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 of that...

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 explain why the thing...

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't careful,...