I've been teaching martial arts for a long time, and I think one of the hardest things about getting started has very little to do with fighting. It's walking through the door for that first class. People spend weeks, months, sometimes years thinking about trying MMA before they actually do it. They watch fights, look up local gyms, read about different martial arts, and imagine what training might be like. They might even fill out a trial-class form and then hesitate when it

Years ago, one of the MMA and BJJ gyms where I coached was located next door to a CrossFit gym. I arranged an exchange with the owner that allowed me to use their equipment during hours when they weren't running group classes, in exchange for some private lessons. I didn't expect to learn much about coaching culture from the experience. I just wanted somewhere to lift weights. But I noticed something almost immediately about the women who trained there, and the contrast with

One of the questions I think every martial artist should ask themselves from time to time is a simple one: Am I actually getting better? Not am I attending class regularly, learning new techniques, or getting tired during training, but am I becoming a more capable martial artist? Can I do things today that I couldn't do six months ago? Can I solve problems that used to give me trouble? Can I perform under pressure with greater consistency? These questions matter because it's

I've met plenty of people who want to fight. They love MMA, they enjoy learning techniques, and they'll happily spend hours drilling, hitting pads, wrestling, and sparring. They want to compete, they want to get better, and they want to see how far they can take the sport. But there's a difference between wanting to fight and being willing to prepare yourself to fight. The interesting thing is that most of these people aren't lazy. They'll show up to the gym after a full day

Of all the sparring equipment I own, my mouthguard is the piece I consider most important, and it's also one of the things I'm willing to spend the most money on. I use a custom-fitted guard made from a dental impression and fabricated in a lab. For me, the difference between that and a bulky, poorly fitting boil-and-bite guard is worth the extra expense. Think about how often the head and jaw are exposed to impact in combat sports. In boxing and MMA, punches can damage teeth

Walk into a sporting goods store, scroll through social media, or listen to almost any fitness podcast and you will eventually hear about electrolytes. Apparently, we're all one workout away from a sodium deficiency, and the solution is usually a brightly colored drink, an expensive powder, or a packet of salts that promises to transform our performance. At the same time, some dieticians have started pushing back against the idea that everyone needs electrolyte supplements. T

A few months ago, I wrote an article about David Epstein's book Range and its implications for developing MMA fighters. One of the central ideas I took from that book was that complex, unpredictable activities often reward breadth of experience rather than narrow specialization. MMA is an obvious example. A fighter needs to understand striking, wrestling, clinch work, and ground grappling, and more importantly, how those areas interact. A specialist who develops tremendous sk

One of the most important abilities a fighter can develop is the ability to remain composed under pressure. We spend a lot of time talking about strength, speed, power, conditioning, and technical skill, and for good reason. These qualities matter. But there's another factor that influences nearly everything a fighter does, and it's easy to overlook because it isn't as straightforward to measure. How well can you think when someone is trying to hurt you? A fighter needs to do

Every so often, someone asks whether MMA is good for self-defense. It's a reasonable question, but it tends to produce some predictable answers. MMA enthusiasts will tell you that combat sports are the only legitimate way to learn to fight. Traditional martial artists will explain that MMA is a sport with rules and that real violence is completely different. Both arguments contain a little truth, but neither tells the whole story. I own and coach at an MMA gym, so you can pro

One of the questions I get from parents fairly often is, “What should my kid get started in?” If they're talking about a young kid, my answer is usually pretty simple: gymnastics, wrestling, and a team sport. Then I tell them to let the kid play. Usually they're looking for the sport that will give their child the greatest athletic advantage, or maybe they're already thinking about what sport the kid might eventually specialize in. I understand that instinct. Parents want to

There's a growing movement in Brazilian jiu-jitsu arguing that we're teaching the art incorrectly. Traditional instruction, we're told, relies too heavily on drilling techniques, memorizing movements, and having coaches explain what to do. Instead, students should learn through games designed to encourage them to discover solutions for themselves. Rather than demonstrating an arm drag and having students practice it, we create a game where they compete to get behind one anoth

I've always thought we should be careful about the claims we make in combat sports, particularly when those claims involve safety. We spend a lot of time discussing technique, training methods, conditioning, and equipment, but sometimes we accept an idea because it sounds reasonable rather than asking whether it actually produces the outcome we want. Protective headgear is a good example. It seems obvious that putting more padding around the head should make getting hit in t

I recently had a conversation with my friend, mentor, and BJJ coach Mark Jones of Fairfax Jiu-Jitsu. I was telling him how, at 51, I'm working harder than ever to maintain my physical capabilities. I'm working on my strength, paying attention to my nutrition, trying to maintain my aerobic conditioning, and doing my best to participate on the mats with my students. But instead of simply maintaining what I had in thirties and forties, I'm noticing a real decline. Injuries are p

I've heard the same thing about judo for years: it takes a long time to learn, the learning curve is steep, and you should expect to spend years working on the basics before you can make much of it work against someone who is actually resisting you. There's truth to those statements. Judo is a difficult martial art, and becoming proficient at throwing another person who doesn't want to be thrown is a serious undertaking. But I think there's a question worth asking: "How much

How much does diet actually matter for MMA performance? A lot. But probably not in the way people sometimes think it does. Sports nutrition has become another area where athletes can get trapped trying to optimize everything. We have macros, meal timing, supplements, hydration strategies, recovery drinks, different kinds of carbohydrates, different kinds of protein, pre-workout nutrition, post-workout nutrition and an endless supply of people on the internet willing to explai

One of the questions I think about a lot when designing strength and conditioning for MMA is when to stop doing general physical preparation and start making the conditioning more specific to the sport. It sounds like there should be an obvious answer. Build the general qualities first, then move into sport-specific conditioning. But in practice, I don't think it's that simple. MMA training already provides a tremendous amount of sport-specific physical stress, and if we aren

One of the questions I get from athletes is some variation of, “How strong do I need to be for MMA?” It's a reasonable question, but I don't think there is a single number that answers it. There isn't a squat number, bench press number or deadlift number that suddenly makes someone strong enough to be an MMA athlete. Strength matters, and for some athletes it matters a lot, but MMA requires much more than strength. The more useful question is not how strong you can become. It

I've been thinking about a question that I don't have a completely satisfying answer to yet. If you don't want to compete, why train combat sports? I don't mean why would someone enjoy it. I understand that part. I love training. I've spent most of my life wrestling, doing boxing, BJJ and MMA. I understand the satisfaction of learning a difficult skill, the camaraderie that comes from training with good people, and the feeling of doing something physically demanding that most

My father is a farmer. He also taught me how to box. One of the expressions I heard from him growing up was, “Make hay while the sun is shining.” It is good advice for a farmer because there are things you simply cannot do whenever you feel like doing them. When the weather is right and the hay is ready, you have a window. If you spend that window waiting for a better opportunity, you may not get another one. Eventually the weather changes, the field changes, and the opportun

I've been thinking about how martial artists talk about risk. There is a lot of discussion these days about concussions, CTE, injuries, hard sparring, training partners, getting older and whether combat sports are worth the physical cost. I understand why. If you're going to spend years participating in something that involves physical conflict, you should understand what you're getting yourself into. But I think we sometimes ask the wrong question. We ask, "How can I make co