Cory Sandhagen reveals how visualization and sports psychology—five years of weekly sessions with Joey Fritz—transformed his fight mindset, turning losses like Sterling’s chokeout into brutal motivation. His 13-pound water-cutting routine and UFC Performance Institute recovery methods highlight MMA’s evolving science, while debates on weight-class flexibility (e.g., Adesanya vs. Blachowicz at 193 lbs) and ethical tactics (like Paul Harris’ sweat tricks) expose the sport’s tension between skill and exploitation. Sandhagen’s discipline—daily saunas, muscle activation therapy, and technical drilling over endurance—underscores that true dominance comes from embracing discomfort, not just physical or mental limits. [Automatically generated summary]
When I'm up in the mountains sometimes camping or whatever, I feel like some shooting stars and some stars fall, which actually now that I'm saying it might be a little bit crazy.
Included as a committee comment on the Intelligence Authorization Act, the committee directs the Director of the National Intelligence in consultation with the Secretary of Defense to Why can't they just say UFOs?
Unidentified aerial phenomenon.
What's the difference?
Unidentified flying object?
They got tired of using that?
So they changed it to UAP? Why they gotta fuck with us?
There's a lot of steps that I think had to take place, but I think the first thing is I had to realize that you can't just walk into a cage and be flat as fuck and expect to compete with the best guys in the world.
You know, however they were feeling about COVID. And so I think maybe that had something to do with it, too.
But regardless, you know, he earned that win.
And when I went into that fight, it wasn't a matter of...
Because you hear guys say all the time, or at least I try to listen to as many interviews as I can and just kind of watch the demeanors of people when they walk into the cage.
And you hear guys say...
You just see that people are competing at different intensity levels all the time.
Some people go in and they're like this, you know, and they're ready to go and then other people walk in like they just woke up from a nap.
And so I try to learn by just watching and on that night I felt really relaxed and I felt really comfortable and really present.
And I realize that that's not where I need to be in order for me to be able to compete at my highest level.
It's kind of an interesting spot in the sport, too, right now.
We're kind of playing, you know, and this is just the way that things are.
I'm not trying to complain about it, but it seems like it's a lot of, you know, the fame game a little bit.
Like, if you fight someone really popular and you beat that person, that ranks higher than beating someone who's ranked higher or someone who's, you know...
And that's the game that we're in, and that's completely fine, and I know that I'm not one of those famous people.
And I've been knowing that for a long time, where I'm like, man, like...
Eventually this shit will start getting going.
I know how good I am.
I've been training for a really long time.
I've been in the room with some really good guys.
I'm like, okay, this shit just has to get going.
I'll just trust the process, whatever.
The last two have definitely really clicked.
But going back to the point of...
Where I was in that fight, I actually learned a lot from Sterling.
I learned that when someone walks into the cage and they have that level of intensity, it can be...
Intimidating, you know, if you're not at that point.
And I kind of, you know, afterwards I was asking one of my military buddies because how much realer can it get than like actually, you know, having to kill someone, you know?
And I remember asking my military buddy and I was like, man, how do you guys deal with that level of intensity?
And he was like, man...
When you're standing on the other side of that door and you're about to kick in that door, you need to understand that it's either you or it's them when you kick that door down.
And now when I walk into the cage, it's right when I walk in, right from the bell, it's like it's either me or it's that person when I kick down that door.
Do you think there is a level of intensity that's sustainable in a three-round fight versus a level of intensity that's sustainable in a five-round fight?
Or do you think it's just a matter of preparation?
I mean, I have a frame where I'm not going to knock anyone out bad with my upper body and stuff, but man, your legs are like big-ass parts of your body.
You don't need to throw them very hard in order for it to really, really score.
Yeah, and if you can't get your feet out of the way of that, and you just want to use your elbow, you're definitely way big time opening up your head for a wheel kick, too.
So, I think it's probably a compilation of everything.
One, I think Christian has a very creative mind.
And it's not super, you know, like we don't hang on to any one type of traditional martial arts over the other or whatever.
We just, you know, try to take as much good as we can from each one.
But I know in my experience, I used to love watching old school K1 fights.
Those were like my all-time favorite fights to watch.
So, I think when it started, it was kind of a hybrid of me watching a lot of the WEC, specifically like Dominic Cruz.
I thought his style was dope, you know, like all of the footwork and stuff.
Watching that, watching Christian and having Christian teach me, and then watching like a lot of really solid K1 guys, like Andy Sauer was one of my favorite fighters.
I gotta go train with him a couple times in Holland.
It's something that's controllable that I think, or at least in my experience of my past, it's something that's told to you that isn't controllable.
You either have it or you don't.
I don't believe that shit.
It's practice.
It's a lot of...
So I'll practice before sparring.
So every time I go into sparring now, before I leave the house, for about 20 minutes, I'll sit and visualize all of the techniques that I'm trying to work.
And I'll see it from a third person's point of view.
So that's how they say that you're supposed to learn techniques the best, is you visualize yourself doing them and not a first person view.
But you're supposed to use the first-person view when you're actually trying to generate the emotions that you'll be feeling before a fight, which makes sense.
And a lot of it, I think in the beginning when you're working with a sports psych, it's just putting out a lot of fires.
Like, hey, this is stressing me out.
Hey, I'm really scared about this.
Hey, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
And I would say that that's kind of what it was for me in the beginning, which was super helpful because then I could start really enjoying it.
And then now, in the last year or so, we've been really hammering down on some like, hey, what's going to make me a better performer instead of what's going to bring me into the fight with a lot less fear and anxiety and stuff like that.
Like, I was watching, I think maybe it was on here, or an interview with Dustin Poirier, and he was saying that before he went and fought McGregor, he felt that way, where he was feeling really flat, and this and that, and I remember him saying that his striking coach, who had a bunch of kickboxing fights, was telling him, like, hey man, like, that's normal, like, As I was listening to that, I was like, that works for Dustin, and that's good, but that doesn't work for me.
It's like every fighter has to figure out what process works best for them, and it's going to be different for a wrestler versus a striker, a tall guy versus a short guy, a guy who's fast versus a guy who's got a lot of cardio.
It's really going to depend entirely on your style and who you are as a human.
Well, he's, you know, he's very respected in jujitsu, you know, in terms of like the guys who train with him, guys who know how good he is, guys, you know, high level black belts.
That guy is always moving forward and he puts a lot of pressure on you.
Aljamain has this crazy style, you know, if the fight turns into a striking contest where he's utilizing a lot of movement, a lot of movement.
That's something he and I talked about on the podcast, like he needs a lot of cardio to fight that way.
And what's interesting about Piotr is that he is really good at picking his moments and pacing himself and then slowly but surely accelerating the pressure.
You saw that in the Aldo fight.
I think he stopped Jose in the fourth round.
But that was what was happening.
You could see Aldo was starting to wilt.
You know, Aldo is a sprinter and it's hard for him for whatever reason to maintain endurance over the course of a long fight.
And that's been the case throughout his entire career.
I mean, you go to the Mark Hominick fight.
Or a Ricardo Lamas fight, I think it was, where at the end of the fifth round, Lamas was on top, beating him up.
And he won the decision because he was beating Lamas up for most of the fight.
Pretty sure it was Lamas.
I want to say it's hominic.
Maybe it was the case in both of those fights.
But the point is, he's had issues with his cardio in his career before because he's super jacked and everything he does is super fast.
Do you feel like, because, I mean, you get to watch these shows live, are you reading the guy's demeanors when they're walking out and when they're walking into the cage and are you really trying to read them and be like, are they ready, are they not ready?
I felt like there's a heightened amount of nerves for Gilbert Burns.
I felt like, you know, because it's just this big moment.
And, you know, obviously performed really good out of the gate, but seemed to slow down early in the first round and then was pretty tired in the second round.
His mouth was open.
And I think it might have been an adrenaline dump.
It might have had something to do with it.
And I think that's a big factor.
Like here he is, all of a sudden, this is the dream.
You know, it's actually happening.
You've been thinking about it for years and years and years and all those days of training.
Every time you're tired and you're doing rounds in the bag or you're hitting the mitts, you're like, one day I'm going to be the fucking champion and all this is going to be worth it.
I mean, he had a rough goal at the top too though, right?
Like Usman was, I mean, from my knowledge, I don't know too well, but to my knowledge, he was like begging for that shot for a long time.
He was fighting the top guys, top guys over and over and over again.
And actually, you know, Usman's been training with us a little bit too.
And while I'm not super close with him, I'm super close to one of his main training partners, Carrington Banks.
And Carrington was telling me that he watched Usman go through the same thing that I feel like I was going through for a little bit too, where it's like, man, you just got to keep winning.
Super smart guy, but I think almost above him being smart is he's just so thoughtful, man.
With his game, he's just so thoughtful in the amount of...
You know, just thinking and, hey, can they do this?
Can they do this?
Can they do this?
Okay, I have an answer for this, this, and this.
Like, the guy has an answer for almost everything.
And I think that the way that he views things and the advice that he gives to me is just like so fundamental and like...
It just makes so much sense.
So an example of that would be, I have terrible posture usually.
Like it's getting a little bit better, but like before it was like this, like hunched over, I had neck issues, shoulders issues, back issues and all of that.
No, I had to, like, strengthen some shit, you know?
I think I was just too weak in a lot of areas, so I had to strengthen some stuff, but...
Ryan taught me, and it's super simple, but it makes a huge difference.
It's like, hey man, you can't be strong like this.
No one goes up to a squat rack and does this.
You squat like this.
And he's like, when you're grappling, you need to know when you need to be like this and when you need to be foldy and bendy and I'm longer and when to tangle people up and when not to tangle people up.
And You can't be strong like this.
So he was like, you need to fix that shit right away.
And that's just one of the examples.
I try not to talk too highly of him because I feel like I don't want to seem like I have a dude crush on the guy.
I think that one thing that separates jiu-jitsu and all the combat sports versus like football and maybe not football, but basketball, tennis, you know, all of those other ones is no one walks into a basketball game and is like, I might get knocked out tonight.
No one walks in with that extra anxiety.
While jiu-jitsu, you might not get knocked out, it's also like, this guy might rip my knee off.
Or this guy might choke me out unconscious in front of a bunch of people.
That's another really interesting part about combat sports, I think, too.
It's that extra level, and I think that's what makes it so different.
It's that extra level of...
Man, you have to worry about getting hurt.
In what world do you usually ever have to worry about getting hurt?
If you put on a warm-up thing, if you put on one of them plastic track suits or one of them sweat suits, those sauna suits, like a rubber suit, you could get super slippery.
If you do that right before you go into the octagon, you can get real fucking slippery.
You could take Abilene and rub it all over you like a lot of guys do before they train.
But you could do that and wash it off.
And even when you wash it off, you're still kind of slick.
I guarantee you people do it.
I don't know if Vander Lee Silva did it, but I know people accused him of doing it.
Vander Lee Silva, I think, put Vic's vapor rub all over his chest, too, and so he would grab guys and pull them in, and they'd get fucking Vic's vapor rub in their eyes and shit mixed with the sweat.
That's actually a thing, you know, like, I'll make sure that I'm using chapstick and stuff for the couple of weeks leading into a fight and make sure that I'm, like, moisturizing my face and stuff leading up to a fight because, I mean, I get real dry skin just because I'm so pasty.
You know, I go out into the sun for five minutes and everything's cracking.
It was a big controversy back in the day, where one of Anderson Silva's fights, they vaselined up his face, and then he takes his face, rubs his fingers, and he starts doing this.
He put the vaseline on his body, and everybody's like, what the fuck?
Because young fighters who are just starting to enter into their prime, they're constantly trying to add new things to their game.
They're working with different people.
They're constantly trying to improve because they don't feel like they're there yet.
And then some guys that have been there before, they've fought for the title, they've fought top contenders, and then you see this kind of pattern emerges, where they basically do the same thing, they fight the same way, and they're kind of protecting themselves from certain injuries that they have that might be chronic, and they don't grow and learn.
And you always wonder, is that because of the injuries and the age, or is that just because of the attitude as well?
Well, it's interesting if you look historically at the evolution of MMA, the difference between MMA in 1993 and MMA today in 2021 is almost unrecognizable.
I mean, there's a lot of the same techniques are applied, but the level is so fucking high now.
Sometimes you see guys making their debut, and I'll just be like, this is crazy!
I have one daughter that's really coordinated and super, super athletic and one daughter who doesn't give a fuck.
She likes to play sports and she plays lacrosse and basketball.
She likes sports and she does it.
She's not obsessed the way my other daughter is.
My other daughter's obsessed with technique and she does gymnastics and she can do all kinds of crazy shit and backflips and roundoffs and handsprings.
It's funny people that have never done anything like athletics.
It's funny watching them as adults try to do stuff.
I remember there's been a few guys coming to jiu-jitsu that had really never done anything.
They just decided, I'm going to just fucking try this.
And you'd see them trying to move their body, and they'd have a big belly and little small arms, and you're like, man, you've got a long road to go, but...
Kudos to you for just...
Because if you're an athlete, say if you're a guy who wrestled or maybe you did a lot of CrossFit or something, and then you enter into a Jiu-Jitsu class, well, hey, you got a lot of tools to work with.
You got a body that you're accustomed to moving around, you understand what it's like to push yourself.
But if you're a person who's never done anything, and then all of a sudden here you are with a gi on and someone's grabbing you and you're like, or you don't know what to do, that's a brave person to take that step.
I think jiu-jitsu is so good for like, because I'll teach the kids program at High Altitude Martial Arts to kickboxing, but like, man, like, I see a lot of adults, bro, they're just not familiar with the way that their body can move, you know?
Like, I sometimes imagine, I'm like, man, like...
Have you done anything like full throttle?
Like how many people you think haven't done shit full throttle?
It's evolving really quick, and I think probably a lot of it, man, is because, you know, like, you become a coach in MMA because you were probably a fighter.
When something I think is so early on, you don't even know how to teach those people.
You know what I mean?
If I'm in 1993 and someone's like, hey, we're doing no rules fighting and I'm a wrestler, I'm going to teach them all the shit that I know about wrestling.
I'm not going to weave out all of the things that are actually efficient for an actual fist fight.
I'm just going to teach them everything that I know about wrestling.
Now you don't have coaches that do that.
Now you have coaches that are like...
This is what's good for fighting.
This is what's good for fighting.
That filter is happening still.
I think that's why guys are getting so good so fast.
I mean, you can roll him and pin him with it, right?
And then a lot of the leg scrambling that I'm seeing from wrestlers, maybe they got it from jiu-jitsu or maybe jiu-jitsu got it from them, but I'm seeing a lot of similarities in the way that people tangle themselves and scrambles on the legs and stuff.
That's super interesting just to watch the two grappling worlds kind of mesh into one.
Well, the guillotine, not the guillotine like this one, but the guillotine in wrestling, or they would call it guillotine, became the twister in jiu-jitsu.
When you're in the back, like say if you're holding someone's back, you lock down on the left leg, you wrap their right arm around your neck, so you baseball bat their right arm, You wrap it around your head, grab the top of their head, and it's a terrible spine lock.
But it came from pinning someone that way.
So if you can get to the side of them and lock a hold of one leg and lean on them, you can get to a point where the guy's both shoulders are touching the mat.
I mean, I was looking at a couple pictures of me just from a couple years ago.
Because before that, I was always like, man, lifting just makes me tired for training.
I'm not going to lift hard, you know?
But I don't have that built.
Like I said, with the posture and adding in strength so that I can be posturally strong and my hips are strong so that I'm not hunched over and I'm not all twisted up because everything's kind of strong.
I used to be very averse to wanting to lift.
But dude, I swear my cardio has probably got two or three times as better just because I started lifting so much because now it's not as much effort to get someone off of me.
Honestly, a lot of focusing on it when you're lifting too.
But a lot of strengthening the hips makes all of this strong too.
The weaker your hips are, the more twisted you are, the more you're like this.
A ton of hip stuff, man.
Hip strength, everyone wants to have a really nice set of abs and all of this, but hip strength, I think, is the thing that will keep me good all the way up until I'm done training on Saturday.
But I started implementing a lot of what he does in my training routine, and I actually got one of those monkey feet things, if you don't know what that is.
It's a thing that you strap onto your shoe, and you can attach a dumbbell to it.
So you lift...
So, like, you know, for, like, hip flexors, to get them strong, it's kind of hard to do.
But if you want to be a strong runner or if you want to throw hard knees, like, that's really where the muscle comes from.
If you think about, like, throwing a hard knee, a lot of that is...
And also with kicks.
If you think about roundhouse kicks, like...
I've been kicking since I was a little kid, so I've got pretty decent hip flexor muscles, but I don't do an exercise to work them other than this stuff.
Maybe lunges work them a little bit, but using this monkey foot thing, you can actually lift weights with your hip flexors as you're lifting your knee up, and that's all that muscle.
But this guy has some really interesting perspective.
A really interesting perspective on strengthening all the muscles around your knee.
And he calls it knee over toes guy because traditionally, if you talk to someone, they'd say, hey, don't ever have your knee over your toes because it puts a lot of pressure on your knee.
It's bad for your knee.
And his idea is, no, build up to where you can have your knee over your toes easily.
And if you look at his Instagram, he does a lot of crazy Crazy shit.
Like where he jumps and lands with knees over toes and goes all the way down to the ground and then can spring back up.
Like this shit.
And this is a guy that's had like multiple leg surgeries.
And so look how he lands.
And he does a lot.
His Instagram, it's knees over toes guy is his Instagram.
But he's definitely got that monkey foot thing in there somewhere, Jamie.
And you see that pose that he's got in the middle there, Jamie?
Yeah, that one with the arrow.
So that's showing the...
What happened there?
That's showing the optimal position to strengthen, like to have that sort of, what do they call it, a split squat where you have that crazy angle where your knee is hanging way over your toes and obviously you build up to it slowly.
Like he's got Miriam Nakamoto.
Do you know who she is?
Yeah, multiple time world kickboxing champion, world Muay Thai champion, my friend Miriam.
Shout out to Miriam.
She's a beast and she has a pretty significant knee injury that she's trying to Recover from and she got a bunch of stem cells and shit shot in there.
But she's now doing a lot of this guy's program to strengthen all the muscles around it.
But see how he's into doing a lot of stuff that puts you in that position.
And, I mean, the dude can fucking...
do some crazy shit athletically, but he also uses all these examples of different athletes that have incredible explosive power with their legs, and they use these kind of exercises, and they're strong in these positions.
So he shows this split squat, which is really hard to do, man.
It's really hard to get down like that with that knee hanging way out over your toes and get all the way down so your back knee touches the ground and then pull yourself back up.
But he calls it dense strength.
You're strengthening all your tendons and all the muscles to stabilize the knee and put the knee in a good position.
For kicking things, man, and for grappling, I think a lot of guys could benefit from it.
Look how flexible the fucking dude is.
Look at that picture right there.
He does a lot of stuff on slant boards.
If you go to that one, the video that we were just on, Jamie, of him doing a full split.
Yeah, that one.
So he does a lot of stuff on slant boards.
It's like a slant board, which is good for stretching your calves out.
And I started doing this because of him, too.
And drop all the way down with a barbell and go all the way down to the floor.
And it's just tremendous hamstring stretch, but also strengthening.
And you see the kind of flexibility that this guy has because of it.
I mean, if you can scoot that...
The dude can go all the way down to a full split.
And look at that, he's doing a Zurcher squat grip, like where you put it in the crux of your elbow with weights.
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I don't know why he's showing someone getting slammed into a triangle.
Because what I'll do is I'll, like, hold on to, like, a chin-up bar like this.
And then I'll just do these fucking leg lifts with my...
And you can do leg curls with it.
You can do leg lifts.
But I feel like for a guy like you who already has a...
Fucking nasty flying knee that would make your knee even scarier.
Yeah, yeah, you know that knee you landed on Frankie was crazy I was by myself watching TV and I screamed out loud You know it was one of those oh Yeah, and that's a common thing in my house people like are you okay?
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I'm like watching the fights Yeah, that was a nasty one.
I would love to, because I'm a calm dude, like I'm a relaxed guy, like I don't get too high or too low about anything, like it'd be nice if I could perform at that level, you know, but that's not the case for me.
So I need to really, and that's why I do it before sparring, is I'll make sure no matter how tired I am, regardless of what's going on, you know, if I'm injured, if I'm, you know, overtrained, whatever it is, when it's sparring day, I'm making sure that I get myself to that same place.
Obviously not intense enough to where I'm going to hurt my training partners, but I'm making sure that I can replicate that headspace regardless of the situation.
It was really uncomfortable for me because I like Hinduism.
I like Eastern philosophy.
I like the idea of Buddhism and being really peaceful and having a Zen mind and not wanting anything and being really free from all the suffering of the world and trying to get there.
And that was kind of my philosophy, you know, up until I was choked out by Sterling and opened up my eyes and I hear him running around and celebrating and I was like, fuck that, you know?
Fuck that.
Everyone that I go into a fight now with, I'm really trying to hurt, you know?
Like, I want to be the guy that's running around the cage and they're opening up their eyes, you know?
And I didn't, you know, it's a different type of space to be in and it takes a lot of practice, especially for someone like me who isn't, you know, naturally like that.
But, you know, that's the game that we're in and that's what I'm trying to do now.
If I sit and think about it long enough, which I sometimes, you know, like, and not because of that fight, but just all of the shitty things, like you said, that happen after a loss, man.
Like, all the shitty conversations you have to have with people.
And that emotional pain, I think, is worse than physical pain.
And I remember after the first time I lost, I had like my own existential crisis a little bit where I had to, you know, Venture off and really question like who I was as a person where I where I was putting a lot of my identity just because that shit hurts so bad man and uh I remember like If I keep doing this It might happen again,
you know and I had to I had to like sit with that a little bit and I was like And you might not even get what you want out of this and then I was like damn and then I had to sit with that and then I was like But I'm really grateful for that because that was the real moment in my life where I was like, martial arts is my path.
That's what I'm doing.
I remember having the very lucid thought of when I was having those feelings of this could happen again.
You might not ever get into the UFC. You could be doing this and win some, lose some, and be a loser until you're 35, 40. And in my head, I was like...
Okay, you know, I'll sleep in a box.
I'll be a loser.
You know, as long as I get to do this with my life, like, I'll be that loser.
And kind of since then, that's when I was like, oh, I actually love this, you know?
I spent probably every other weekend or every weekend in the mountains hiking 14ers or just camping for about, you know, probably six months and just like really...
Uh, as, you know, corny as it might sound, you know, like, facing my ego, looking at, like, a lot of my identities and looking at, like, where I was placing my attachment in my life and, uh, and, you know, after kind of the six months of that and a lot of, like, experiences and stuff like that, uh, you know, I feel like I found my spirit and I feel like, uh, Yeah, that's kind of how I handled that situation.
I think one is that it reminds you how little you are.
It's good to be reminded that you're little.
It's also not good to think that what we're doing is not important because what we're doing is still important.
The relationships that we're building, the love that we're given and receiving is still super important, even though we're kind of a dumb species that's not going to be around for probably too much longer.
I really love that feeling.
I love the feeling of just taking a breath and being like, You know, I'm here with no one else.
There's, you know, it's just me and this and it's just here.
And that's like one special feeling that I feel like I never really experienced before.
I took all of that time.
And then I think too, it's just, you know, when you sit by yourself and you go to the mountains and you hike or I know that you like hunting.
I don't know if you go by yourself or what it is.
When you're by yourself, man, an hour can feel like a really long time.
And you kind of realize like...
There's a lot of shit happening in my head, man.
There's a lot of things happening.
There's a lot of voices happening in my head.
And when you just kind of sit and you listen to them and you kind of separate yourself from them sometimes and then question some of them sometimes, I think that you learn a lot of shit about what's going on in there that I don't think we know is going on in there when we're glued to the TV or we're glued to our phones and stuff like that.
Yeah, giving yourself a moment in the woods, there's a lot that's going on there.
One of the things that's going on is that the woods didn't even know you were alive.
Before you walked into this mountain, before you walked up this hill, You'd never walked there before.
These trees, these animals have no idea you're a thing.
They don't give a fuck about you.
They're just trying to...
They're surviving.
The trees are trying to get moisture and light and the animals are trying to get food and they're trying to stay alive and not be eaten.
And as you're walking there and you look over like...
Especially if you get to a mountain...
And you can look into a valley and see more mountains in the distance.
You realize, like, you could die here and things would just keep going on and you're totally insignificant.
But in your insulated little world, you look at yourself as being the center of the universe, you know, because you're the center of your own mind and your own ego.
And there's nothing other than, like, I've always said that that's one of the reasons why people that live in mountain towns and people that live by the ocean are so chill.
Because there's something about it that just lets you know, hey, motherfucker, look out there.
Like Colorado, when I lived there briefly and when I would drive up into the mountains above Boulder, I remember thinking, man, if this was a painting, it would be worth so much money.
Yeah, it's, you know, someone's trying to, you know, they're trying to take whatever that feeling is and you see something incredibly beautiful and then put it into something and give people that awe-inspiring feeling when you're looking at it.
Well, when everything was going great, it's exciting.
Yeah, that's true.
I have friends that are comics that love living in New York because you live in an apartment, you hop in an Uber, you drive to this club, you go to that club, you're hanging around, there's all this stuff to do, there's all these restaurants, let's go to this bar and that bar and everything's hopping and bam, bam, fuck you!
There's all this energy.
There's something happening constantly.
I always like visiting.
I don't like living like that.
I like birds chirping and shit.
I'm not interested in all that honk honk, fuck you.
We were just walking up the street just yesterday and where the Capitol building is in comparison to the road with all of the shops and all of that stuff.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's like a thing in 10 years where everyone kind of, you know, or maybe not everyone, but a lot of people have their own helicopter.
The idea of a helicopter, they thought when they first created it, was going to be like a flying car and everyone would have a helicopter instead of a car.
Once you're up in the air, you're just like, we're going to go here, then we're going to go there.
Because it's not high enough to where it interferes with plane flight.
You're just hovering over buildings.
But as we were flying over downtown LA, you realize a lot of these buildings, these big-ass buildings, have X's on the roof where people land helicopters.
I think it's probably when I enter into that, like, alright, I did everything phase.
I would like to get out then.
But also, like, I really, I don't know, man.
Like, I really would like to ask Aldo, and I'd like to ask Cruz, you know, because both of those guys I see as guys that are just, like, they're obviously in it because they love it.
You know, Ream, too.
You know, Overeem, too, where it's just, like, you've been doing it for so long.
You did kind of everything that there is to do in the sport.
Like, why are you still doing it?
And, I mean, my guess is the answer is that they love it.
I kind of noticed that in Conor, too, in the Poirier fight, where I was like, I saw that his leg was hurt, and I was like, he's got to start going after him, because there's no way he can go three more rounds like this.
A technique can be part of the system and then it's not until someone that's a really high caliber fighter uses the technique that people start to get on board with it.
Tim Means was using those for a really long time.
I mean, calf kicks have been around for a really long time.
Now everyone's kind of like...
And I was kind of thinking back, and you might know this, but who was it that made those really, really popular shows?
There has to be someone recently, though, in the last couple of years where there was a fight where it was like, this is the fight where now everyone's bought into this idea.
Because I think as far as...
If I'm a fighter watching, I think it's really easy to get confidence when you're like, oh, this guy's one of the best guys in the world and he's doing this.
I need to do that.
But when you see someone who's maybe two or three fights into their professional career and they're doing something the same, you're like, eh, maybe it's good.
So I try to watch for all of those things early because I think that there's just as much to be learned from those really, really high-level, championship-level fighters as there are on the day one debut UFC fighters episode.
I think last year, too, I don't know, you tell me, but it feels like the sport, I mean, obviously it's gotten bigger, but man, it feels weird to not have fights on Saturday to watch.
If you're going to go up to light heavyweight from where you're at, if you're a 185-er and you wanted to go up to 205, like a legit 205, you really want to probably get to like 220. Dude, that's a big gap.
Oh, I think that there should be one almost every 5. It's not a bad idea.
Especially if we're going to start doing, you know, champ champ stuff.
You know, I think that it's not a bad idea to kind of maybe adopt some of that stuff in boxing and kind of, you know, why not make it every five pounds and then make, you know, two title fights every card?
If the guy's coming at you and he's much larger and there's much more danger in him hitting you, what do you do differently than you would do it for a 185-pound fighter?
Like Paulo Costa.
Paulo Costa is a...
He's a destroyer, but he's a guy who beats guys up and then takes them and puts them away.
He doesn't KO anybody with one shot.
This guy KOs light heavyweights with one shot.
I mean, he puts people in another dimension when he punches them.
He hits fucking...
When he hit Rockhold, when he KOs Rockhold and Rockhold's laying his back like, what the fuck?
Adesanya is the heavy favorite with an implied win probability of 71.43%, despite Blachowicz 27-8 being the incumbent champ in the higher weight class.
A $10 bet on Adesanya to win would return a profit of just $4.
I mean, listen, if Khabib's not going to fight for the title, and you're not going to have an interim title, if Khabib's going to fight for the title again, I want Oliveira.
Because I feel like if anyone's going to fight for the actual title, I feel like, as a purist, Charles Oliveira has looked sensational.
You look at what he did to Tony Ferguson.
You look at what he did to Kevin Lee.
You're like, this guy is on fire right now.
His technique is so sharp.
He's so good.
I want to see Oliveira fight for the title.
But if it's not for the title, if it's just a big-ass, money, five-round fight, okay.
I watch people talk like that and Tyson's one of my favorite people to talk or listen to talk also and then Kobe Bryant is a good one but like all of those guys where it's just like borderline like a little psychotic you know like borderline like wow these guys are probably fantasizing about like hurting their opponents for weeks you know oh yeah Tyson most certainly did Do you ever see that documentary on Tyson where he goes into depth about his thought process going from walking from
I love that Tyson's so open about talking about stuff like that because, I mean, I promised my mom and Erica that I would keep it, like, fairly at a low level of intensity with my, like, detail and description of, like, what goes on in my mind, too.
Yeah, because I've, you know, in the past, I've brought up, like, yeah, you know, like, I just would really like to, and I, you know, I got memed for this, but, you know, I was ready to rip his heart open, or rip his chest open and start eating his heart, you know?
Like, just saying weird shit like that, it's like, my mom and girlfriend were like, please, for God's sake, just don't say anything.
But no, man, I think that like, I don't know how many other people are on that level of like thinking, but you know, it's definitely something that I've adopted.
And I think that it's like really, a really good survival tool for this sport.
Like having a mind like that is a super good survival technique.
Is it because when the shit goes down and you're in the middle of the firefight, you're maintaining that mindset rather than trying to gather it up while it's a fight for your life?
When Curtis and Derek Lewis fought, and Derek KO'd him with that uppercut and then blasted him when he was out a couple of times, and then he's like, hey, that's Herb Dean's fault.
Like, that's not where you have to be in your head when you walk into a cage, and people aren't going to understand that.
I didn't understand that for a really long time, where it was like, even someone like Cody Garbrandt and McGregor, like, you watch how they act, and sometimes you're like, man, that guy's, like, really arrogant, like this and that, and it's like, that's what he's doing because we're in, like, we're in a different set of cultural rules, you know?
I like studying war strategy, and he brought up Napoleon and all of those guys.
Yep, I'm...
I like to read when I'm in camp.
Like, I'll read, like, as much, you know, war strategy and shit on war and stuff on combat and psychology of combat and all of that stuff.
I'll read that stuff because I really believe, man, like, you can really program that in your brain, you know?
So, like, the first 30, 40 minutes of my day when I'm in training camp and outside, but I'm just reading different things when I'm outside of training camp is, like, war stuff, man, because you can really program.
I think you can program yourself to not only, like...
It's important in performance, man, but fighting is so much bigger than just what's happening in the cage, man.
It's a place.
It's a certain environment.
It's a certain place that you need to put yourself in that just is where you need to be, in my opinion, to be at the level that I'm competing at now.
I'm really enjoying Robert Greene's The 33 Strategies of War, which kind of just covers like a lot of, you know, each chapter is a different strategy of war.
And I'll read each chapter and, you know, sit and kind of think about like, okay, how can I use this in my arena?
You know, because not a lot of it is just on the actual combat part.
What we're doing, man, because I get a lot of praise or compliments on how technical I am.
I could give a shit less how technical I am.
I could care less about how good of a striker I am.
I could care less about how skilled I am or any of that.
What I want to be is a master of war.
That extends way past technical part.
That extends into the level of intensity that you're bringing in when you walk into a fight.
It extends into how you're living each day in day life and how your relationships go.
And, uh, it's, it's way outside the cage, man.
So, for me, in camp, I'm not a very fun guy to be around, you know, like, because I'm programming myself in order to, you know, be as war-minded as possible.
And that, you know, like I said, that shit don't work in real life.
So, uh, I'm trying to find nice balance in it, but, uh, It's just different, man.
When you're reading those things, I feel it in my bones, man.
I'm just a different person.
The way I see things, the way I view things is just geared towards how do I get what I want through all of these things.
It's just something where – I mean books are just brain food and I spend my first 30 or 45 minutes of every day reading something like that because I think it gets me in that gear.
It gets me – It just gets me in that war brain like you see with Tyson.
It gets me going in that direction.
And it's kind of a peaking process as camp kind of goes through.
In the beginning, obviously, it doesn't need to be too intense.
Around like four or five weeks out, it's pretty intense.
About three weeks away, I don't really care too much about what else is happening in life or in the world or whatever.
It's solely like that night.
And then two weeks away is a little bit more intense.
One week away, my entire...
Fight week, I don't do anything.
I do my media, but I literally just lay in bed and I imagine how I want the fight to go.
What's going to go right?
What's going to go wrong?
When things start to go wrong, how am I going to react to that?
It's literally just me laying in bed.
Every once in a while, I'll go hang out with my corners.
I'll watch TV, something stupid, for an hour with them.
I'll go back to my room.
I'll do the same thing again.
It's this peaking process that you...
That I never knew anything about until I started kind of like gearing my mind for war and talking with people and talking with my sports psychologist and all of that.
It's a peaking process, man.
So that when I walk into the arena that night, now, you know, now that I feel like I'm a new fighter, I'm ready to flip the switch like this.
You know, like when I'm getting my hands taped, I'm sitting there and I'm like, Let me put my hands on someone.
And I think that that's from the reading of the books, from the peaking process, from the visualizations, from having thoughts of wanting to really put your hands on someone to put it nicely and laying in bed and not thinking about anything else except for how dominant you're going to be in this fight.
It's a whole new thing for me now, man.
In the last couple of fights, it's for sure flourished.
I see that all the time with fighters too, is they'll try to distract themselves as much as possible.
And if you don't give yourself time, whether it's a week before, 10 weeks before, whatever, if you don't give yourself time to sit with those thoughts that are happening inside your head, they're going to come out.
And they're going to come out 10 minutes before the fight, 15 minutes before the fight, and you're not going to have time to deal with those.
In my belief.
So I don't try to distract myself.
I sit there and I watch everything that's happening in my brain and I'll say, okay, yeah, that's good.
I don't really want that idea.
I don't want that thought in there.
So let's not, you know, you don't have any business being here.
Like one, I think, really good example is the morning I woke up to fight Frankie.
And I've had this happen in the past too and I didn't know how to deal with it.
I just didn't feel like fighting.
I don't know if it's because of the moment or because I think after doing a lot of thinking about it, I think it's that my Eastern way of thinking about things where it's like no desire, no attachment, no this.
It wants to make your life feel really small.
It wants you to have goals that are this big because anything this big you're going to have to suffer that much more for.
That's in me.
I did a lot of time programming that in me, but the day of the fight isn't for that.
The day of the fight is for me to be wired in on getting the job done.
That morning of the fight, I just didn't feel like fighting.
I think it's just because I tried to make it little.
You try to tell yourself all kinds of things like, if you lose, nothing really changes.
Blah, blah, blah.
You start making excuses for yourself.
And I think that that's why I try to make things small.
But I remember I was writing in my journal that morning because I couldn't get the thought out of my head.
I couldn't get it out where I was like, man, I got to fight later.
Like, that's a really intense thing.
Like, I don't know if...
I don't really feel like doing that.
And then I started writing in my journal.
And it's just another demon in your head that wants to make your life this big.
When really, like...
We're not made to be this big.
We're made to do what we want with our lives.
And that little demon in there, fuck that guy.
Fuck that guy.
And I really believe if I tried to distract myself that whole day and not think about that, that demon would have popped up and been like, hey, guess what, bitch?
We're happening 10-15 minutes before the fight.
You're feeling small.
And like, I don't do that anymore.
I sit there in bed and I just think and I watch my thoughts and I just make sure that I'm 100% geared and ready to go.
I think even the good thoughts are the ones that are the most dangerous because they're the ones that you want to have, but they might not be the healthiest because they can get greedy and they can get hungry.
For example, I want shit.
I don't like nice things.
I'm not big on all of that stuff, but I want to set myself up and my future family up with a good life.
And sometimes that voice even gets a little bit greedy where it's like, I'm looking for things to invest in.
I'm looking for, you know, how much more can I get on my next contract, this and that.
And I haven't named that one because that's kind of a new one because now I'm actually making some money.
But I haven't named that one.
But even that one, I'll be like, not today, man.
We're a little bit too close to the fight.
I don't need to be stressing about where I'm investing my money.
Right now, it's just about, you know, taking care of business.
So, for example, I think that when you interview a fighter and you hear them not acknowledge anything that their opponent does well, I think that that's, you know, you...
That's a good thought that can sabotage you later.
So if I'm like, okay, well, Sterling's a really good grappler, but he can't strike.
It's like, that's not true.
He can strike, but me telling myself that is a good thought for me.
It maybe makes me a little bit less anxious, but is it true?
No.
So why am I telling myself that good thing?
It's only so that I can get a little bit less stressed, but it's not a good thing because it's not true.
It's like you're recognizing and acknowledging that all this hard work and even these mindsets that you put yourself in where you do grapple with reality, it's working.
But also I think that that little voice that makes you feel like the man, if he gets, just like any voice, if it gets carried away, it's going to lead to me not doing what I need to do in order for me to keep excelling and keep doing better and better.
And I think that...
It's easy to ride a nice wave.
Like we were talking about earlier, when you lose, you never want that to happen again.
But when you're winning, you're kind of coasting.
You're doing good.
It's not easy to make a change when you're winning.
But changes still need to happen when you're winning.
So you are sitting here waiting on the results of this Saturday, and you're likely in the running.
There's just a couple other people that are in the running.
There's Pedro Munoz.
There's, again, we talked about...
There's no way TJ's going to come back and get a direct shot at the title, especially after getting popped for EPO. So he's going to have to beat at least one person, probably a couple people.
Um, where do you see the division right now?
When you look at that, like, you are likely one of the next guys in line for the title.
Would you be willing to fight one more time for the title?
No, it would be, you know, if they give me the title shot, great.
If I have to win another one, I'm cool with that too.
You know, I want it to be for a number one contender spot, and I feel like the only people that are really in that conversation is probably Garbrandt and probably TJ. But even Garbrandt, right, who has one victory after losing three in a row.
And then, I mean, even TJ coming back from a two-year suspension.
It's like, you know, should he even?
So at this point, I really think that I'm the man.
You know, like, I'm the guy that should be getting called out.
I don't know why it wasn't really him in February.
Because he was off of his suspension.
I was the number two guy in February.
I don't really know why it was him in February.
Anyways, man, I think that I should be either next for the title or given someone like the UFC has been talking about me and TJ, I'm open to that fight also.
I mean, as far as kickboxing goes, definitely one of my favorite fighters.
So I went out in 2014 when I was still an amateur.
I was on the U.S. team for the WKA team.
And we went and competed.
And afterwards, because I used to train with Dwayne Ludwig also a little bit, I was like, hey, Dwayne, do you think I could go train with Andy for a couple weeks?
And he was like, yeah, yeah, we'll set it up.
And he actually did set it up.
And then, like, here I am after I fought in the WKAs, like, a couple days later, like, staying at Andy's neighbor's house, getting picked up by him at the little train station or however I got there.
And I was like, this guy really picked me up from the train station, you know?
Like, I was 20, 22 years old.
And I was like, damn, this guy is awesome, you know?
And he was, like, my favorite fighter of all time.
That was, like, one of my favorite moments in my whole life is, like, seeing him pick me up in this, like, ugly-ass van.
I was like, this guy, is this really happening, you know?
It is really interesting that the mind, like, there's no clear, you can't just go, well, this is the work that you have to do, this is the mindset that you have to put in.
No, it's like a constant wrestling match with your consciousness.
Constant wrestling match with seeking comfort and avoiding injury and avoiding, I don't want to be tired, I don't want to push myself.
It's this constant battle of you trying to get control of your emotions and your mind and your body.
Bro, like, I swear for 10 weeks, or I guess so I do 10-week camps, for 9 weeks, every single day I'm sore, and every single day I'm like, today is probably going to suck a little bit, you know, for 9 weeks.
And then that last week I tried to taper, and even then I'm like losing weight and having a sweat and stuff, so it's even shitty then.
And then I wake up on the fight and I'm like, okay, whew, I finally feel like an athlete, you know?
I try to get to 148 a week before and then I just lose the last 13. So really I'm going from 53 of like being in good shape and eating okay, losing five pounds and then cutting that last 13 that week.
And I'm pretty good at like going to bed and being like, I'll probably weigh this tomorrow just depending on like how hungry or how hard I've worked out that day.
So I've got it down pretty good.
You know, honestly, I think that the reload is the most important part or maybe not most important part because I don't cut an incredible amount of weight.
It's not like I'm doing 20 in a week or whatever, but...
I think it's really underrated how you put the weight back on and what you're putting in your body.
And the UFC does a really good job of giving us all of our shakes and stuff after the weight cuts so that we're actually feeling good when we walk into the cage.
The guy Charles that works there is just a really knowledgeable and easy guy to work with.
He really...
Tells you exactly what to do and it's easy when a scientist is telling you exactly what to do because before, it's like, should I eat pizza instead of drink this gallon of water?
The UFC's Performance Institute, what they've done by setting that place up is pretty extraordinary.
To have a place where fighters can choose to go down there and do their camps.
You have world-class coaches and people that understand strength and conditioning and recovery and all these different ways to keep your body fit and healthy for a fight.
And then also to analyze where your weight cuts at, where your body fat's at, what's your VO2 max.
Having one A one-stop shop with a big, giant, state-of-the-art facility they developed is really fucking incredible.
All of that stuff with the rings and the bands and stuff that measure your heart rate and stuff.
I think it's just going to make athletes get this much better, man.
Talking about the evolution of the sport, especially in the sport of fighting, I don't think that we've seen too much actual scientific stuff.
Because there's probably just not as much money as the NFL and the NBA and athletics and other areas.
And the players of those sports have a lot more money to spend on those types of things.
But I think that we're going to start to see money get dumped into the sport of MMA. And then we're going to really start understanding the science of cutting weight and how to put muscle on and what type of muscle to put on and all of that jazz.
I mean, I've only done the IV once, so I guess I can only speak to that one experience.
But, I mean, I don't ever feel like I'm dehydrated when I walk into the cage, you know?
Like, I'm usually walking in at, like, now 51 or 52, where before it was, like, 47, 48, just because I wasn't doing all of the posture stuff and, you know, getting certain things strong.
But now I'm walking in at, like, yeah, 51, 52. Yeah.
Do you think that we're ever going to get to a point where people stop doing that, where they can figure out a way to stop fighters from cutting weight?
I think when the sport gets mainstream enough, I think it's going to.
Because I think that there's going to be a lot of...
Eventually, man, as much as I hate to say it, like...
I mean, it's already happened, but some guys, you know, they have to pull out of fights because they're cutting weight and fainting and all of that stuff.
You know, eventually, if the sport is going to be, you know, on the level of the NFL and all of that, I think it's going to be where they have to kind of take that out or else it's going to be too brutal for, like, the common audience to watch.
Yeah, I think that they were scheduled, though, a couple weeks before this last fight that they had, and I think it was, maybe, you know, I'm not sure, but I think it was maybe a scenario.
But yeah, man, that stuff happens, you know, like, you can't be passing out, cutting weight.
That's too brutal for people.
If we want, like, the mass population watching, I think that that's probably a little too brutal.
It seems like something, to me it seems like almost it's one thing they've been doing this way for so long that they just keep doing it.
Whereas if they came along today and there was a blank slate and they said, alright, do you think it's a good idea if the fighters just dehydrate the fuck out of themselves 24 hours before they fight?
I mean, they do hydration tests with high school wrestling and college wrestling.
It can be done.
It's just, it would have to be...
First of all, you'd have to give people way more options in terms of weight classes, and I think that's something we were speaking about earlier.
I really think you have to have at least every 10 pounds, and you might be right every 5 pounds, but there's this idea that that would somehow or another water down the sport, like...
Is that true?
I don't think that's true.
Look at Canelo Alvarez.
Look how he keeps going up in weight and beating these guys and winning titles all the way up to light heavyweight.
Knocks out Kovalev at light heavyweight and comes back down.
Fights at 68. I believe he was 52 when he fought Mayweather.
Yeah, I will say I think that there is this huge emphasis on having to fight in one weight class and to be the biggest guy in the weight class.
I don't think that that's super important.
I fought 145 for most of my professional career, but when I got into the UFC, I was like, okay, I'll lose the weight for that amount of money.
I won't lose it for a couple grand and whatever promotion I was fighting in before, but it's like...
I don't think it's too huge of a thing, you know?
And I think that, you know, we're starting to see that now where it's like, no, like, you can jump up a weight class and still do really well because it's not a huge deal.
He said he had leg cramps, he couldn't sleep, and he had a glass of wine, and that didn't do it, so he drank another glass, that didn't do it, then he drank the whole bottle.
So he said when he fought, he was probably drunk.
Look, he's come up with so many excuses for that fight, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
You have one idea of who Paulo Costa is.
His whole career is just smashing people.
Walks down Yoel Romero.
Who the fuck walks down Yoel Romero and beats his ass like that?
Nobody.
The way he did it and beat...
All these guys coming up from...
Johnny Hendricks was fat, and he's really 170, and he had no business being at 185 in the first place.
But the fact that Paulo Costa just smashed him that way, and just was smashing everybody.
So it's like the idea, so I go to a place called Rock Solid Physical Therapy, and it's this place where muscle activation is like the type of therapy that it is, but the idea is it's like, okay, if my shoulder is sore, it's because something in there isn't firing.
And there's something in there.
I don't need to massage the shit out of the one spot that's hurt.
I need to wake up the other things that are having to compensate for the...
Or this spot is compensating for the other spots.
So when I go in, it's like, alright, my shoulder's sore.
They'll work on my back.
They'll work on my chest.
Because those areas aren't waking up and aren't firing.
And then this is what's having to really overcompensate.
And that's why it's really sore.
And that's been like a...
I've been going to them for about six years and getting that done about every single week, and that, I think, is the reason that I don't really ever get hurt.
I can't think of a really big injury that I've gotten that hasn't been a broken bone or something in a really long time.
And there are a lot of times injuries where people are, like, a lot of times you have back pain and you really don't realize that it's because your hamstrings are tight.
And that it's pulling, your whole, your thing is all kind of crunched up.
And if you can stretch your hamstrings out, it actually alleviates some tension in your back.
Every time I've hurt my knees, it's been because my glutes and my hips are really tight.
Which makes total sense because if my hips can't do the circles that they're meant to be, this joint is going to have to...
If it only has this much motion, this thing has to compensate for it some way.
I think...
I think so much of the time when guys get hurt, it's just because they're sore in one area or one area isn't firing and they need to compensate in some area.
And they do that for X amount of time and then that area ends up getting injured because it's just tired from compensating.
Yeah, so here's the nice thing about, I think, where I'm in a really unique position, where I don't think maybe a lot of fighters are, is that I've been with the same, pretty much the same set of coaches for 12 years now.
You know, so...
I can have an open conversation about things and not have to feel like I'm being a bitch or I'm being whiny or whatever.
I don't think a lot of people...
If I'm someone's new coach and they're complaining all the time about being tired and needing to rest on this day or whatever day, I'm probably going to think that that person's just being whiny.
But with my set of coaches, because we've been around for so long and a lot of them I would consider my best friends, I can kind of have that open dialogue of like, hey man, I think that we need to pick it up on this day and we need to do less on this day.
And they're like, yeah, okay, we trust you to be able to do that.
And like I said, man, I'm like a really self-sufficient guy.
I don't blame anyone and I don't expect anyone to be the cause of my success or my failure.
Yeah.
So, honestly, I take a lot of that into my own way, and I think that working with Christian Allen has kind of helped me with that a lot, too, because Christian Allen, he never really told me exactly what to do.
He kind of let me find my own way, which I know a lot of people don't like, and at times, you know, I didn't really like, if I'm being completely honest, but...
It also did help me become really, really self-sufficient.
And so a lot of me putting together my camp is me putting it together.
But kind of to answer your question a little bit more is it's like when I'm setting up my practices for each day, I don't ever miss any of those practices.
Even if I'm dead tired, I'll still go in.
I'll just do less.
Maybe I'll drill or I'll do something different, but I'm not going to miss that day of practice.
And if I have to, you know, because I need to, I'm just rescheduling it for a different day.
So I do set my own schedule, but every practice gets made because I think that that makes the mind strong.
But if I am a little bit tired or if it's a weird week or whatever, I'm stressed out or whatever is happening in my life and I need to go a little bit slower on a day, I will do that.
There's so many variables with the human body, whether or not you're getting massages, whether or not you're doing ice baths, whether or not you're doing sauna.
There's so many different things that can help you recover and help your body bounce back.
Monday is our heavy lifting day because I think Monday you're the most rested.
I think your body's more capable of obviously lifting more weights the more rested you are.
Wednesday is more of a metabolic day, so like a conditioning day.
And I only do those really in the last three or four weeks of camp because Aaron kind of puts me through more of a strength building stuff because that's more important for my body type.
And then Friday is just recovery.
So Friday when we spar on the same day, it's just like a 45-minute session.
We just get our blood moving.
We get everything loose so that we can spar well on Friday.
If I have some weight to lose, I'll also run on Saturday also.
But Monday and Tuesday, I think, are the only two days.
And then everything else is three.
Hmm.
But like I said, man, I just drill a lot.
This is such a technical sport, man.
I used to like running more.
I used to like lifting more.
But I find that I'm just doing better when I'm focusing on the technical aspects of the sport and not as much about the, am I going on a run just to go on a run?
Or am I going on a run because it's actually helping?
And can I actually get this help in a different area?
Because I used to really enjoy doing trail runs.
And, like, I had to kind of cut those because I just wasn't able to train as hard and, like, learn as much and drill as much.
So I had to cut the run because I think it's more important that I'm actually learning and getting better and drilling.
Because actually the UFC also recommended this to me also.
So I guess you can train your body to get used to heat and it can get used to how much you're flushing out as long as obviously you're putting it back in you.
So I'll do a sauna session two days a week and then I'll do...
There's so many benefits to it just outside of even getting your body accustomed to the heat for a sauna for cutting weight.
It just reduces inflammation to such a high degree.
It produces heat shock proteins.
Also, there's a study they did in Norway where people who did the sauna four days a week for, I believe it was 20 minutes at 170 degrees, I think is the protocol they used.
And they experienced a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality.
The heat shock proteins, what it's doing is it creates this radical anti-inflammatory response for the body because your body's freaking out.
Your body doesn't want to be in 170 degrees.
It's like, what is this shit?
And so because of that and you're sweating it out and struggling, your body produces these cytokines and it has an amazing effect just on health and wellness.
I have one in my house and it was one of the first things I did when I moved to Austin is get one and it took a couple months to get it and get it brought in and installed and everything like that and I was sweating it because I was like, God, I miss the sauna because I had one in my house in California and it's It's a game changer, man.
Dan Gable's a huge believer in it as well.
And I read him talking about the sauna, and he thinks that it's a secret weapon that the Russians and a lot of other athletes in other countries use on a regular basis.
He's obviously in very good shape for his age, but to be able to do that for eight fucking hours, especially while people are staring at you, that is boring as fuck.
So my one thing is I would wake up every Saturday morning and I would go do a trail run by Red Rocks in Colorado.
And I didn't care if it was snowing.
I didn't care if it was however.
And I'm more upset that I had to get rid of it because it started to suck, but then it became something that was like, oh, this is something that I really enjoy doing over and over and over again.
And it's like, yeah, even if it does suck, afterwards it just feels good.
I feel like you don't have to do a lot of things where afterwards you feel super rewarded.
Yeah, stuff like that where it's like, man, like...
Being happy isn't my goal every day.
Maybe one day it will be the goal every day, but for now it's like, how much can I make today suck so that I can have that one little reward at the end of a training camp?