JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

Joe Rogan 0:00 From wild pig.

Forrest Griffin 0:00 Or a boar or something, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:02 Yeah. My buddy from, uh, Australia gave me those and that head. It's a Asian water buffalo. It's an invasive species, and-

Dr. Duncan French 0:10 We are live. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:11 Are we live?

Dr. Duncan French 0:11 Yes, it worked.

Joe Rogan 0:11 Oh, it worked. Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, the UFC Performance Institute boys.

Dr. Duncan French 0:16 Hey, hey. What's up?

Joe Rogan 0:17 Right, Duncan, Forrest Griff- hey, Forrest Griffin. Good to see you.

Forrest Griffin 0:20 We've already talked over each other, so-

Joe Rogan 0:21 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 0:21 ... we've already blown it.

Dr. Duncan French 0:22 Geez.

Joe Rogan 0:23 No, we've got it. We, we've got it nailed. Um, well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I've, I was blown away when I went to visit the, you know, you hear the Performance Institute and you go, "Well, what is this going to be like?" And you go there and you're like, "Oh my God, they thought of everything." It's like the ultimate state-of-the-art facility for training, for recovery, for, for nutrition. It's fucking amazing. I mean, I was, I was so happy that-

Forrest Griffin 0:44 All right, we're, we're s- we're posting, we're posting a link to that shit right there.

Joe Rogan 0:45 Say it.

Dr. Duncan French 0:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:46 Dude, I mean, it's, it's amazing. When, when we went on tour and checked that place out, uh, I think, was it with- DellaGrasse was with me?

Forrest Griffin 0:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:53 Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 0:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:54 We were like, "Holy shit." Like, can you imagine? You have access to this fucking place?

Dr. Duncan French 0:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:58 Like, you guys have really created something special. It's very interesting and, and, and I don't know much about other sports, but I know this never really existed in combat sports before. Something like this that's... I mean, you guys have athletes from all sorts of different walks of life come through there. When I was there, there was many, many, uh, top level fighters-

Dr. Duncan French 1:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13 ... that were training out of there. It's really, really interesting.

Dr. Duncan French 1:16 Yeah, cool. Well, well, we appreciate the kind words, obviously. Um, I mean, ultimately, yeah, the, the, the vision of the UFC was to build a Performance Institute that was truly a, uh, a world-class high performance center that had everything that fighters would, would need. Um, but not only are we trying to, uh, align ourselves as the leaders in mixed martial arts, but certainly leaders, uh, in human high performance. So-

Joe Rogan 1:37 Yeah. Duncan, tell people what you do there. Like, explain around-

Dr. Duncan French 1:39 Yeah, so my, my role is the Vice President of Performance. Um, I essentially, um, direct the, the, the philosophy of how we're going to interact with the fighters, how we're going to support the fighters, and obviously manage n- our, our world class staff that are, that are working within the performance facility.

Joe Rogan 1:55 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 1:55 And Clint, you, you came from a background in, uh, amateur wrestling.

Clint Wattenberg 1:59 Yep.

Dr. Duncan French 2:00 And, uh, tell everybody, like, what your job is over there.

Clint Wattenberg 2:02 Yep. So I'm the Director of Performance Nutrition. So anything related to feeding of athletes g- is essentially managed by myself and, and our ever expanding team. So it, it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan, integrating within the, the other performance services, as well as feeding athletes on the ground, integrating within our kitchen at, at the Performance Institute, um, supporting athletes as they prepare for, for fight week, weight descents, et cetera. And then supporting athletes on fight week and, and pre- preparing at that, even at the last moment of fight day to fuel up and to be really well fueled for, for their performance. My background is, like he said, in amateur wrestling. I, I wrestled and coached at Cornell University. Um, graduated in '03. W- was on the US National Team with a number of actually cur- current fighters right now, so Cormier, Daniel Cormier and a number of other athletes. Chris Weidman and some others and I, uh, used to train together. Um, and then I, I went back to school and got all my, my credentialing, uh, to be a registered dietician. And so that's kinda led me, uh, through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC, uh, with a, you know, pretty unique combination of the nutrition, the dietetics, uh, and, and then obviously the experience in, in combat sports and weight cutting.

Joe Rogan 3:14 Yeah, and in my opinion, the most grueling combat sport. I mean, I think wrestling is just... We, we talked about it on the last podcast. It's just, it's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real competition and the s- the, the actual physical struggle of getting through wrestling practice and strength and conditioning drills. M- v- most kids that are coming up in high school and in college, they, they don't really work that hard in any other sport. I mean, it's, it's a crazy sport.

Forrest Griffin 3:38 I remember in high school, like, walking into the wrestling room and it's a bunch of gross dudes-

Joe Rogan 3:42 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 3:42 ... like, in a sweaty, hot room. And then it was like basketball was right next to it. I walked next to the basketball. There's like dudes-

Joe Rogan 3:48 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 3:48 ... in tank tops and some, like, cheerleaders. I'm like, "I know what I'm doing."

Joe Rogan 3:52 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 3:52 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 3:52 I'm not an idiots. Uh, little did I know.

Joe Rogan 3:56 Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 3:56 Little did you know.

Joe Rogan 3:57 Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, in my opinion still, I think it's the most important skill, because you get to dictate-

Forrest Griffin 4:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:02 ... where the fight takes place. I mean, there's no one skill that really overpowers all except for the ability to hold a guy down. Like, the ability to hold someone down and control them on the ground, it's so critical. And everything else you can learn from that. Submissions, ground and pound, but the, the, the difference in, like, an elite wrestler like yourself and a person who doesn't have that skill, it's, it's so hard to bridge that gap. You know?

Forrest Griffin 4:23 It's hard to learn later in life.

Joe Rogan 4:24 Yes, mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 4:25 GSP is one of the few people that's just like, "I'll just take this up and be amazing at it."

Joe Rogan 4:28 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 4:28 "'Cause I'm GSP, and then I'll become a gymnast. Who knows?"

Joe Rogan 4:31 I think that's the thing with him, though. He had such physical abilities.

Forrest Griffin 4:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:34 We were talking about this, uh, almost on the last podcast as well that he used to do that karate blitz.

Forrest Griffin 4:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:39 You know, so he was, he was so used to that lunging in stuff that he sort of incorporated that with a blast double. And he's so physically strong and such a smart dude and so, uh, so good at learning things that he just figured out the te- the, the, the essential techniques that he needed to master and just got better and better at them.

Clint Wattenberg 4:56 Way back in the day, obviously, UFC 1 was kind of a discipline versus discipline, uh, kind of grudge match. And, and having been a lifelong wrestler, that's when I started tuning in, actually, and taking pride in all the wrestlers-

Joe Rogan 5:08 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 5:08 ... taking names and, and growing within the sport. And obviously with the evolution of the sport, um, it, it, it's, it's a different dynamic. And obviously each athlete coming from their own discipline is really fun for us to work with as practitioners having their own kind of sport culture. But wrestling is, uh, obviously a core component to what each athlete's doing. And when I'm working with athletes and talking through their weekly training plan and, you know, how to feed and fuel for each of these types of training sessions and hearing them bitch about how hard those wrestling practices are-

Joe Rogan 5:37 (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 5:37 ... I, I always get a little bit of, little bit of pride there. Like, yes, it is hard and imagine doing it for eight months straight for a college wrestling season and, and grind that out. But it's, it's definitely, uh, been fun for me to watch wrestling as a component of MMA grow and, and be able to c- contribute to, uh, to, to the sport on a, on a few different kind of levels.

Joe Rogan 5:55 Yeah, I mean, I think the way I've always looked at it is pressure makes diamonds. You know, there's, there's no other way.... y- those, those, uh, those-

Dr. Duncan French 6:02 Or-

Joe Rogan 6:03 ... hard-nosed dudes, they come out of those environments. Th- y- like, i- if you think about guys with, uh, crazy determination and, and mental fortitude, there's a giant chunk of those you could attribute to wrestlers. I mean, there's a lot of them in kickboxing-

Dr. Duncan French 6:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:15 ... and everything else as well, but there just seems to be... it's such a, it's a unique sport in terms of hardening, like, your mental toughness.

Dr. Duncan French 6:23 For sure. I mean, we-

Joe Rogan 6:24 Not what Forrest Griffin's team says. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 6:26 (laughs) I wouldn't do it.

Joe Rogan 6:27 (laughs) Fuck that, I'll play basketball.

Dr. Duncan French 6:28 It seems horrible.

Forrest Griffin 6:29 I mean, we... uh, at the Performance Institute, we, we always talk about martial ar- mixed martial arts-

Joe Rogan 6:33 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 6:33 ... as the decathlon of combat sports.

Joe Rogan 6:35 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 6:36 Um, and I think, you know, our philosophy is to try and understand all the respective components that makes a world-class MMA fighter.

Joe Rogan 6:42 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 6:42 Um, I think, you know, if you're in the UFC, you've got some certain X-factors, um, that, that allow you to be world-class, and, you know, wrestling is, is a huge component of that. Um, but what we try to do is understand limitations as well.

Joe Rogan 6:54 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 6:55 Because in a decathlon, you're only ever as good as your weakest event, right?

Joe Rogan 6:58 Right.

Forrest Griffin 6:58 So, if you're a striker, if you're a grappler, or if you're a w- a wrestler, um, you know, we're, we're trying to support each of those to understand how we can elevate the whole thing.

Joe Rogan 7:06 Now, how much input do you put into fighters, if any, into how they incorporate their skills and, like, how they combine their skills together?

Forrest Griffin 7:14 'Cause-

Joe Rogan 7:14 Do you guys offer, like, coaching on technique and approaches? Okay. So, yeah. Let me... Yeah. So, break down the philosophy. We don't do sports-specific coaching, so physical therapy, sports nutrition, uh, strength and conditioning, sports science, and then Duncan oversees all those to make sure-

Forrest Griffin 7:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:31 ... that they work. All right? So, our philosophy, anything that doesn't make you in the... better in the octagon is pretty pointless. So, what, what I do is I just go over what your training schedule looks like with you, and then, you know, w- where do we feed accordingly for this practice? You know, what... And then Roman, our sports scientist, when can you be recovered enough for this practice? And that's-

Dr. Duncan French 7:51 Mm.

Joe Rogan 7:52 ... you know, that's the philosophy. So it's not specific. If you think about it, if you guys are fighting and the Performance Institute is working with both of you, we'd make you as big, strong, healthy, have the easiest time making weight, go into your fight as fueled as you can. But if I start saying, "Hey, you know what? H- he, I, I... He's, he's pretty susceptible to leg kicks," then it becomes, you know-

Dr. Duncan French 8:13 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:13 ... now we can't support every athlete.

Dr. Duncan French 8:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:15 So, when you talk to people it's just like, "Here's how to get the most out of your practices," right? "Here's the way to lay this out, to..." just your training blocks. I don't think a lot of people understand, like, basic training periodization leading up to a fight. And then that's the other problem with the UFC, you don't always have 8 weeks, 10 weeks-

Dr. Duncan French 8:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:32 ... 12 weeks. Sometimes you got four weeks and it's like, "All right. Well, where's your, where's your weight? Where are you at? Where's your skill? Where's your conditioning? How can we put those things together in time to get you ready on..." You know. But never specific, like, i- i- instruction on how to deal- No.

Dr. Duncan French 8:48 Never.

Joe Rogan 8:49 That's, um... It's almost like... Uh, for a, for a young fighter to have the access, first of all, just the access to the, the physical facility, like, the, the... just all the different modalities you guys-

Forrest Griffin 9:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:02 ... have and, you know, the strength and conditioning stuff and the, the fact that you can... One of the most impressing things, impressive things, was the camera set up around the octagon so that you could film sparring sequences and technique sequences, and the fighter, you can back 'em up and rewind them and watch it, and you can say, "Oh, see how you drop your leg here? See how your, you know, your, your chin is up in the air?" And all these different, different little factors you can-

Forrest Griffin 9:23 Well, if you think about the philosophy, right? You have to get close to game speed once or twice a week. So for 15, 25 minutes you're gonna get... you're gonna risk injury, you're gonna take physical damage that you're not getting paid for. Make the most out of it, right?

Joe Rogan 9:35 Mm.

Forrest Griffin 9:35 Like, review it, treat it like a fight. Think about our athletes, they fight two to four times a year, so that's, that's a very limited amount of actual footage they have. But if you start recording your sparring sessions and treating them like a, like a fight, like, "Oh, shit, I did this wrong, I did that wrong," then you're gonna end up with more like 80, 90, which is, you know, baseball, basketball, even football, you got 20-plus games to, you know, review.

Joe Rogan 9:57 Yeah. And I think it's really important for young fighters also to see themselves doing certain techniques. Like, they might not notice... They might think they look better than they do.

Forrest Griffin 10:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:05 Like, "It's good."

Forrest Griffin 10:06 "My coach is full of shit, man."

Joe Rogan 10:07 Yeah. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 10:07 And then you... Uh, the film don't lie.

Joe Rogan 10:09 And you're like, "Yeah. Oh, okay, I see what I'm doing wrong there."

Forrest Griffin 10:11 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 10:11 It's hard sometimes to mimic, you know, without, without actually seeing yourself. Now, you guys... You, you've been Forrest Griffin, former UFC... champion of the motherfucking world. Uh, no one can ever take that from you, sir. How's that feel? It's a beautiful thing to have.

Dr. Duncan French 10:24 It's good. Yeah. Sure, yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:25 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 10:25 Yeah, I've moved on.

Joe Rogan 10:27 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 10:27 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 10:27 I've moved on.

Joe Rogan 10:27 Sure.

Forrest Griffin 10:27 I'm over it.

Joe Rogan 10:28 Um-

Forrest Griffin 10:28 And now I'm, I'm VP of Athlete Development at the Performance Institute, so it's much, much more important.

Joe Rogan 10:33 But you're still Forrest Griffin.

Forrest Griffin 10:35 There's a lot of champions. There's only one VP of Athlete Development.

Joe Rogan 10:38 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 10:38 We're still, we're still trying to find that job description-

Joe Rogan 10:40 Yeah. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 10:40 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 10:40 ... to figure out what he actually does.

Forrest Griffin 10:42 It... I change it daily, don't worry about it.

Joe Rogan 10:43 (laughs) Um, you've been involved from the beginning of this, right?

Forrest Griffin 10:47 Yeah, yeah. Uh, so it was going on about two weeks in, I heard this was happening and I was like, "Oh, hey guys, y- I, I work for you. I'm doing community outreach right now, but I've been trying to figure out the best way to train for mixed martial arts for the last 18 years. I don't know, maybe give me a shot at it."

Joe Rogan 11:04 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 11:04 So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:06 Now, when you, when you say that, that you're trying to figure out the best way, is there a best way?

Forrest Griffin 11:12 Yes. For everybody, right?

Joe Rogan 11:13 For everybody.

Forrest Griffin 11:13 And unfortunately it's those bullshit answers, everybody's different, man.

Joe Rogan 11:17 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 11:17 Everybody's got a different ability to work. You know, like, a Usman might have X amount, you know, before he physically breaks down, 'cause look at him, he's a fucking Ferrari, right?

Joe Rogan 11:25 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 11:26 He, he, he needs more high-end work or, you know, whatever. Everybody's a little physically different. Y- the key is to get some sub- objective feedback to know, "Hey, all right, I'm in the red. I'm, I'm good, I'm not."

Joe Rogan 11:38 Right.

Forrest Griffin 11:38 You know?

Joe Rogan 11:38 Do you do... do you guys do it on heart rate?

Forrest Griffin 11:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:41 Heart rate variability? Like, how, when you disc- determine whether or not someone's recovered enough to-

Forrest Griffin 11:45 Tell them about Omega Wave.

Dr. Duncan French 11:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:46 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 11:47 Tell 'em.

Dr. Duncan French 11:47 Yeah, I mean there's, there's plenty-

Joe Rogan 11:48 Give 'em something new.

Dr. Duncan French 11:48 ... of different ways to do it. Uh, the most, the, the most basic level is just speaking to a guy and getting subjective feedback, right? "How are you feeling?" is one of the best questions that we can ask a- an athlete.

Joe Rogan 11:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 11:57 But, um, yeah, I mean, we're, we're blessed and we're privileged with pretty high resource at the UFC Performance Institute. So we have some pretty, um, involved technologies. One of the ones that we use is, is, is a system called Omega Wave. Um, that gives us real insight and removes the subjectivity, where it can get objective understanding around physiology, particularly looking at, um, the DC potential of the brain. So, really-

Joe Rogan 12:19 DC? What is that?

Dr. Duncan French 12:19 Yeah, that's... The DC potential-

Joe Rogan 12:20 Never heard of it.

Dr. Duncan French 12:20 ... of the brain is an assessment of the autonomic nervous system.

Joe Rogan 12:23 (sighs)

Dr. Duncan French 12:23 Yeah.So, the- i- if you look at- if you look at the parasympathetic and sympathetic balance of your body, we're talking science now, I apologize, but-

Joe Rogan 12:32 No, please.

Dr. Duncan French 12:32 ... u- ul- ult- ultimately that's one of the things that's-

Joe Rogan 12:34 No, sure.

Dr. Duncan French 12:34 ... that's really impacted... There you go.

Joe Rogan 12:36 Jamie pulled something up on the screen here.

Dr. Duncan French 12:38 That's- that was John Smith, uh-

Joe Rogan 12:38 And you can see the, uh, windows of trainability.

Dr. Duncan French 12:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:41 This is fascinating.

Dr. Duncan French 12:42 Yeah, so this-

Joe Rogan 12:43 And this omega wave, oh, is it something you wear?

Dr. Duncan French 12:46 Yeah, so ultimately, it's, um, it's a three to five-minute assessment. You wear something that resembles a heart rate strap, lying at rest. Um, we also have electrodes in, on your, on your, on the third eye of your brain essentially.

Joe Rogan 12:58 Whoa.

Dr. Duncan French 12:58 Um, so we're picking up cardiovascular stress, uh, we're picking up the autonomic nervous system, and we're looking at things like heart rate variability-

Joe Rogan 13:04 But-

Dr. Duncan French 13:04 ... which Forrest already mentioned.

Joe Rogan 13:06 But, so, this isn't for everybody. Some people love it, and they say, "Hey, man. This is..." You know, again, these are just tools, right?

Dr. Duncan French 13:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:12 So different tools for different people.

Dr. Duncan French 13:14 Right. Yeah, for sure.

Forrest Griffin 13:15 It's a, it's a first thing in the morning measurement too to understand your, your recovery, your, how well you're recovered from the day before, and those windows of trainability for the next day.

Joe Rogan 13:25 So-

Forrest Griffin 13:25 Or that coming day.

Dr. Duncan French 13:25 ... I think it all comes back to what Forrest says. Uh, ultimately, what we're trying to do is understand individual responses, right? At the end of the day, everyone's on a pathway of, um, performance mastery to be-

Joe Rogan 13:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 13:36 ... a world champion. Um, and people respond to the workloads, the intensities, the volumes in very different ways. If we take a basketball team and put them all through the same workout, you've got 15 different guys that are responding-

Joe Rogan 13:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 13:47 ... in very different ways to the same workout.

Joe Rogan 13:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 13:49 Um, so, we're, we, we're privileged in that we work with an individual sport, and that's our, that's our mantra, is that we're looking at every single athlete as an individual, and we're building our programs, programming strategies and our information in an individual way.

Joe Rogan 14:03 So, y- you guys have been doing this now for how many years?

Dr. Duncan French 14:07 We're coming up on two years on May 22nd is, uh-

Joe Rogan 14:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 14:09 ... is our second anniversary.

Joe Rogan 14:11 And do you, do you have, like, a, a log of all the different cases you've worked with so you can kind of review, like, what methods were more effective than others, and you're constantly trying to improve this protocol, or-

Dr. Duncan French 14:21 Yes.

Joe Rogan 14:21 ... how do you guys, how do you guys write it all out?

Dr. Duncan French 14:23 I mean, we've obviously been involved with numerous fight camps, um, but we're also working with fighters that are not in camp. Um, last year, we, we presented this, um, journal, our first journal, which is a, an overview, a cross-section of all the data that we accrued in our first 12 months, um, and we continue to aggregate that data. Now, one of the privileges that we have at the institute is we get the opportunity to work with just under 600 fighters on our roster, um, so we can create real, clear, cross-sectional awareness of what different weight classes look like, what the challenges are to a fighter. Um, and then, you know, the, the fighters can compare and contrast themselves against their immediate peers in their weight class. So that's one of the most powerful benchmarking tools you can create.

Joe Rogan 15:03 This omega wave technology, can people buy that? Is that-

Dr. Duncan French 15:06 Oh, yeah. It's just a commercial product off the shelf, yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:08 And it w- itled like it worked off an app? Like, you, you put an app on your phone?

Dr. Duncan French 15:11 Yep, yep, yep.

Forrest Griffin 15:12 It does everything.

Dr. Duncan French 15:13 Yep.

Joe Rogan 15:13 Seems like it.

Forrest Griffin 15:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:14 Seems like that's the future.

Dr. Duncan French 15:15 Yeah. Uh, but again, we, we use many different types of technologies, you know?

Joe Rogan 15:18 Yeah, sure, sure.

Dr. Duncan French 15:18 You know, things like force plates-

Joe Rogan 15:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 15:20 ... can, can look at neuromuscular responses, um, some of our nutrition variables-

Forrest Griffin 15:25 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 15:25 ... will change across time. So it's not just one tool that is giving us all the answers. The, the windows of trainability concept is something that really helps us on a day-to-day basis to understand, can you go into a strength or power type session today and really maximize the opportunity to create the adaptations? Another day, your endure- it might be an endurance emphasis. So what it allows us to do is just give, give kind of kudos and credence to the athlete to understand where's the best approach and where you're gonna optimize your responses.

Joe Rogan 15:50 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 15:51 Every other sport is easier to train for than MMA. If you think about it, I was a defensive end in high school. Every defensive end needs the same physical abilities.

Joe Rogan 15:59 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 15:59 You think about the, uh, combine, the NFL combine, for instance. They've figured out over a million years what they want to test for. And like, the, the guys that, that, you know, they, they run the same, they jump the same, and per position, right? So quarterbacks don't need to necessarily be that fast if they can throw, right? But for everybody else, the numbers are kind of the same for our sport, and they've collected, I don't know, I don't know how many data points at this point.

Dr. Duncan French 16:23 Oh, over 100,000.

Forrest Griffin 16:23 But it's a lot. So they're anonymized, normalized, so you know what average looks like, what... You know, so you can give a guy like Anthony Smith, say, "Hey, look man, if..." And I bring him up because he's mentioned it before.

Joe Rogan 16:35 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 16:35 He's been outspoken about, you know, working with the PI. "Hey, you know what? Your force power measurements, eh, they're pretty average for 205. You're not, you're not a weak guy, you know? You, you could think about going up a weight class." So it's just objective information so the athletes, and hopefully their coaches, can make those choices.

Joe Rogan 16:54 Do you think they would benefit from more weight classes?

Forrest Griffin 16:57 Oh, that's a great question. I, I... So, I, I thought, ah, 65, you know? Look at the percentages. And then, you know, I was talking to actually Dana and Sean, and I was like, "Well, this guy's gonna go to 65, this guy's gonna go to 65, everybody's gonna go..." So, are, is it gonna help? I mean, there needs to be a percentage difference, but I, I don't know. I think people would just say, "Well, shit. Now I have to do an extra five pounds." But again, so from a PI standpoint, w- that's not really a decision we have to make. What we need to do is collect as much data-

Joe Rogan 17:29 Right.

Forrest Griffin 17:29 ... as we can on that and-

Joe Rogan 17:30 For individual fighters, trying to figure out which weight classes.

Forrest Griffin 17:32 ... p- uh, and, and then also to pro- provide that information to, you know, third-party commissions.

Joe Rogan 17:36 There's just so many, there's the gaps-

Forrest Griffin 17:38 I'm so PR these days, aren't I? I'm so cut.

Joe Rogan 17:38 You're very PR. It's okay, I, I, I know what you're doing.

Forrest Griffin 17:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:41 Like when you go from 85 to 205, that's 20 pounds.

Forrest Griffin 17:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:45 That is an enormous jump. So how do you decide, like, when a guy's a tweener? Like how do you look at a guy who maybe weighs 215, and you go, "Damn, dude."?

Forrest Griffin 17:52 That, those, the numbers. Like, what's your power?

Joe Rogan 17:55 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 17:55 What's your speed?

Joe Rogan 17:56 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 17:56 Like, are you a good athlete for that weight class, huh?

Joe Rogan 17:58 Right.

Forrest Griffin 17:59 Maybe not. Y- what's your arm length? How does that... You know, how does your arm length and the way you fight, right?

Joe Rogan 18:05 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 18:05 So, you know, if you're a Tyson-esque guy, you can have short arms and you wrestle kind of like a Gray Maynard style, right?

Joe Rogan 18:10 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 18:10 That's fine. You don't need super long arms. But, you know, if you're not a wrestler, you don't have the head move... Maybe you do. Anyway. W- we've actually had a number of athletes, I would say over the last year, come to us specifically, and sometimes it's matchmakers who are saying, "Hey, this guy wants to go down. Come, come take a look."

Clint Wattenberg 18:25 ... meet with the PI staff, see what, see what you guys think. Um, all those things that Forrest said are, are really valid. We, we do have a lot of be- uh, battery of tests both in the nutrition space, around body composition, around metabolic, um, function. Uh, oftentimes bad weight cuts will diminish and depress the metabolic rate, the resting metabolic rate, as well as, as it progresses over time through, through training. Um, and then, like we said, some of the energy systems, a lot of the strength and power diagnostics. How does an athlete compare to the, the, the norms and the standards that are set for that division? So first things that... First thing that I look at is how, how does, how does their body fit into a division? Uh, everybody's body is broken into three components, if you think about it in terms of bone, muscle, and fat. And if somebody's fat-free mass, it's everything except for their, uh, their fat, is n- 90, n- you know, is bigger than 99% of the athletes in that weight division, it's not gonna be a good fit. So a big thing is benchmarking and understanding how somebody's body fits into their division compared to others. So, uh, that, that's kind of step one. Then we look through all these other different metrics to see how they compare, and then we have a conversation. So my job is never, especially working with independent contractors, they can use us or they can, they can not. And we are a resource to consult and to have conversations with them, uh, o- about what makes sense on a scientific level.

Joe Rogan 19:48 Can I ask you how that works? Is like, if say if someone like a Henry Cejudo or someone-

Clint Wattenberg 19:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:52 ... wants to do his camp-

Clint Wattenberg 19:53 Yep.

Joe Rogan 19:53 ... uh, at the UFC Performance Institute, how wou- would they do? Schedule it with you guys? Tell you, "I'm gonna be here for eight weeks. We've set up camp in Vegas. We'd like to do it at the, at the gym."

Clint Wattenberg 20:02 So it happens all the time-

Forrest Griffin 20:03 Yeah. It's a testament of that, yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 20:04 ... whe- whether it's, whether it's a week or, or eight weeks. That, that filters into every single member of our team, especially as we're doing more and more on the ground at, at fight events. But that gets filtered up to Duncan and then Duncan handles e- the, the coordination of that.

Joe Rogan 20:16 But he could literally be there with, say if he was gonna fight Marlon Moraes, they literally could be in the Performance Institute at the same time.

Forrest Griffin 20:22 For sure. And that, that happens. I mean-

Joe Rogan 20:24 That's crazy. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 20:24 You know, we're a split level facility where- (laughs) They, they're never in the same zone at the same time though- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:29 You know?

Forrest Griffin 20:29 So you schedule them differently? The guy wouldn't be doing MMA in the Octagon. You know, schedule them first come, first served.

Joe Rogan 20:34 Do you ever anticipate a problem, like with guys that are supposed to be fighting each other, you know, like what just happened with Masvidal recently, like w- where an actual fistfight breaks out?

Forrest Griffin 20:45 Man, you find most of these guys wanna get paid to fight, not pay to fight.

Joe Rogan 20:49 Right. But when you see like-

Forrest Griffin 20:50 When the cameras aren't on, they're not so, "Eh."

Joe Rogan 20:52 That fight w- well, yeah, that's true, right? When the cameras aren't on.

Forrest Griffin 20:55 And the other thing is, when you're leading into a fight, my thought was, "You cannot let that person think they intimidated you." And if that means-

Joe Rogan 21:01 Right.

Forrest Griffin 21:01 ... you actually have to hit them, maybe it does, but the, the, you know, the idea is that I can't let you think that you have a mental advantage.

Joe Rogan 21:07 Right. In any other sport, no one would-

Clint Wattenberg 21:10 So we, we try-

Joe Rogan 21:10 ... ever wanna see that c- like d- it's, it's just like, "You gotta stop that." But in fighting it's like, "Oh, they're just doing extra fighting."

Forrest Griffin 21:16 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:17 Right. (laughs) Right. You know what I mean?

Forrest Griffin 21:18 It's like, "You guys aren't- you, you guys aren't getting paid."

Joe Rogan 21:21 Yeah, like if it was a basketball player, sucker punches another basketball player in the face at some sort of-

Forrest Griffin 21:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:25 ... a press conference.

Forrest Griffin 21:25 How-

Joe Rogan 21:25 Like that-

Forrest Griffin 21:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:26 ... like Masvidal did, I mean, you'd be like, "What?"

Forrest Griffin 21:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:30 "No way."

Forrest Griffin 21:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:30 But in fighting, like, "Oh, they did extra fighting." (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 21:33 Right. (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 21:33 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 21:33 It's like, but you, but you don't- Extra curricular activities. You don't get extra money or extra credit for it.

Joe Rogan 21:37 No, but you kind of do-

Forrest Griffin 21:39 Well, you get-

Joe Rogan 21:39 ... let's be honest-

Forrest Griffin 21:40 People are like, uh-

Joe Rogan 21:40 ... but Masvidal, for that performance, was going to get extra money. There was a stunning knockout of-

Forrest Griffin 21:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:45 ... Darren Till, who was one of the top guys in the welterweight division. The way he KO'd him was crazy. So he got it from that, and then to tee off on Leon Edwards after the fight like that, it's like another one. Like, the- that's, part of that is very good for him, unfortunately.

Forrest Griffin 22:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:01 Like, I don't want him to do that. I, I, I n- I don't wanna encourage, but if you wanna think about like a fighter's popularity-

Forrest Griffin 22:07 Building their brand, et cetera, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:08 ... yeah, building their brand. Like, he's an, "I don't give a fuck, I'll punch you in the face," guy.

Forrest Griffin 22:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:12 And like, well, a lot of people are. No, he's a real-

Forrest Griffin 22:15 No.

Joe Rogan 22:15 ... "I don't give a fuck, I'll punch you in your face," guy.

Forrest Griffin 22:17 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 22:17 They're real. They really exist. And he's a world-class fighter.

Forrest Griffin 22:20 Mm.

Joe Rogan 22:20 Like, that's a, that's sellable. It's unfortunate. I wish guys wouldn't ever fight at press conferences. Like, Cormier and Jon Jones, I fucking hated that. But tell me that didn't sell more tickets.

Forrest Griffin 22:31 No doubt.

Joe Rogan 22:33 That sold a shitload more tickets.

Forrest Griffin 22:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:35 How many times they th- show-

Forrest Griffin 22:36 For sure.

Joe Rogan 22:36 ... Conor throwing that dolly?

Forrest Griffin 22:38 Oh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:38 How many times did they th- show that, even in the promos? I hated when that happened. That was a terrible thing that-

Forrest Griffin 22:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:43 ... Conor did that. Goddamn, that sold some tickets.

Forrest Griffin 22:46 Well, you know, and that's a, that's a fine line, right? That's kind of a funny thing.

Joe Rogan 22:49 That's way over the line.

Forrest Griffin 22:50 Yeah, eh.

Joe Rogan 22:50 People that weren't even involved got cut.

Forrest Griffin 22:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:52 They got hit with glass.

Forrest Griffin 22:54 No, I, I, I don't mean-

Joe Rogan 22:54 Fights got canceled.

Forrest Griffin 22:55 I don't mean that. I mean using it, promoting it-

Joe Rogan 22:57 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Forrest Griffin 22:58 ... saying, "Well, here's the thing that happened."

Clint Wattenberg 22:58 Yep. Yes, yes.

Forrest Griffin 22:59 Do we just try to avoid it and hide it or do we let people know that this is a real thing? I don't know.

Joe Rogan 23:04 They call all, all people involved, go, "Look, this is the business. We're here to get paid. Okay? We're gonna run it. We're gonna run it. Every 15 minutes, we're gonna show that dolly smash." Oh, and that's Will Harris's company? Is that the, the gentleman-

Forrest Griffin 23:17 Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah, he does shit.

Joe Rogan 23:18 What is it, what is it called?

Forrest Griffin 23:20 Anatomy of a Fighter.

Clint Wattenberg 23:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:21 Yes, that's his YouTube show-

Clint Wattenberg 23:22 Boom.

Joe Rogan 23:23 ... that I, I often thought was, uh, a UFC show. I didn't even know that he had his own show. There's so many good guys right now that are putting out good content.

Forrest Griffin 23:30 Mm-hmm.

Clint Wattenberg 23:31 Yeah, Will Harris.

Joe Rogan 23:32 It's, is that what it is?

Clint Wattenberg 23:33 Yeah, yeah.

Forrest Griffin 23:33 Will Harris.

Clint Wattenberg 23:33 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:33 And, uh, he came in here with Kamaru Usman, super nice guy, but his, uh, his footage is the f- his, that was his footage-

Forrest Griffin 23:39 Ah.

Clint Wattenberg 23:40 Oh, that was in the window.

Joe Rogan 23:40 ... of that dolly smashing into the window, so the thing you see over and over again, thank Will. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 23:44 I think the embedded guys from the UFC were on the bus as well.

Joe Rogan 23:47 Oh.

Forrest Griffin 23:47 So they got the inside, nice. They got the outside.

Joe Rogan 23:50 Jesus Christ. You know, let's not do that.

Forrest Griffin 23:51 So the Performance Institute's awesome.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Anyway, sorry about that.

Clint Wattenberg 23:55 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 23:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:55 Hey, listen man, this is how this show works. It goes off the rails occasionally. Um, it, it is, uh, what, what you guys have set up though is kind of an unprecedented thing in the combat sports world. Like, there's never anything like this for boxing-

Forrest Griffin 24:07 No, no. It's, it's-

Joe Rogan 24:07 ... where boxers can go and-

Forrest Griffin 24:09 ... it's closest to the Olympic model.

Dr. Duncan French 24:11 Hmm.

Forrest Griffin 24:11 So we went around benchmarking, yada yada, 60-plus facilities, and you notice, like, a, a lot of the people that we hired worked with, you know, international and Olympic sports. And that's kind of our athlete model, right? So Olympic athletes, they might go to Colorado Springs for two weeks, or for four months-

Dr. Duncan French 24:27 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 24:27 ... or for a week, um, and do, like, a skills camp or something. For, we, we have the same model. You come in, three, four days, and then go home with, like, a program, you know, a diet, strength conditioning program-

Dr. Duncan French 24:39 (laughs) .

Forrest Griffin 24:39 ... PT program, uh, your training load goals, et cetera. So you'd leave with that, right? And then maybe, you know, you can't, you don't wanna move your life to Vegas. You got family, kids back home. So you come out three days every other month, and they can actually monitor and tell you, "This is how your training's going."

Dr. Duncan French 24:54 Mm.

Forrest Griffin 24:55 It, it's just, again, just data on whether it, it's working or not working, as opposed to my old boxing coach, "Oh, you're hitting hard today, kid. I don't know what you ate, but it's good. It's working for you."

Dr. Duncan French 25:05 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 25:06 I was like, "I ate cookies last night."

Dr. Duncan French 25:07 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 25:07 Should I just eat cookies every day and punch hard? I don't know.

Dr. Duncan French 25:12 Yeah, um, the scientific approach of getting those little extra percentage points of improvement is really what it's all about, and it, it could really be the difference. And it's such a crazy sport because it's so wild and unpredictable. And I mean, you could speak to this better than anybody. L- the results may vary, right?

Forrest Griffin 25:30 Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 25:30 It is a wild goddamn sport.

Forrest Griffin 25:32 I had... One of the best camps I ever had was, uh, Keith Jardine, Dean Gasua.

Dr. Duncan French 25:36 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 25:36 I was fucking amazing in the gym though (laughs) . I was like, "I am so good right now. I'm beating everybody up. This is amazing." But, you know, it was a 14-week camp. Eh, started falling apart at the end. A little much, yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 25:48 That's the, there's no other sport with as many degrees of freedom as mixed martial arts.

Forrest Griffin 25:51 Right. In terms of execution?

Dr. Duncan French 25:51 All right, if you think about... Well, just in sort of-

Forrest Griffin 25:54 Ways to win.

Dr. Duncan French 25:54 ... stylistic background, weight classes. Um, you don't even know when Dana's gonna give you a call to the next fight. Let's- Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 26:00 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 26:00 Let's look at Usain Bolt, right? You, there's a reason why Usain Bolt is a 100-meter champion and he's not the 60-meter champion. All right? Our guys, if, if you look at mixed martial arts, that is 6 to 36 seconds of high-intensity work, followed by two to three times as much low-intensity work, repeated throughout a five-minute round. 77% of fights are won in those high-intensity e- efforts, right? So that's where the fight is won and lost. But you don't know if that six seconds is gonna be the first six seconds of the fight or the last six seconds of the fight. So Usain Bolt knows that he's going 100, 100 meters, all right? Our guys don't know if they need to be the, the, the best starter or the best finisher. So you gotta prepare for everything. Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 26:40 So all, all these degrees of freedom, these variab- external variable things that come into mixed martial arts make it the most complex sport to figure out and build a structure and a development pathway against.

Dr. Duncan French 26:50 It's so interesting too that so many different fighters have a d- a completely different approach. Like, you've got, uh, uh-

Forrest Griffin 26:56 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 26:56 ... low volume, high power approach, like maybe a Tyron Woodley. And then you got a guy like Nick Diaz, who just smothers guys.

Forrest Griffin 27:01 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 27:02 He just stays on you and keeps punching you and talking shit to you. And he sees you starting to lose your breath-

Forrest Griffin 27:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 27:06 ... and he keeps coming after you. And he can push a pace because of his long-term cardiovascular condition.

Forrest Griffin 27:11 Mm-hmm. Right.

Dr. Duncan French 27:11 I mean, it's, it's... And you can't tell him he's doing it wrong, 'cause-

Forrest Griffin 27:14 No, no, no.

Dr. Duncan French 27:14 ... he's not. It-

Forrest Griffin 27:15 So-

Dr. Duncan French 27:15 Everybody's doing it a different way.

Forrest Griffin 27:16 ... everybody's doing it a... Sometimes your physiology, right, is gonna determine the way you fight.

Dr. Duncan French 27:19 Mm.

Forrest Griffin 27:20 Right? Like-

Dr. Duncan French 27:20 Right.

Forrest Griffin 27:20 Like the arm length of Jon Jones, and the leg-

Dr. Duncan French 27:23 Sure.

Forrest Griffin 27:23 ... and arm length. I can't fight like that, 'cause I'm gonna get... I'm not gonna be at the end of everybody's punch-

Dr. Duncan French 27:28 Right.

Forrest Griffin 27:28 ... just out of reach. I'm gonna be getting hit by everybody if I start throwing those teeps, you know?

Dr. Duncan French 27:32 Yeah. And also, it allows him in training to, like, get better. Like, he's always got this-

Forrest Griffin 27:37 Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 27:37 He's always got this advantage. He's, like, constantly getting better. And he's also the best I've ever seen at utilizing that reach. He's very good at keeping an op- his opponent exactly where he needs him and in, in his range. And then when they close up, he's very good at being defensive. I mean, it's, it's, it's- I mean, that's what the best fighters do, right? They take-

Forrest Griffin 27:57 Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 27:57 ... the fight where they want it to go. But it's just so interesting to see that everyone does have a different approach that they make work with their body structure. It's quite unique, 'cause we've looked at a lot of our physiological assessments. And when you take the data and you compare and contrast, for example, people with grappling and wrestling backgrounds versus striking backgrounds, you, you, you can take something like power and you can differentiate between those two. So all right, I want to get a competitive advantage as a striker. Um, might need to improve my strength work because the wrestlers are already stronger than me. Mm. We can look at this, the, the, the pa- the strength characteristics, and you know, our, our data shows that those comes... The, the, the guys that come from a wrestling background are far and above stronger than the strikers, which you would expect, right? But if you look at things like, can you differentiate our top 15 in the world versus the rest of the roster in that weight class? It just, it, it takes away any comparative, um, any comparison. And at the end of the day, ultimately in a complex chaos-based sport, skill is always gonna be the best determinant of performance. So we're not saying that the physiological variables aren't important to the sport of MMA, but it's really hard to tease out where you need to push your strategy and where you need to optimize your training.

Forrest Griffin 29:08 Mm.

Dr. Duncan French 29:08 Because in a, in a, in a homogeneous population of world-class fighters, it kind of gets ab- absorbed and, and it becomes invisible where the differences are.

Forrest Griffin 29:15 Don't worry.

Dr. Duncan French 29:16 That's such an important point.

Forrest Griffin 29:17 We usually are a little more specific per athlete (laughs) .

Dr. Duncan French 29:21 (laughs) Well, it-

Forrest Griffin 29:21 You just told me what not to do. What do I do, though?

Clint Wattenberg 29:24 Well, and that's where the individualization, personalization for every single athlete comes in. We find their strengths and, and some of their, their gaps, where it might be the, the lowest s- point-scoring component of their decathlon of MMA.

Forrest Griffin 29:37 Mm-hmm.

Clint Wattenberg 29:37 And if it's a deficiency that maybe hasn't been taken advantage of yet, but will, that's where we fill those gaps, so that they can start to fill those holes and become more complete, more comprehensive. That might be strength, power. It might be energy system. It may be... It could be anything. It could be orthopedic. I mean, we, we have... We're, we're trying to assess every component of preparation that can support or limit that athlete's g- performance in the cage. In terms of, you know, how, how they, all those things work together, it's really vital that if somebody's working on their strength and power, they're not feeding their, their body in a way that's actually limiting their ability to perform at the high-intensity training, right? Because then that limits the, the adaptation that we're looking for as a response to that training. And that's, that's a really critical point where nutrition-... fills, it really f- is a foundation that supports the development of all the other adaptations that, that, that are, are required to become that complete m- mixed martial artist. So as the strength and conditioning plan is being laid out, as the, uh, physical therapy plan, as the recovery plan, all of those are, are coming to fruition. The nutrition, obviously, is really s- near and dear to what I'm doing, is really critical at supporting the adaptation so that we're not pulling the b- you know, the, the athlete in two different directions in terms of the adaptation.

Joe Rogan 30:57 Now, in terms of when you take fighters and athletes into your Performance Institute, have you guys ever worked with young, junior, like amateur mixed martial artists? Kids that are coming up, and d- do you ever do stuff like that? Show them, like give them a peak at what it's like to see like the world-class fighters?

Dr. Duncan French 31:17 Well, w- we don't at the Performance Institute in Las Vegas, because we're very much aligned to supporting our current roster.

Joe Rogan 31:23 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 31:23 Um, and it, it's a facility and a philosophy that's been designed to support our current roster. What we're doing in June of this year, however, is opening up a facility in Shanghai, China, um, which will have a completely different business model in terms of that will be very much a developmental program for guys that aren't in the U- currently in the UFC.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 31:41 So obviously we're trying to improve the talent standards in, in China, and, and develop that market and break that new territory. But the mechanism to doing that is gonna be very much through talent development in the Performance Institute. So over there, we will have, um, MMA coaches and grappling coaches and striking coaches. We don't have that in Las Vegas 'cause we're currently working with the guys that are already on the roster.

Joe Rogan 32:00 Mm-hmm. Well, it's such a unique sport in the fact that even though it is one thing when you get into the UFC, the paths to get there are so-

Dr. Duncan French 32:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:08 ... widely different. And you really don't know what the right... Well, you, is the Cro Cop path the right way to do it, or is the Daniel Cormier path the right way to do it? No one can say.

Dr. Duncan French 32:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:17 And different fighters will win on different nights with different styles. It's the, one of the only sports where your pathway in, you could say that if someone is an elite kickboxer or an elite grappler-

Dr. Duncan French 32:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:28 ... that going in with that one major advantage in that one skill set could, uh, p- could take you very, very far versus an overall game approach that some guys have where they're really good at everything.

Dr. Duncan French 32:40 Mm-hmm. Right, and the true specialist, if you look at the day, the true specialist, the GSPs of this world, still hasn't necessarily risen to the top in the sport of MMA. You still see guys that are stylistically... They have a stylistic emphasis, and that's their X factor that keeps them at the top of the game.

Joe Rogan 32:54 Yeah, and, and then there's execution-

Dr. Duncan French 32:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:56 ... with the, which is creativity and their ability to perform under pressure, their ability to maintain their cool during camp where they never overtrain and they, they stay in a good space-

Dr. Duncan French 33:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:06 ... they stay in a good head space, don't have girlfriend problems or boyfriend problems. And then they get to the final night of the competition with the most in the tank. And that's a, that's an art in and of itself, right?

Dr. Duncan French 33:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:17 Some, some, when you first asked about, you know, something I've seen that I love, uh, training partners, right? So bring your training partners to the UFCPI, and we've had, I don't know, six, seven, eight guys that came in as training partners and are now on the UFC roster.

Dr. Duncan French 33:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:32 So that's, that's why I'm not an asshole to anyone.

Dr. Duncan French 33:34 That's beautiful.

Joe Rogan 33:35 'Cause you never know. (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 33:36 It's also you, you get the chance to see these... I mean, every guy has to start somewhere, every girl has to start somewhere. You get a chance to see these people that may- maybe never get this invitation there, and they see the holy ground. They're like, "God, damn, I'm at the UFC Performance Institute."

Dr. Duncan French 33:49 Well, to your point, too, about the facility, world-class facility, the, the services, we would argue, are even better than the facility. But training partners, coaches, those that are on the Contender Series, those that came through for The Ultimate Fighter-

Joe Rogan 34:02 Ultimate Fighter, yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 34:02 ... they've all been able to use and to access the facility in short periods. Training partners can come and access the facility, eat on campus, um, strength train with the UFC athlete, use the facility upstairs and, and, and train in the MMA space. And when they get the chance, th- when they get the shot, then they tap right into services. And, and, and it, it's an opportunity for us to o- you know, essentially influence the community even before we're working with them directly, which is, which is a really huge component of our, our philosophy and, and really what we're looking to accomplish.

Joe Rogan 34:32 I- I would also, I think it would be massively inspirational for the fighters, too, the young guys that are coming through.

Dr. Duncan French 34:36 Yeah, I mean, part... Our philosophy is to accelerate the evolution of the sport of mixed martial arts. That, that's in our mission statement.

Joe Rogan 34:42 Tagline.

Dr. Duncan French 34:42 As you've seen-

Joe Rogan 34:42 Trademark.

Clint Wattenberg 34:42 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 34:42 ... when you, when you walk through the door, it's, it's right there on the wall.

Joe Rogan 34:45 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 34:45 You know? Um, uh, uh, and to do that, to... W- we're trying to shift the barometer in terms of not the professionalism of the sport, but the expectations of fighters within the sport. You look at someone like Brian Ortega, and, and listen, what, what we're not trying to do is take the wild out of the stallion, right? Uh, we're not trying to just push science at fighters. At the end of the day-

Joe Rogan 35:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 35:03 ... these guys are, are, are world-class fighters for a reason. But you can train and shape the stallion and it still has the wild at heart, right?

Joe Rogan 35:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 35:10 So what we're trying to do is shift the barometer so there's an expectation of what a professional athlete should, should really expect.

Joe Rogan 35:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 35:16 Brian Ortega has worked out in his garage most of his care- garage, sorry. It's American, right?

Joe Rogan 35:21 Yeah (laughs) .

Clint Wattenberg 35:21 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 35:21 (laughs) Um, but, but in terms of, you know, what's the expectation that a professional fighter should expect? And the Performance Institute demonstrates that, you know, not everyone can have access to it, obviously, but that's an aspiration and it's, it's where people should understand, in the sport of mixed martial arts, the standard th- as a professional fighter you can expect.

Joe Rogan 35:39 And it's, uh, it's so important, I think, that you put all these things under one roof like that and, and create this environment, because it, it seems to be trickling off into other places. Like, the, the, the level of training and recovery and everything is so intense and so severe that people are starting to try to mimic certain aspects of that in their, their own gyms and their own different places.

Dr. Duncan French 35:58 Yeah, but it, the problem is you can't do things in isolation, all right? If, if you just say, "Well, I'm gonna really hammer the recovery piece and forget about the nutrition piece."

Joe Rogan 36:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 36:06 It's, it's a large machine, right?

Joe Rogan 36:08 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 36:08 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 36:08 The, there's cogs, and all the cogs need to work together. And that's what we truly feel we can offer and we, we can deliver is this integ- not necessarily a multidisciplinary service, but an interdisciplinary service-

Joe Rogan 36:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 36:20 ... where we have multiple aspects coming together to fill the whole picture of an athlete's portfolio of needs.

Joe Rogan 36:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 36:26 And, and that's what we can offer through the Performance Institute. The other thing we want to do is figure out what the best practices are and disseminate them. Like we don't wanna just know a bunch of stuff so we can keep it. Remember-

Joe Rogan 36:36 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 36:36 ... we want every other gym, like, "Hey, here's what we've learned."

Forrest Griffin 36:39 This is how we do our recovery. Take a, take of it, try it, see if you recover. See if you want a laser bed. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. This is what we found success in, you know. So you wanna, you know... What's the point of learning something and then hiding it away?

Narrator 36:52 And-

Joe Rogan 36:52 But for

Dr. Duncan French 36:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah-

Joe Rogan 36:52 Yes, please.

Dr. Duncan French 36:53 Yeah, sorry. And everything's about assessment. So, it's not one recovery modality, it's not one nutrition modality, it's not one strength and conditioning. It's assessing so then we can build that personalized approach. And so here are the modalities, here is the philosophy that we've developed to help optimize athletes' needs around what, what, w- what we're measuring. And we're not winning fights. That, that's, that's obvious. That comes with the X factors, that comes from the fighters, their, their passion and, and their commitment to their sport. But what we're trying to do, back, back to your original question, I think, around this 1% is so hard to measure, but what we're able to do is to help them to do it more consistently and to do it longer into their career so that they c- they can, they can optimize, they can maximize their ability to train, to adapt, to perform, and give themselves the best chance to, to be successful on fight night.

Joe Rogan 37:43 Yeah, and there must be so many fighters that come from, uh, a discipline, whether it's judo or something along those lines, and then they start fighting in MMA, so they get a boxing coach, and they have, uh, a few guys working with them on leg kicks. But they don't have a nutrition guy.

Dr. Duncan French 37:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:54 And they don't have a recovery guy. They don't have someone who understands, like, deep tissue massage. They gotta find that guy. They gotta find someone to organize a diet for them. They gotta figure out how to cut weight, healthy, proper. And there's, these things are so difficult for fighters to put... Especially if you don't live in a place that has something like an American Top Team or some gigantic, uh, institution.

Dr. Duncan French 38:13 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, there, there, there's fighters, uh, e- even top fighters on our roster might potentially hire a nutritionist for a short period of time in the fight camp. You know, for an ei- eight-week period.

Joe Rogan 38:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 38:24 This, this should be a 52-week fight camp.

Joe Rogan 38:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 38:26 We should be considering our development as fighters and as athletes, professional athletes, 52 months, y- 52 weeks of the year, you know, and I think that's-

Forrest Griffin 38:33 We trademark that too. 52-week fight camp.

Joe Rogan 38:36 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 38:36 That's, that's what our philosophy is, as, as Clint has already talked about. Um, in, in terms of plugging the holes and being able to offer the services that you need as a particular athlete. So, there's, there's large gyms out there, American Top Team, AKA, they've, they've got their own guys. That's, that's great. Jackson. They've got their own people. Um, but, you know, w- w- there's plenty of people on the roster that have an MMA coach and a grappling coach, and that's it, you know.

Joe Rogan 38:58 Right. Yeah.

Dr. Duncan French 38:58 So the Performance Institute, we, we feel we can help and support those guys as well.

Joe Rogan 39:02 You can bridge the gaps.

Dr. Duncan French 39:03 Right. And we're not trying to displace the, the programs where athletes already have resources. But, m- I, I don't know of another MMA gym globally that has the capacity around assessment that we do. So yeah, we have, we have some really great practitioners, but Beau Sandoval, our strength coach, and his team cannot write programs for 570 athletes.

Joe Rogan 39:22 Yep.

Dr. Duncan French 39:23 It's, it's not possible. But what we can do is, is assess those athletes, provide that feedback back to their strength coaches, and have conversations about how those coaches can use that data to, to support the development of that athlete. And that, that goes across the board for all of our performance services.

Joe Rogan 39:37 Well, it's a pretty amazing resource because if you're a young fighter and all you have is access to the people around you, you g- if you're fighting in the UFC, you get to have access, like, instantaneously to this gigantic group of people. Where it's like, it... When, for us, when you were coming up, I mean, you were a real pioneer. I mean, that was, that was not available to a guy like you.

Forrest Griffin 39:57 No, I mean, I, I tell this story all the time, but so I was actually a little bit ahead of my time. I had, you know, I had an actual strength coach that had letters behind his name that went to college-

Joe Rogan 40:06 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 40:06 ... to be a strength coach, not that was like an ex-bodybuilder. Uh, I had, uh, you know, a, a relatively good nutritionist who at least had a degree in, uh, chemical biology. Uh, I had a, a good physical therapist, but I didn't really have... Like, I was my coach, you know. At the end of the day, I was the head of performance. So I'd go, "Do jujitsu." And you know, "Jujitsu coach wants you to go hard," and then you go, "Kickbox, but you're gonna go light," but it's kickbox, so you don't. And then-

Joe Rogan 40:31 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 40:31 ... you know, and now, you know, nobody's... The strength coach and nutritionist are on different pages. So, I think just understanding that everything has to work together, which I, I didn't really understand.

Joe Rogan 40:42 Well, the... What I'm saying is that you kinda had to pave a path because when a guy like you was doing all that stuff with a real legitimate strength and conditioning coach, a real legitimate nutritionist, how many other people were doing that at, at your time?

Forrest Griffin 40:55 Not that many, but I, see, I got to be-

Joe Rogan 40:57 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 40:57 ... around good people, like Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell.

Joe Rogan 40:59 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 40:59 Those were kind of guys I got to hang out with and say, "Well, he does this, he does that." Chuck actually wouldn't do that much of this stuff, but Randy would.

Dr. Duncan French 41:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:06 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 41:06 Chuck just went, "I, I know what I'm doing, K?" "All right." "Yes, sir."

Joe Rogan 41:10 Yeah, he just existed on pure savagery.

Dr. Duncan French 41:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:12 Um, when you step back and look at your career, like, how, uh, how amazing is it to be able to step off from there and do something like you're doing now for the UFC Performance Institute, which is very meaningful for young fighters? I mean, you really do get a chance to give back with your experience and your-

Forrest Griffin 41:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:30 ... understanding of the right way and the wrong way, the mistakes that you've made. I mean, it's huge.

Forrest Griffin 41:34 Well, that, I mean, and that's the whole th- I mean, that's the whole genesis kinda from, from my involvement in the PI. Like, "Oh, look, here's the 10,000 mistakes I made."

Joe Rogan 41:42 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 41:42 "You're gonna make mistakes too, but h- these are the ones you don't need to make," you know?

Joe Rogan 41:46 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 41:47 Again, the, the sport's changed, man. It's 25 years old. Every other sport's so evolved, been around so long. Our sport changes all the time. I forget who was talking about it, but, you know, even the guys fighting 10 years ago probably couldn't compete with the guys fighting today. You know?

Dr. Duncan French 42:02 But I mean, what I would say as well, um, is not only for the fighters. Forrest is a huge resource for us. The be- the best piece of technology we have is the door handle that leads from my office to u- to Forrest's office, right?

Joe Rogan 42:12 (laughs)

Dr. Duncan French 42:12 Because ultimately, he's a massive resource for us-

Joe Rogan 42:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Duncan French 42:15 ... that are not necessarily coming from an MMA background, um, and are trying to support the MMA community, to, to, to bounce ideas off, to essentially beta test things from a thought process perspective. And he, he's a huge part of the Performance Institute philosophy because we can use and call upon his expertise.

Forrest Griffin 42:31 So, here's another funny thing. When we were putting together the (clears throat) the, uh, the team for the PI-I kinda shied away from people already doing MMA. I wanted-

Joe Rogan 42:41 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 42:41 ... combat sports. Everybody that's done it has done judo, boxing on an Olympic level. They've done combat sports. But I wanted, like, a fresh set of eyes coming from a different, you know, than just, "Ah," you know, 'cause I know really good MMA strength coaches. I know pretty good MMA, you know, you, you, you know good, but get, get that fresh set of eyes. You know? Nutrition actually was a little different because the rest of the world does not understand a weight cut for an MMA fight. It's not like it, it... You know, when you go to EXOS, you go to any high level facility and they, you say, "I'm gonna lose eight percent of my body weight and then compete on Saturday." They're like, "No, don't. Just fight in the higher weight class." I'm like, "Yeah, that actually isn't gonna work out for me."

Joe Rogan 43:21 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 43:21 (hisses) Like, they, they just won't comprehend it. They're like, "No, no, you'll perform better," like, "No, no." So-

Joe Rogan 43:26 Well, some fighters do.

Forrest Griffin 43:28 ... you know, we have had somebody-

Joe Rogan 43:28 Or it's, it's, that's another thing about having a limited amount of weight classes. When you jump up you have to make a drastic change.

Forrest Griffin 43:33 Diego Sanchez. He's crazy, man.

Joe Rogan 43:34 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 43:34 He's like 174 and 175 on fight day.

Joe Rogan 43:37 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 43:37 Fighting guys 190.

Joe Rogan 43:39 Yeah, but-

Forrest Griffin 43:39 That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 43:39 ... with a lot of energy.

Forrest Griffin 43:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:41 What's interesting is at his age, I think it's probably a good move.

Forrest Griffin 43:43 He's missing no meals. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:44 Yeah, I, I think it's probably a good move though, at his age, you know? I mean, he's back from UFC Ultimate Fighter 1.

Forrest Griffin 43:51 Dude, insane. We, we knew though, like on the show that he was the one that would go forever.

Joe Rogan 43:55 (laughs) We knew in the house then, like, I don't know, he's just crazy, right? But there's so much enthusiasm still.

Forrest Griffin 44:00 Yeah, he's not gonna stop. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:01 I mean, when, when he beat Mickey Gall that way, I was, I was incredibly impressed.

Forrest Griffin 44:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:05 You know, like, this kid might test him. He didn't test him at all. I mean, it was amazing. It's a prime Diego Sanchez performance 15 years into the game. I mean, it doesn't even, not even just into... That's just into the UFC.

Forrest Griffin 44:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:17 He had amateur fights and, or, or professional fights rather before the UFC. He's f- he's been in the UFC for 15 years, man. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 44:25 Or at least 14, right? 2004, 2005 was season one.

Joe Rogan 44:29 Yeah, but yeah, we- we shot at 2004, 2005, so yeah, 14, we'll get 15.

Forrest Griffin 44:33 So, we'll get 15.

Joe Rogan 44:33 Somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood-

Forrest Griffin 44:35 We'll get 15.

Joe Rogan 44:35 ... of 15 years, which is amazing that he's so enthusiastic about it still. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they'll give him a vase for his top of his mantelpiece, on above his fire or something.

Forrest Griffin 44:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:42 Carriage clock or something just to recognize he's 15 years.

Forrest Griffin 44:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:46 (laughs) Yeah, that's, um, that's a long time, uh, in a combat sport. A long time.

Forrest Griffin 44:51 It... So that's the other thing, man. That is not the norm.

Joe Rogan 44:54 Yeah. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 44:54 That's a deviation, right?

Joe Rogan 44:56 Huge deviation.

Forrest Griffin 44:56 Don't think that you got it for... I made it nine years in the UFC. Eight years actually. And, you know, I didn't have that many fights. I broke down, I fell apart. You know, it's pretty average. You know, I was like, "Woe is me," and then when you look at the data, it's like, "Oh no, I'm, I'm, I'm just average." 35, that's, that's when you start to fall apart.

Joe Rogan 45:13 When you look back now with what you know now and all the athletes you've worked with at the UFCPI, do you think you would have done anything different in terms of the way you prepared?

Forrest Griffin 45:21 Oh my God, I can't even think about it.

Joe Rogan 45:22 Oh, really?

Forrest Griffin 45:23 I don't even wanna think about it. Oh yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:24 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 45:24 It's so, it's so dumb.

Joe Rogan 45:25 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 45:25 Like why, why, why would spar eight rounds? Why would you spar eight rounds?

Joe Rogan 45:29 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 45:29 There's no eight round fights, Forrest.

Joe Rogan 45:31 Right.

Forrest Griffin 45:31 What, what, what are you doing?

Joe Rogan 45:33 (sighs)

Forrest Griffin 45:33 Oh, you're literally just getting slower, Forrest. You're already slow. I don't, I don't...

Joe Rogan 45:37 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 45:37 I don't know, man.

Joe Rogan 45:38 It's s- uh, again, being a pioneer like you were, there wasn't really a whole lot of guys before you that were operating-

Forrest Griffin 45:46 I, I, I had the other pioneers like the Randys and the Chucks.

Joe Rogan 45:48 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 45:48 And that's what they were doing.

Joe Rogan 45:50 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 45:50 So I figured, "Well, I better be tough. I better do what they do." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:53 That's the craziest thing about MMA-

Forrest Griffin 45:54 They're champions.

Joe Rogan 45:54 If-

Forrest Griffin 45:54 I'm not gonna question them.

Joe Rogan 45:56 Mm-hmm, boxing had already figured out you shouldn't beat the fuck out of each other every day. They had already kinda figured that out.

Forrest Griffin 46:00 Well, and the other thing they figured out is, uh, we would work with people... I would spar with Wanderlei, Chuck, uh, Randy. In boxing, they don't spar with people that are equals.

Joe Rogan 46:11 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 46:11 Past a certain point, e-

Joe Rogan 46:12 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 46:12 Yeah, in camp.

Joe Rogan 46:13 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 46:13 Well, think about it. You know a lot about... They, they start like... Is Floyd Mayweather sparring with, I don't know, really good people his level? No. No, definitely not. He's, he's finding people up-

Joe Rogan 46:23 He's finding good boxers and he's tooling them. (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 46:26 Yes, yes.

Joe Rogan 46:26 Yeah, and I think-

Forrest Griffin 46:27 But they're... Have you heard of them though? They're not famous and rich, so they're not the best in the world.

Joe Rogan 46:31 Right, right, right.

Forrest Griffin 46:31 They're not elite. Whereas you think about like, a gym, like our gym, like I'll just use Randy's 'cause I don't wanna talk bad about anybody, but you're fighting other champions every day?

Joe Rogan 46:40 Right.

Forrest Griffin 46:41 Eh, maybe, maybe-

Joe Rogan 46:42 (laughs) Dangerous as fuck.

Forrest Griffin 46:43 Yeah, maybe-

Joe Rogan 46:44 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 46:44 ... drill together, sure, learn from each other, roll, wrestle, like control your training.

Joe Rogan 46:48 Mm-hmm. Especially guys that are in the same weight class as you that may someday fight you.

Forrest Griffin 46:53 That's awkward, yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:54 Yeah. And there was no guidebook, you know?

Forrest Griffin 46:58 Yeah. Well, you know, guys like Keith Jardine and Rashad Evans figured it out. They're like, "All right, we already had to fight each other. We'll train together now so we won't-

Joe Rogan 47:05 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 47:05 ... have to do it again."

Joe Rogan 47:06 Right. (laughs) That is a good move if it works out. Um, the, the level of guys now is, it's, uh, so extraordinary to see. Like, when you see the elite champions of today, you, you just have this insane level of, of, of fighter. It's, it's really... As a person who's been involved in the sport as long as I have, I, I, I still never cease to be amazed at the, the level of talent of these guys coming up. 'Cause some of these guys coming up, they just could do everything. And they could do everything at such a high level. And you're realizing you're, you're seeing the results of kids that started out learning MMA-

Forrest Griffin 47:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:38 ... when they were like five, six years old.

Forrest Griffin 47:40 Yeah, yeah. I- I mean, you know, I had a pers- I have a personal gym and I remember Rhonda Rousey were like, "Man, she's gonna change my bottom line." All of a sudden, I got a mat full of, uh, young women.

Joe Rogan 47:49 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 47:49 Like, just training and fighting-

Joe Rogan 47:51 What a badass.

Forrest Griffin 47:52 ... legit fighting. I was like, "This is amazing. Thank you, Rhonda."

Joe Rogan 47:55 Yeah, she for sure changed it. Gina Carano changed it a little bit before her.

Clint Wattenberg 47:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:59 You know, b- people had this idea, like, "Oh, you could be pretty and fuck people up." Like, "Oh, that's a totally different kind of girl. That's like a superhero, like a real live superhero."

Clint Wattenberg 48:09 And now she plays in movies, right?

Joe Rogan 48:10 Yeah. But it's just incredible too that the sport, when you look at women's MMA, like, like, uh, particularly Amanda Nunes, Cris Cyborg, that fight. I mean, that is as crazy exciting as any fight you will ever see-

Clint Wattenberg 48:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:22 ... in your-

Clint Wattenberg 48:22 Oh. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:22 ... fucking life. And Amanda Nunes bombed on the, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, women's MMA fighter of all time and KO'd her in the first round in spectacular fashion. Like, if you're not a fan of MMA or women's MMA-

Clint Wattenberg 48:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:36 ... after watching that...

Clint Wattenberg 48:37 Yeah, like, it's funny you mention that. I just think about Holly Holm. Like, what's she made out of? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:42 (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 48:42 Like, she's had a million fights.

Joe Rogan 48:43 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 48:43 Like, what, what-

Joe Rogan 48:44 She's a beast.

Clint Wattenberg 48:44 ... is she doing so right? Like, she's just a, she's, she's a, you know, GSP, Couture. She's just-

Joe Rogan 48:49 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 48:49 ... a genetic specimen. And I think, uh, she m-, you know, she's just, again, she does that 52-week fight camp type deal, you know?

Joe Rogan 48:56 Right. Yeah, you don't see her ever getting out of shape.

Clint Wattenberg 48:59 Never.

Joe Rogan 48:59 It's not happening.

Clint Wattenberg 49:00 Uh-uh.

Joe Rogan 49:00 Yeah. You know, I still think she got a raw deal in the de Randamie fight.

Clint Wattenberg 49:04 Uh, she did. That's 'cause-

Joe Rogan 49:05 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 49:05 ... she did.

Joe Rogan 49:06 She did.

Clint Wattenberg 49:06 She got, she got clocked pretty l- pretty late.

Joe Rogan 49:07 Two times hard-

Clint Wattenberg 49:09 Yes.

Joe Rogan 49:09 ... after the buzzer.

Clint Wattenberg 49:10 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 49:10 Two times. And, uh, no, no, no points taken away, no nothing, and we were shocked. We're like, "That's crazy." And then on top of that, she dropped her, she dropped her with a head kick, and she dropped her with a straight left. Like, in my opinion, she did th- the more damage in that fight. And I, I was, I was shocked. But that's, uh, I mean-

Clint Wattenberg 49:26 MMA judging.

Joe Rogan 49:27 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 49:27 It's never gonna-

Joe Rogan 49:28 That's crazy.

Clint Wattenberg 49:29 We cannot help you with that at the Performance Institute (laughs) . (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:32 At the Performance Institute, uh-

Clint Wattenberg 49:32 Well, we got some data.

Joe Rogan 49:33 What I was getting at before when you were talking about little kids, when I was at, I was rather talking about kids coming up and amateur fighters, (coughs) it would, there would probably be something that would be really beneficial of having, um, some sort of a program like that in America, where kids could understand the right way and the wrong way to do it so they don't have to repeat these problems and these, these mistakes that have already been kinda gone, gone over.

Clint Wattenberg 49:59 And that's your background in the British Olympics system, right?

Joe Rogan 50:01 Yeah, I mean, if you, uh, yeah, it's-

Clint Wattenberg 50:02 Do it. Set that up.

Joe Rogan 50:03 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 50:03 You got nothing going on.

Joe Rogan 50:04 Is, is that... I mean-

Clint Wattenberg 50:05 I'm into that.

Joe Rogan 50:05 ... would that be something that the UFC would ever think about doing in the future? Because if they really wanted to ensure that they had a good pool of high-level talent, it would certainly add to that.

Dr. Duncan French 50:14 Yeah, I mean, there's no clear performance pathway-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Right.

Dr. Duncan French 50:17 ... for, into m-, into the wo-, you know, the highest level of the UFC for the sport of mixed martial arts. So-

Joe Rogan 50:21 But there's guidelines for training that I think kids-

Dr. Duncan French 50:23 For sure.

Joe Rogan 50:24 ... might not have the resources.

Dr. Duncan French 50:25 And every, every gym has a curriculum, and what we're trying to do is obviously add to that curriculum from a s-, you know, from a training perspective, a recovery perspective. But ultimately, what's the, what's the best pathway? And as you've already contested to, people are coming to this sport with so many different backgrounds. So are you gonna chop that, that e- access route to, to the UFC in, in half or are you actually, uh, gonna promote it and, and find s- , you know, many ways to get into the UFC? I think, you know, we can look at things like the Olympic Games and does MMA ever, ever enter into the Olympic Games and create a pathway? Who knows? And I'm sure the UFC, uh, you know, are looking into that type of thing in the future and trying to be ambitious.

Joe Rogan 51:00 Mm.

Dr. Duncan French 51:00 But, um, right now it's hard to define what's the, what's the optimal way and what the, what is the optimal route into the UFC?

Joe Rogan 51:07 Yeah, g-, uh, t- it is, uh, uh, really, that's one of the more interesting things about it, like we were saying before. You could really have any c- combat sport path, boxer, wrestler, anything-

Dr. Duncan French 51:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:17 ... could get you in there.

Clint Wattenberg 51:18 I- I'm sure it's the same for other disciplines of martial arts, but I, I have a lot of experience in kind of youth wrestling development. And when MMA came along, it was a little bit of a fear we're gonna lose a lot of athletes to MMA. And we did originally lose a lot of athletes on the Olympic level to MMA. Johnny Hendricks is a great example. Promising young wrestling star, went to MMA, became a UFC champ, did not become an Olympian. Um, but what it's really done is it's created this popularity in wrestling, in no small part to, uh, I think some of the, uh, the feedback that you've provided ar- around wrestling being so vital to the development of, of mixed martial arts. But there's been a real boon, uh, I believe, in youth wrestling and d- and, and, you know, youth and high school wrestling because people realize and recognize that this is a pathway into, uh, you know, into becoming an elite m- mixed martial artist. Of all the athletes that are in the UFC, you know, there's, uh, a very high level of champions right now that were 2008 Olympians, um, but if you look at the roster and how many people wrestled in high school, it's staggering. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so just getting this base, uh, not only technique and the grind mentality but the strength that you, you know, double legging somebody from when you're five until you're 18, you develop strength that you can't develop when you're 22. And this core strength and, and- I've tried. ... the ability to do it- Can't do that (laughs) . ... is, is, is a way to get into it. And I know that other disciplines are, are likely receiving similar windfalls, but in terms of developing that curriculum for, for development, and that's, that's definitely part of the, you know, what we're interested in, in- You were like the- ... alleviating some of the, the, the big, the big mistakes, but there's still enumerable ways to get into it. Think about when you were doing jujitsu. You had to, like, struggle to find people to roll with when you started, right? Sure. It was like, uh, it was like six guys you could roll with.

Joe Rogan 53:01 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 53:01 Now you can go anywhere. Like, you can be doing a show in any, uh, oh, just look up and go drop in on a local jujitsu class.

Joe Rogan 53:08 Yeah. It's packed.

Clint Wattenberg 53:08 You know? It's insane.

Joe Rogan 53:09 Uh, Jean Jacques' noon class the other day had 60 people in it, 6-0. Like, what the fuck?

Clint Wattenberg 53:15 Wow.

Joe Rogan 53:15 There was nowhere to move.

Clint Wattenberg 53:16 There, there's your talent development pathway to the UFC.

Joe Rogan 53:19 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 53:19 You know, it's those kids classes, right?

Joe Rogan 53:21 Yep. Yeah, um, uh, uh, it's, it really is interesting, too, and it's dependent upon if a kid lives in an area that has a strong jujitsu program or a strong Muay Thai program. Oftentimes, that's what dictates what path they get into the sport from.

Dr. Duncan French 53:33 No doubt.

Clint Wattenberg 53:34 You know? Or a good, good women's wrestling program-

Dr. Duncan French 53:36 Uh-huh.

Clint Wattenberg 53:36 ... becomes a big supporter.

Joe Rogan 53:37 Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 53:38 There you go.

Joe Rogan 53:38 Wrestle Like A Girl, I'm on the, the advisory board. So I'm not o- uh, not only women's MMA but women's wrestling as well. And there's, what's really interesting working on the, on the, kind of the clinical side of, of what we do at the PI is every discipline has its own, not only sport culture, but physiology that goes with it. You know, as we talked about, the strength dynamics for wrestlers, um-

Clint Wattenberg 54:00 ... it are gonna be different than the, the, the reactive strength for, for our strikers. And then nutrition and, and just overall lifestyle type sport cultures is, is really interesting coming from the, the different disciplines that you came from. Boxers, they do their road work, they're doing a lot more fast and morning training. Uh, wrestlers that have, you know, obviously a weight cut culture that they bring with them and have a little bit more experience there. A lot of the Brazilian jiu-jitsu players, especially from Brazil, have their sport culture. So, it's, it's so intriguing being able to, you know, not... We work with one sport, but with so many subcultures within that sport. And, uh, r- really, really interesting to, to get to work with. And obviously working with the, the female athletes, like you alluded to earlier, adds a whole nother layer in terms of the dynamics that we're working with, in terms of the physiology with, with our athletes.

Forrest Griffin 54:46 Yeah. I was just, like, the female physiology and the weight cut, that's just a whole... Like, you really need to go to school for that.

Joe Rogan 54:53 Yeah, I would imagine. That's a big difference. Now, you helped them organize their weight cuts. I know you worked with, uh-

Clint Wattenberg 54:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:58 ... Kamaru Usman for his, uh, cut for his last fight.

Forrest Griffin 55:00 Okay.

Clint Wattenberg 55:01 So, so with Kamaru, we, we, we absolutely worked with him all the way through... all the way through the fight.

Joe Rogan 55:06 Did you guys know he had a broken foot?

Clint Wattenberg 55:08 Uh, he was limping around, but we, you know-

Forrest Griffin 55:10 No, we didn't. And if we did, we wouldn't have mentioned it. But no, I had no idea.

Clint Wattenberg 55:14 And, and-

Joe Rogan 55:15 How crazy is that guy? Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 55:16 Hey, he, I did not... You know, that's good. That's awesome. I, I was actually happy he was in the building for... the whole time.

Joe Rogan 55:23 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 55:23 And I didn't know that. I was happy. I was like, "Yes, good."

Joe Rogan 55:26 (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 55:26 Good job there.

Forrest Griffin 55:27 What, what happens in the walls stays in these walls. 'Cause, if, if there's this place like the Performance Institute and it's run by the UFC, oh, the, the UFC that, that pays me to fight people, I'm worried that that's gonna get to them.

Joe Rogan 55:39 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 55:39 Right, of course. Especially if you want to go through it like he did.

Forrest Griffin 55:40 And so, that was one of the things when we started this. Like, I don't want to know. Like, I'm the, the liaison from them to the other side of the half. I don't want to know whose weight is what. I don't want to know who's got a nagging injury. That's your, you know... Some of that is actually HIPAA, you know, information.

Joe Rogan 55:55 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 55:55 That's your private stuff, though. Even if it's just how strong or weak you are, if you're having a bad day, I, I don't, I don't want that to ever get out of our walls, right?

Joe Rogan 56:03 Right, right.

Forrest Griffin 56:03 So that's... Obviously.

Joe Rogan 56:05 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 56:05 Yep.

Forrest Griffin 56:05 You're, you're, you're the conspiracy guy. That's... You know.

Joe Rogan 56:08 What does that have to do with conspiracy?

Clint Wattenberg 56:10 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 56:10 (laughs) Yeah, guys always think the UFC is out to get them.

Joe Rogan 56:13 Oh, no.

Forrest Griffin 56:14 I don't... Me too, I always thought like, "Ah, they're gonna find out that I got this or that," and, you know... So.

Joe Rogan 56:19 Well, you know, the, the stress-

Forrest Griffin 56:20 They won't find out from me.

Joe Rogan 56:21 The stress of preparation for a fight, I mean, people are always worried, especially if there's a little tweak, something going on.

Forrest Griffin 56:27 No, no doubt.

Joe Rogan 56:27 Something with the hand, something with the leg-

Forrest Griffin 56:28 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 56:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:28 ... something with the knee. People... It gets out, people find out about it, they hear about it, they target it.

Forrest Griffin 56:33 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 56:33 They do.

Forrest Griffin 56:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:33 Yeah.

Forrest Griffin 56:33 That's a thing.

Joe Rogan 56:34 Yeah, it's a thing.

Clint Wattenberg 56:34 So, Kamaru and, you know, every other athlete we work with comes in with sensitive injuries. And we have a private, uh, treatment suite within the Performance Institute, the, the PT area, um, so they can come get private treatment. And then in terms of, you know, supporting him for, for his weight cut, that, that starts 10 weeks, 12 weeks. For, for Kamaru, you know, three, four months in advance.

Joe Rogan 56:55 How much are you trying to get him down to before the day of the cut?

Clint Wattenberg 56:58 So, e- every athlete is going to be a little bit different based on what, what their background is, right?

Forrest Griffin 57:03 What, what he's comfortable cutting from.

Clint Wattenberg 57:04 Yeah, what-

Joe Rogan 57:05 Right.

Clint Wattenberg 57:05 ... what their historical weight cutting, uh, practices have been, the... how hard they've been on the body. So, we're, we're assessing somebody like Kamaru for their metabolic rate, where, where they fit in terms of their body composition into that weight division, their lean tissue versus their, their fat tissue. Those that have a higher degree of lean tissue are gonna have... Muscle has more water than, than does fat and bone. So, you can push the body a little bit further for those that have a higher lean tissue. Um, and so all of that planning and preparation starts many, many weeks in advance. And, and having heard, uh, Kamaru on your show a, a couple weeks ago, uh, a lot of, a lot of what we do with an athlete that doesn't have a history of missing weight may have a hard time making weight, but oftentimes they're making it harder on themselves because they're pulling the body in two different directions, like we talked about. If they're training in one way and feeding in a different way, what they're doing is they're just undermining and kind of digging a, digging a hole that they can't get out of by the end of fight camp. And that fight camp gets really long, like Forrest talked about.

Joe Rogan 58:04 What do you see in terms of the way they fuel themselves that's like the biggest error?

Clint Wattenberg 58:09 Sticking to one, one style of feeding regardless of the training style that they're engaging in. So, MMA athletes, they have to do high intensity training sessions, strength and conditioning. They have to be doing sparring. They have to be doing pads rounds that are crazy hard. Um, and in, in every athlete, each one is going to have a different intensity relative to, to, to their body type. And so if somebody is doing pads, it's a nine or a 10 out of, of 10 in terms of intensity, and they're doing that fasted or they're doing that without carbohydrates available to do that work, they can't... They can't, A, hit those training intensities repeatedly, and then they can't adapt as a response to that training. So, they end g- end up just getting slower and more beat up instead of faster and more powerful. So, if they're doing high intensity, we need to fuel the body in the specific way that supports that training effort and then the longer term adaptation to that bout. Additionally, if they're doing lower intensity, we can adjust our fueling strategies based on what that dictates. You know, if it's, if it's a, um, kind of a base aerobic training session or if they're doing skills and drills, we want to be feeding the body to adapt differently than if they're doing the high intensity sparring, strength and conditioning, or pads, or wha- whatever that might be. So, for every athlete, we're looking at how their body uses substrate energy, the energy that they're using, the substrate between carbs and fat at each of these intensities.

Joe Rogan 59:29 (coughs)

Clint Wattenberg 59:29 And then we also need to base, uh, base... We need to base our recommendations on where their body fits into the division. If they're, if they're 20% out from their weight division four weeks out, then we're going to have a little bit of a more aggressive strategy nutritionally, because it, it... Weight becomes a primary factor. If they're 10% out four weeks out, then we're gonna have a little bit of a different conversation and prioritization around the fueling strategies. And all of these conversations integrate within our strength and conditioning program so that we're working in a concert and tying in the workload.... in, into our own system as well as the, the training load that they're engaging with, with their s- skill-specific training.

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 Now, when you vary the diet that you give them in depend- dependent of the workout, what is, what is that based on? Is that based on, uh, a hard accepted science of, n- carbohydrate versus protein versus essential fat, essential fatty acids? Like, how do you determine that?

Clint Wattenberg 1:00:22 So, w- we, we use a, a philosophy, a system called metabolic efficiency. You could call it metabolic flexibility, I've heard it called as well, and essentially, the body will use different substrate at different intensities. And at low intensities and at rest, the body, uh, can and, and likely should be adapted, uh, for our, for our sports athletes to, to fat at rest. Now, it depends on the sport type. Again, if we're a shot putter or if we're a 100-meter d- sprinter, then we're gonna be much more dependent on carbohydrates and, and, and really the creatine phosphate system. We're not even getting into the glycolytic system, and Duncan could talk a lot more about the energy systems. But essentially, we're, we're reliant upon glucose and ATP for energy at the lower intensity bursts. Right? So to hit repeated max or sub-max efforts, we require blood sugar. And without it, we, we will deplete our, our initial stores and then we can't, we can't, we can no longer hit 90 or 95% of our max. We start hitting 80 and 70 and 60 and, and diminishing our ability to do these high intensity efforts.

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 Now, do you guys see anybody come in and try to fight on a ketogenic diet? 'Cause I know quite a few guys were doing that for a while.

Forrest Griffin 1:01:31 No.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 I know Brian Carraway did it.

Forrest Griffin 1:01:32 Matt Brown.

Joe Rogan 1:01:33 Matt Brown? Yeah, that's right. He has fought, but he, he varies it, I think. I think there's-

Forrest Griffin 1:01:37 Yeah. He, he, yeah. Well, I talked to him. I think he did one pretty pure, and then he did, you know, he did the one where you, you know, you might take in 60 or 80 carbs, but then you work them off-

Joe Rogan 1:01:46 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 1:01:46 ... to stay ketogenic. I don't-

Joe Rogan 1:01:47 Mm-hmm. Some of those guys, like, uh, Zach Bitter, um, he's a w- ultramarathon runner.

Forrest Griffin 1:01:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:53 He, he var- he does eat ketogenic most the time, but then on days of big races, he'll consume a lot of sugars.

Forrest Griffin 1:01:59 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 1:02:00 And, and-

Forrest Griffin 1:02:00 Yeah.

Clint Wattenberg 1:02:00 ... and, and again, I'll, I'll-

Forrest Griffin 1:02:02 Insulin sensitivity too. Right.

Clint Wattenberg 1:02:04 Yeah. So essentially, the, the more we can regulate blood sugar at rest and low intensities, then we can expand and, and to support the development of that kind of aerobic oxidative system.

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Mm-hmm.

Clint Wattenberg 1:02:14 And by adapting to use fat as a primary substrate, we're, we're doing a number of things. One, we're balancing blood sugar at rest so that we can really, uh, limit the insulin spikes and, and, yeah, essentially adipose development, um, in addition to really driving the body towards the oxidative an- or the oxidative aerobic system. And then as we increase and, and what we do is we assess how the body adapts throu- through the training intensities, and we'll repeat that kind of on a monthly basis to see how the athlete changes. And then as they increase in the intensity of a training effort, then we will adjust the ratio of fat to carbohydrates as, as the s- as the fuel substrate.

Forrest Griffin 1:02:55 I thought it was gonna come up organically, but it didn't. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 1:02:59 ... the Trifecta fight prep system. You guys on your team are going to 22 events this year.

Clint Wattenberg 1:03:04 Indeed.

Forrest Griffin 1:03:04 Take, take it away.

Clint Wattenberg 1:03:05 All right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:06 What are you doing? (laughs)

Forrest Griffin 1:03:07 (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 1:03:07 So-

Forrest Griffin 1:03:08 I'm shooting a promo here, Joe. Step back. (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 1:03:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:11 (laughs)

Clint Wattenberg 1:03:11 So essentially, we're assessing and then we're programming based on each athlete's needs. So, um, like Forrest said, o- o- one of our most valuable partners at the UFC Performance Institute is this comp- meal prep company, uh, called Trifecta Nutrition. And, and they, uh, essentially have a all organic meal line that can be, uh, developed a la carte, uh, ordered a la carte. And so with Kamaru as an example, we worked together for his past two fights. And, and many athletes, like I said, uh, are, are not fueling the type of training in a way that leads to their long-term adaptation, but can lead to overtraining earlier in camp. And so what, what we really w- wanna do is to understand how that physiology works and then program, and then provide those athletes with the nutrition, whether it's on site at, at, at the UFC Performance Institute-

Forrest Griffin 1:04:00 At the actual... Well, at the events as well, is what I was getting at. Like, 22 events they go to. So you think about, like, I would, you know, I would literally smuggle oatmeal into Brazil. Like, you're, I'm, like, stealing food. (laughs) You know, they, they're like, the, you get the, you know, the little thing that says no organic, the little pass.

Clint Wattenberg 1:04:15 Mm-hmm.

Forrest Griffin 1:04:16 Uh, they can go to those fights and actually feed you throughout the week through that system.

Joe Rogan 1:04:20 Oh, wow.

Forrest Griffin 1:04:21 That's where I was going with that.

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 Yeah. So that's-

Clint Wattenberg 1:04:22 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 So that's-

Forrest Griffin 1:04:23 Also-

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 ... incredible. So they would, like-

Forrest Griffin 1:04:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:24 ... if you had a fight in Stockholm, they would come to Stockholm with, like-

Forrest Griffin 1:04:27 If, if it's one of the 22 events.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 Oh, okay.

Forrest Griffin 1:04:30 So-

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 But if it's one of those-

Clint Wattenberg 1:04:31 Half. More than half.

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 ... 22 events, they would go and you could get the UFCPI to fuel you through the entire event?

Clint Wattenberg 1:04:37 Yep. So there, there, there's a, a number of levels. So I'll, I'll get there in just one sec, but essentially, we'll take them through the fight camp, fuel them t- for adaptation so they show up to the event. We know exactly where they are, they're fueled, and then we could take them all the way through the fight. So 22 events, most are domestic except for some, the pay-per-views that are, that are international. So of, of the 22, the only international ones are the pay-per-views. The others are the ESPN events, and those are pretty much exclusively domestic. But what we, what we've done is we've outreached all of the athletes that have crossed paths with us at the Performance Institute. So it's not, it's, it's not roster-wide yet, as we're working through a lot of the operational stuff. As an example, uh, we aren't able to get into the kitchen at every hotel. So then we're w- working t- to find a community kitchen, trying to find contacts at local universities.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 So you guys would actually cook them yourselves?

Clint Wattenberg 1:05:25 So Trifecta hired a chef. So