Why nutrition should be developed progressively—not treated as an all-or-nothing skill If you spend much time on Reddit or other online fitness communities, you've probably seen this happen. Someone asks a relatively simple question about nutrition. Maybe they want to lose some body fat, gain muscle, improve their energy, or simply start eating better. They are looking for somewhere to begin. The answers often go much further than that. Before long, they're being told to calc

There is a strange idea in strength and conditioning that seems to show up everywhere, especially when people start taking their athletic development seriously. Someone decides they want to become stronger, faster, more explosive, and better conditioned for MMA, so they start looking at what high-level fighters are doing. They see heavy strength training, Olympic lifts, jumps and throws, sprinting, aerobic conditioning, intervals, mobility work, recovery strategies, testing,

When people talk about mental toughness in MMA, they usually mean someone who doesn't quit. That's certainly part of it, but I think mental toughness is much more than being willing to suffer. MMA is going to make you uncomfortable. You're going to get tired. You're going to get hit. You're going to get taken down. You're going to get stuck underneath someone who is stronger than you. You're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to be nervous before you train or comp

A lot of people think of fundamentals as something you learn so you can move on to the “advanced” stuff. I think that’s backwards. The fundamentals aren’t a stepping stone to advanced techniques. They are the foundation of everything you will ever do. Knowing a technique and mastering it are two very different things. You can know how to throw a jab, shoot a double leg, pass a guard, or escape a bad position without being particularly good at any of them. Mastery comes from r