JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

00:00Wild pig? A boar or something, yeah. My buddy from Australia gave me those in that head. It's an Asian water buffalo. It's an invasive species. Are we live? Oh, it worked. Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, the UFC Performance Institute boys. Hey, what's up? Duncan, Forrest Griffin. Hey, Forrest Griffin. Good to see you. We've already talked over each other, so we've already blown it. No, we've got it. We've got it nailed. Well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I was blown away when I went to visit the, you know, you hear the Performance Institute and you go, well, what is this going to be like? And you go, they're like, oh my God, they thought of everything. It's like the ultimate state-of-the-art facility for training, for recovery, for nutrition. It's fucking amazing. I mean, I was so happy. We're posting a link to that shit right there. Say it. Dude, I mean, it's amazing.

00:47When we went on a tour and checked that place out, I think it was Della Gratze was with me? Yeah, yeah. We were like, holy shit. Like, can you imagine? You have access to this fucking place? Like, you guys have really created something special. It's very interesting. And I don't know much about other sports, but I know this never really existed in combat sports before. Something like this that's, I mean, you guys have athletes from all sorts of different walks of life come through there. When I was there, there was many, many top-level fighters that were training out of there. It's really, really interesting. Yeah, cool. Well, we appreciate the kind words, obviously. I mean, ultimately, yeah, the vision of the UFC was to build a performance institute that was truly a world-class high-performance center that had everything that fighters would need. But not only are we trying to align ourselves

01:32as the leaders in mixed martial arts, but certainly leaders in human high performance. Yeah, Duncan, tell people what you do there. Like, explain. Yeah, so my role is the vice president of performance. I essentially direct the philosophy of how we're going to interact with the fighters, how we're going to support the fighters, and obviously manage our world-class staff that are working within the performance facility. And Clint, you came from a background in amateur wrestling. Yep. And tell everybody what your job is over there. Yep, so I'm the director of performance nutrition. So anything related to feeding of athletes is essentially managed by myself and our ever-expanding team. So it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan, integrating within the other performance services, as well as feeding athletes on the ground, integrating within our kitchen

02:24at the Performance Institute, supporting athletes as they prepare for fight week, weight descents, et cetera, and then supporting athletes on fight week and preparing even at the last moment of fight day to fuel up and to be really well-fueled for their performance. My background is, like you said, in amateur wrestling, I wrestled and coached at Cornell University, graduated in 03, was on the U.S. national team with a number of actually current fighters right now. So Daniel Cormier and a number of other athletes, Chris Weidman and some others, and I used to train together. And then I went back to school and got all my credentialing to be a registered dietitian. And so that's kind of led me through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC with a pretty unique combination of the nutrition, the dietetics, and then obviously the experience in combat sports and weight cutting. Yeah, and in my opinion,

03:15the most grueling combat sport, I mean, I think wrestling. It's just, we talked about on the last podcast, it's just, it's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real competition and the actual physical struggle of getting through wrestling practice and strength and conditioning grills. Most kids that are coming up in high school and in college, they don't really work that hard in any other sport. I mean, it's a crazy sport. I remember in high school, like walking into the wrestling room and it's a bunch of gross dudes, like in a sweaty, hot room. And then it was like basketball was right next to it. I walked next to the basketball. There's like dudes in tent tops and some like cheerleaders. I'm like, I know what I'm doing. I'm not an idiot. Little did I know. Little did you know. Yeah, I mean, it's, in my opinion still, I think it's the most important skill because you get to dictate

04:01where the fight takes place. I mean, there's no one skill that really overpowers all except for the ability to hold the guy down. Like the ability to hold someone down and control them on the ground. It's so critical and everything else you can learn from that. Submissions, ground and pound. But the difference in like an elite wrestler like yourself and a person who doesn't have that skill, it's so hard to bridge that gap. It's hard to learn later in life. GSP is one of the few people that's just like, I'll just take this up and be amazing at it because I'm GSP and then I'll become a gymnast. Who knows? I think that's the thing with him though. He had such physical abilities. We were talking about this almost on the last podcast as well that he used to do that karate blitz. You know, so he was so used to that lunging in stuff that he sort of incorporated that with a blast double and he's so physically strong

04:45and such a smart dude and so good at learning things that he just figured out the essential techniques that he needed to master and just got better and better at them. Way back in the day, obviously, UFC 1 was kind of discipline versus discipline. Kind of grudge match and having been a lifelong wrestler, that's when I started tuning in actually and taking pride in all the wrestlers, taking names and growing within the sport and obviously with the evolution of the sport. It's a different dynamic and obviously each athlete coming from their own discipline is really fun for us to work with as practitioners, having their own kind of sport culture. But wrestling is obviously a core component to what each athlete's doing. And when I'm working with athletes and talking through their weekly training plan and how to feed and fuel for each of these types of training sessions and hearing them bitch about

05:35how hard those wrestling practices are, I always get a little bit of pride there. Like, yes, it is hard and imagine doing it for eight months straight for a college wrestling season and grind that out. But it's definitely been fun for me to watch wrestling as a component of MMA grow and be able to contribute to the sport on a few different kind of... Yeah, I mean, I think the way I've always looked at it is pressure makes diamonds. You know, there's no other way. Those hard-nosed dudes, they come out of those environments. Like, if you think about guys with crazy determination and mental fortitude, there's a giant chunk of those you could attribute to wrestlers. I mean, there's a lot of them in kickboxing and everything else as well. But there just seems to be... It's such a unique sport in terms of hardening your mental toughness. For sure. I mean... I wouldn't do it. Fuck that. I play basketball.

06:29I mean, at the Performance Institute, we always talk about mixed martial arts as the decathlon of combat sports. Yeah. And I think, you know, our philosophy is to try and understand all the respective components that makes a world-class MMA fighter. I think, you know, if you're in the UFC, you've got some certain X factors that allow you to be world-class. And, you know, wrestling is a huge component of that. But what we try to do is understand limitations as well. Because in a decathlon, you're only ever as good as your weakest event, right? Right. So if you're a striker, if you're a grappler, or if you're a wrestler, you know, we're trying to support each of those to understand how we can elevate the whole thing. Now, how much input do you put into fighters, if any, into how they incorporate their skills and, like, how they combine their skills together? Do you guys offer, like, coaching on technique and approaches?

07:17Yeah, let me, yeah, so break down the philosophy. We don't do sports-specific coaching. So physical therapy, sports nutrition, strength and conditioning, sports science, and then Duncan oversees all those to make sure that they work. All right, so our philosophy, anything that doesn't make you better in the octagon is pretty pointless. So what I do is I'll just go over what your training schedule looks like with you, and then, you know, where do we feed accordingly for this practice? You know, what, and then Roman, our sports scientist, when can you be recovered enough for this practice? And that's, you know, that's the philosophy. So it's not specific. If you think about it, if you guys are fighting and the Performance Institute is working with both of you, we make you as big, strong, healthy, have the easiest time making weight, go into your fight as fueled as you can. But if I start saying, hey, you know what,

08:10he's pretty susceptible to leg kicks, then it becomes, you know, now we can't support every athlete. So when you talk to people, it's just like, here's how to get the most out of your practices, right? Here's the way to lay this out to just your training blocks. I don't think a lot of people understand like basic training periodization leading up to a fight. And then that's the other problem with the UFC. You don't always have eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks. Sometimes you got four weeks and it's like, all right, well, where's your, where's your weight? Where are you at? Where's your skill? Where's your conditioning? How can we put those things together in time to get you ready on, you know? But never specific like instruction on how to deal with a certain fighter? That's, it's almost like for a young fighter to have the access, first of all, just the access to the physical facility, like the, just all the different

09:00modalities you guys have and, you know, the strength and conditioning stuff and the fact that you can, one of the most impressive things was the camera setup around the octagon so that you could film sparring sequences and technique sequences and the fighter, you can back them up and rewind them and watch it and you can see, oh, see how you drop your leg here, see how your, you know, your chin is up in the air and all these different, different little factors. you think about the philosophy, right? You have to get close to game speed once or twice a week. So for 15, 25 minutes, you're going to get, you're going to risk injury, you're going to take physical damage that you're not getting paid for, make the most out of it, right? Like review it, treat it like a fight. Think about our athletes, they fight two to four times a year so that's, that's a very limited amount of actual footage they have but if you start recording

09:44your sparring sessions and treating them like, like a fight, like, oh shit, I did this wrong, I did that wrong, then you're going to end up with more like 80, 90, which is, you know, baseball, basketball, even football, you got 20 plus games to, you know, review. Yeah, and I think it's really important for young fighters also to see themselves doing certain techniques, like they might not notice, they might think they look better than they do, like it's good. My coach is full of shit, man, and then you, the film don't lie. And you're like, yeah, oh okay, I see what I'm doing wrong there. It's hard sometimes to mimic, you know, without actually seeing yourself. Now, you guys, you've been Forrest Griffin, former UFC, champion of the motherfucking world. No one can ever take that from you, sir. How's that feel? It's a beautiful thing to have. sure, yeah. Yeah. I've moved on, I've moved on, I'm over it. And now I'm VP of Athlete Development

10:30at the Performance Institute, so it's much, much more important. But you're still Forrest Griffin. There's a lot of champions. There's only one VP of athlete development. We're still trying to find that job description to figure out what it actually does. I change it daily, don't worry about it. You've been involved from the beginning of this, right? Yeah, yeah. So it was going on about two weeks in, I heard this was happening, and I was like, oh, hey guys, I work for you, I'm doing community outreach right now, but I've been trying to figure out the best way to train for mixed martial arts for the last 18 years. I don't know, maybe give me a shot at it. So, yeah. Now, when you, when you say that, that you're trying to figure out the best way, is there a best way? Yes, for everybody, right? And unfortunately, it's those bullshit answers, everybody's different, man. Everybody's got a different ability to work, you know,

11:19like a Uzzman might have X amount, you know, before he physically breaks down, because look at him, he's a fucking Ferrari, right? He, he, he needs more high-end work, or, you know, whatever. Everybody's a little physically different. The key is to get some subjective feedback to know, hey, all right, I'm in the red, I'm good, I'm not, you know. Do you do, do you guys do it on heart rate, heart rate variability? Like, when you determine whether or not someone's recovered, tell them about Omega Wave. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of different ways to do it. At the most, the most basic level, it's just speaking to a guy and getting subjective feedback, right? How you're feeling is one of the best questions that we can ask an athlete. But, yeah, I mean, we're blessed and we're privileged with pretty high resource at the UFC Performance Institute, so we have some pretty involved technologies.

12:05One of the ones that we use is a system called Omega Wave, and that gives us real insight and removes the subjectivity where it can get, objective understanding around physiology, particularly looking at the DC potential of the brain. So, really, DC? What is that? The DC potential of the brain is an assessment of the autonomic nervous system. Yeah. So, if you look at the parasympathetic and sympathetic balance of your body, we're talking science now, I apologize, but ultimately, that's one of the things that's really impacted. There you go. Jamie pulled something up on the screen here. There's John Smith. See the windows of trainability. Yeah. This is fascinating. Yeah. So, this Omega Wave, is it something you wear? Yeah. So, ultimately, it's a three to five minute assessment. You wear something that resembles a heart rate strap lying at rest. We also have electrodes on the third eye of your brain, essentially. Whoa. So,

12:58we're picking up cardiovascular stress, and we're picking up the autonomic nervous system, and we're looking at things like heart rate variability, which you've already mentioned. But, so, this isn't for everybody. Some people love it, and they say, hey, man, this is, you know, again, these are just tools, right? So, different tools for different people. Right. Yeah, for sure. It's a first thing in the morning measurement, too, to understand your recovery, how well you recovered from the day before, and those windows of trainability for the next day, that coming day. I think it all comes back to what Forrest says. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is understand individual responses, right? At the end of the day, everyone's on a pathway of performance mastery to be a world champion, and people respond to the workloads, the intensities, the volumes in very different ways.

13:41If we take a basketball team and put them all through the same workout, you've got 15 different guys that are responding in very different ways to the same workout. So, we're privileged in that we work with an individual sport, and that's our mantra, is that we're looking at every single athlete, as an individual, and we're building our programming strategies and our information in an individual way. So, you guys have been doing this now for how many years? We're coming up on two years on May 22nd, is our second anniversary. And do you have like a log of all the different cases you worked with, so you can kind of review like what methods were more effective than others, and you're constantly trying to improve this protocol? Yes. How do you guys write it all out? I mean, we've obviously been involved with numerous fight camps, but we're also working with fighters that are not in camp. Last year,

14:30we presented this journal, our first journal, which is an overview, a cross-section of all the data that we accrued in our first 12 months, and we continue to aggregate that data. Now, one of the privileges that we have at the Institute is we get the opportunity to work with just under 600 fighters on our roster, so we can create real clear cross-sectional awareness of what different weight classes look like, what the challenges are to a fighter, and then, you know, the fighters can compare and contrast themselves against their immediate peers in their weight class. So, that's one of the most powerful benchmarking tools you can create. This Omega Wave technology, can people buy that? Oh, yeah. It's just a commercial product off the shelf. And it looked like it worked off an app? Like, you put an app on your phone? Yeah, It does everything. Yeah. Seems like it. Seems like that's the future. But again,

15:16we use many different types of technologies, you know, things like force plates can look at neuromuscular responses, and some of our nutrition variables will change across time. So, it's not just one tool that has given us all the answers. The Windows of Trainability concept is something that really helps us on a day-to-day basis to understand, can you go into a strength or power type session today and really maximize the opportunity to create the adaptations? Another day, it might be an endurance emphasis. So, what it allows us to do is just give kind of kudos and credence to the athlete to understand where's the best approach and where are you going to optimize your responses? Every other sport is easier to train for than MMA. If you think about it, I was a defensive end in high school. Every defensive end needs the same physical abilities. You think about the combine, the NFL combine, for instance.

16:03They've figured out over a million years what they want to test for, and like, the guys that, you know, they run the same, they jump the same per position, right? So, quarterbacks don't need to necessarily be that fast if they can throw, right? But for everybody else, the numbers are kind of the same. For our sport, and they've collected, I don't know, I don't know how many data points at this point, but it's a lot. So, they're anonymized, normalized, so you know what average looks like. you know, so you can give a guy like Anthony Smith, say, hey, look, man, if, and I bring him up, because he's mentioned it before, he's been outspoken about, you know, working with the PI. Hey, you know what, your force power measurements, man, they're pretty average for 205. You're not, you're not a weak guy. You know, you could think about going up a weight class. So, it's just objective information, so the athletes, and hopefully their coaches,

16:51can make those choices. Do you think they would benefit from more weight classes? Oh, that's a great question. So, I thought, ah, 65, you know, look at the percentages, and then, you know, I was talking to actually Dana and Sean, and I was like, well, this guy's going to go to 65. This guy's going to go to 65. Everybody's going to go, so, is it going to help? I mean, there needs to be a percentage difference, but I don't know. I think people would just say, well, shit, now I have to do an extra five pounds. But, again, so, from a PI standpoint, that's not really a decision we have to make. What we need to do is collect as much data as we can on that. For individual fighters, trying to figure out which. And then also to provide that information to, you know, third party commissions. There's just so many, there's the gaps. I'm so PR these days. You're very PR. I'm so good. It's okay. I know what you're doing. Like,

17:42when you go from 85 to 205, that's 20 pounds. That is an enormous jump. So, how do you decide, like, when a guy's a tweener? Like, how do you look at a guy who maybe weighs 215, and you go, damn, dude. Yeah, those, the numbers. Like, what's your power? What's your speed? Like, are you a good athlete for that weight class? Maybe not. What's your arm length? How does that, you know, how does your arm length and the way you fight, right? So, you know, if you're Tyson-esque guy, you can have short arms and you wrestle a guy like a Gray Maynard style, right? That's fine. You don't need super long arms, but, you know, if you're not a wrestler, you don't have the head movement, maybe you do. Anyway. We've actually had a number of athletes, I would say over the last year, come to us specifically, and sometimes it's matchmakers who are saying, hey, this guy wants to go down, come, come take a look, meet with the PI staff, see what,

18:27see what you guys think. All those things that Forrest said are really valid. We, we do have a lot of battery of tests, both in the nutrition space around body composition, around metabolic function. Oftentimes, bad weight cuts will diminish and depress the metabolic rate, the resting metabolic rate, as well as, as it progresses over time through, through training. And then, like we said, some of the energy systems, a lot of the strength and power diagnostics. How does an athlete compare to the, the, the norms and the standards that are set for that division? So first things, first thing that I look at is how to, how to, how does their body fit into a division? Everybody's body is broken into three components. If you think about it in terms of bone, muscle, and fat. And if somebody's fat free mass, it's everything except for their, their fat is 90, you know, is bigger than 99% of the athletes in that weight division.

19:21It's not going to be a good fit. So a big thing is benchmarking and understanding how somebody's body fits into their division compared to others. So that's kind of step one. Then we look through all these other different metrics to see how they compare. And then we have a conversation. So my job is never, especially working with independent contractors, they can use us or they can, they can not. And we are a resource to consult and to have conversations with them about what makes sense on a scientific level. Can I ask you how that works? It's like, if say if someone like a Henry Cejudo or someone wants to do his camp at the UFC performance Institute, how would they do schedule it with you guys? Tell you, I'm going to be here for eight weeks. We've set up camp in Vegas. We'd like to do it at the, at the gym. So it happens all the time, whether it's, whether it's a week or eight weeks that,

20:06that filters into every single member of our team, especially as we're doing more and more on the ground at, at fight events, but that gets filtered up to Duncan and then Duncan handles the, the coordination of that. Yeah. He could literally be there with, say, if he was going to fight Marlon Marais, they literally could be in the performance Institute at the same time. For sure. And that, that happens. I mean, that's crazy. You know, we're a split level facility where they're never in the same zone at the same time though. You know, so you schedule them. I wouldn't be doing MMA in the octagon. You schedule them first come first serve. Do you ever anticipate a problem like with guys that are supposed to be fighting each other? You know, like what just happened with Masvidal recently, like where an actual fist fight breaks out, man, you find most of these guys want to get paid to fight, not pay to fight. Right.

20:49But when you see like cameras aren't on, they're not so, yeah, that fight. Yeah, that's true. Right. When the cameras aren't on. The other thing is when you're leading into a fight, my thought was you cannot let that person think they intimidated you. And if that means you actually have to hit them, maybe it does, but the, you know, the idea is that I can't let you think that you have a mental advantage. Right. In any other sport. So we, we try. No one would ever want to see that. Like, it's just like, you got to stop that. But in fighting, it's like, oh, they're just doing extra fighting. Yeah. Right. Right. I was like, you guys are getting paid. Yeah. Like if it was a basketball player, sucker punches another basketball player in the face at some sort of a press conference like that, like Masvidal did. I mean, you'd be like, what? Yeah. No way. But in fighting, like, oh, they did extra fighting. But you don't,

21:35you don't get extra money or extra credit for it. But you kind of do. Well, let's be honest. People are like, well, for that performance was going to get extra money. It was a stunning knockout of Darren Till. It was one of the top guys in the welterweight division. The way he KO'd him was crazy. So he got it from that. And then to tee off on Leon Edwards after the fight like that, it's like another one. Like that's part of that is very good for him. Unfortunately, like I don't want him to do that. I don't want to encourage, but if you want to think about like a fighter's popularity, building their brand. He's an, I don't give a fuck. I'll punch you in the face guy. And like, well, a lot of people are now. He's a real, I don't give a fuck. I'll punch you in your face guy. They're real. They really exist. And he's a world-class fighter. Like that's a, that's sellable. That's unfortunate.

22:23I wish guys wouldn't ever fight at press conferences. Like Cormier and John Jones. I fucking hated that. But tell me that didn't sell more tickets. No doubt. That sold a shitload more tickets. How many times they throw, show Connor throwing that dolly. Oh, how many times they show that even in the promos. I hated when that happened. It was a terrible thing that Connor did that. God damn, that sold some tickets. And that's a, that's a fine line, right? That's kind of a funny thing. Way over the line. People that weren't even involved got cut. They got hit with glass. Fights got canceled. I don't mean that. I mean using it, promoting it. Saying, well, here's the thing that happened. Do we just try to avoid it and hide it? Or do we let people know that this is a real thing? I don't know. They call all, all people involved. Go look, this is a business. We're here to get paid. Okay. We're going to run it.

23:09We're going to run it every 15 minutes. We're going to show that dolly smash. Oh, and that's Will Harris's company. Is that the, the gentleman? What is it? What is it called? Anatomy of a fighter. Yes. That's his YouTube show that I often thought was a UFC show. I didn't even know that he had his own show. There's so many good guys right now that are putting out good content. It's Will Harris. And he came in here with Kamaru Usman, super nice guy, but his, his footage is his, that was his footage. Oh, of that dolly smashing into the window. So then you see over and over again. Thank Will. I think the embedded guys from the UFC were on the bus as well. So they got the inside. Nice. Congratulations. Will got the outside. Jesus Christ. You know, so the performance Institute's awesome. sorry about that. Hey, listen, man, this is how this show works. It goes off the rails occasionally. Um, it is, uh,

24:01what you guys have set up though, is kind of an unprecedented thing in the combat sports world. Like there's never anything like this for boxing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's closest to the Olympic model. So we went around benchmarking, yada, yada, 60 plus facilities. And you notice like a lot of the people that we hired worked with, you know, international Olympic sports and that's kind of our athlete model, right? So Olympic athletes, they might go to Colorado Springs for two weeks or for four months or for a week, um, and do like a skills camp or something for, we, we have the same model. You come in three, four days and then go home with like a program, you know, a diet, strength, conditioning program, PT program, your training load goals, et cetera. So you'd leave with that, right? And then maybe, you know, you can't, you don't want to move your life to Vegas. You got family, kids back home.

24:48So you come out three days every other month and they can actually monitor and tell you, this is how your training's going. It's just, again, just data on whether it is working or not working as opposed to my old boxing coach. Oh, you're hitting hard today, kid. I don't know what you ate, but it's good. Come on for you. I was like, I ate cookies last night. Should I just eat cookies every day and punch hard? I don't know. Yeah. Um, the scientific approach of getting those little extra percentage points of improvement is really what it's all about. And it could really be the difference. And it's such a crazy sport because it's so wild and unpredictable. And I mean, you could speak to this better than anybody. The results may vary, right? It is a wild goddamn sport. I had one of the best camps I ever had was, uh, Keith Jardine. Didn't guess who I was fucking amazing in the gym though. I was like, I am so good right now.

25:41I beat everybody up. This is amazing. But you know, it was a 14 week camp. Yeah. I started falling apart again. There's no other sport with as many degrees of freedom as mixed martial arts. Right. All right. If you think about execution, well, just in some of the stylistic backgrounds, weight classes, um, you don't even know when Dana is going to give you a call to the next fight. Let's, let's look at Usain Bolt, right? There's a reason why Usain Bolt is a hundred meter champion and he's not the 60 meter champion. All right. Our guys, if you look at mixed martial arts, that is six to 36 seconds of high intensity work followed by two to three times as much low intensity work repeated throughout a five minute round. 77% of fights are won in those high intensity efforts. Right. So that's where the fight is won and lost,

26:24but you don't know if that six seconds is going to be the first six seconds of the fight or the last six seconds of the fight. So Usain Bolt knows that he's going a hundred, a hundred meters. All right. Our guys don't know if they need to be the, the, the best starter or the best finisher. So you've got to prepare for everything. So all, all these degrees of freedom, these very external variable things that come into mixed martial arts, make it the most complex sport to figure out and build a structure and a development pathway against. It's so interesting too, that so many different fighters have a completely different approach. Like you've got a low volume, high power approach, like maybe a Tyron Woodley. And then you got a guy like Nick Diaz, who just smothers guys. Right. He just stays on you and keeps punching you and talking shit to you.

27:05And he sees you starting to lose your breath and he keeps coming after you. And he can push a pace because of his long-term cardiovascular condition. Right. I mean, it's, and you can't tell him he's doing it wrong. No, no, he's not. So everybody's doing it. Sometimes your physiology, right. Is going to determine the way you fight. Right. Like, like the arm length, John Jones and the leg and arm length. I can't fight like that. Cause I'm going to get, I'm not going to be at the end of everybody's punch just out of reach. I'm going to be getting hit by everybody. If I start throwing those teeps, you know? Yeah. And also it allows him in training to like get better. Like he's always got this, he's always got this advantage. He's like constantly getting better. And he's also the best I've ever seen at utilizing that, that reach. He's very good at keeping his opponent exactly where he needs them. And in, in his range.

27:51And then when they close up, he's very good at being defensive. I mean, it's, I mean, that's what the best fighters do, right? They take the fight where they want it to go. But it's just so interesting to see that everyone does have a different approach that they make work with their body structure. Sure. It's quite unique because we've looked at a lot of our physiological assessments. And when you take the data and you compare and contrast, for example, people with grappling and wrestling backgrounds versus striking backgrounds, you, you can take something like power and you can differentiate between those two. So, all right, I want to get a competitive advantage as a striker, um, might need to improve my strength work because the wrestlers are already stronger than me. We can look at the, the, the, the strength characteristics and, you know, our data shows that those comes,

28:33the guys that come from a wrestling background are far and above stronger than the strikers, which you would expect, right? But if you look at things like, can you differentiate our top 15 in the world versus the rest of the roster in that weight class? It just, it takes away any comparative, um, any comparison. And at the end of the day, ultimately in a complex chaos based sport, skill is always going to be the best determinant of performance. So we're not saying that the physiological variables aren't important to the sport of MMA, but it's really hard to tease out where you need to push your strategy and where you need to optimize your training. Because in a, in a, in a homogeneous population of world-class fighters, it kind of gets absorbed and it becomes invisible where the differences are. Don't worry. That's such an important point. We usually are a little more specific, perhaps.

29:21You just told me what not to do. What do I do though? Well, and that's where the individualization, personalization for every single athlete comes in. We find their strengths and, and some of their, their gaps where it might be the, the lowest point scoring component of their decathlon of MMA. And if it's a deficiency that maybe hasn't been taken advantage of yet, but will, that's where we fill those gaps so that they can start to fill those holes and become more complete, more comprehensive. That might be strength, power. It might be energy system. It may be, it could be anything. It could be orthopedic. I mean, we have, we're, we're trying to assess every component of preparation that can support or limit that athlete's performance in the cage. In terms of, you know, how, how they, all those things work together. It's really vital that if somebody is working on their strength and power, they're not feeding their,

30:12their body in a way that's actually limiting their ability to perform the high intensity training, right? Because then that limits the, the adaptation that we're looking for as a response to that training. And that's, that's a really critical point where nutrition fills, it really is a foundation that supports the development of all the other adaptations that, that, that are, are required to become that complete mixed martial artist. So as the strength and conditioning plan is being laid out, as the physical therapy plan, as the recovery plan, all of those are, are coming to fruition. The nutrition obviously is really near and dear to what I'm doing is really critical at supporting the adaptation so that we're not pulling the butt, you know, the, the athlete in two different directions in terms of the adaptation. Now, in terms of when you take fighters and athletes into your performance institute,

31:04have you guys ever worked with young junior, like amateur mixed martial artists, kids that are coming up? And do you ever do stuff like that? Show them, like give them a peek at what it's like to see like the world class fighters? Well, we, we don't at the performance institute in Las Vegas because we're very much aligned to supporting our current roster. Right. And it's a facility and a philosophy that's been designed to support our current roster. What we're doing in June of this year, however, is opening up a facility in Shanghai, China, which will have a completely different business model in terms of that will be very much a developmental program for guys that aren't in the, currently in the UFC. So obviously we're trying to improve the talent standards in China and develop that market and break that new territory.

31:48But the mechanism to doing that is going to be very much through talent development in the performance institute. So over there, we will have MMA coaches and grappling coaches and striking coaches. We don't have that in Las Vegas because we're currently working with guys that are already on the roster. Well, it's such a unique sport in the fact that even though it is one thing when you get into the UFC, the paths to get there are so widely different. And you really don't know what the right way is. The Crow Cop path, the right way to do it, or is it Daniel Cormier path, the right way to do it? No one can say. And different fighters will win on different nights with different styles. It's the, one of the only sports where your pathway in, you could say that if someone is an elite kickboxer or an elite grappler, that going in with that one major advantage in that one skill set could, could take you very,

32:35very far versus an overall game approach that some guys have where they're really good at, everything. Right. And the true specialist, if you look at the day, the true specialist, the GSPs of this world still hasn't necessarily risen to the top in the sport of MMA. You still see guys that are stylistically, they have a stylistic emphasis and that's their X factor that keeps them at the top of the game. Yeah. And, and then there's execution, which is creativity and their ability to perform under pressure, their ability to maintain their cool during camp where they never over-train and they, they stay in a good space, stay in a good head space and have girlfriend problems or boyfriend problems. And then they get to the final night of the competition with the most in the tank. And that's a, that's an art in and of itself. Right. So, so when you first asked about, you know, something I've seen that I love, uh,

33:21training partners, right? So bring your training partners to the UFC PI. And we've had, I don't know, six, seven, eight guys that came in as training partners and are now on the UFC roster. So that's, that's why I'm not an asshole to anyone. That's beautiful. You never know. It's also, you get the chance to see these. I mean, every guy has to start somewhere. Every girl has to start somewhere. You get a chance to see these people that may maybe never get this invitation there. And they see the holy ground. Like, God damn. I'm at the US performance. So, well, to your point too, about the facility, world-class facility, the, the services we would argue are even better than the facility, but training partners, coaches, those that are on the contender series, those that came through for the ultimate fighter. They have all been able to use and to access the facility in short periods.

34:07Training partners can come and access the facility, eat on campus, strength train with the UFC athlete, use the facility upstairs and train in the MMA space. And when they get the chance, then when they get the shot, then they tap right into services. And, and, and it's an opportunity for us to, you know, essentially influence the community, even before we're working with them directly, which is, which is a really huge component of our, our philosophy. And really what we're looking to accomplish. I don't, I think it'd be massively inspirational for the fighters to, the young guys. Yeah. our philosophy is to accelerate the evolution of the sport of mixed martial arts. That that's in our mission statement. As you've seen, when you, when you walk through the door, it's right there on the wall, you know? Yeah. And, and to do that, to, we're trying to shift the barometer in terms of not the professionalism of the sport,

34:51but the expectations of fighters within the sport. You look at someone like Brown or Tager and, and listen, what, what we're not trying to do is take the wild out of the stallion, right? We're not trying to just push science at fighters. At the end of the day, these guys are a world-class fighters for a reason, but you can train and shape the stallion and it still has the wild at heart. Right? So what we're trying to do is shift the barometer. So there's an expectation of what a professional athlete should, should really expect. Brown or Tager has worked out in his garage, most of his career garage. Sorry, it's American, right? But, but in terms of, you know, what's the expectation that a professional fighter should expect? You know, the performance Institute demonstrates that, you know, not everyone can have access to it, obviously, but that's an aspiration. And it's,

35:33it's where people should understand in the sport of mixed martial arts, the standard that as a professional fighter, you can expect. And it's, it's so important. I think that you put all these things under one roof like that and, and create this environment because it, it seems to be trickling off into other places. Like the, the, the, the level of, of training and recovery and everything is so intense and so severe that people are starting to try to mimic certain aspects of that in their, their own gyms and their own different places. But the problem is you can't do things in isolation. All right. If, if you just say, right, I'm going to really hammer the recovery piece and forget about the nutrition piece, it's, it's a large machine, right? There's cogs and all the cogs need to work together. And that's what we truly feel we can offer. And we, we can deliver is this integral,

36:15not necessarily a multidisciplinary service, but an interdisciplinary service. It's where we have multiple aspects coming together to fill the whole picture of an athlete's portfolio of needs. And that's what we can offer through the performance institute. The other thing we want to do is figure out what the best practices are and disseminate them. Like, we don't want to just know a bunch of stuff so we can keep it. Remember, we want every other gym, like, hey, here's what we've learned. This is how we do our recovery. Take it, take of it, try it, see if you recover, see if you want a laser bed. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. This is what we found success in, you know? So you want to, you know, what's the point of learning something and then hiding it away? Yeah, sorry. And everything's about assessment. So it's not one recovery modality. It's not one nutrition modality. It's not one strength and conditioning.

37:00It's assessing so then we could build that personalized approach. And so here are the modalities. Here's the philosophy that we've developed to help optimize athletes' needs around what we're measuring. And we're not winning fights. That's obvious. That comes with the X factors. That comes from the fighters, their passion and their commitment to their sport. But what we're trying to do, back to your original question, I think around this 1% is so hard to measure, but what we're able to do is to help them to do it more consistently and to do it longer into their career. So that they can optimize, they can maximize their ability to train, to adapt, to perform, and give themselves the best chance to be successful on fight night. Yeah, and there must be so many fighters that come from a discipline, whether it's judo or something along those lines. And then they start fighting in MMA,

37:49so they get a boxing coach and they have a few guys working with them with leg kicks, but they don't have a nutrition guy. They don't have a recovery guy. They don't have someone who understands deep tissue massage. They got to find that guy. They got to find someone to organize a diet for them. They got to figure out how to cut weight healthy, proper. And these things are so difficult for fighters to put, especially if you don't live in a place that has something like an American top team or some gigantic institution. Yeah, I mean, there's fighters, even top fighters on our roster might potentially hire a nutritionist for a short period of time in the fight camp, you know, for an eight-week period. This should be a 52-week fight camp. We should be considering our development as fighters and as professional athletes 52 weeks of the year. You trademarked that too, 52-week fight camp.

38:35That's what our philosophy is, as Clint has already talked about, in terms of plugging the holes and being able to offer the services that you need as a particular athlete. So there's large gyms out there, American top team, AKA, they've got their own guys. That's great. Jackson, they've got their own people. But, you know, there's plenty of people on the roster that have an MMA coach and a grappling coach. And that's it. So the Performance Institute, we feel we can help and support those guys as well. You can bridge the gaps. Right. And we're not trying to displace the programs where athletes already have resources. But I don't know of another MMA gym globally that has the capacity around assessment that we do. So, yeah, we have some really great practitioners. But Bo Sandoval, our strength coach, and his team, cannot write programs for 570 athletes. It's not possible. But what we can do is assess those athletes,

39:26provide that feedback back to their strength coaches, and have conversations about how those coaches can use that data to support the development of that athlete. And that goes across the board for all of our performance services. Well, it's a pretty amazing resource because if you're a young fighter and all you have is access to the people around you, if you're fighting in the UFC, you get to have access like instantaneously to this gigantic group of people. Where it's like, when Forrest, when you were coming up, I mean, you were a real pioneer. I mean, that was not available to a guy like you. No, I mean, I tell the story all the time. But so, I was actually a little bit ahead of my time. I had, you know, I had an actual strength coach that had letters behind his name. I went to college to be a strength coach, not that was like an ex-bodybuilder. I had, you know,

40:11a relatively good nutritionist who at least had a degree in chemical biology. I had a good physical therapist, but I didn't really have, like, I was my coach. You know, at the end of the day, I was the head of performance. So, I'd go do jiu-jitsu. And, you know, jiu-jitsu coach wants you to go hard. And then you go kickbox, but you're going to go light, but it's kickbox. So, you don't. And then, you know, and now, you know, nobody's, the strength coach and nutritionist are on different pages. So, I think just understanding that everything has to work together, which I didn't really understand. Well, what I'm saying is that you kind of had to pave a path. Because when a guy like you was doing all that stuff with a real legitimate strength and condition coach, real legitimate nutritionist, how many other people were doing that at your time? Not that many, but I got to be around good people like Randy Couture,

40:59Chuck Liddell, those were kind of guys I got to hang out with and say, well, he does this, he does that. Chuck actually went into that much of this stuff, but Randy was. Chuck was like, I know what I'm doing, okay? All right. Yes, sir? Yeah, he just existed on pure savagery. When you step back and look at your career, like how amazing is it to be able to step off from there and do something like you're doing now for the UFC Performance Institute, which is very meaningful for young fighters. I mean, you really do get a chance to give back with your experience and your understanding of the right way and the wrong way, the mistakes that you've made. I mean, it's huge. I mean, that's the whole, I mean, that's the whole genesis kind of from, from my involvement in the PI. Like, oh, look, here's the 10,000 mistakes I made. Yeah. You're going to make mistakes too, but these are the ones you don't need to make, you know? Again,

41:47the sports change, man. It's 25 years old. Every other sport's so evolved, been around so long. Our sport changes all the time. I forget who was talking about it, but, you know, even the guys fighting 10 years ago probably couldn't compete with the guys fighting today, you know? But, I mean, what I would say as well is not only for the fighters. Forrest is a huge resource for us. The best piece of technology we have is the door handle. That leads from my office to, to Forrest's office, right? Because ultimately he's a massive resource for us that are not necessarily coming from an MMA background and are trying to support the MMA community to, to, to bounce ideas off, to essentially beta test things from a thought process perspective. And he, he's a huge part of the performance Institute philosophy because we can use and call upon his expertise. So here's another funny thing. When we were putting together the, the,

42:35the team for the PI, I kind of shied away from people already, doing MMA. I wanted combat sports. Everybody that's done it has done judo boxing on an Olympic level. They've done combat sports, but I wanted like a fresh set of eyes coming from a different, you know, than just, ah, you know, cause I know really good MMA strength coaches. I know pretty good MMA, you know, you, you, you know, good, but get, get that fresh set of eyes. You know, nutrition actually was a little different because the rest of the world does not understand a weight cut for an MMA fight. It's not like it, you know, we go to XO's, you go to any high level facility and then you say, I'm going to lose 8% of my body weight and then compete on Saturday. They're like, no, don't just fight in the highway class. I'm like, yeah, that actually isn't going to work out for me. They, they just won't comprehend it though. No, no, you'll perform better. Like, no. So,

43:26well, some fighters do, or it's, that's another thing about having a limited amount of weight classes. When you jump up, you have to make a drastic change. He's crazy, man. He's like 174 and 175 on fight day. Yeah. Fighting guys 190. Yeah, but with a lot of energy. Yeah. What's interesting is at his age, I think it's probably a good move. Yeah, I think it's probably a good move though, at his age. You know, I mean, he's back from UFC Ultimate Fighter 1. Dude, insane. We, we knew though, like on the show, that he was the one that would go forever. We knew in the house that, I don't know, he's just crazy. He's got so much enthusiasm. Still. He's not going to stop. I mean, when he beat Mickey Gall that way, I was, I was incredibly impressed. When I'm like, this kid might test him. He didn't test him at all. I mean, it was amazing. It was a prime Diego Sanchez performance, 15 years into the game. I mean, it doesn't even,

44:14not even just into, that's just into the UFC. Yeah. He had amateur fights, or professional fights rather, before the UFC. He's been in the UFC for 15 years, Or at least 14, right? 2004, 2005 was season one. Yeah, we shot it 2004, 2005, so yeah. Somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years, which is amazing, that he's so enthusiastic about it still. Yeah, they'll give him a vase for his, top of his mantelpiece, above his fire or something. Carriage clock or something, just to recognize his 15 years. Yeah. Yeah, that's a long time, in a combat sport. Long time. So, that's the other thing, man. That is not the norm. That's a deviation, right? Huge deviation. Don't think you got it for, I made it nine years in the UFC, eight years actually. And, you know, I didn't have that many fights. I broke down, I fell apart. Yeah, it's pretty average. You know, I was like, woe is me. And then when you look at the data, it's like, oh no,

45:09I'm just average. 35, that's when you start to fall apart. When you look back now, with what you know now, and all the athletes you've worked with at the UFC PI, do you think you would have done anything different? Oh my God, I can't even think about it. I knew what to think about it. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's so, so dumb. Like, why would you spar eight rounds? Why would you spar eight rounds? There's no eight round fights for us. What are you doing? Oh, you're literally just getting slower for us. You're already slow. I don't, I don't know. It's, again, being a pioneer like you were, there wasn't really a whole lot of guys before you that were operating. I had the other pioneers, like the Randys and the Chucks, and that's what they were doing. So I figured, oh, better be tough. I better do what they do. That's the craziest thing about MMA. I'm not going to question them.

45:56Boxing had already figured out you shouldn't beat the fuck out of each other every day. They had already kind of figured that out. and the other thing they figured out is, we would work with people, I would spar with Vanderlei, Chuck, Randy. In boxing, they don't spar with people that are equals. Past a certain point, in camp, well, think about it. You know a lot about it. They start, like, is Floyd Mayweather sparring with, I don't know, really good people, his level? No. No, definitely not. He's fighting with good boxers, and he's tooling them. Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I think, have you heard of them though? They're not famous and rich, so they're not the best in the world. They're not elite. Whereas, you think about like, a gym, like our gym, like I'll just use Randy's, because I don't want to talk bad about anybody. You're fighting other champions every day? Right. Eh, maybe, maybe. Dangerous as fuck. Yeah, maybe drill together, sure,

46:45learn from each other, roll, wrestle, like, control your training. Mm-hmm. Especially guys that are in the same weight class as you, that may someday fight you. That's awkward, yeah. Yeah. And, there was no guidebook. Yeah. Well, you know guys like Keith Jardine, and Rashad Evans figured it out, they're like, all right, we already had to fight each other, we'll train together now, so we won't have to do it again. Right. That is a good move, if it works out. The, the level of guys now, is, it's so extraordinary to see, like, when you see the elite champions of today, you, you just have this insane level of, of, of fighter. It's, it's really, as a person who's been involved in the sport as long as I have, I, I still never cease to be amazed at the, the level of talent of these guys coming up, because some of these guys coming up, they just could do everything, and they could do everything at such a high level,

47:34and you're realizing you're, you're seeing the results of, kids that started out learning MMA, when they were like five, six years old. I mean, you know, I had a person, I have a personal gym, and I remember Ronda Rousey, they're like, man, she's going to change my bottom line. All of a sudden, I got a mat full of, uh, young women, like, just training, like, legit fighting. I was like, this is amazing. Thank you, Ronda. Yeah, she for sure changed it. Gina Carano changed it a little bit before her, you know, and people had this idea, like, oh, you could be pretty, and fuck people up. Like, oh, that's a totally different kind of girl. That's like a superhero. Like a real life superhero. Now she plays it in movies, right? Yeah, but it's just incredible too, that the sport, when you look at women's MMA, like, like, uh, particularly Amanda Nunes, Chris Cyborg, that fight, I mean,

48:18that is as crazy exciting as any fight you will ever see in your fucking life. And Amanda Nunes bombed on the, one of the greatest, if not the greatest women's MMA fighter of all time, and KO'd her in the first round, in spectacular fashion. Like, if you're not a fan of MMA, or women's MMA after watching that. Yeah, like, that's funny you mention that. I just think about Holly Holm, like, what's she made out of? Like, she's had a million fights. Like, what is she doing so right? Like, she's just, she's a, you know, GSP, couture, she's just a genetic specimen. And, and I think she, you know, she just, again, she does that 52 week fight camp type deal, you know? Yeah, you don't see her ever getting out of shape. Never. It's not happening. Yeah. You know, I still think she got a raw deal in the Durandamy fight. Ah, she did. That's because she did. She did. She got clocked pretty, pretty late. Two times hard after the buzzer. Absolutely.

49:10Two times. And no, no, no points taken away, no nothing. And we were shocked. We're like, that's crazy. And then on top of that, she dropped her. She dropped her with a head kick, and she dropped her with a straight left. Like, in my opinion, she did the more damage in that fight. And I was, I was shocked, but that's, I mean, MMA judging. It's never gonna. That's crazy. We cannot help you with that at the performance. Performance Institute. Well, we got some data. When I was getting that before, when you were talking about little kids, when I was, I was rather talking about kids coming up and amateur fighters, there would probably be something that would be really beneficial of having, um, some sort of a program like that in America, where kids can understand the right way, the wrong way to do it. So they don't have to repeat these problems and these, these mistakes that have already been kind of gone, gone over.

49:58And that's your background in the British Olympics. Yeah. I mean, if you, yeah, set that up, right. Is that, I mean, would that be something that the UFC would ever think about doing in the future? Because if they really wanted to ensure that they had a good pool of high level talent, it would certainly add to that. Yeah. I mean, there's no clear performance pathway into, into the, you know, the highest level of the UFC for the sport of mixed martial arts. So, but there's guidelines for training that I think kids might not have. Every, every gym has a curriculum. And what we're trying to do is obviously add to that curriculum from a, you know, from a training perspective, a recovery perspective, but ultimately what's, what's the best pathway. And as you've already contested to people are coming to this sport with so many different backgrounds. So are you going to chop that, that X access route to, to the UFC in, half,

50:43or are you actually going to promote it and, and find, you know, many ways to get into the UFC? I think, you know, we can look at things like the Olympic games. Does MMA ever, ever enter into the Olympic games and create a pathway? Who knows? And I'm sure the UFC, you know, are looking into that type of thing in the future and trying to be ambitious. But right now it's hard to define what's the, what's the optimal way. And what was the optimal route into the UFC? Yeah, it is really, that's one of the more interesting things about it. Like we were saying before, you could really have any combat sport path, boxer, wrestler, anything could get you in there. I'm sure it's the same for other disciplines of martial arts, but I have a lot of experience in kind of youth wrestling development. And when MMA came along, it was a little bit of a fear. We're going to lose a lot of athletes to MMA.

51:30And we did originally lose a lot of athletes on the Olympic level to MMA. Johnny Hendricks is a great example, promising young wrestling star, went to MMA, became a UFC champ, did not become an Olympian. But what it's really done is it's created this popularity in wrestling in no small part to, I think some of the, the feedback that you've provided around wrestling being so vital to the development of, of mixed martial arts, but there's been a real boon, I believe in youth wrestling and in, in, you know, youth and high school wrestling, because people realize and recognize that this is a pathway into, you know, into becoming an elite mixed martial artist of all the athletes that are in the UFC. You know, there's a very high level of champions right now that were 2008 Olympians. But if you look at the roster and how many people wrestled in high school, it's staggering. And so just getting this base,

52:21not only technique in the grind mentality, but the strength that you, you know, double lagging somebody from when you're five until you're 18, you develop strength that you can't develop when you're 22. And this core strength and the ability to do that is, is, is a way to get into it. And I know that other disciplines are likely receiving similar windfalls, but in terms of developing that curriculum for, for development, and that's, that's definitely part of the, you know, what we're interested in, in alleviating some of the, the big, the big mistakes, but there's still innumerable ways to get into it. Think about when you were doing jujitsu, you had to like struggle to find people to roll with when you started. Right. Sure. It was like, there's like six guys you could roll with. Now you can go anywhere. Like you can be doing a show in any, uh, just look up and go drop in on our local jujitsu club. Yeah. It's packed.

53:09You know, it's insane. John Jock's noon class the other day had 60 people in it. Six zero. Like what the fuck? There was nowhere to move. There's your talent development pathway to the UFC. You know, it's those kids' classes, right? Yep. Yeah. It's, it really is interesting too. And it's dependent upon if a kid lives in an area that has a strong jujitsu program or a strong Muay Thai program. Oftentimes that's what dictates what path they get into the sport from. No doubt. Yeah. Good, good women's wrestling program. Yeah. Wrestle like a girl. I'm on the advisory board. So I'm not only women's MMA, but women's wrestling as well. And there's, what's really interesting working on the, on the kind of the clinical side of, of what we do with the PI is every discipline has its own, not only sport culture, but physiology that goes with it. You know, as we talked about the strength dynamics for wrestlers, um,

54:00it are going to be different than the, the, the reactive strength for, for our strikers and then nutrition and, and just overall lifestyle type sport cultures is really interesting coming from the, the different disciplines that you came from boxers. They do the road work. They're doing a lot more fast and morning training, uh, wrestlers that have, you know, obviously a weight cut culture that they bring with them and have a little bit more experience there. A lot of the Brazilian jujitsu players, especially from Brazil have their sport culture. So it's so intriguing being able to, you know, not, we work with one sport, but with so many sub cultures within that sport and, uh, really, really interesting to, to, to get to work with. And obviously working with the female athletes, like you alluded to earlier, as a whole nother layer in terms of the dynamics that we're working with, in terms of the physiology with,

54:46with our athletes. I was just like the female physiology and the weight cut. That's just the whole, like, you really need to go to school for that. Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine that's a big difference. Now you help them organize their weight cuts. I know you work with, uh, Kamaru Usman for his, uh, cut for his last fight. So, so with Kamaru, we, we, we absolutely worked with him all the way through, all the way through the fight. Did you guys know he had a broken foot? Uh, he was limping around, but we, you know, no, we didn't. And if we did, we wouldn't have mentioned it, but no, I had no idea. And, and how crazy is that guy? Hey, he, I did know, you know, that's, that's awesome. I was actually happy keeps in the building for the whole time. And I didn't know that I was happy. I was like, yes, good. Good job. What happens in the walls stays in these walls.

55:29Cause if there's this place like the performance Institute and it's run by the UFC, Oh, the, the UFC that, that pays me to fight people. I'm worried that that's going to get to them. Right. So of course, especially if you want to go through, we started this, like, I don't want to know, like I'm the liaison from them to the other side of the half. I don't want to know whose weight is what. I don't want to know who's got a nagging injury. That's your, you know, some of that is actually HIPAA, you know, information. That's your private stuff though. Even if it's just how strong or weak you are, if you're having a bad day, I don't, I don't want that to ever get out of our walls. Right. So that's obviously, you know, you're a conspiracy guy. That's, you know, what does that have to do with conspiracy? Yeah. Guys always think the UFC is out to get them. Oh, me too. I always thought like, ah,

56:15they're going to find out that I got this or that. And you know, well, you know, the, the stress out for me, the stress of preparation for a fight. I mean, people are always worried, especially if there's a little tweak, something going on, something with the hand, something with the leg, something with the knee. People, it gets out. People find out about it. They hear about it. They target it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. It's a thing. Camaro in, you know, every other athlete we work with comes in with sensitive injuries and we have a private treatment suite within the performance institute, the, the PT area. Um, so they can come get private treatment. And then in terms of, you know, supporting him for, for his weight cut that, that starts 10 weeks, 12 weeks for, for Camaro, you know, three, four months in advance. How much are you trying to get them down to before the day of the cut?

56:57So every athlete is going to be a little bit different based on what, what their background is, what is comfortable cutting from? Yeah. What, what their historical weight cutting, uh, practices have been, how hard they've been on the body. So we're, we're assessing somebody like Camaro for their metabolic rate, where, where they fit in terms of their body composition into that weight division, their lean tissue versus their, their fat tissue. Those that have a higher degree of lean tissue are going to have muscle has more water than, than does fat and bone. So you can push the body a little bit further for those that have a higher lean tissue. Um, and so all of that planning and preparation starts many, many weeks in advance. And, and having heard, uh, Camaro on your show a couple of weeks ago, a lot of, a lot of what we do with an athlete that doesn't have a history of missing

57:46weight may have a hard time making weight, but oftentimes they're making it harder on themselves because they're pulling the body in two different directions. Like we talked about, if they're training in one way and feeding in a different way, what they're doing is they're just undermining it and kind of digging a, digging a hole that they can't get out of by the end of fight camp. And that fight camp gets really long. Like Forrest talked about, what do you see in terms of the way they fuel themselves? It's like the biggest error. Sticking to one, one style of feeding, regardless of the training style that they're engaging in. And so MMA athletes, they have to do high intensity training sessions, strength and conditioning. They have to be doing sparring. They have to be doing pads rounds that are crazy hard. Um, and, and every athlete, each one is going to have a different intensity relative to, to,

58:28to their body type. And so if somebody is doing pads, it's a nine or 10 out of 10 in terms of intensity, and they're doing that fasted, or they're doing that without carbohydrates available to do that work. They can't, they can't a hit those training intensities repeatedly, and then they can't adapt as a response to that training. So they end up just getting slower and more beat up instead of faster and more powerful. So if they're doing high intensity, we need to fuel the body in the specific way that supports that training effort. And then the longer turn adaptation to that bout. Additionally, if they're doing lower intensity, we can adjust our fueling strategies based on what that dictates. You know, if it's, if it's a, uh, kind of a base aerobic training session, or if they're doing skills and drills, we want to be feeding the body to adapt differently than if they're doing the high intensity sparring,

59:17strengthening, conditioning, or pads, or whatever that might be. So for every athlete, we're looking at how their body uses substrate energy, the energy that they're using the substrate between carbs and fat at each of these intensities. And then we also need to base it based. We need to base our recommendations on where their body fits into the division. If they're, if they're 20% out from their weight division, four weeks out, then we're going to have a little bit of a more aggressive strategy nutritionally because it, it weight becomes a primary factor. If they're 10% out, four weeks out, then we're going to have a little bit of a different conversation and prioritization around the fueling strategies. And all of these conversations integrate within our strength and conditioning program so that we're working in concert and tying in the workload into our own system,

60:04as well as the training load that they're engaging with, with their skill specific training. Now, when you vary the diet that you give them independent, dependent of the workout, what is it, what is that based on? Is that based on a hard accepted science of carbohydrate versus protein versus essential fat, essential fatty acids? Like how do you determine that? So we, we, we use a philosophy, a system called metabolic efficiency. You could call it metabolic flexibility. I've heard it called as well. And essentially the body will use different substrate at different intensities and at low intensities and at rest, the body, uh, can and likely should be adapted, uh, for our, for our sports athletes to, to fat at rest. Now it depends on the sport type. Again, if we're a shot putter or if we're a hundred meter sprinter, then we're going to be much more dependent on carbohydrates and,

60:52and really the creatine phosphate system. We're not even getting into the glycolytic system. And Duncan could talk a lot more about the energy systems, but essentially we're, we're reliant upon glucose and ATP for energy at those lower intensity bursts, right? So to hit repeated max or sub max efforts, we require blood sugar. And without it, we will, we will deplete our, our initial stores. And then we can't, we can't, we can no longer hit 90 or 95% of our max. We start hitting 80 and 70 and 60 and, and diminishing our ability to do these high intensity efforts. Now, do you guys see anybody come in and try to fight on a ketogenic diet? Cause I know quite a few guys were doing that for a while. I know Brian Carraway did it, Matt Brown. Yeah, that's right. He has fought, but he, he varies. And I think he, yeah, well, I talked to him. I think he did one pretty pure and then he did, you know, he did the one where you,

61:43you know, you might take in 60 or 80 carbs, but then you work them off to stay ketogenic. I don't, some of those guys like Zach bitter. He's a ultra marathon runner. He, he, he does eat ketogenic most of the time, but then on days of big races, he'll consume a lot of sugars. Yeah. And, and, and again, I'll, insulin sensitivity too. So essentially the, the more we can regulate blood sugar at rest and low intensities, then we can expand and, and to support the development of that kind of aerobic oxidative system. And by adapting to use fat as a primary substrate, we're, we're doing a number of things. One, we're balancing blood sugar at rest so that we can really limit the insulin spikes and, and essentially adipose development. Um, in addition to really driving the body towards the oxidative and, or the oxidative aerobic system. And then as we increase in,

62:36in what we do is we assess how the body adapts through the training intensities. And we'll repeat that kind of on a monthly basis to see how the athlete changes. And then as they increase in the intensity of a training effort, then we will adjust the ratio of fat to carbohydrates as, as this, as a fuel substrate. I thought it was going to come up organically, but it didn't. the trifecta fight prep system, you guys and your team are going to 22 events this year. Indeed. Take, take it away. All right. What are you doing? So I'm shooting a promo here, Joe. Step back. So essentially we're assessing and then we're programming based on each athlete's needs. So, um, like Forrest said, one of our most valuable partners at the UFC performance Institute is this company, meal prep company, uh, called trifecta nutrition. And, and they, uh, essentially have all organic meal line that can be, uh, developed all a cart, uh,

63:33ordered all a cart. And so with Camaro, as an example, we worked together for his past two fights and, and many athletes, like I said, uh, are, are not fueling the type of training in a way that leads to their long-term adaptation, but can lead to overtraining earlier in camp. And so what, what we really want to do is to understand how that physiology works and then program and then provide those athletes with the nutrition, whether it's onsite at, at, at the UFC performance Institute, at the events as well as what I was getting at, like 22 events they go to. So you think about like, I would, you know, I would literally smuggle oatmeal into Brazil. Like you're stealing food. You know, they, they're like the, you get the, you know, the little thing that says an organic, the little pass, uh, they can go to those fights and actually feed you throughout the week. Oh, wow. That's where I was going with that. Sorry.

64:22So that's incredible. So they would like, if you had a fight in Stockholm, they would come to Stockholm with, if, if it's one of the 22 events. Oh, okay. So, but if it's one of those 22 events, they would go and you could get the UFC PI to fuel you through the entire event. Yep. So there's, there's a number of levels. So I'll get there in just one sec, but essentially we'll take them through the fight camp, fuel them for adaptation. So they show up to the event. We know exactly where they are. They're fueled. And then we could take them all the way through the fight. So 22 events, most are domestic, except for some, the pay-per-views that are, that are international. So of the 22, the only international ones are the pay-per-views. The others are the ESPN events. And those are pretty much exclusively domestic. But what we,

65:04what we've done is we've outreached all of the athletes that have crossed paths with us at the performance institute. So it's not, it's, it's not roster wide yet as we're working through a lot of the operational events. As an example, we aren't able to get into the kitchen at every hotel. So then we're working to find a community kitchen, trying to find contacts at local universities. So you guys would actually cook them yourself. So trifecta hired a chef. So trifecta, they're our partner. They've, they've been amazing in terms of, you know, trying to feed our athletes. We identified this as a real need to, you know, we, we, we run a marathon with these guys, right? Kamaru, as an example, we worked together for three months. We get them to a week before the fight. And then it's like pat them on the butt. Good luck. And say, good luck. Right. We, as we know, fueling is, is impactful all the way through the fight, you know,

65:50in, including 30 minutes before. And so instead of patting them on the button, but in saying, good luck, trifecta hired a chef who I've previously worked with. He, he worked with me at Cornell university for, for a year. He was an intern with me. He worked at, he worked at XO's for two years and then at a two star, two Michelin star restaurant here in LA and Providence is, is the name of it. And he got hired. He's their executive chef and, and is building out the fight week meals based on me and my team's programming. So we work with every single athlete that we've connected with at the PI. It's gotten up to, you know, on average between 14 and 16 athletes at all the events that we're working. And we provide comprehensive fueling. Uh, so all of the food calories that they put in their body from the time they step on foot on Tuesday for fighter check-in all the way through, you know, 30 minutes pre fight, um,

66:38including all the supplements, NSF third party tested supplements for supplement safety to make sure they're not getting adulterated products. We're keeping track of everything that they're, they're consuming on the supplement side. We don't sit in the sauna. We're not there to, to be a weight cut coach. We are the, we are the sports dietetics team to support them on a, on a, on a programming and on a, you know, a science evidence-based level. Uh, so we, we, we will consult with their teams around what's the safest, what's the most effective way to support an athlete making weight. And then we instantly, once they make weight, we have supplies that was developed, cooked, prepared by our chef that morning and the night before to support rehydration electrolytes to, to optimize the gut, uh, repopulation of gut microbiota, um, as well as balance the osmolality so that they're not getting gut cramping and,

67:28and issues that happen when you ingest a ton of sodium and, and glycogen, or sorry, and glucose that causes a lot of water to rush into the gut. And then we essentially feed them all the way through, um, like I said, breakfast, lunch, and then pre fight to support their, their performance on fight night. Um, I'm an outspoken critic of, uh, cutting weight. I don't necessarily think it's the best thing for the sport or for the athlete. I mean, I think one of the benefits that we would get out of having more weight classes available is that fighters could get their body to the weight class where they're optimally at. Has there ever been any discussion? I know you guys have had discussions about PED usage and how to stop adulterated supplements from getting to fighters and, and making people test positive. But what about some long-term goal of potentially eliminating weight cutting the way they've eliminated PEDs?

68:17PEDs. So as we already talked about, I come from college wrestling. Um, tragically in 1997, three college wrestlers died. In Florida, of course. It's always Florida. Was it? No. Two of them. Two of them. One was at the University of Michigan. And, uh, I, I'm not, I'm not exactly sure where the other two were, but. Let's pretend they were Florida. Let's say Florida. It feels like Florida. Florida's just going to shake their head anyway. Go ahead. They're not even going to check. They'll accept it. But the NCAA, dramatically overhauled their weigh-in rules, um, from the, the day before to, to the day of. And there are a lot of similarities in terms of the types of athletes that are wrestling versus the types of athletes that are competing in MMA. Uh, but we work in and we work with professional athletes, uh, and we work for a professional fight promotion. And, and the dynamics of, uh,

69:12professional fight promoter is completely different than the NCAA. And the, the, the, the level of autonomy with our independent contractors versus the NCAA athletes is different. And, and we, as the UFC, you know, the performances too, we have the health and safety of our fighters in mind at all times. And, and that's priority number one. And I've, I've had to literally call the ambulance on athletes that, that I've seen not doing well because of health, health considerations. Now, you personally, how do you feel about it? About weight cutting? About weight cutting. I, I, I would like to, um, I personally would like to make it safer. Um, there, there are, uh, there are less than ideal, um, I think safety concerns, uh, you know, that, that we've all heard of. And, you know, a lot of us have seen. Um, and, and from, from my perspective, the, the closer that you can bring it to, to the fight, the better,

70:11but because of the promotional nature of the UFC, it's limited. And then we, I'll tell you, we have, we have limited ability to affect change with the UFC because the commissions, the commissions really are the ones that are, are, are really making the rules. I don't sound like that asshole, but dude, pick your weight class, make the weight, or just say, you know, I'm not going to be able to do it. I got to move up. Right. You know, like it was always hard for me to make 205, but you know what? I didn't really want to fight heavyweight and I made it. And towards the end of my career, I walked around like, you know, I used to get pretty big. I was like, Hey, I don't want to do that. I want to be a professional, be a professional. It comes back to the whole, I hate to keep saying it, but the 52 week fight camp. All right. Like, do you need to get 20% over your fight weight? If you're 20% over your fight weight,

71:00that's not your fight weight. You know, just making very good points. Just, just, I mean, you can, there are weight classes. All right. Maybe there needs to be a weight class like every, well, it is like every 10, 10 pounds. Well, every 10%. So I think percent's a lot more important than, than weight. The other thing is maybe in time it'll happen. There's 570 athletes is not enough to fill that many weight classes. And then, you know, you're a boxing guy or you, you know, then you get a weight class. I'm just going to run around and we're going to have fights every three pounds. And then, then it becomes a little, I don't know if that's necessarily the, there's like 27 belts. How much value do they have? Really clearly is that it's an unnecessary risk. It's an unnecessary risk to have a guy dehydrate themselves or a girl dehydrates themselves. So that literally to the point of going to the fucking hospital,

71:5224 hours before a cage fight is insane. If you could eliminate that, why wouldn't you? That's the number one thing. I think there's no benefit whatsoever to making people dehydrate themselves 24 hours before a cage fight. It seems crazy. No, nobody's going to disagree with you, but we, what's the best way to figure it out? The best way to figure it out is to, first of all, you could definitely avoid a lot of struggle and tragedy by figuring it out. Right. I mean, the, the, the fights that happen where waiters were fighters, um, in several organizations cut weight and died during that process. That's heartbreaking. You know, if we could avoid that, it's already a dangerous sport as it is. We are collecting data at the performance Institute. We, we all have some opinions around what works best in terms of reducing the extreme weight cutting, creating some competitive parity in the cage, I think is a really,

72:42really critical point. So that it de-incentivizes that, that weight cutting process. If you can't be as big in the cage, well then, right. Then there's not as much of a benefit. The problem, well, it is a very complex problem. And the regulation in, in mixed martial arts is such that we're the promoter and we abide by the regulations of every single state athletic commission. And so we are, we're collecting data so that we can understand the issue better. We're coming, you know, we're working to come to an understanding to then share with, with those that, that are the, the, the legislators of the system so that they can help make it safer as well. Because it's, it's not just a unilateral decision where we tell our, our employees, this is what you do. We have, we have 570 independent contractors. So each of us has, has, you know, some strong beliefs and opinions in this space. And I,

73:31I value yours and I really respect that the passion you bring to it. This is, this is my passion as well. That's why I came to the UFC is to, to impact this culture and hopefully on the policy side as well. But it's a very, very complex system that we're working to, to kind of, you know, infiltrate or to affect from the inside. I truly understand that it's complex, but if you could wave a magic wand and not have weight cutting, wouldn't you do it? Fuck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But nobody's disagreeing with that. So why not just listen to the UFC can do that. They can do that. One FC is doing it. It can be done. You just, you have a program where you make sure that people move up a weight class. They don't, you have hydration tests. You make sure that they're never, they're never really taxing out. Like some guys we've seen, some guys, I've seen guys shuffle to the, to the scale. Cause they couldn't walk. We've all seen that.

74:19Where guys are literally on death's door, 24 hours before a cage fight. That's crazy. If you could eliminate that. I, I commend one FC for, for trying. There's holes in that system. Just like there's holes in any system. For sure. You're always going to try and game the system. Nah, they're, they're trying to game the system as well. Well, I think your point is that one. They're peeing on a stick that you or I could go buy in Walmart. Those aren't that easy to beat, or those aren't hard to beat. The hydration tests. Yeah. Yeah. Nope. They're not. You're a hundred percent. Right. I mean, it, but it's more, more, it's more protected. It's more difficult to do. They have a, they have a far different regulatory system than we have as well. We have 50 independent state regulators. We have come back down, down in Brazil. We, we have different regulators. It's, it's very complex. And, and I,

75:07I think that we obviously here at the table and at the performances too have, have that as a, as a primary kind of area of focus. But we're, we're, we're working to affect the systems that can. Yeah. I mean, I'll sum it up. What Clint and his team are doing is let's see the data. Like, let's collect the data. Let's figure out what it looks like. You know what, what Donna has been doing for the last couple of years, collecting every fight weight. Let's see, you know, let's, let's look at the data, figure it out from there. Yeah. It's, it's just such a, it's such an unfortunate aspect of it that I get has been there from the beginning, or at least from the time the weight classes started being instituted. But it just seems to me that boy, if there was a way to avoid that. UFC six, they had it, they had it right. The giant guys, wasn't that the one with the giant guys? that was Adam. Like Jerry versus Goliath. Right. Yeah.

76:00We'll go back to that. Yeah. Cage fighting is pretty hard by itself. Yes, it is. Yeah. I just, um, we don't call it cage fighting. We call it octagonal struggling. Struggle. Got to PC that shit up. Yeah. Well, you say cage fighting. People go, what? You say, Oh, mixed martial arts. Oh, you mean like the UFC. I love Ronda Rousey. Yeah. I'm a big fan. Hey, it's about your messaging sometimes, man. Yeah. I've accepted that. Do you guys have, uh, long-term plans for expansion of, uh, the treatments and different things you do? Do you have like a, uh, is this something that you guys are constantly working on and improving? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. The, the sports science landscape is vast, you know, um, and we try to keep abreast of all the latest technologies, the advances in theory and philosophy. So, yeah, that's at the heart of everything we do. You know, we're trying to, um, stay at the cutting edge of sports performance. So how does that,

76:52does, do you have to go to conferences and find out what the latest stuff guys are doing? And I mean, you know, I did the math this week, actually, you know, I, I always say the church isn't the building, the church is the people. Our, our staff has got a combined experience in pro and elite sports of 106 years. We've got 18 Olympic games supported within our staff alone. Wow. Okay. So our people, our, our staff are what is so precious to the performance Institute. Um, and we're very proud of our staff and that their respective world leaders in their own individual areas. Um, but yeah, of course you have to go and speak to people. Of course, you've got to listen to seminars and collect and gather information. They love their conferences. I'll tell you that. What you've got to do is process it. You know, there's, there's a lot of pseudo science and bro science out there, you know? So you, you've got, you love that word,

77:39right? Yeah. It's a real problem. So, you know, the, the ability to process it is, is what makes the difference, you know? What's, what's no, no, not everybody can be fortunate enough. I don't even have to be smart. I just went out and found a bunch of smart people. Do they make you take notes when they make you sit on these conferences? I honestly used to really like try to upskill myself and everything. And then at some point I was like, nah, this is nah. Just, Hey Clint, come here. I got a question. Now in terms of, uh, like recovery stuff, I know you guys had a, a hot, uh, pool, like a sauna or a jacuzzi rather. It was right next to a cold plunge. How much of that stuff do you guys do? And what, what, what equipment do you guys keep? Yeah. I mean, again, both Sandoval, who's our head of strength, our director of strength and conditioning puts it, you know, intimately in terms of the, in the UFC, everyone's training hard.

78:27You know, every, you're not training harder than the guy next to you or in the gym next to you. What, what is the key is how fast you can recover and train again at the intensity that you need to the day after day after day and be robust enough to tolerate that. So recovery and regeneration is just as important as the training exposure. In fact, your body obviously changes and adapts during the recovery and regeneration process. So, yeah, listen, we've got hot tubs, we've got aquatic capabilities, we've got cryotherapy, we've got compression, we've got, you know, everything that you would expect in a, in a, in a world-class facility. What we're starting to do is really try to be a bit more prescriptive around that. As Clint's already talked about, you know,

79:06it makes no sense to us to look at a high neuromuscular striking session where you're hitting mitts or hitting bags and use the same recovery strategy as a high metabolic grappling session. These are totally different physiology, physiology challenges. So, yeah, to be prescriptive and to be a bit more strategic in our approach. But at the end of the day, what is core to recovery, it's such a personal thing. You know, some people don't like getting in the cryotherapy chamber. Some people can't swim, so they're not going to get in the water and do hot, cold plunges. It's just, it's going to stress them out more. So, you know, it's, hey, go in here and potentially drown. It'll help you recover. It's not that deep. Well, it's not that deep, but there's, you know, there's some people just got the fear of water because you can't swim, you know? What do they do about baths? Well, shower. Avoid much of that.

79:53Shower is too crazy. You'll know them when you smell them, I guess. Do you guys have sauna on premises as well? We do. Yeah. Do you have guys go from the sauna to the cold plunge? Me personally. Yeah. Do you do that? Yeah. It's supposed to be a great benefit of that, right? For sure. And again, you know, you've had Andy Galpin on, you've had all these, Brian McKenzie, all these people, the breathing experts. Most of both of their books, so. There's a lot of information now around recovery. Yeah. But it's still a massive gray area. What about massage? Do you have that on staff as well? Absolutely. Our therapists can do that. Do they do like, like, rolfing, that kind of like deep tissue stuff? Yeah, Graston, all that stuff. How often do you guys recommend that for athletes? Because the Soviets, for a long period of time, it was really shocking when we found out they were massaging their athletes every day. Yeah.

80:38And there's debate as to whether or not that's good or bad. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think what Heather, who's our director of PT, will tell you is that the fascia and the fighter posture and the way fighters are putting their bodies through particular challenges, obviously creates a lot of muscle tone. It creates a lot of tightness in the fascia. And just methods and mechanisms to free that up, to allow the joints and the articulation of the body to work effectively is huge. If you have greater than a, I'm trying to remember the numbers, but a 10 to 20% imbalance in the joint within your body, you now have a 70 to 90% chance of injuring that joint, right? So just the difference in terms of symmetry and balance within the body and its influence on injury is massive. Wow. So why not be proactive in trying to utilize manual therapies and recovery modalities,

81:34rather than working in a reactive process and waiting for the injury to happen. And again, that's, that's core of our philosophy is that there's been a big shift in the barometer for, for some of the fighters that come through the performance Institute, you know, the clinic and the therapy is somewhere where you go and you're injured. Well, you know, what we do is we promote it just as much as the strength and conditioning piece. So when you talking about range of motion, you including flexibility exercises, do you guys incorporate a lot of that stuff as well? Oh, for sure. But again, it's, you know, the fighters tend to be pretty flexible. So again, it's, it's on an individual level, but most strikers, most people can kick you in the head in the UFC. They're pretty flexible. In individual orthopedic assessment, right? So I, this is tight. That is tight. All right, we need to loosen you up.

82:17We're going to put that in your routine, right? So everything is needs analysis driven, right? So, you know, Brian Ortega don't need to be any more flexible. He can throw his, put his legs, he just needs to maintain his current flexibility, right? So you, it completely varies. And if you've got like a stiff wrestler or someone who's like, just never really worked out on there. And think about the combat posture, that internal rotation, that combat posture where you're constantly throwing. I mean, just chronically doing that year after year is going to set you up for some amount of tightness in terms of fascia. So again, I don't want to get outside of my scope of expertise. But we're very proactive in promoting fighters using modalities proactively rather than reactively. So say if a fighter came in and they did a hard grappling workout and after the training, what would you recommend and how much time?

83:04Cause there's, there's some thought that the body should exist in an inflamed state post workout. Depends on the phase of training. Yeah, right. And also for a certain amount of time. Right. And then there's more of a benefit of going into cryotherapy after like an hour or so. So where the benefits and the, the reaction. So again, if, if you're off camp, what are you trying to do? You're trying to break down your body so it can be overloaded and recover better. You know, you, you, you're using that super compensation to take it to a new level of, of, of adaptation. Yeah. In camp, when you're sharpening the knife, ready for the fight, you want to remove any type of fatigue because you're getting close to the fight. You need to optimize your training and always peak to, to, to the performance on fight night. So, you know, there's gotta be a strategic, we've got to periodize your recovery as you would periodize your training

83:51loads in camp or off camp. Um, but yeah, there's, there's different approaches and different modalities that you've got to utilize. So if you look at grappling, um, and the metabolic demand that goes into the wrestling and the grappling, you know, that that's a lactic lactate kind of response. That's a, um, you know, a circulatory issue in terms of those, those metabolites that are circulating around the body. You've got to remove those. All right. So is that going to be something like a muscle pump type recovery strategy that will help it remove it through the, through the liver and into the limb system? You mean like one of those compressions? So yeah, it might be a compression panel or it might be hot, cold, you know, if you go hot, cold, the, the, the vessels will expand in the heart and they'll contract in the cold. You get a natural kind of muscle pump.

84:33And how many times do you ask fighters to do that when they do a hot, cold thing? Do they do it? Is there a sequence? Yeah. I mean, we, we, we have a preferred methodology right now. It's about three, three to four minutes, four times in each. Ah, just go back and forth. Go back and forth, four minutes, finishing the call. You look at other, you know, other experts and other professionals in the field, they'll say sit in the cold bath for 20 minutes, you know, so it's, there's still not the science, not the data and information out there to really support. How do you, yeah. How do you optimize? I mean, how do you know whether or not it's having that much of a benefit compared to not doing that? Ask the guy. Yeah. Just all subjective. Talk to him, make a way, you know, feedback. Yeah. Number one, subjective. Do you feel better? You know, there might be no science around cryotherapy. I'm not suggesting not, but there might be no, no,

85:22no data and no science on it. But if the guy walks out three minutes later and feels like crystal mind and his body is fresh, it's, it's kind of worked, right? Yeah. Well, the norepinephrine, the, the raising of the levels of it due to extreme cold exposure. I think that's been proven. I think cytokine developed. Killed pain, right? Yeah. And the heat shock proteins as well. Yeah. Cold shock proteins and heat shock proteins. Both of them. That's all proven stuff. Right. In terms of measuring the actual inflammatory markers of the body, but some people don't like it. I'm just making the point that if, if you like that stimulation and you like that sensation and you walk out, you can forget the physiology because now we're tapping into psychology and that's still part of the recovery process. Yes. It's, it's beneficial. For sure. What were you going to say? I have no idea. Sure wasn't for it. No, I was going to say.

86:06I will sidetrack just in terms of recovery. Nutrition is a core value of the recovery process. As well. So as much cryotherapy as you do, if you're not recovering, stimulating muscle, you know, converting from catabolism to anabolism, providing nutrients for, for substrate regeneration, that's a critical component as well. So that, that, that's, that's critical. What we aren't doing is providing tart cherry juice or high antioxidants immediately post-training as well. That, yeah, we'll, we'll include that in other periods of the day in the evening or, or not, or not immediately around a high intensity training session for antioxidant. What's the negative aspect of, uh, the antioxidants post-training? Similar. It, it, it limits, it blunts the, uh, adaptive response based on the, the, the body's recovery process. So if, if you, if you blunt your, your, uh, immune response to, uh, to, uh, micro trauma,

86:57muscle tears that need to be rebuilt stronger and faster, well, then you, you limit the adaptation. So yeah, we want to provide nutrients to support recovery, but we don't want to eliminate the adaptive response to, to the training session. That's what's so fascinating about the science of it, that you can get that, that specific, that you know that if you consume the high levels of antioxidants post-training, it's going to blunt the recovery time. That's, you have to. yeah, it's amazing. Curcumin, tart cherry juice. There's a number of, of spices that, that are included in a lot of different things. So whether it's cooking or, or in our supplement protocol that we will include, but we're, we're going to target them away from the high intensity. How far away from the high intensity? A couple hours, couple hours. I mean, it comes back to, you know, can, can a fighter, can a coach process all this information? Right.

87:41You know, can they physically be aware of it? Where are the cats? Just give me the diet. Right. So write it down for me. So again, let, let us do some of the grunt work for you at the performance Institute, and we can give you some of that education. Write it down for me. I'll tell you how I feel. And then we'll come back. We'll talk about it. And maybe it changes. Coaches and gyms don't have to feel like you're trying to poach them and take them away and bring them to a new player. That's the beautiful thing about it. It's like, it's open to everybody who fights for the UFC. Yeah. And the other thing which I would say is this, this is at no cost to the fighters. Yeah. All right. It's also their choice where they're independent contractors. They can decide how much they want to engage with us as much or as little as they want. And again, that's the same with the trifecta program for, for meal prep.

88:19It's the same with our strength and conditioning program. So again, it's, it's all bespoke and customized programming at their expense at no cost to the fighters. it's so exciting for me because, having seen the fight, the fights in the, um, the, the sport and the level of sport evolve over all these years, it's so exciting to see constant and continuing innovation. And when you guys came along and built this thing and I had a chance to go and visit, I was so excited. I was like, this is just as what, man, every sport needs something like this. But the fact that the UFC has this. You should do some testing. Come by, do some testing. They're going to find out I'm old. Yeah. I mean, we knew that. Where are you more old than others? Yeah. Right now, my left hip, I fell down skiing. You make a great, sorry, you make a great point because what's, what's been one of the really exciting things for us and refreshing, um,

89:03also for the UFC performance Institute is that sports like the NFL, the NBA, you know, the English premier league, we're having representatives from all of these teams, NHL coming through and trying to understand, or just be trying to understand what we're doing, how we're working our sport science into the sport of mixed martial arts, and to try and capture our philosophy and our approach from a facility development perspective through to kind of our educational processes, through to the way we're interacting with fighters. And again, we're trying to shape mixed martial arts. We're trying to influence the UFC. That's, that's, that's our, that's our number one mission. But the, the, the, the global awareness around the performance Institute is, is, is really exciting as well. Now, I know you guys, you were talking about your place in China. Uh, are you planning on going anywhere else? Well, right now, um, you know,

89:48the, the expectation or, or our desire is to influence mixed martial arts globally. We're, we're truly a global sport. So, right now we don't know what that's going to look like, but the ambition is to obviously have performance institutes around the world that can help the development process. I want to build one in like South Africa. So, mm-hmm, badass over there. Get the malaria medication ready, bro. Wow. Cipro, right? Cipro. I don't know what that stuff is. He just wants the red wine, right? Oh, it's pretty nice too. What is cool about is about us operating and, and athletes being independent contractors and, and accessing us however they see fit is we have so many different case studies and utilization. Uh, we'll have people come out for a week at a time, access our team, take that back. We'll have other people come out for part of a camp or a full camp. Others will come. We had, um, Macy Barber actually,

90:34she talked about it publicly, but she, she worked with us quite a bit for her last fight. She booked a flight from Nashville to Vegas to, to reconnect, to get updated nutrition, strength and conditioning, whatever, whatever metrics that we could update based on her health status, as well as orthopedic support post fight. So we were able to get a number of days post fight as part of essentially the completion of her fight camp to, to get her ready for the next phase. So there's a lot of different ways that athletes can utilize based on just whatever their needs are, whatever they perceive their needs needs to be. And then whatever influence we're able to, uh, kind of make over, over their preparation. And Macy Barber is a perfect example of someone getting that kind of high level treatment very early in her career. She's only 20 years old, you know, super exciting prospect.

91:20And for her to have access to something. She'll be 21, like three weeks. She's old already. Over the hill. That, that voice is Forrest Griffin, ladies and gentlemen, no one else. Uh, when you, um, when you treat these younger fighters, how much, um, emphasis do you put on giving them, um, just some, just a smart protocol to try to minimize the potential injuries, like to get them to understand the relationship between range of motion and injuries, to get them to understand balance. I know you guys have a machine that you actually can measure the muscles in the body and show like the left and the right side. What's, what's, what's weak and what's strong, right? What is that called again? I mean, we, we use force plates in, in certain particular, um, there's something you lie down in though, isn't there? So we have the DEXA scan, which is essentially, uh, you know, a low dose X-ray that measures the,

92:12the mass of the tissue between bone mass, muscle mass, and fat mass. Um, and so we, we can get a balance of, of the musculature and the skeleton bilaterally. When we, when we see a big imbalance on that front, because that, that is a nutrition related test. We will share that with both physical therapy and strength and conditioning. And then physical therapy could break that into more nuance around strength imbalances around joints using the biodex. And then strength and conditioning will do very similar, uh, kind of understanding using the, the bilateral force plates that Duncan was mentioning. That stupid machine told me I had two pounds less muscle in my left leg than my right. And it was accurate. Oh yeah. No, I do. I blew my knee out a couple of times, but I just didn't rehab it properly. So when you found out, did you start doing like extra one legged pistols on the left side? Four, two weeks,

93:01maybe even three. And then I was like, yeah, I got some emails to send. Then your knee started hurting. And now he just keeps running in circles. Let me ask you this. If you did see a fighter and they did have something like that and they were active, they're still competing. You saw, happens all the time. What do you do? Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of fighters that have imbalances muscularly that that's, that's not a nutrition related. Obviously our support is going to be important for the adaptation. Right. And this goes to Heather around a orthopedic assessment. What, what, what's the imbalance? What's the injury risk? Like Duncan was saying in terms of strength imbalances, um, she and her team, Heather Linden, our director of PT would, would do that orthopedic screen, see what the imbalances are, um, and break it down. And then that would lead to probably, probably programming in her space.

93:46And then also to strengthen conditioning, to build programs around whether it's mobility, range of motion, or, or just around kind of hypertrophy to make up for some imbalances. So that's where the comprehensive approach comes in. I might assess something and then kick it over to them. There's many cases where they would assess something, whether the strength coach, uh, you happen this week, so-and-so is having a, a, a bad training session. They talk about low energy. They talk about not, not being able to recover or get up for the next training session. That's an immediate referral over to my session, to, to, to my side of the defense. So that's where the integrated care becomes really, really critical. So, uh, how, if you had someone that had like a two pound weight difference between their left leg and the right leg, how much time would you give them to gain that weight back?

94:29Would it be dependent upon the individual? Or like, you would probably want that to be a priority before they went into a heavy camp or something like that, right? So, you, you can't resolve that immediately, but that would be part of the... Yeah, I mean, it comes back to the, the, the return on investment, right? What, what's the return on investment to, and the, the reduction of an injury risk to, to try and influence that two pounds? Do you know what I mean? That, that's a conversation. That's, uh, you know, we're, we're going to have that conversation around how, how effective or influential that is going to be on the outcome of the fighter. So, you know, as Clint says, there's fighters that walk around truly imbalanced. Um, but what's the risk and the time and effort it's going to take to make that change? If it's in a fight camp, we're probably going to just leave it as it is.

95:09If it's off camp and we've got a little bit more time to try and address it. All right, now we can be a bit more proactive about that. But with me, they were like, you're old. We'll take you out back and shoot you. No, they did. Uh, we messed around with some, uh, BFR stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's BFR. Blood flow restriction. The occlusion band. The katsu type approach. But again, in physical therapy and strength and conditioning. Now that's not revolutionary anymore. That that's, that's part of just another tool that we add to it. It's, it's a way to come to augment, um, or accelerate hypertrophy. So if you have someone that's coming back for returning from surgery or an injury, and you're looking to get muscle mass back onto, um, the limb without necessarily loading it through free weights or whatever it may be, you can use blood flow restriction methods to try and increase the hypertrophy mechanism.

95:53What are your thoughts on, uh, electrical muscular stimulation? Those little pads and shocks. Geez. No, no, that is called Heather. Yeah. Well, they, they, uh, they come by a lot with different machines too. So that's, I have not now. Well, no, actually, no, that's not true. I was the test dummy, but we did it on my shoulder. I was the test dummy. Did it help you at all? I think with a lot of those things, there's some short term relief. And again, you're influencing the nervous system. The long term changes are potentially not there. Here's what I want to ask you about. Cupping. Is that legit? Yeah. Is it real? Michael Phelps. Everyone sees a picture. He's amazing. Everyone sees a picture of Michael Phelps at the Olympics. You can plate them, fork them, cup them. I got to cut this morning. He's a beast. If you think about massage, that's all decompression. What cupping does is the opposite. It lifts. All right. So again,

96:43when we're talking about fascia and changing fascia and releasing fascia, if all you ever do is massage and depress the tissue, you're not getting that mechanism of lifting and bringing it up into the cup. So that's kind of philosophy behind it. And our therapists use it a lot. But again, it's just a tool. And they're going to use the tool for certain situations. And they might leave it for others. Is there any scientific research to back cupping? Not that I'm aware of, but I might be completely wrong. Do you ever do it? I got cupped this morning. Do you like it? Show him your leg. What's going on with your leg, bro? Forrest. Oh, man. Forrest, what'd you do? So do you know, do you know. Compression from an, oh, so you had surgery. Six weeks ago. What'd you have done? MCL, PCL, LCL. Jesus, man. Do you know the single leg, when you do the scissor defense to the single leg? Yes. That scissor. I don't. Oh, no. Not at all.

97:36I just fell right on his leg. It turns out you can't do a thing. You can't not do a thing for six years and just think you can do it. It's not riding a bike. It's a, it's a perishable skill as me and Clinton now know. So how long ago did you get this? But I have three new ligaments. I'm good. Oh, Jesus Christ. Six and a half weeks ago. Six and a half weeks ago. Three new ligaments from cadavers. Is that what it is? MCL was able to be repaired down on itself. PCL, cadaver, LCL, cadaver. I'm getting world-class physical therapy on a daily basis. Cupping today. I got grasped in yesterday. Hurt like hell. But literally, I'm just beta testing everything. I was the test subject for Roman for all the exercise tests. Now I'm the test subject for all the PT rehab. What about stem cells or exosomes or anything along those lines? We got our flights to Panama booked. Dr. Neil Reardon on standby.

98:29I'm sticking with physical therapy at the moment, but I honestly don't know that much about the other components. I'm waiting for embryonic stem cells in the U.S. Then I'll do it. What's that mean? They're doing a lot of insane stuff. I have stem cells in my Achilles. I have Achilles surgery. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah, they're doing some pretty incredible stuff. If you're really interested, you should talk to Dr. Roddy McGee. He's also local in Vegas. I know Roddy. Roddy was the one that did my Achilles surgery. Yeah, he's amazing. I did a consult with him. You sent me. You and DC both sent me. He said for my shoulder, and he was like, yeah, there's nothing there for it to attach to. I'll take your six grand, but it probably won't work. I was like, oh, I appreciate the candor, Doc. Yeah, he's very honest about the potentials, but your shoulder's been operated on how many times? Three. Yeah, that's rough. Now,

99:23what are the options when something like that happens? I know they do shoulder replacements, but what does that entail? Yeah, I'll probably do that eventually. And what does that mean? They just put a different socket and joint? The ball and socket, yeah. What do they do with all the surrounding ligaments and everything? I don't know. I don't know. That's terrifying. I think a lot of those are still intact, so I don't think the range of motion would improve. As long as I go mess around in RPT once or twice a week, it stays functional. So, when you say mess around, what kind of stuff are you doing? Stuff for mobility or stuff for you doing like clubs? Well, I like where you're actually moving through with them like pressing on the muscles and you're actually like lifting the weight. What's that called? Where you're lifting weights or someone's manipulating your muscles? I forget. I'll think of it in a second.

100:09No worries. Physical therapy? It's called physical therapy. They have you do a lot of band stuff and a lot of shoulder guys get band work. I do them as a warm-up every day. Or whenever I work out. Except for today, I just jumped in cold. Let's see what happens. Now, how much time do you spend on educating fighters about having to strengthen up all the surrounding tissue around knees and shoulders and necks and things along those things that are commonly your core, your lower back, commonly injured? Tissue resilience is massive in our sport because, again, it's end-range resilience, right? With the submission and the grappling exercise techniques, obviously you're taking a tissue and the tolerance of that tissue to its end range. So by being able to train that over time in a progressive fashion, of course it's going to have an influence. And yeah, part of our programming is going to approach that for sure. Now,

101:07you guys have been in action now for two years. You've had a bunch of different fighters move through and do their camps there. We've had a roster of 570. We've had over 430 of the fighters have already been through in the first 22 months. And we have a retention rate of about 73%. So they're either coming back for repeat visits or they're getting remote programming from ourselves. Now, how much has this changed over the two years? How much have your protocols changed? Your programs have changed? A lot. Yeah, I mean, a lot. We're learning more about the sport. The data is showing us more. And, you know, again, just the opportunity to speak to more coaches, more athletes. Again, we're servants to the fight community. We're sports scientists, therapists, clinicians. At the end of the day, the IP sits with the coaches, with MA coaches and people like Forrest. So just being able to understand how we can collect that information

101:59from a technical, tactical perspective and try and fit it into our philosophy of sports science being complementary to that, that's evolved all of our processes extensively over the last two years. Have you guys ever thought about putting any of these sessions online? Yeah, I mean, I... Oh, the shooting. Yeah, I always say the Performance Institute has got three responsibilities. The first responsibility is to service athletes, to service our fight community, either face-to-face or remotely. The second thing which we're trying to do, something like this, is to aggregate more information and more insights around the sport. It's only... Is this available? Anybody can buy this? No, but you can get it online through... It was sent to every fighter on the roster. Okay. But to the average person? A fan? You can go to our Twitter accounts and things like that and find it on there. There's links out there on social media. Everybody knows

102:47the UFC fighter, right? Just go find one. But the second thing is we need to understand the sport. The sport of mixed martial arts is only 25 years old professionally, so aggregating data is the second thing. And then the third thing off the back of that data is dissemination and education across the global fight community. So we're called the Performance Institute for a reason, not the Performance Gym because we are truly trying to do project work, do research work, work with partners to try and aggregate that information and our awareness and our understanding so that we can push it out there. So the plan is obviously moving forward to really ramp up our educational platforms to support the global community. And hopefully, we'll have kind of certifications coming online and those types of things as well. strength and PT are filming stuff to put online to like a full, like this is the way this exercise is properly done,

103:36this is things to look out for, for physical therapy and strength and conditioning, you know. You guys have a YouTube channel? We don't. We're working on all this stuff. What? Here's the thing. We don't want to act quickly. This isn't, we're not like a YouTube thing. We want to like, hey, when we release something, we stand behind it. This is tried and true. These are practice methods. We don't need to rush it. Also, these jerks are always busy like working with athletes. Freudian slip. Freudian slip. Wow. Well, I think that would, I mean, what you guys are doing is amazing and it would be even more amazing if young fighters, people coming up, get it. You really could influence a lot of folks. You're right. And again, it's in our ambition. It's just, we're just two years into this thing. Our first year was just, shit, let's just get operational. We don't even know what this thing is. What kind of mandate did the UFC give you? I mean,

104:27how much, what do they say, hey man, make a fucking awesome place where people could do their best. All right, this is Dana. High five. I'm going back to work. Like, how does that work? How does it get set up? No, I mean, it was like, hey, we want insights into the athletes. We want, you know, eventually, its origin was like, hey, can you guys make people stop missing weight and getting injured so much? And more importantly, when somebody does get injured, can we like get them back quicker? Can they not work with like a mom and pop car accident chiropractor to get like a professional athlete? You know, can we get them back? So, the goal, right, so the mission statement is, you know, to elongate careers, to, you know, to help athletes make their weight class, stay within the weight class, fight great at their weight class. So, again, specific mandates, like the exact KPIs, I forget what they are. there were some.

105:17Just off the back of the forest, what I would say is, we can legitimately say, in the first 19 months of, the first 19 months of our existence, we've saved 22 fights, either through medical intervention or the work that Clint has done around someone that's behind their weight descent, and we've really expedited that process. That's amazing. We're proud of that number, and it's hard to build KPIs around that, but that's why the Performance Institute was implemented. KPIs? KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. So, we're not a fight team, right? We work with the whole roster. So, we're not judged on wins and losses, although some would, you would look on social media and some would think. But, our KPIs are around things like, how can we support fighters make weight? How can we get them to the door of the octagon in a healthy fashion? And again, 22 fights, we can absolutely say, they probably wouldn't have happened

106:07if it wasn't for the work of the Performance Institute. So, you can put a financial cost potentially against that, and that's kind of the philosophy behind the Performance Institute. All right, gentlemen, any last words? Clint, you were going to say something? I was just going to add that a lot of what we're doing and the athletes that we get to interact with are the cases that require huge interventions. You know, people that are coming off a six-fight win streak are not looking for how to fix their metabolism or how to stop missing weight or how to improve their power because it's a deficiency or an orthopedic injury. So, we're working with those that are really successful and those that are struggling and everything in between. So, around those interventions that have led to fights actually happening, there's a huge amount of, I guess, risk for lack of a better term, that we're taking on as we're really working

107:02with the athlete's best interest at heart and doing everything we can to support that athlete to be more consistent and to be able to do it longer into their career so that they can, you know, do the best for themselves, for their family and for, I guess, the UFC. Beautiful. Anything, Duncan, to add to that? No, I mean, this is a trip, you know, in terms of where we're at with the Performance Institute, our ambition is to really affect and support the global fight community. That's what we're about and hopefully, you know, moving forward to here, you know, people are going to see the value of what we're trying to do. Well, I think they already see the value. I certainly do. I'm very excited that you guys are around. I thought you thought it was going to be a waste of money. It's definitely going to be a waste of money but in a good way. What does that mean though, right? It costs money but I think ultimately it's great for the sport

107:45for sure. Thank you. And it's just an amazing resource and I'm glad you're a part of it too, man. It really means a lot. It means a lot to have a guy who's a former champion who's been there, I mean, since Ultimate Fighter Season 1, you know? I mean, it's crazy. Your fight, I mean, everybody says it, it's a fact. Your fight with I say it all the time. I say it at least once a day. That fucking fight made the sport. What? You were in a... He was in a fight once. That fight made the sport, man. It really did. That fight was so crazy. People were calling up their friends like... When they started doing... Nielsen numbers are all shenanigans, right? You get like 100 people, they're checking their... They don't really know who the fuck's watching what. But they know that something crazy happened during that fight. They have estimates that there was as much as 6 million people changed and started tuning into that fight

108:32while it was happening. They don't know what the real numbers are, but it was chaos. And then afterwards, I never saw anything like it. I've seen... It was like all of a sudden people wanted to watch the UFC. It was almost instantaneous. The season finale of The Ultimate Fighter went on the air and then the door opened and people started pouring through. It was crazy, man. And that's you. You and Stefan Bonner. You guys are responsible for literally the birth of this explosion that we're all seeing right now. That we're seeing with this ESPN deal. We're seeing with these incredible fights. No, it's cool. And I love that that I got to kind of be that cornerstone. But now the PI, the UFC itself, the stars today, it's only building. That was the beginning. There's so much more to come. There's so much more to come, but you're a bad motherfucker, Forrest. We're there. Just don't ever drill jiu-jitsu or wrestling. We're worse.

109:30You fall on people. But seriously, I'm super happy that you guys exist. It's awesome for me. Thanks, Joe. It's been a treat for me as a fan. Thanks for having us. Dork out with you. Appreciate it. And to learn all the inside stuff. It's very exciting. So thank you. Much continued success, gentlemen. Please come visit us again. I would love to. Welcome anytime. I would love to. Thank you very much. All right. Woo.