#86. Gavin Pratt: Everyone Is King
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What's up, everybody? Welcome to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. We got a very special guest today. He is, in my humble opinion, one of the top strength and conditioning coaches in the world, P.

period. He is currently working for the UFC and is in charge of the strength and conditioning program at the UFC Performance Institute in Shanghai. He coaches and improves the athletic and physical abilities of professional UFC fighters. This guy is the real deal. He's worked with men and women at the Olympic and world-class level across many different sports. He has over 20 years experience working with elite athletes around the world. Now, today, we talk about a

bunch of stuff, but really what it boils down to is being both physically and mentally fit. We talk about everything from how to train and exercise, beauty standards, body fat, mental health and social media, preparing for a fight, motivation versus dedication, the difference between being prepared versus being ready, the UFC, dealing with harsh and negative inner thoughts, enjoying life, and why we should breathe through our nose.

It doesn't matter what gender you are, what age, what fitness level you're at. I think there are some very useful things here to be taken away for everybody. It was such a good time talking to him. This episode was hosted by Howie, Eric, and myself. So without further ado, please give it up for Gavin Pratt. ♪ I love you so much ♪ ♪ You're the reason why I'm here ♪

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That's delicious. Gavin, this was a long time coming, man. Bro, it's been like a year and a half. I've been trying to get you on this show for such a long time. And just, I think, you know, life has gotten away a little bit. The last time I reached out to you,

It was actually... Well, the first time I reached out to you was before COVID. Before that was even part of our common vernacular. Yeah, absolutely. It was at the Combine, the second Combine we had at the USCPI. Yeah, I was trying to get you on your show and then all of a sudden COVID hit and you weren't here. You were in Vegas at that time, right? And it's been wild ever since, to be honest. You guys stuck outside of China. Yeah. Oh, shit. So, yeah, it was pretty wild. We actually...

My wife and I eloped just before COVID. We eloped in London. We actually got married 10 years to the day of when I asked her out in the same place. So that was kind of the plan. Sounds very romantic. Look at you, Mr. Romantic. Points, mate. Points. And so after that, we came back to Shanghai because we obviously both lived here and we were here for about three weeks.

And then Chinese New Year. Cool. Let's go. And that's just after obviously COVID whispers were starting to happen. And so the UFC team in America brought us back to Vegas and just said, come and work for us here while things blow over. Didn't happen. And then America got swamped. They said, go home before you get it. And the day after we landed in Australia, China shut down.

And the UFC is headquartered in Vegas. Is that where like the main headquarters are? Yeah, correct. So that's where the first facility was built. And then the Shanghai version that we're working in is actually three times the size of it.

and everything is one in the world. Yep. So at the moment there's just the two, but they're looking to expand on that with potentially one in Mexico city as well. Wow. What's the, like the charter or the kind of the mission for these, these centers. So the idea is like they call it, we want to basically improve the evolution of MMA, right? So it's, it's a young sport. It's only about 29 years old, which is,

when you look at football and cricket and all things like that. Basketball. Yeah, Kung Fu, right? So the amalgamation of MMA has been a really new sport. So we're looking to try and bring it into better...

Better world-class training, nutrition, education on it. And so the thing with the UFC is they've implemented or put in a lot of money to this because they would lose a great deal of money from fighters missing weight, getting injured. If you have your draw card or your main card and they can't make weight, they're not potentially allowed to fight. So they would lose a lot of money because people wouldn't tune in. So they're like, right, we want to stop this because we're losing millions. Let's put in a center that helps train our athletes better.

That worked. And then they're now trying to do that in China and try and develop MMA because there's such a big market here because of things like Kung Fu and the traditional martial arts. There's a big history here. So they figured, let's try and build it back up and build some world champions in China.

Well, let's introduce you to the listeners a little bit. So as far as I understand, you are in charge of the strength and conditioning program at the UFC Performance Institute here in China. So for the, I guess, the non-

exercise literate, I guess. What is strength and conditioning in your words? And should it be a priority you feel for all of us to understand what strength and conditioning is and make that kind of a priority for us to be

kind of hitting our athletic peak. Do you feel that's a priority all people should have? 100%. And I'm not saying that because I'm biased and that's the job that I have, but basically my role is to help athletes get fit and strong.

And so they don't get smashed in a fight. That's basically as simple as it gets. But in terms of the general population, strength and fitness or strength and conditioning is literally that. You're lifting weights to get strong or doing body weight exercises to get strong. And then fitness is more about the things like, you know, you're riding your bike or going for a run or having your energy system capabilities to be able to last, in these guys' cases, a fight.

So there's three different energy systems that you have and both of them work, three of them work for different timeframes. And so you just need to make sure that you train all of them. So if it's a short burst of energy, you've got that good energy system to back it up. If it's a middle one, that one that makes you feel like you're going to throw up, that's a lactic energy system. That's a tough one to train, but you need to train it so that you don't feel like throwing up in the fight. And then you've got your aerobic fitness, which is the one where you go for a run, usually lasting over three minutes. Yeah.

So the third one is aerobic energy system. What are the first two? The first one is called alactic. And so that's very short bursts of energy, usually under sort of 15 seconds. Like sprints, high intensity. Or in UFC or martial arts, it's those high energy bursts of striking.

So a combination on the pads would be a lactic. But if then, if you repeat it over and over and over and over again for around a minute, that becomes lactic, which is the next one. And that's where you're like, Oh my God, I'm so tired. I feel like I'm going to throw up. That's the worst. That's the worst one. Exactly. That's the lactic one. That's everyone's favorite, right? So if you improve those thresholds,

then all of a sudden you don't feel like throwing up and that's increasing your fitness in the lactic energy system. And then the aerobic one is usually when you go for longer than two or three minutes. And all of them, they're never like, this is this, and then this is the next one. They all intermingle, but you need to specifically work those energy systems so that it all comes together and you can utilize all of them. So, I mean, based on how I view what you do as a strength and conditioning coach, I feel like

You know, when you say strength and conditioning, you're building up your strength and your conditioning. I think for a lot of people,

regular people they think well isn't that just regular workouts but i see what you do as far more than that i feel like you're more like a scientist going in and breaking things down more for performance and actual function in terms of what you're trying to achieve rather than just general weight lifting and running and working out yeah correct and there's a massive science behind it that's

I'm actually an exercise scientist. That's my degree. So there's a massive science behind it from a physiological point of view. But the thing is, as a coach, is you've got to have that human element as well. So if I could tell you the science...

But it might go straight over your head as an athlete, right? And then all of a sudden, you don't really care about that. So I'm not really sure. What am I supposed to be doing, coach? What am I supposed to be doing? Just jump higher. I know why you've got to jump higher, but you've just got to jump higher. Okay, I understand that. And it's not talking down to the athlete. It's about getting the most out of them from an intent perspective. You do this because this helps you in your sport or in life. Therefore, you should do it. Oh, that makes sense to me. I'll go do it.

there's something called the force velocity curve right and there's one end where you work maximal strength and that's going to be quite slow think of lifting the heaviest thing you can lift you're not going to do that very quickly right so that's just pure force so that's at one end of the scale at the other end of the curve is speed so that's like if you're thinking you could run as fast as you can that's velocity now all the dots in between that

a contribution to both. Now you need that for pretty much all sports. Even marathon running, you'll need some speed because your feet hit the ground and come off the ground quickly, right? So you need all those components. So if you train one end of that curve, let's say force, you're going to get really strong, but you're not going to be very fast. Mm-hmm.

And so that's the science. We have to make sure that we program accordingly so that our athlete, we find out their weaknesses and then we look at maybe how long we've got before the next fight. Can we improve that component? And then how long does it actually take to improve that component? And then how long does it take for that particular thing to not drop off? So there's a thing called decay rate. So if you train strength for a while, you build up your strength,

And then after, you cannot train strength for 30 days and still manage to maintain your strength. If you train speed for a long time in the gym, maybe, and then don't train it for between three and seven days, you pretty much like decrease it.

So now think about a competition. What am I going to do first? Probably going to do a bit more strength because that'll hang on closer to the competition, but I need to train speed right at the end. So there's all those sorts of periodization strategies we've got to look at as well. And then you add 30 people, 30 fighters into the gym. Each one of you guys would need something different. Different body types. Yep. Different weight classes. Males and females we have as well.

And I could make you really strong and put on some muscle, but you've got to make weight still. So we're looking at something called hypertrophy, which is putting on muscle bulk. We've got to look at hypertrophy mitigation strategies. So I've got to make you strong, but I'm not really allowed to put on too much muscle because then you go up to the next weight class. So that's the science you're speaking of. Yeah. It's science, like the whole idea of –

fitness and through science, from a science perspective, is that something that's a bit newer that's been incorporated into training or has it always existed? It's always existed, but it gets butchered really badly because people make money now on social media. So they love seeing the circus acts, as we call them, you know, the balancing on

half BOSU ball and throwing something in the air and catching it that's really heavy. Wow, that looks impressive. I wonder, that must be how that person got so strong. That's the smallest little dot in their fitness regime. I can guarantee that. They do proper, basic, boring strength and conditioning to get better. And that is consistency's the science, man. Like tried and true methods. Tried and true methods, but it doesn't sell, right? People

People want the new stuff. It doesn't sell. It's boring. I don't want to just go to the gym four times a week and do a regular gym training program with some energy system work at the end. That sounds boring. It's like, yeah, but it works. They want the flash. They want the flash, man, but that doesn't give you the results. That just gives you likes on social media. So make your mind up. If that's what you're going to do, that's fine, but that's not where we're going.

Justin just sparked his eyes just lit up for some reason. Because I'm with you, brother. I hate that kind of shit on social media where, I mean, not even with exercise, but it's a whole array of different things. So what would you, are there any real common, I guess, myths or things that you see people doing, whether it's in just, if you walk into a regular gym, you see people working out here or on social media that you see people

people are doing that you're just kind of inside just shaking your head at just thinking they really shouldn't be doing that uh it's actually probably something that more uh they should be doing so in in the in the sense of one of the biggest things that just doesn't go away and i've been doing this for maybe 24 years

Females do not put on bulk in the gym unless they actually have to work their asses off for it. It is hard to do that. They don't have the same levels of the hormone testosterone, which is part of being able to put on lean muscle very easily. And a lot of the time they'll feel like they bulk up because there's a process where you to put on lean muscle and

you also need to decrease body fat as well. And sometimes the body fat's a little bit slower. So if you put on a little bit of lean muscle, but you haven't quite lost the body fat yet because maybe you haven't got your dietary requirements correct or maybe you're not doing cardio, then you're keeping that body fat, putting on a little bit of lean muscle so you feel a bit chunkier. So that was the weight's fault. Well, actually, if you had all those three factors in, really simple, nutrition, cardiovascular and strength training, you'll do it.

You just got to be consistent. So there's a real fear from females putting on size in the gym. It's bloody hard. Yeah, you hear that a lot, huh? Yeah. And it's...

And it's rubbish. It's a bit absurd almost. It is. And all they need is a very simple strength and conditioning program. That's going to help their bone density because it prevents osteoporosis. It's going to help your heart health. It's going to change the hormonal balance in your body. It's going to release dopamine, serotonin, all those great chemicals that make you feel good so you don't have to reach for social media to get your feel-good likes. Yeah.

You're actually getting real hits of dopamine and serotonin to make yourself feel better. And the end result of just a regular training routine is you start feeling better about yourself because you start looking better, even if that's not your goal to do in the first place. There's so many benefits to it. I think the other thing is just the...

And from a general perspective, it's that combination. People tend to forget about the fitness side of it. They like lifting heavy weights, but you've got to remember your heart and your lung health as well. It's not just about having big muscles or looking good, right? Yeah. Your inner function is so essential, and that's something that's often forgotten. It's like the stereotypical...

thought of guys that bulk up on top, chest and bi's, right? But then they have little chicken legs. Barrel chest, pigeon legs. Yeah, absolutely. Don't forget your legs. From my own personal experience, I don't want to generalize, but from my own personal experience, I've talked to a lot of local Chinese girls,

And that is a reoccurring thing that I hear from them is when I say, oh, how come you don't work out? How come you don't try to build some strength? They're always telling me to help them open stuff that is easily openable for them. There should be no reason they're asking me to open this or lift this. And I'm like, well, you should build up your strength. I'm trying to help them here. And they're like, yeah, I don't want to go in the gym because I don't want to get all big and like –

I don't want to become very strong. In Chinese, like all bulky and muscular. I'm like, no, no, no. Don't worry. That's not going to happen. It's not that easy. Unless you're on the gear, that's not going to happen. And even then, it's probably doubtful. But I mean, that's the thing. A lot of our social norms come back to, well, like, why don't females want to... And this is a massive generalization, obviously, but why don't a lot of females, particularly in China, want to step in the gym? Well, what's deemed to be...

and this is not the only reason, but what's deemed to be attractive to the opposite sex. There's part of that for all of us, right? As men, as women, a lot of that deep down is our determining factor whether we do things initially. And then after that, you fall in love with whatever you've chosen to do.

But I do feel there's maybe a bit of that, that maybe there's this thought that the skinny look is still quite popular here. Oh, yeah, for sure. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's how it feels because there's definitely a bigger shift in Australia. Skinny and pale.

Well, I think there's different types of skinny and I've actually had this conversation before where the difference is, I mean, I'm generalizing, but in the West you have thin as an attractive look, but toned, right? Maybe a little bit of muscle tone or whatever. But here it's like thin, but like,

like tofu like it's like very skinny fat skinny fat like mushy right yeah like just skinny but it's like full of meat you know that's a fantastic it's actually a fantastic point because skinny does not mean healthy and and that and it's actually proven that there's you can do something called a dexter scan which which scans your body and we have one at the pi and it scans your body to tell you what your your um

fat mass is, your muscle mass and your bone density. And it can give you a breakdown of what your body is comprised of. And we've actually had that happen a fair bit where you might get a skinny human and looks like they're lean, but they actually are considered overweight in terms of body fat percentage. So there's two main types of body fat that you have.

There's visceral and there's subcutaneous. And so one of them is the subcutaneous is like the one that's just on top of your skin sort of thing, just covers the outer layer of your body. And then the visceral fat is the one that's surrounding your internal organs. Now that's dangerous. If you start putting on body fat around those internal organs, they don't get to function the way that they should. And then that's when we start coming into health problems. Now that visceral fat is a big component of that high percentage body fat.

So now we're starting to look at like, okay, you might look skinny, but you're actually really unhealthy. And this is why you need to start doing weight training and energy system work because it's good for your heart. It's good for your body to be doing these things, not just from a physical point of view, but from a mental point of view. And that's where people maybe sometimes are missing the point.

Our mental health is suffering brutally at the moment. Oh, yeah. All around the world. Globally. Globally. All we're seeing is the best of everyone. Yeah. On Instagram. And it's bullshit. No one's having that good of a time. Oh, yeah. I know. No one. Right? But we get suckered into this. Right? And so...

What's the best thing you can do for yourself? Something for yourself. Look after yourself. That's how you make yourself happy. Not waiting on other people to say, yeah, you're doing a great job. There's a like for you. It is get into the gym or whatever it is, boxing, whatever you like to do and do it for you. And then all of a sudden you'll find yourself a lot happier.

So actually you kind of answered my question because I was going to ask you to kind of more clearly articulate your argument for why, you know, because you work with elite athletes, but if we're talking, trying to make this more relatable for just like everyday folk, I mean, would that, what you just said be your biggest argument for why people should have it as one of their priorities on the totem pole of priorities they have is a goal to be

to kind of meet or try to chase their athletic peak? Well, to me, it's about finding what your, not even what your motivation is, it's what you're dedicated to. So the difference is between those two words. Motivation wanes. You can be really motivated tomorrow. This week, I'm going to have a ripping week in the gym. I'm going for it. By Tuesday, you're over it, right? But the difference is dedication, you'll actually decide I'm going in anyway. Why are you going in anyway?

That's what you've got to look at. There's all sorts of tricks you can do, like ask yourself the question, why seven times, and you'll get to the answer of that. When I was back in Australia, I was working with a young up-and-coming surfer, and we had this conversation as to why she wanted to make the world tour. She goes, I love surfing. I don't want it to be my job. Why? Because then I can get paid to go surfing. I said, why do you want to get paid to go surfing? What's exciting about that?

I get to travel the world. What else? And it came out that she wanted to support or pay back her mum who had brought up four kids on her own. I was like, there's your answer. Every time you go to the gym when you're tired and you don't feel like doing it, it's not just for you now. It's for your mum as well.

and now you've got a motivation and a dedication, right? And we've all got that. So whatever that is, there is no one answer, but it could be, I want to be able to play with my kids when I'm 60 and not be in my deathbed. I want to kick a ball with them. I want to show them that it's okay to live a positive, active life when you're 60. My parents are still running and swimming at 73 years of age, playing tennis, blah, blah, blah, right? I look at that and I go, it's possible. I'm

But if you're that parent that's not active, what do you think kids are going to do? So are you setting a good example for your kids? Are you the best version of yourself for your wife? Are you still the same person that she met five, six years ago? Does she still find you to be that person she fell in love with? Or are you a sad sack on the couch now not doing anything or half of what you promised her? Those are your purposes.

So I think regardless of what you decide, find that and then work in something you enjoy. So whilst I work with elite athletes, shameless plug, but I also have worked with general populations for a lot of that time as well. So I have an online business where I write programs for everyday people around the world. So they might send me a photo of their home, home gym, where they've got two pieces of equipment and they tell me how many times a week they want to train for how long.

Let's do it. Could be 30 minutes. We'll find a way. Let's do that. You just need a chair maybe or just like random stuff, right? Yeah. Your body can do some amazing things for training. Well, just using your own body weight. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. But what you were just talking about is a topic that we've frequently covered on this show actually in a different context, but is about finding the true like why. Yeah.

behind it all, right? And Eric has talked a lot about this and we've explored how he's passed and he's given us his personal stories. And he used to put like post-it notes all over his dorm room wall. And what it said was, do it for the family, do it for the family. And that was his root driving force after asking a million whys that he came to a realization that that was what he needed to do. And that propelled him

you know, greatly. It works, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it's funny because, you know, a lot of times, the first why, right, it's pretty far from the real reason, right? Because it's so multi-layered and we're complex creatures, you know, and the things that go through our mind are quite complex and diverse. And it's sometimes, for many people, some people are just so clear, maybe it's just, I mean, I feel like those are anomalies, but...

But for the rest of us in the world, I mean, a lot of times we're doing things because we kind of know why we're doing it or why we're doing it, right? But the core may be not so clear. Yes. And I think what your technique you just shared is a brilliant way to just cut to the core. You know, like, okay, you give your answer, there's more to it. Keep going. It's almost like a kid. It's like the innocence of a kid, right? You know, kids are like, why does that happen? What is that? You know what I mean? Yeah. And did you ask yourself that?

Those questions or was someone asking you? Because sometimes we can trick ourselves, right? Well, for me, in that particular instance where Justin was sharing, it was myself. Because I was already in the lowest of lows. You know, like the pit. You know, I was in the pit. But it happens like that, right? Yeah. You have to get to that pit sometimes to come out on the other side. It's that ebb and flow. And you hate being down there, but you know...

There's going to be a point where I come back up. It's the shittiest part of being a human. Yeah. You have to get to the deepest end. And it's so damn consistent too. Well, Gavin, I want to ask you, there's the old adage and cliche, right? With combat sports, whether it's boxing or MMA or a lot of other sports is that it's more mental than it is physical. That's the common adage you hear, right?

So from your standpoint, how much of that do you balance from giving them mental support and help versus physical? It's a huge question too because there's a saying that you can be as prepared as you want, but are you ready? And what that means is you could have a 250-kilo back squat, so you've prepared your strength well for that fight. But on the day, you get too nervous and you can't utilize that strength, so you're not ready.

So that's where the mental element comes into it. From a strength and conditioning perspective, I guess there's two angles. One, I just have to know that based on the data that we're creating as normative data of what's expected in the UFC and what thresholds and levels we need to get to, my job is to make sure that they physiologically can get to those levels or that I train them to the point where at least I know they're strong enough, they're fit enough, they're fast enough.

that's kind of all I can do from that. The numbers. Yeah, the numbers, right? We've got to go off something. I'm not making them a better fighter per se. That's the technical training job.

But I can build on those physiological aspects to underpin what they do in the technical training. Like in the back of those old Marvel cards, you know, they had like the strength, endurance, speed, the skill. The battery levels, right? You're trying to up those stats. Exactly. And then I know that they can go into the fight as prepared as possible.

But then we need to work on how ready they're going to be. And I guess that's the other aspect of a coach is you need to be able to work out each individual and know how those characters work. So is someone needing to be pumped up before a fight? Do you need to give them all the confidence in the world and tell them how good they are and build up that confidence because they self-berate?

Or do you just know that someone's going to get a little bit nervous a few days before the event, but come game day, they shine. They love it. They love walking out. You just know they're going to be okay. And everyone's a little bit different. So for me, I've got to try and get to know the athletes and work out how do I approach each of them as individuals because it's a very individual sport.

but we're training them in a team environment. So how do we get each other to help one another? How do I, as a coach, connect with each of these athletes as individuals as well? And how do I make them know that they've done everything possible once they step into that cage, what will be, will be, but you prepared as best as you could and you're ready to go. And then what will happen will happen. Sometimes you can't help the outcome of that. And that's kind of all you can do, right? I would have to imagine that...

you know, you coaching the mental aspect would be a lot harder than the physical aspect of it all. Especially when my Mandarin's horrific. So that, that, that is definitely hard and something that I've like much easier in Australia in all seriousness for me, I guess is I can talk like this to you guys and to my athletes in Australia, but here I don't, I can't go into the depth. So I'm just like, yeah, yeah. You know, like, but,

I can show them. And that's been a really cool challenge for me as a coach is that I might not have the language depth, but I need them to be able to trust me. I need them to know that what I'm giving them is in their best interest.

and we'll get the most out of them. And I can do that in very subtle ways. I can become friends with them with limited conversations and instill that trust in them and derive intent from them within the training session so that at least I know if I ask you to jump, they're going to say how high and they'll put everything into it. And then the physiology of that's going to take care of itself. So the mental aspect is huge. It's definitely more of a challenge here, but I really enjoy that because it's made me sort of look

a little bit laterally with regards to my coaching and how I do it. - What is the talent pool here like in terms of how you guys select your athletes and be part of the UFC? Because I was part of the UFC combine. I don't know, I wasn't part of it. Like I wasn't, I was volunteering as a helper, but you know, you have a lot of people wanting, obviously UFC is the biggest name in the game. So you have a lot of talent, young talent coming in, wanting to be a part of that UFC team.

And it seemed like part of the combine, what you guys were doing was you guys were kind of narrowing down and eliminating people and kind of just picking the cream of the crop. What are you guys looking for during this process? Sure. So they definitely get an invite only to the combine. So there's a lot of local cards around China that they fight on.

And so the sort of higher standard athletes will get invited to the combine. Then we do these tests and you're helping me out with the non-technical tests. So the strength and power and energy system related tests. So we can actually see what they're like as an athlete. And then upstairs, there's all these tests that are technical training. So we can see what they're like as a fighter.

And then from that, we aggregate the scores. We have a look at it and it's a bit of fun to see where everyone sort of lands. But basically the idea of a combine is to see what talent we have, what the coaches think of their skillset, and then combine all of those elements into a, they're going to make the squad of 25. We have a limited number that we can keep.

And I guess the non-technical tests, the strength, power, fitness tests are more of a decider if the coach is going, I don't know between these two. It's like a tiebreaker. So it's not weighted that heavily. No. It's more the technical stuff. For sure. Okay. Ultimately, we can change those things, right? Yeah. I can make them more powerful. I can make them stronger.

But if their level of skill. Instincts, I guess. Fight IQ. Absolutely. I wish the rating system was out in public. That sounds awesome. Like the Marvel cards that you were saying. I would watch it just to see the rating system. Yeah. In all sports. Yeah. Every sport. Every sport. Any sport. Any player. It's like watching the draft. Right? And there's like strength, stamina, endurance.

mental durability you gotta take this to Dana Dana White that'd be awesome you can market this collectibles and every year you get re-ranked you know what I mean so you're constantly seeing your growth or

For sure. I'm telling you. There's something in that. And this year was the first year they put the combine on Fight Pass for people to watch. So it's like a four-part series. But I reckon if you have the little profiles and sort of showing where their test results were, people would buy into that. Dude, I'm telling you, fans would be like, that dude's 10 in strength and 10 in mental. That's amazing. That's so rare. But his stamina is only two. Green lights. Green lights all...

I'm going to ask a question that I guess all of us, all three of us here are personally more invested in, is that as we get older and we've had podcasts about midlife crisis and stuff like that, we're kind of reaching that age. You know,

In terms of an athlete aging, and this goes back to what you said in the beginning, which I didn't know before was that speed has the quickest decay rate. Exactly. So it has the quickest decay rate within anybody, but also overall in terms of an age context, it's also the first to go away. Usually. And so there's actually research saying that the overall,

older aged like above 60 above 50 should be doing like olympic based lifts or power based lifting because of the type of muscle architecture that it can change and that prevents falls

Wow. So you'd think that like that sort of explosive style of lifting would be dangerous. But obviously, if you've got a smart sort of progression towards those lifts, then it's actually really beneficial for older age people to do more like, say, your Olympic lifts, maybe without the full technique, but that sort of style of movement where you're getting a good power base.

And so a lot of the falls you see are obviously that reactionary, whoop, I fell over, broke my hip, or whoop, fell over, broke my wrist. Well, their muscles can react and their tendons can react in that quicker way because they've been training that way.

So there's actually research to prove that as well. So it's a fascinating world in terms of how you can utilize strength and conditioning no matter what age you are. Well, talking about breaking things, I mean, by the time this show airs, it'll probably be old news. Did you watch the fight today, Poirier-McGregor? Yes, I did. So what happened there? It was just an awkward kind of...

putting weight on his back leg, so he broke his ankle. Mcgregor got hurt, right? Yeah, he broke his ankle, broke his tibia, one of the shin bones.

So you saw his leg fold in. Oh, no. And he just literally stepped back and it was quite a high... Funnily enough, I was watching it with the physio and it was quite a high... He was saying it's quite a high break for that sort of movement. It's just a walk? He stepped back. So they went in for an exchange. They both missed and then Conor McGregor stepped back and his tibia snapped. Is that just one of those freak accidents? So it's probably...

If you think of a stress fracture, if you're running, running, running on the pavement all the time, your bones start to crack a little bit each time over time, just slowly, slowly, slowly. But in the sport of MMA, he was kicking Dustin hard in the first minute and Dustin had checked a few of those kicks and maybe that was just a little stress fracture maybe occurred during that, but the adrenaline would have been high. He wouldn't have known anything.

And then maybe it's just over a couple of those. And then he stepped back and that's all it took. So it wasn't there. It looked horrible. I didn't see it. It looked very painful. Yes. It's pretty brutal. And he's still, still yapping away when he's on the ground. Still yappy. Yep. Have you, have you gotten to work with Zhang Weili here at all? Yeah. So yeah, she's come in a bit. She was actually here during the COVID time as well. So yeah,

the strength conditioning coordinator, Tom Wang, who's a Chinese national, does a fantastic job for us down there in the strength conditioning. He got to work with her one-on-one because there was no one in the facility because COVID was happening. So she worked...

with him for about three months and then she pops in from time to time. Yan Xiaonan has come in, done time there. We've got Song Kunnan. The Leach has come in a few times. So we get a lot of them because a lot of them are based in Beijing. So they have their houses, their homes, their training facilities there. So they sort of come in and do camps. But the UFC fighters that are based in Shanghai, they all train there full time. Why in Beijing, you think?

China Top Team. So China Top Team is a great club that's based out of there. Is that a management company, like a fighter management company? It's a gym. Oh, okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of martial arts gyms in China and that's one of them. There's another one that we've got a lot of our athletes from China

in Chengdu as well, called Embo. And so a lot of these gyms have produced some fantastic fighters, some of the best in the country. And if they're the cream of the crop, they get selected in this combine. We work together with their coaches back home, have a great relationship with them. And then they come and train with us full time and,

If they make the UFC, they've got the choice of staying at the PI in Shanghai or they're quite welcome to move home and train at their old gyms as well and then maybe come in for a camp before they go to America or whatever it is. Whatever they're comfortable with. Yeah. I mean, a lot of them still have their homes or their own gyms back in there. Well, they have families too. So, you know, it's cool. If they make the UFC, they can do whatever they want. I'm really happy for them. And if anyone who's listening watches Fight Pass and the current –

um, the ultimate fighter with Brian Ortega and, um, Alexander Volkanovsky. Um, there is Dana White coming in most time with the UFC PI Shanghai shirt. Yeah. I've seen it all the time. He's pumping that up. So it's really cool. It's really exciting time for Chinese MMA. And we've got some absolute weapons coming through. Um,

first of all, it sounded like you're really passionate about helping people achieve peak fitness, whether you're an athlete or whether you're, you know, me. Right. And so, you know, I was curious about how, you know, applicable these things are across different disciplines for different, you know, athletes in different disciplines and just regular people. Yep. And then sort of like what other sports that you've, you know, been, been,

been training athletes in as well. I'm just curious what the differences are. Is it common? If I train as a UFC fighter but I don't want to fight, is that a great way to train? Sure. From that perspective, I would say anything you're interested in and takes your passion is correct. That's what you need to train in. If I was to say, yeah, you could train like a UFC athlete, you'd definitely get fit, but you hate it. You don't like hitting pads. You don't like boxing. Then don't do that.

It sucks. You hate it. Do something you like. If you're a cyclist, do that. We need to find your passion because you'll continually do that because you enjoy it. And that's what life should be about, right? You've got to do things you enjoy. Sometimes, not so much, but that makes you a better person. But...

From different sports, I've probably worked, I don't even know how many different sports I've worked with, but there's definitely heaps. And the idea is that you need to find out what's important for that sport. What are the things that differentiate between a successful or an elite athlete in that sport versus someone that's sub-elite or even amateur? What are the differences physiologically and skillfully? Test those things.

And then work out what that person is weakest at and then train those things. And so if you take that to a general populations standpoint...

I spoke about the DEXA, but that's not very easy to get for the general population. So what are most people's goals when they want to train in general populations? For guys, it's probably to put on a little bit of lean muscle. They want a chest. They want some abs. They want some shoulders. And they want to decrease some body fat, right? It's pretty standard. So you go, well, how do you know if you're improving? What are you going to test if that's your goal? Because if you're going to...

go on this journey, you need to be held accountable.

And obviously looking in the mirror absolutely is one of those... The mirror test. Hey, the mirror test is legit, right? What about your jeans size? If you want to go from size 36 waist to size 32, that's a legitimate test. You don't have to pay any money for that either except maybe buying new pants, but it's a test. But you can also utilize your local gym to do things like that. There's different ways to test body fat. There's different ways to test your composition. The reason I'm saying body composition is...

that I'm only, I hate saying this on microphone, but I'm five foot six, very short, but I'm 77 kilos. Now, if you look at the BMI, the body mass index, which is a test to say how healthy you are, I'm considered obese. Really? Yes, because all they take into account is weight.

Now, out of that, I have a body fat percentage of about 10%. Oh, yeah. Right? So I have a high lean muscle mass, but I'm considered obese according to the BMI scale. Gavin, I have to confess that I usually do a little research before we meet guests because part of the show is just to learn and kind of deconstruct all the expertise that

And I was Googling you and like the first couple of images and you were like, you were on a cover of a magazine and just fucking ripped. It was ridiculous. I was like, oh, I'm pretty pumped, man. This guy knows what he's talking about. I mean, he's literally ripped. You know, the funniest story about that is that one of those covers, I was holding a pizza and the pizza had prawns on it. I'm anaphylactically allergic to prawns. Oh, really? Oh, no.

Wait, so why were the prawns? They just gave you prawns on it? Yeah, they're just like, here's a pizza we made. I was like, you don't want me to eat that, do you? And they're like, oh, could you? No, it will kill me. So let's keep it like that, please. Well, we've talked to, we've mentioned this on a previous podcast too, um,

about, you know, is BMI a really archaic thing, a measurement or metric to use? Because like you said, there are only factors in height and weight. And, you know, when, whenever I go and get my physical, my annual physical BMI is always a part of it. And, and,

It doesn't, to me, seem like an accurate metric for your fitness at all. It's got nothing to do with fitness at all. What it has to do, what they're trying to get from that is your, I guess, not even your body composition. They're trying to get a basic understanding of your health, but it's not accurate if you're an active human. If you're just a general population that doesn't do much, it's probably fairly accurate.

But if you're an active person, lifts weights, trains a bit, then there's another scale that's BMI for athletes, which is a little bit more accurate. It's quite an intense little calculation, but it's there. By far, the most important thing or the most interesting thing for most of us would be, what is my body composition? Now, the body composition tells you

about how much lean muscle mass you have and how much body fat you have. They're the two main things that most people are interested in, right?

So the body fat percentage, like we're talking about, you can have dangerous levels of body fat, you can have healthy levels of body fat, and you can have unhealthy levels of body fat too. So finding that out is probably just as important, if not more important than BMI. Well, BMI, it makes total sense right now that you mentioned it that way because the biggest factor in your weight, one of the biggest factors is your height. And so if you just to look at weight, you can't really...

give a any kind of estimate i mean if you're like 500 pounds then probably that's not super healthy exactly but if you're like 200 pounds you might be seven foot tall and so bmi is just it's like probably the roughest calculation possible because it's taking height and weight but it scales right with the height and weight but i would say like bone density is a huge one as well right sure because some people's bone density like for example my bone density is not

high, you know, so I would have, if I'm a high weight, then yeah, I'll have a lot of fat on me, right? I mean, is that a big thing as a big factor as well? From health perspective, absolutely. And as we get older, our bone density decreases and gets worse. But

But you know what's one of the best things for increasing bone density is lifting weights. - Or resistance, right? - Yeah, you get things called osteoblasts and that's a way of like basically changing your bone structure and making it stronger. - I didn't know that. - Yeah, and so this is another reason you should be lifting weights. - Can you do body weight? - Doesn't have the same effect. - Really? It has to be high weight, low volume kind of thing? - It can be higher volume, but that extra resistance is what you're after.

And I guess that sort of leads to things like people being scared of their kids lifting weights. A lot of the concern is that it's going to affect my child's growth plates. It stunts the growth. Absolutely. The height, right? It's like, oh, you're not going to grow. That's incorrect. Oh, incorrect. So that's a complete myth. Complete myth. Really? Really. I grew up on that myth. Every strength and conditioning training program needs to be progressed correctly, right? So...

One of the best examples is if a kid does a push-up, they're probably going to be lifting about 40, 45% of their body weight. So if they weigh, let's say, 40 kilos, they might be lifting anywhere like 15 kilos doing a push-up. If you lie on your back and hold two 2-kilo dumbbells, you're lifting 4 kilos. Now, weight's dangerous.

You just lifted more doing a bodyweight pushup than you did holding two two-kilo dumbbells. So no, the argument's invalid. So the thing is, if you get a bad coach that says, we're going to go squat 250 kilos, there's a thing called training age.

So you might be 30 years of age, but your training age is zero. You've never stepped inside a gym before, right? I'm not going to get you squatting 250 kilos because you're 30. I'm still a little baby in my training age. You're still a baby in training age. So I'm going to prescribe exercises that are suited to your level that sits in the gym. And that's where the important factor of strength and conditioning comes in, right? You need to take on exercise.

every person as an individual because everyone has a different training age. Everyone has different coordination levels. Everyone has different mental capacity to deal with those things. And you need to try and suit what is effective for that individual. And that's where the art, I guess, of coaching comes in, is to very quickly work out in a conversation what you need

versus what they need versus what she needs and make it appropriate to that individual. And that's the skill. Everyone can know the knowledge, everyone can have the theoretical knowledge, but how good are you at applying that to the individual? There's so much here to unpack. But I'm curious, so this kind of connects to a question I had written down, which is, I guess, what is the sort of the driver of your philosophy? Because it's this balance of

um, you know, humanism and really like the way you've talked about your athletes, like you just really, you know, you, you respect them, you admire them and all this stuff. Like, what was it in your life that brought you to your current philosophy of this really, really human approach, but then being like extremely technical because UFC, I mean, it's the results count, you know? So like what brought you to your current approach? Great question, man.

You know, my whole life when I was younger, all I wanted to do was be an athlete. And you'll actually find that with a lot of strength and conditioning coaches. They wanted to be an athlete. For some reason or another, it didn't happen. Whether it was through injury, they weren't good enough. But a lot of strength and conditioning coaches maybe weren't the best athlete, but they did

worked out ways to get the most out of themselves. And I really enjoyed that component. The problem with that is I'm such an arsehole to myself and I don't want anyone to have to deal with what I deal with in my own head. And I want to make sure that those people...

know that I have their back and that I care for them. And then I'll make sure that I'm doing everything in my mind to make sure that they're successful. Because in my head, I am really, really driven. And sometimes it's great.

And sometimes it's horrible what drives me. And I don't want other people to have to deal with that. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Is it your inner critic, inner demons? Yeah, what is that? No, it's horrific actually. This is our wheelhouse, by the way. We talk about this all the time. We're like strength and conditioning coaches for the mind. I'll be honest, I love this shit. But we're not that good at it. Well, it's...

One of the things that it's called cognitive disassociation is something that I've been working on. Cognitive disassociation, the simplest way that I've looked at it and been taught about is you're always going to have thoughts. Depending on who you are, they can be positive, neutral, or negative. For someone like me, if I'm looking at a client of mine or an athlete of mine, it's always positive.

But when it comes to me, it's usually pretty neutral or negative. And then occasionally I'll be like, no, no, that was a positive. You deserve that one. But usually it's pretty harsh. And cognitive disassociation is thinking of those thoughts like the plates on a sushi train. And there's thoughts always going round and round. And you can choose to take that thought off and put it on your plate or you can just let it keep rolling past. And that is a skill. Mmm.

And so that's what I've been trying to work on lately is not taking the negative plates off and putting it on and starting to eat it up. You're choosing the right plate. So before you were just grabbing every piece of sushi that came across you. Yeah, I was eating the whole kit and kaboodle. You were hungry. I was hungry, right? And still am sometimes, you know, like it's a lifelong skill to try and deal with those things. Were you always like that since you were a kid? Absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. And I think that's, without sounding like a dickhead, that's probably what got me to positions in my life of success because you're so driven because you're almost scared of what your mind will tell you of how shit you are. So you just keep driving to be better and better and better. And the good thing about that is that it's for you.

You're not relying on other people to tell you how good you are. It's for you. But the bad thing is it's for you. Like it's your harshest critic, right? It's your own prison. It's your own prison. You know what? Like one thing that I feel like I've started realizing over time is that like everyone, like I mean really most people, you know, have their demons and you feel like you're the only one that has that demon. Everyone has their baggage because...

And it's not just to make yourself feel better, but it's in the sense that like, what are the conditions that would be necessary for someone to not have demons? What would be the conditions of like having that perfect childhood, perfect balance of encouragement yet challenging yourself?

that would lead someone to be perfectly mentally sort of balanced. It's pretty rare. - I don't know that it exists. - Does it even exist? - It doesn't exist, right? And so when you think in terms of that kind of thought experiment, it's like most people are probably fucked up, honestly. Because if you have a super positive childhood, then you probably never encountered any adversity, and then what happens the first time? Shit happens.

And then if you grow up in an environment where like shit's always thrown at you all the time, then there's a lot of negativity in your head. Reality is that most people are just not that well adjusted. And even if you're well adjusted over time, what happens when adversity hits you? And so I kind of like came to that realization over time is that most people are fucked up. You just don't see it. Right. And with social media, you see it even less because now we've created a tool for people to highlight everything, everything under the rug. Right. And, and,

to accentuate like everything, you know, everything that's really, really positive. And it's interesting that you mentioned sort of being your own heartless critic and, and sort of that sushi, sushi conveyor belt thing. I mean, I think it's brilliant because I,

you've created a restaurant, like you've created two restaurants, right? One restaurant is a restaurant of like, like everything is made by like, you know, Michelin star chef on the conveyor belt for your clients. And then like you created another restaurant where you're just serving like rotten fish. Yeah. Right. And once in a while,

a good one and the crazy thing is you choose to dine at the Rotten Fish restaurant more than you choose to dine at the Mission Weeks restaurant exactly my mates are asking me to invite me over to the good one I'm good here with the Rotten Fish I've seen it with other people I'm good they deserve it more

And what I think one thing is that when you look at really successful people, they've gone through a lot of hardship and it's the hardship that, that kind of created the conditions for them to want to overcome that, you know? And so I think, um, a lot of people in this world and in China and these athletes are benefiting from this, this, uh,

harsh criticism that you put on yourself because without that it would never have generated this compassion for others at the same time you've got to start you know kind of applying some of the compassion to yourself but I totally get it like we we did an episode a few weeks ago about the inner critic and

There's a professor from the US that wrote a book called Chatter, and it's about the chatter. And so positive chatter can be a good thing, but a lot of times people have negative chatter. And there's certain moments of your life where you have really, really negative chatter, and those are the sushi plates. That's it, brother. And there's another book called The Chimp Paradox. I don't know if you guys have heard of that. I think I've heard of that. And so we've all got an inner chimp paradox.

And it's the part of the brain that is your subconscious almost. And that's actually a lot stronger. That's the one that has all the thoughts in your head. The monkey brain. The monkey brain, exactly. And I was speaking to someone and they're like, you've got to give it a name because then it disassociates from you having those thoughts. So mine's Steven with a V. Interesting. Not a PH. And I'll talk to Steven a bit every now and then when he gets a little bit lippy.

And because he's lippier than my conscious brain, right? He's always going to win out, always. But if you can actually disassociate that from actually being your thoughts that you're having, it's not you. You're not having these thoughts. That's the chimp brain talking and his name is Stephen.

then all of a sudden it's not Gav being an asshole to Gav. It's this little voice saying, whatever, mate, you go to bed now. It's time for you to sleep. I don't want to hear from you anymore. Do you feel that it's been effective for you? It has. And things like noting are certainly good techniques that are utilized as well, like whether it's a positive, negative, or neutral thought and then just moving on with those sorts of things. But it's a constant challenge, right? Like if you've had your whole life

And if we bring it back to exercise, if you have a whole life without training or exercising, it's pretty damn hard to walk into a gym, really intimidating to walk into a gym and just start training and not knowing how to use any of the equipment, thinking people are looking at you and judging you and laughing at you. And so you have this inner dialogue and that's that chimp brain talking to you going, you can't do this, mate. What are you doing it for? But actually working with your own psychology is much the same. Yeah.

It's a constant battle that you're trying to deal with. And if you don't talk to people about it, like you were saying, Eric, you think you're the only person dealing with it. Every one of us is dealing with something in some way, shape or form.

And talking about it's the first step to sort of say, man, we all got issues. We just got to deal with it and help each other out, right? Like, I'm here for you. I'll do anything for you guys. And probably my worst critic. So just let it be known that that's a struggle I might be having. And then you guys might be able to help me out later. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no one's perfect. Like the cliche, no one's perfect really then rings true is that

first of all, no one is perfect. And then most of our, most of us are imperfect and probably nine out of 10, nine out of 10 things we do. But there is one person that in that area might be a little bit better and it can help us. And it's interesting. Like what if you met yourself? Cause I'm sure you meet these athletes and there's probably like,

you know i'm guessing there's probably an athlete where like this guy has a girl has all the talents that you didn't have or or or was better at all these things that you wish you had

but they're just missing the mental piece. And you're like, shit, man, if I had your fucking talent, I would be like whooping, you know, Conor McGregor's ass also. And then you see that person in yourself and then you're kind of like, okay, let me help you because I've, because of maybe some of my, whatever other limitations, I've mastered that mental aspect in this way. I'm going to help you.

help you. And, you know, that's powerful. There's a saying that I've sort of read when I was in my teenage years, and it was, everyone is king. And I love it because it means in this room, I might be the most knowledgeable on strength and conditioning, but if I speak to any of you guys about a particular subject, you know more than me about it.

And that's not to say you should be like, no, everyone's better at me in everything. It's more to say, be humble because you never know what you can learn from someone and take from someone. Everyone is king. Everyone has something to offer.

So start talking to them and understand that you've all got your bits to share, right? Yeah. That's such a great takeaway. Yeah. I'm taking that one down. Right. That's a great takeaway. I think that's the title of this show. Yeah. Everyone is king. We're all king. Well, I mean, I feel like that's also a little bit of our philosophy. Yeah. Right? Because when we come in with our podcast and we bring on guests like yourself...

Yeah, we want to learn from you, you know? And we're not trying to talk about our expertises. We want to hear about your expertise, you know? And that's a beautiful thing is that, like you said, being humble and being able to accept and share, right? I think that's a beautiful thing. More people are like that, I think. Everything. It's that whole Dunning-Kruger effect as well, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think especially combat sports almost...

you know, I'm gonna generalize, but almost more than any other sport or activity I can think of. I think combat sports is the best at humbling anybody.

Because you're going to just get your ass kicked no matter how good you are. There's some consequences in that. You're going to get punched. You're going to get taken down. That's a brutal loss. No fighter, no matter how good they are, has never gotten their ass kicked at some point in time, whether it's when they're sparring or preparing or in a fight. You just are. And you have to accept that reality, especially in...

in an organization like the UFC where the best are always fighting the best. It's not like boxing where it's controlled by private interests where you don't always get the best fights. But in the UFC, you can't avoid that. If you want to move up, you're going to have to fight through the best. And the competition is so fucking fierce. You got to have, I mean, confidence aside, every fighter needs to have their confidence, but you need to also have a degree of humbleness and humility

To know what you're up against. I think that would only help you as a fighter. It's the biggest equalizer sport there is. You don't come back next week and play for four more points. No. Like it's you. And if you lose, you lose bad. Like even if it's a decision, like you lost a fight. Put yourself in that situation, right? Like how good is your mental will and mental chatter to deal with the fact you lost a fight?

That deals with your soul, man. Right now in my life, I couldn't do that. I would berate myself for months if I lost a fight, right? I need to be in a better mental space to be able to do that no matter what that fight is. But if you ask me to play a ball sport every day of the week, no problem. I could do that. No problem. And if we lose, we lose. Whatever. It's a ball sport. I feel you so much because, yeah, if you lose a basketball game, if you lose a pickup basketball game, it's like, okay, whatever. I lost. Whatever.

But when you lose a fight, you're defeated. Like you are defeated as a person, as a man. Well, you can't flame anybody else but yourself. Exactly. And the other thing with UFC is like you were defeated to the point where this person could have killed you. Yes. That's the crazy thing. Because tennis is a singles game, right? Yes. Yeah.

They're not going to kill you. But you're not physically dominated when you lose in a fight. It's not absolute. Like, would you be killed or not? But in reality, at that point, if that person would want to continue to... Especially a non-decision one, right? Actually, like a tap out. Basically means that if you kept going, he'd break your arm or whatever, and then he could kill you. You were physically dominated. Like, you're physically dominated to the point of like...

existence because it's the most primal sport you know exactly and compared to any other sport out there this is the most primal sport so when you do get defeated it's like you're ever your your whole being is defeated yeah right as opposed to well that's why all these other sports whatever sport ball sport you're talking about that you always use oh they're fighting they're fighting for the championship they're fighting against this other team but

When we're talking about combat sports, you are literally fighting, whereas other sports are only borrowing that term. There's a term, and I don't even know what sport it is, sudden death. And here's the other thing about this is that

We don't actually, like, if you play basketball, all this stuff, like, we play that. Like, as an amateur, I can play that. None of us actually, like, none of the three of us actually fight. Well, you bring up a good point because you don't, they say you don't play combat sports. There's no playing. You don't play that. I don't remember the last...

I've been in some fights, whatever, but I don't really remember the last fight I was in that was like that. You don't actually do this on a regular basis. So it's the one sport that does mimic something that's actually real life rather than a virtual simulation. I play basketball. We can do arm wrestle anytime. But fighting someone to the point of submission, we don't do that. And if you watch any combat sport in real life,

Even if you know it's a sport, you know it's an organized sport, but you maybe have never gone to a live event before, your heart is racing, right? Mm-hmm.

I haven't had that watching basketball. I haven't had that watching football. Right? It's like, cool, this is going to be a good game. Like, I'm excited for my team. But in fighting, you're like, holy shit. Because the empathetic side of you kicks in. Yes. And you feel like you're there and you're the one getting pummeled or not pummeled. If that was me, oh my God, how would I be feeling? And the adrenaline. Like, it's full on. When you get knocked out.

Fuck. How does someone come back from a knockout? That's now that I'm thinking like, cause like when I, when I, like I follow a lot of this stuff and I also follow it not only from the perspective of the sport, but also statistically, cause you want to know who's the best.

And I would notice that like USC fighters, like there'd be guys that were like all-time great champions, hall of famers, whatever. And I'm like, oh, that guy was like 24 and eight. He lost like eight times. What a loser. Right? And I would notice that statistically. What a dick. Like statistically, right? They'd lost a lot, but this totally puts it in perspective. Like the fact that like they could, like Dan Henderson, he's lost a number of times that he could come back from like 12 losses. Like-

That makes him more of a badass. Those guys are insane how they, like, they take it on and they improve from it. Like, McGregor said it, and I'm sure it wasn't his quote, but it was, you win or you learn, right? And sometimes you get better because you lose. That is a mentality. I agree.

Sometimes I have that mentality, but like I say, in team sports, I might have that mentality. But as an individual, I don't know if I would have that mentality. It's hard. It's hard. I box as a recreation and I'll spar occasionally. And even at my own pathetic sparring level, to me personally, it's like do or die. And even after a sparring round...

or sparring rounds, if I feel like I didn't perform well, or I quote unquote lost those rounds, I am so hard on myself. And I just can't imagine at the elite level and when you're fighting in front of millions of people watching, like if you lose or if you get knocked out, like what Eric said, like,

The amount of mental toughness and the kind of character you have to be to kind of rise and get even better because of that and continue where you just don't crumble. And that's a special type of person, I think. And that's what makes...

Not only world champions, just people to make the UFC. Like there's less than 600 fighters in the UFC. Think about how many people are in the world. In the world, yeah. Less than 600 fighters. Like that's some serious skill. And you can't get to that level just with skill. You have to have a special kind of mindset as well. Well, this goes to a theory of mine. And I'm wondering what your thoughts on this are. I feel like at the elite level, the level of athletes that you work with,

- I mean, at that level, I feel like differences in skill and physical ability are marginal to a point. And what really separates people is that mentality of, oh, because we had a different podcast episode about like crumbling under pressure. Like when the stakes are really high, when you're at your most nervous, or when you're about to step in front of a bunch of people and give a speech, and you're just so nervous to do something, like who are the people that shine?

And who are the people that just crumble? And I feel at the elite level in terms of combat sports or really any sports, that's what differentiates the great from just your normal professional athletes. Absolutely. Some people love the lights. But you could also argue that it depends on what that situation is. So you might have a UFC fighter that absolutely adores getting in the cage under the lights and performs well.

But if you ask them to speak in front of an audience, they'd shit themselves. Right? So all of a sudden, everyone is king comes back. Yeah. Right? What do you want to be? What is important to you? Where do you want to shine? What are the lights you want to stand under? It doesn't have to be in the cage.

It could be you play music. It could be I feel comfortable playing a guitar on stage in front of 500 to 500 people. Do you know how many people would not feel comfortable doing that? Right? That's your...

That's your time to shine. And that's cool too. That's my kingdom. That's your kingdom, bro. Absolutely. And I think all of us have got that, but we look at what people are doing and you're like, man, I wish I was Conor McGregor earning this money, being a superstar. But-

You got your thing. Yeah. You might not even be able to hack it. Come on. Yeah. Even if you're given the opportunity. Absolutely. I wouldn't be able to hack that. There's no way. I'd get too nervous. But like I was a TV presenter for 10 years in Australia and I would have to do...

like stand in front of like in a shopping center or something and do a piece of camera. And I loved it. I sang in bands. I loved it. It was great. But that was my time to show. They were the things I could stand, I can stand in front of 30 athletes and direct them how I would like and be confident in that. I'm okay with that. But there's some things that just maybe, maybe I'm not cut out for those things, you know? Well, and the thing is like, you can influence the world and impact the world in so many different ways. I did notice like on, like when, right when you came on, like you,

were able to articulate yourself in a super smooth, concise way, like you're a natural, right? And I wasn't necessarily expecting that because like the image was like strength and conditioning coach, like this guy's a pretty badass guy, but you're super duper articulate. And if that's your superpower, then use that superpower for good because like being able to beat people up and be the number one fighter in the world, that's great.

Maybe you could actually do a lot more with being able to communicate and influence people in a very, very powerful way. Yeah. Absolutely. You kind of have to understand where do you get your energy? What are some of the things you're good at? And then how do you then build on top of that? Because for me, as a fairly skinny person, if I said, you know what? I just want to be a fucking bodybuilder. I want to be fucking Schwarzenegger.

Like I could probably get a lot bigger than my current self, but that level of effort that I would need to get to do that, maybe I'd be better off investing in something that was more naturally talented at, good at, where I get more energy out of. And so I think it's really important to always understand like, what's your goal? Yeah. What do you want? Yeah. And what do you enjoy? What do you enjoy? Man, there's so many pressures on us to do shit that maybe we're not that into. Don't do it.

Like do the things that you actually want to do because we don't know how long we're going to be on this planet for. And the amount of times that's been driven home to me is that people just spend so much of their time doing things that they thought they should be doing. Yeah. The expected timeline we often speak about, right? That whole you do this and then you get married by then and then you have kids and then you buy the house and then you have the same job for like 20 years. Fuck. Fuck.

I want nothing to do with that. I want adventure. I want to do things in my life that I enjoy and I want to pursue. I want to be challenged. I'm not going to be happy all the time, but you're not happy all the time. Life is hard. Life is hard because you're either in your comfort zone or you're trying to get out of it or you are out of it, right? So if you're out of your comfort zone, it's hard. If you're in your comfort zone, it's probably hard because you're like, no, I don't want to be here. So life's hard.

Do what you want to do, do what you enjoy. And then at least you're getting some aspects of enjoyment in there and some sense of achievement. And I've always tried to live by that. I don't want to do what's expected of me because I expect different things from myself. That's really, really well put. You know, one thing I do before I talk to any guest recently is something that I've taken away from a recent episode that we did is about finding that one thing.

And it's that one thing that makes everything else make sense. It's that one thing that makes everything else easier or even unnecessary. So when preparing for this conversation, I was thinking about like, okay, well, what is that one thing that ties everything together based on what I perceived was your expertise and what your experience is?

And from a technical side, because we can argue that the whole mental discussion and emotional discussion we just had is really that one thing. And I would agree. But from a very physical, I guess, technical side of it, that one thing I took away as like breath work and the way you breathe. And I got that idea from looking at different posts that you had in your moments. I was kind of like stalking you on WeChat a little bit. Yeah.

But, you know, you go through a lot of breathing exercises, whether it's like nasal only drills where the athletes are in like really high aerobic, doing really high aerobic exercises, but their mouths are taped shut and they can only breathe through their nose. You have another post about doing underwater breath holds where you're going across the length of a really like maybe Olympic size swimming pool underwater holding weights and

And it's about improving cognitive control and confidence when you're kind of out of breath. So, you know, from your, I guess, from your perspective, what can we take away? What are the main lessons to learn from, you know, acknowledging and understanding that there are breathing techniques and the way we can improve our breathing that can really kind of infiltrate and improve all facets of our life?

This goes deep. So one of the biggest things that we've started to do in modern day society is breathe through our mouth when we should actually be breathing pretty much purely through our nose. And there's many, many different reasons for that. And I'll try and go over them as best as I can and as clear as I can. But first of all, the nasal cavity...

limits your breath rate. So it's obviously harder to breathe through your nose, but that's good because when you breathe through your mouth, you over-breathe. When you over-breathe, you actually release more carbon dioxide. Everyone thinks carbon dioxide is a waste gas, right? Yeah, you've got to get rid of that. But actually, carbon dioxide helps to release oxygen from hemoglobin. So hemoglobin is like this transporter. Think of hemoglobin like a...

like a car going through your body. And then the wheels are oxygen. And then it's got to drive through this tunnel of carbon dioxide and it'll just snip the wheels off and then your body can use oxygen, right? But if you don't have enough carbon dioxide in your body, those wheels don't come off. So the wheels just stay attached to the car the whole time. So you don't actually get to utilize oxygen. That's what happens when we over-breathe. When you breathe through your nose, it regulates that.

Not only does it do that, at the back of your nasal cavity, there's a gas called nitric oxide. And nitric oxide, when you breathe in through your nose, goes into the deep lobes of your lungs. And nitric oxide helps to dilate blood vessels. So oxygen transportation can be more effective throughout your body. So again, breathing better helps oxygenate your body better.

Finally, when you actually breathe through your nose, it's obviously got that, most people know it's got the filter, like the nasal hairs and the filter, right? So it's a bit of a cleaner way to breathe in. But if you over-breathe, so this is a big thing with asthmatics. And I was a heavy asthmatic as a kid. I almost died about three times from it. I was asthmatic as well. It was terrible. Because we over-breathe, because we get rid of too much carbon dioxide.

And so if we work to work on our efficiency of our breathing rate, you can actually get rid of it. Now, I still get it from, say, things like cats. Yeah, cats, highly allergic. Yep. Grass, pollen, old places. Yep. All those allergens are really highly sensitive to our to the the soft muscle tissue in our airways. Right.

But the thing is that when we over-breathe, the body's natural reaction is to say, hey, man, you're over-breathing. I'm going to tighten up a little bit so you stop breathing. Oh, damn. Shit. It's a natural reaction. And so when you get asthma, what do you do? Yeah. Try and breathe more. The wheezing always killed me. It's a killer, right? It's like a vicious cycle because the more you try to do it, the- Bingo. Yeah.

So yeah, actually there's a technique called Buteyko breathing, which I did as a kid. And what that teaches you is to improve your breath rate. And it sounds really simple, but you're holding your breath. It's basically holding your breath, but for certain timeframes, right? And so what you're trying to do is improve and minimize your breathing rate. So everyone has a particular breathing rate that they have. And asthmatics is really high. So when we get nervous or when we get allergies, our breathing rate goes through the roof.

And so our body's natural reaction is to shut down those airways to say, hey, bro, you're breathing too much. And then we go, I can't breathe. I've got to try and breathe more. And it shuts down even harder. So there's techniques where you actually hold your breath and the body goes, oh, no, you're good now. And starts to actually open up those airways, counterintuitive, right? Counterintuitive. And then you're like, oh, shit, I don't have an asthma attack anymore.

And so if you're consistent with that technique, you can start to- It's like hyperventilating too, right? For normal people. Yeah. So there's a couple of really good experts in the field in this, like way better, way more knowledgeable than I am. And one of the best books that I've read on it is called The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick, and I'll probably say this wrong, but it's Patrick McKeon is what I'm pretty sure his name is.

It's a fantastic book, bit of a life changer for me. And it doesn't only talk about asthmatics, but it can actually really help you as a general population, your fitness, your health, your sleep. So he has this product called Myotape. So I tape my mouth every night before I sleep. Really? You tape your mouth? I tape my mouth closed.

Every night when you sleep, you tape your mouth closed. Exactly. What does that do? So it forces you to breathe through your nose. So you're affecting your breathing rate at night because a lot of people will start breathing through their mouth and that's a lot of asthmatics will tend to get asthma at night. Why? They over breathe. So it minimizes your breath rate and makes your nose regulate that breath rate.

And so this myotape just sits either side of your lips on top and just has this natural mechanism of closing your lip muscles. You could breathe through your mouth if you wanted to, but the way it feels is you can't. And so you do nasal breathing your whole life. Think of people who snore.

Most people who snore will lie on their back with their mouth open. It's very guttural, right? So that's also a prevention for snoring. Really? Yeah. If you just keep your mouth shut, you won't snore? It's much harder to, right? If your mouth is shut and you're lying on your back, it's really hard to snore. So it changes. It's actually shown to have changed. If you do mouth breathing only, it changes postural. It changes the facial shape.

of children when they're developing. So you'll see that thin sort of face is usually because it's a mouth breather. Yeah. I have a thin face. You had asthma, right? Yeah.

Wow. Well, what about just, okay, well, how do we apply it? You mentioned a way we can apply it in our daily lives, but what about for, you know, just us regular mortals who are working out, let's say we're going on a run, working out, playing a sport. Is that also saying that we should also be intentionally trying to breathe through our nose regularly?

only when doing, you know, exercise? Yeah. So it's a great way to train. So if we speak scientifically, there's thresholds when you're training. So there's something called event re-threshold one and event re-threshold two. Basically, what they are is determinants of when you're changing those energy systems. Okay. So

If you were to try next time you go out for a run or even on the treadmill, try and just do nasal breathing and try and run as hard as you can or like to whatever level you can where you can no longer contain just nasal breathing. That's too fast. And that's what we call vent re-threshold one. So that's your aerobic system.

So if you want to just work on aerobic system and improving your breath efficiency, nasal only breathing at your best pace possible, we can only do nasal breathing. As soon as you start needing to breathe in through your mouth, you're starting to creep up towards what we call vent rethreshold two, which is more of that lactate, you know, the one that makes you feel sick and a bit hard. That's harder. And that's cool. Like you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to breathe through your mouth when it gets to that level and

But sometimes just at a lower level, you can get like a nice fat burning heart rate percentage. And it's a really good challenge for you to develop your aerobic capacity. And when I build on that capacity, you'll find that you can get up to like 80, 85% of your maximal heart rate just through nasal breathing only.

So, it takes time like anything, right? I'm going to go and squat 200 kilos. Hang on, mate, you haven't even squatted 50. What are you doing? You've got to build into that. And there's different ways you can use nasal breathing as well for your recovery. Even though it's hard initially, you actually should be able to speed up your recovery rate. So, usually with our fighters, we'll get them. So, in MMA, obviously, they have a one-minute round between...

one minute rest between rounds sorry so if they come out at a lower heart rate percentage than their opponent they're more likely to have obviously higher energy more ability to put higher output more capacity out in that round so for us we're aiming for them if they do a high output effort we're trying to get them to decrease their heart rate percentage by around 15 to 20 percent in a minute

And there's something called the GEARS system. Brian McKenzie and a company called Shift in America have created this GEARS system. And it talks about what your ratio of in to out breaths are, whether they're nasal-nasal or mouth-nasal or mouth-mouth. And so there's all these different GEARS you can utilize in your training. So nasal is just one of those things.

Um, so if you're going for like a five minute round and you want a day that's of low to moderate intensity, then yeah, absolutely. Try and hit up your nasal only. If you want more, one of more of those lactic days, then you might find that you can breathe in through your nose and you have to breathe out through your mouth, or maybe you end up going really hard and you've got to go mouth mouth in terms of your breathing. That's cool as well. As long as that's a high day, if that's a day you're going for it, then go for it. That's cool. Yeah.

There's components to all of it and over time you'll find that your nasal breathing will slowly catch up to that mouth only breathing technique. Does that make sense? Yeah. The other thing is that if you think there's two different aspects to this, right? When you're sparring or if you're in training where you're potentially going to get hit, you don't exactly want your mouth and your jaw to be loose. So you want to be trying to breathe through your nose.

What if you do get hit in the nose and you break it? You can't actually breathe through your nose anymore. So then you start looking at things like, well, sometimes you have to breathe through your mouth. And that's cool as well. And that's super common in combat sports. Of course it is. You're having your nose broken. Of course it is. So if you just purely work with nasal only breathing, you're doing yourself a bit of disservice. But it's understanding how you can use it for recovery and then understanding how to regulate your breath so you can actually maintain your breathing.

your fitness or your capacity for longer. You don't tire out or fatigue as quickly. Yeah. Okay. Well, last thing I swear. It's quite all right. You mentioned recovery and you recently recovered from a pretty intense knee surgery. Part of, I think your rehab process that I saw that really fascinated me was the idea of blood flow restriction.

And I've never seen that before. So for the listeners who don't know, or for you guys, like you basically had clamps around like your legs that were clamping down your veins or around your leg really tight so that you would restrict the blood flow. And you were doing like sled pulls and drives. You were doing all sorts of like really intense exercises where

It seemed through the videos that you could hardly even walk. What is that all about? Yeah, cool question. So blood flow restriction has been around for a while. It was created in Japan, I think in the 1960s. But now they're starting to come out with equipment that is really accessible and really easy to utilize in a gym setting. So you're looking at arterial occlusion. So you're looking to pull the blood in a limb.

And the reason you're looking to do that is it pulls the metabolites that help you to increase metabolism.

hypertrophy or muscle mass without the load. So for someone like myself that now is starting to, and it's legit, as you get older, your joints start to break down a little bit if you've been active, you can still get the hypertrophy benefits from using blood flow restriction with using 20 to 30% of the load. So for example, if I squatted 100 kilos,

I can actually use a protocol with blood flow restriction where I would use 20 to 30 kilos and get the same hypertrophy benefits without using that mechanical load on my axial system.

So that's a really cool way to do it as you progress. What's the mechanism at play here? It's a pooling of the metabolites that help your muscles grow, basically. Okay. So you'll always attach the cuff, whether it's upper body or lower body, to the most proximal part of your limb, so the highest part of your limb. And then anything underneath that, so if I attach the cuff...

below my butt cheeks, anything below my butt, quads, hammies, calves will get pulled with those metabolites and it will stay there and actually have more of an effect because of the protocols that you put in place. Well, can you even feel your legs at that point? It's pretty nasty. Yeah, I'll be honest. And it's like, that's the thing you put on Instagram where you got like 20 kilo bar screaming and everyone's like, what's wrong with this guy? But

The idea is that you can get that metabolic and that stress response from your muscles without adding the load. So is that primarily good just for people who are rehabbing certain parts of their body? Absolutely not. We're utilizing that with our athletes because the DOMS or the delayed onset of muscle soreness is less because the loading and that actual muscle fiber changes is a little bit less.

even though your repetitions are high. So the protocols when you use blood flow restriction are four sets of 20 with 30 seconds rest or a 30, 15, 15, 15 with 30 seconds rest. So the 30 is almost a failure on that first set. You have 30 seconds rest and then you do 15, 15, 15. And you can see the same gains? Absolutely.

So, by the way, I've done a few quarantines now and blood flow restriction cuffs I've utilized in quarantine, you actually get gains from it using like an aqua bag or even just body weight squats without using any weights. Yeah, you were working out like a madman in your quarantine. Hey, man, you got to stay sane, right?

That's science for you right there. Right? That's huge science right there. And there is a lot of research on the benefits of it. There's a full clearing protocol though, like things like pregnant women shouldn't do it if you've had a stroke previously, high cholesterol. You know, there's certainly...

people that should not be doing blood flow restriction i feel like it needs to be in the control environment yeah absolutely somebody just does it off the street don't have it don't have a crack at it you know what i mean tighter on your neck you gotta know what you're doing but out there don't don't just start restricting your blood flow yes i'll find gavin he'll he'll help you with that absolutely but it's it's such a good benefit um because so if if you have an acl injury for example

If you were to just wear those cuffs for 10 minutes, three times a day, you don't even have to do anything. You could literally sit there watching TV. You would prevent atrophy of your muscles. Really? Yes. Without even doing anything? Without doing anything.

Well, look, Gavin, um, it was an honor and a pleasure having you here. I'm so glad you can finally make it. Um, I really hope that this isn't the last time I would love to have you back sometime. We can, I mean, obviously what you do and the topic of whether it's mental health or physical health or just, you know, just fitness in general is, is a topic that can never be exhausted. Thank you so much for coming on the show, bro. Uh,

Look, I really appreciate your time, guys. I love chatting about this stuff. And yeah, like you say, it's an endless pool of information that we can talk about. So I'd love to come back. So where can people find you? So on Instagram, it's Gav underscore Pratt. On Twitter, it's GCP Fit. And that's the website for the general populations that I run is gcpfitness.com.au.

And the idea with that is that you would all come to me with your individual goals like we've been talking about. But I also need a video and photos of where you train so I can utilize the equipment and the environment that you work in. That is awesome. All right, well, cheers. Cheers, guys. Cheers. That's amazing. Thank you, team. Cheers. All right, guys. That was Gavin Pratt. I'm Justin. I'm Eric. And I'm Howie. All right, guys. Be good. Be well. Peace. See you.

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