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

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

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

Walk into almost any MMA gym and ask what an athlete needs to get better physically and you're going to get a lot of different answers. Get stronger Get faster Build your cardio Do sprints Lift weights Jump rope Get more explosive Improve your mobility Build your conditioning The funny thing is that almost all of those answers can be correct while still missing the bigger question. What does an MMA athlete actually need to be good at physically? I think this is an important q

Every once in a while I'll see someone ask a question like, "Is it bad to train five days a week?" My honest answer is that I have no idea. I don't mean that I don't know anything about training. I mean that the question doesn't contain enough information for me to give you a meaningful answer. I don't know how long those five sessions are. I don't know what you're doing during them, how hard you're training, how much of the work is technical practice, how much is live sparri

I tell my students that ukemi, aka breakfall,—the art of falling safely— is the most valuable martial arts technique I know. That probably sounds strange when you consider that I've spent most of my life training in wrestling, judo, BJJ and MMA. We spend an enormous amount of time learning how to do things to another person: punch them, kick them, throw them, take them down, pass their guard, submit them. We spend years developing increasingly sophisticated ways to control an

There is a particular kind of athlete we see all the time at BLAST. They aren't professional fighters. They have jobs, families, responsibilities and a life outside the gym. They wake up in the morning, go to work, spend eight or nine hours at their job, and then head straight to the gym after work. By 6:00 or 6:30 PM, they're expected to switch gears and spend the next two hours learning techniques, drilling, wrestling, grappling, striking and sparring. And they want to trai

Recovery has become one of the most talked-about subjects in strength and conditioning. And I think that's a good thing. For a long time, athletes tended to think about training as the important part and everything else as secondary. Now we understand much better that the training stimulus is only one part of the adaptation process. What happens between training sessions matters. Sleep matters. Nutrition matters. Hydration matters. Training load matters. Stress matters. But a

Combat sports are hard. That seems obvious, but whenever someone talks about training intelligently, managing intensity, or taking recovery seriously, there is always someone who hears, "So we're supposed to take it easy now?" No. If you want to get better at MMA or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you have to work. You're going to get tired, sore, frustrated, and occasionally get your ass kicked by someone better than you. There will be difficult rounds where quitting or slowing down wo

When I was wrestling, one of my coaches used to say that you needed three different kinds of training partners in the practice room. You needed the person you could beat frequently. You needed the person you could beat about half the time. And finally, you needed the person who could beat you frequently. I've thought about that a lot over the years, and I think it's one of the simplest explanations of what a good training environment should look like. Most people understand t