they break.

They break mentally, and they their performance suffers greatly. Great fighters can change their tactics on their own once they have a certain amount of experience. Okay. When they’re still up and coming, that’s when you’re coaching and or sorry. Being coachable is so important.

Sure. Not being stubborn, being able to adjust, being able to recognize that maybe your plan a isn’t working, but you have plan b, plan c, plan d, and your coach is giving you advice. And if you could follow that, you see athletes that have great relationships with their coaches. It’s almost like the coach is playing a video game. The coach will call something out.

The athlete will respond immediately. So being coachable is probably one of the most important things. And that’s how things yeah. Being able to listen, adjust, and adapt is so important. Such a chaotic sport like MMA, like boxing, like kickboxing.

Anything else would you say? I I always heard, like, longer limbs helps too. It it definitely helps, you know, especially depending on your fighting style. Right? Like, reach, you can’t teach reach.

Right? There you go. Yeah. You can’t teach Jon Jones has the wingspan greater than heavyweights. Right?

A light heavyweight. That makes him tough to to get past. He’s gonna kick your knees. He’s gonna poke you in the eye. You know, he’s gonna extend his hand.

Yep. So, yeah, reach is very, very important. And we see it now a lot of long, blanky, lean fighters that don’t look physically imposing but are some of the best fighters. Yair Rodriguez, Jon Jones. Right?

A lot of these fighters that don’t look intimidating as far as their physiques, but they are incredible fighters because of that reach, and that wiry Sean O’Malley. Sean O’Malley looks like he can’t do a push up. Right? But he’s one of the best fighters in the bantamweight division. Yeah.

Because he has that for that weight class, he has that reach. He knows how to use his reach, long punches, long kicks, keeping people at bay. That’s another way to have a long career is to keep people away from you so you’re not getting hit as much. The fighters that love the firefight and that, you know, dramatic high action fights, they tend to have exciting fights but much shorter careers. That’s why, you know, even Floyd Mayweather always said, you know, the key is to, you know, hit somebody Mhmm.

Hit them, but not get hit. And people always kinda like, you know of of course, it’s not fun to watch on TV because, you know, maybe it seems like he’s running. But, you know, you’re not trying to get hit. Right. You don’t want that.

Right. Right. You can contest for it because one hit and you’re done. That’s it. It can happen.

That’s it. But Floyd was very good at, you know, defensively, footwork, all that stuff, getting away from his opponent. So I think that’s super important too, is being smart. Absolutely. Range, you know, controlling the distance, all that stuff.

You’re right. Or as who was it? I was watching someone’s YouTube channel. Mhmm. I think DJ, Demetrius Johnson, become the void or something like that.

Have you heard this? I haven’t heard him talk about that though. What he’s referring to. But he would say, you know, the void is in between, you know, fighter a and fighter b to control that void and manage it correctly, you know, close distance or get out of there fast, you know. That is so that’s such a great way of pointing it.

Another way, I forget the fighter. Another fighter that mentioned this, he says that the fighter who controls the space between the two people. Right? I think it’s with DJs. Yeah.

It’s that’s so true. And that’s those are, like, the nuances of striking that you can’t teach through just, like, jab, cross, hook, or jab, cross, slow kick. Right? These are the the aspects of striking that a lot of coaches don’t teach. They just teach you how to punch, but they don’t teach you why you should throw the punch at what time.

Right? And that’s really, really important. So, yeah, controlling space, managing distance. Yep. These things are so, so important.

Again, these are very glam managing distance isn’t the, you know, hey. Today’s class. We’re gonna work on managing distance. You’re not gonna get an enthusiastic response from your Mhmm. Your students, but it’s so important.

It will pay off in the long run. Footwork distance, not the flashy stuff like we talked about. Absolutely. That’s fun. You add that to your game.

Once your fundamentals are cemented and you have the fundamentals, that’s when you could, one, break the rules. So I always tell my students, Muhammad Ali didn’t learn how to box with his hands down. He learned how to box like everybody on the planet learns. Hands up, chin down, point your shoulder at your opponent, you know, the same basics. Once he mastered those basics, he discovered he had such great reflexes and vision and footwork that he could kind of fight with his hands down to bait you so that he could counter.

But you don’t learn from day one how to fight that way. Mhmm. So the flashy stuff comes later. You have to earn the right to do the flashy stuff, in my humble opinion. Gotcha.

How long did it take you to learn the fundamentals, would you say? I would say so it depends on what fundamental. Some fundamentals are easier to learn than others. So learning a jab, it’s easy to learn a jab, but to master a jab, I don’t think you’ll ever master a jab. I think even the greatest boxers will admit I have not mastered the jab because that’s how that’s how, like, high levels, you know, this this game is at this point.

So I think it takes let’s say, on average, it takes a solid two years of, you know, five, six days a week Okay. To get and that’s That depends, though. Right? I mean, everybody’s an athlete. Yeah.

Some people might take them ten years. Some people might take them one, you know, their once in a lifetime talents. Maybe one year, they have their fundamentals down. But that doesn’t mean you stop working them because they could always be sharper. Just because you know how to jab doesn’t mean your jab is at its best or it’s the best that it’s ever going to be.

So I always tell, my students when they get bored with working the jab, working the rear naked choke, working on back control, working on, you know, the clinch, working on throwing a push kick, I tell them that the greatest fighters it’s not they have techniques that you don’t know. You know almost all the techniques that the greatest fighters know. They could just do them better than you. That’s what makes them so good. Yeah.

There’s no secrets. Everything’s out in the open. Right? This idea of the the mysticism behind martial arts that’s gone. The, oh, yeah.

I could poke you here and you’re gonna pass out. Stuff that, you know, we heard I heard a lot as a kid. Oh, death touch or there’s a secret technique or we can’t teach this. It’s too dangerous. Or I can’t my my instructor can’t fight in the UFC.

He would kill people. It’s like, well, have him go there and let him be a, you know, world champion. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

So that stuff, thank goodness, is no longer. So we can see everything. We know what works, and we know that technique’s done well. That’s what works at the highest level. Yeah.

Yeah. I was gonna anything else of, the perfect fighter you think would have? Man, to in this day and age, being able to market yourself is important because you might be a there’s a bunch of great fighters that are 25 and o in different parts of the world that we will never hear about because either they or their management or whoever is not marketing them correctly. I am of the belief that the UFC champion at any weight class is not necessarily the best fighter in the world. Right?

There are so many fighters now. And we see fighters from the UFC go to, like, one FC and lose. Right? We’ve seen that happen. So marketing is so, so, so important.

So being able to talk, to promote yourself Yeah. To keep your fans interested in your day to day, your training, your life, your personal life. That’s a big part of it now. That’s something we’re learning too. Yeah.

Right. We’re doing this right now. Like, this is something I’ve, you know, ever really done in my life. But, you know, having our own businesses is, you know, we have to tell people what we do. You know, I’m the physical therapist.

I help people get out of pain. You’re the the the sports, combat sports coach. You help people learn how to fight and to defend themselves. Right. And it is a lot easier these days with, you know, social media, with the Internet.

You could just, you know, we could just do this, start talking about what we do. Sure. And hopefully, somebody is like, yeah. You know, let’s you know, I could see Jerry for my knee injury or I could go see coach Romy to learn how to better box. Right.

But how do you so if if you have, like, a a new prospective new person Mhmm. Coming in and they’re unsure about wanting about fighting in general, how do you I I don’t wanna say how do you convince them to Right. But how do you persuade them into, like, being, like, hey, like, this is what fighting is all about. Like, what’s your, ways of getting them into your your academy or your into PSC? No.

Great question. What I deal with the most is people coming in right away saying that they wanna fight. Okay. And that is a it’s a tough because you don’t wanna be a dream killer. You don’t wanna tell them, I’ve heard this a thousand times, and maybe 10 people have actually gone through and been able to do it.

So I always tell people that’s wonderful that you wanna compete. Let’s start out by training. Let’s see how you like the training. Let’s see if you could stay consistent. Let’s see how you like sparring.

Let’s see how you like, you know, this whole aspect, the tough aspect of combat sports training, sparring, dealing with not doing well in certain rounds. Some people can’t take it mentally when they start, trading with people who are better than them or more skilled than them. You know, they quit or they get discouraged. So you don’t wanna be a dream killer, but you also don’t wanna be like, oh, yeah. You’re definitely gonna be a UFC champion.

Come on in. You know? Here’s sign up. Here, what’s your credit card info? Right?

So, and then on the other hand, when people are tentative, it’s the same strategy. Try it. You might be an amazing competitor, and you might just not be aware because maybe traditional sports didn’t work for you. I didn’t know I was a good athlete because I never had an interest in traditional sports until I got into combat sports. I discovered I was a good athlete.

I just need to find a sport that was right for me. Yeah. So a lot of people come in not believing that they could be successful at combat sports, and they happen to do very, very well. Mhmm. So I always tell people, train.

Train first, See how you like it. If you could train, the training will take you some place. You might end up being a coach. You might end up saying, this sucks. Let’s go to pickleball.

Let’s do, you know, ping pong. Or you might say, wow. I love this, and I wanna focus on this. But the main thing is the training. See how you mentally and physically respond to the training aspect, and that will determine what you’re capable of.

Yeah. Right. Speaking of pickleball, I’ve got so many pickleball injuries recently. You’re kidding me. It’s I mean, it’s catching on everywhere.

No way. What’s the most common injury? I’ve seen a lot of knee injuries with pickleball. I mean, it it it could be whatever. But Okay.

Just people coming in or calling like, hey. This happened with pickleball. I was like, oh, okay. Really? Do you tell them to make up a better reason for their injury and then come back to you after?

Okay. No. Have you tried pickleball? I have not. No.

I have not. Me neither, but I’m kind of intrigued by it now. Maybe that’s our next, YouTube thing is Should we do it? Yeah. Doctor Jerry, coach Romy, Flint, Drive Freak sucks.

I was driving it terrible. Yeah. It looks kinda fun. It does look fun. I’ve heard that.

Happy tennis or whatever. That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. Less athletic tennis.

Right? I shouldn’t have said it. Shout out to all the pickleball players. Like, you know, in between ping pong and tennis. Mhmm.

You know what I mean? It’s pickleball. I would think. Unless I’m way off, someone can just in the comments tell me, like, hey, you’re an idiot about pickleball, which is fine. I’m very not well versed in pickleball, obviously.

I’m learning more through patients that have, you know, pain and they tell me about pickleball. But it’s not my forte. That’s for sure. I see. Okay.

Hey, I mean, any activity that people enjoy that’s just massive. I’m not trying to rattle on anything. I’m just trying to joke it. Just am I, you know, I just don’t know about it. Right.

Right. Right. We poke fun at everything. Yes. Yes.

This is how we are. We’re sarcastic people. That’s right. That’s what we do. Anything else?

I mean, well, I think that’s it. I mean, you wanna plug everything again? We should talk about, like, well, next time we’ll talk about what I’m thinking in my head. But, you wanna plug all your stuff again? Yeah.

I’d love to. You know, my academy is Phoenix Sports app. That was fast. Sorry. It just goes by so fast.

That really went by very quickly. I always have a good time chatting with you. And, I received a lot of great feedback, about you, about your show. You’re a superstar. Thank you.

You guys are a superstar. Thank you. Shout out to Enrique who commented about, my good looks. Yes. Great comment.

Keep them coming. Hopefully, people other than Enrique also comment on Very handsome man, coach Romy here. He is, You’re not single, though. Right? You’re No.

I’m not. No. No. I was gonna say he’s single, but you’re not. But still, keep the comments coming.

You know, you never know what’s what’s gonna happen. Right? So, Throw him your number in the comments. Yeah. He’ll no.

Okay. So yeah. PSE. Yeah. Shout out to, you know, anyone in the Vial, Naperville area, Chicago Suburbs, if you’d like a good gym with coaches who care, please come to PSC.

Shout out to my coaches who helped PSC run, coach Jaime, coach Brooks who, helped me, teach. Enrique, who we just mentioned, actually covered some classes for me while I was on Riyadh. So shout out to Enrique. Thank you for your help. To you, Enrique.

Yeah. He’s a super we’ve mentioned more than that. Yeah. We love your presence. No.

He’s a man. I can’t wait for a while. When I first saw the comment, I was like, oh, okay. You got a super fan. Uh-huh.

Right. Which is fine. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. Yeah.

Anything else? And, my students, I have students competing, March 9. Many of them are making their competition debut. I’m really proud of them. We have Mina, Miguel, Aaron, Pete, Sophie, and Dan.

Six students. So last year when we went to this competition, we had one competitor, Pete. One year later one year later, we have six. Shout out to all of them. It’s just been organic.

You know, I don’t push competition on my students. They’re the ones that wanna compete and test themselves. That’s awesome. Good for you. Have to, like, reign them in a lot.

You know? I was gonna yeah. We can talk about that next next time. Yeah. I don’t know how to slow people down.

But Shout out to them, and, you’re doing great. I’m very proud of you. And, yeah. Shout out to doctor Jerry for having me on. Oh, well, thanks.

Anytime. No. I appreciate it. Episode three with you since you’re the, you know, super famous guy that And, yes, let’s mention that our episode had the most views out of all of us. 99 right now.

So if somebody else wants to watch for that extra 300 Please. I’ve been getting recognized on the street. Yeah. I’ve yeah. Money just through the roof now.

Just fed people. Yeah. But, yeah. Instagram? Rami the Giant and then my academy, Phoenix Sports Empire.

Give me a follow. If you have questions about combat sports, even if you can’t train at my gym, you’re not in the area, you could hit me up. I love to train with people. Yeah. DM us.

DM coach Rami about combat sports training. DM me about pain injury stuff. My newsletter is PT Handbook. So it’s in my bio and my Instagram, profile, which is at a p t doctor g. But I send it out biweekly.

So it’s about, you know, just general ways to integrate physical therapy into your daily life. So it’s it’s a quick read. It’s nothing crazy. It’s it’s free. So sign up for that.

It’s biweekly, like I said. Hit me up if you have any questions about pain and injury, like I said. And then, yeah. Thanks, bro. Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Do it again. Yes, sir. Can’t wait.

Yep. Peace. We’ll see you guys next time. Adios.