Diet, Self-defence, Khamzat Chimaev and Philosophy

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Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah what I can. So welcome to another episode of the M H podcast, the most irregular podcast on the internet today and I'm joined with none other than the infamous the legendary for us the hobby or the hobby. They probably in the Arabic language this man just for those who don't know this quick introduction, probably one of the most notorious and celebrated MMA coaches in the world today has coached John St. Pierre is noted as seen as the pound for pound best fighter in the World War II MacDonald and other fighters, as well. He's the head coach at Tristar Gym, a gym, which is seen as one of the best gyms for MMA from his martial arts in the entire world.

Listen to top five or top 10 at least been ranked like that. And, and also a philosopher in his own right, and someone who's has has contributed quite strongly I think in the in the public discourse on the YouTube scene, the last two to three years for us a hobby how're you doing? Like Allah, thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure to actually be able to see you in the flesh. Finally, you know, you're here.

You know, there's a lot to talk to you about. And I'm just thinking where to start. And what we usually talk about, we should talk about feel philosophical issues. And I'm sure we will come in we are going to talk about that today as well.

But what I wanted to start by talking to you about really was something quite important for the Muslim community and for many computers, communities are going to be watching this relating to health and fitness. We've had these kind of conversations when we're having lunch as well. But I think some of the gems that you were kind of putting forward to us needs to be said to the public. Now, a lot of us nowadays, we have so many diet plans to choose from. We've got the carnivorous diet, we have the ketogenic diet, we have vegan vegan diet, you know, we have calorie deficit we have, you know, fat, fat deficit. So many deficits, so many different diets. Intermittent fasting

has become really big. There's so many different YouTubers now that are on the scene that even their own diet plans.

This is becoming so confusing now.

Honestly, speaking from experience when you it's almost as if now there's competing schools of thought, you have the Keto school of thought, where everything keto is good, you know, and you have people that you know, the solution to everything is ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. And then you have other people that say, no, actually, no, this is nonsense. Let's go the opposite way. Or the carnivorous diet, which is quite close to keto. What do we do?

I would say, I love this a pole check quote that I absolutely love. He says, Look, we're as different on the inside as we are on the outside. It's such an important quote, because it's true. Look at the differences we have on the outside, you're not everybody's gonna react the same way to the same diet.

So there's some exploration, I personally think that you should try to choose a diet that you can live with for the rest of your life.

So if me personally, I can do keto, I can do keto for a little while, then I get bored of it. I want to eat carbohydrates. I'm drawn to carbohydrates. I love carbohydrates. So my diet is is mostly high carb, low fat. Really, yeah, I'm more high carb, low fat I perform better. I've experimented with different diets. I'm more comfortable with this protein fit into that pie chart. I have I have proteins, but if I want to lean up, I go more towards egg whites. Egg whites are high protein, low fat. So I want a low fat source chicken breast a low fat source of

flesh foods proteins. So as a percentage, let's just kind of give this a visual. If 100% is you've got carbs. I mean, this is simplistic but you've got carbs, proteins and protein, fats and proteins, right? What kind of percentage are we looking at here? I would say 70% is carbs a lot, but I train a lot. If you train less. You don't need that many carbs. All these keto guys think this guy's crazy. It's

a refutation video, but don't forget I'm going to glycogen export. That means I need I primarily used carbohydrates for fuel. Right? Okay, so it's normal. If I'm gonna wake up in the morning and go wrestle and I'm gonna go at night wrestle. Again, you need a lot of carbohydrates. Yes. You don't need so much carbohydrates. If you're just working behind the desk, I will tell you get your carbs from greens. Eat more green. And when I say carbs, I mean starches and keto ketones are not a substitute for carbohydrates. You're saying no, no, because ketones. See if your body wants to metabolize fat for energy, it takes longer, there's a longer process. So if you're wrestling and you

want

To grab a guy lift them up in the air, you need the energy. Now you need glycogen in your muscle glycogen in your muscle gets transformed energy immediately when the muscle contracts, it uses that, that that energy that's stored in the muscle itself. If you're running a marathon, if you're doing aerobic work, it's lower intensity, then your body can use fats very successfully. So you have aerobic champions in aerobic sports that only work on fats. But there are no sprinters, 100 meter sprinters, high intensity athletes that work only on fats, it doesn't exist. So are you in this is very important. You'll never see a guy who was high fat, low carb doesn't carb up the day of the 100

meter race. Now sometimes they do it. It's a bit complicated. Sometimes they go on a short phase of ketogenic like MMA fighters will go on a ketogenic diet, low carb diet or just to drop the water. Because the way your body stores carbs is one part carbohydrate, or apply glycogen actually, I should say, three parts water, so you have a lot of water. When you when you eat carbs, you retain more water. So we temporarily take away their carbs, let them shut that water. They lose weight, after the way we carved them up. Okay, so to keep this really simple look, what kind of sport you win. If you're in a sport, that's high intensity, eat carbs. Now, I think everybody should like, I

think the vast majority of people will do well on what they call book called The starch solution. You eat. It's basically I'm not vegan. Okay. But I'm, I'm, I don't believe we need so much animal products. Okay, so animal products are really pushed on us because I think it's big. It's big business. Right? I do believe in eating meat. I think you can have a deficiency on vegan diet long term, you can have problems. What do you think of just on this point? What do you think of the arguments that are being put by many who kind of have a vegan diet? The Chai, I think for the China study whatever of the meat, and they say is it you know, there's a correlation between me and

cancer, for example?

To what extent do you kind of look at that? Is it meat or excessive amounts of meat? That's why I differentiate. Okay, I think eating meat three times a day is crazy. I think that's insane. You might as well be a smoker. Right? Okay. You don't need that much meat. Okay. Now I like to eat meat. When we're sitting around in a social gathering. Okay, somebody cooked meat, let's eat it. And that language is fish, by the way on every type of animal product, right? Even if it's even today, eggs and cheese and every single animal product mass produce product in one way or another they they've I hate to use the word poison that but they they've they've done some bad things to it. Yes, you can

get away around it because if you want to mass produce it, they have to mess with it.

That's almost true of all our foods, but grains, rice, oatmeal, pastas. If you have if you take in low fat, high carb, you won't get fat just like you won't get fat. If you do high fat, low carb. You could do the other way around. I prefer high carb low fat because I'm in a glycogen export. I need that glycogen and I feel full and satisfied. One book I really recommend is the starch, starch solution by John McDougall. I think it's a fantastic book. I think people should try it. Because you'll feel very, very good. However, I do believe he goes too far. I'm more of a nutritarian like a Joe Furman where he gives you a little more allowance of fat and meat. I think you should have meat

once a day. If you're very active even once a week from once a day to once but once a day is too much even I think way too much. And if you eat meat should be like a deck of cards, not more. We eat too much animal products. Now look my favorite thing to eat in for me steak. So sometimes I make myself a nice juicy steak. I treat myself once in a while. But you got to start equating steak with like smoking. Would you do it everyday? No, I would do three times a day. No, like Be careful with eating meat. It's not healthy, long term. Now a great example of this is the Okinawans the Okinawans are mainly vegan, they eat sweet potato, rice, vegetable, and they eat flesh foods once a month.

So how do we know all this? Well, we observe different different cultures how they ate.

Like, for instance the Inuits they only eat fish. They ate the past in the past so they they have more modern foods. Okay, but back in the day, they used to eat mostly fish. No, they live in the Arctic. Yeah, there's no grains. There's no vegetables.

They never die of heart disease because they're eating fish. But did they have cancer?

So we know that too much eating flesh foods can lead to cancer. Again, there's always more elements. There's always more to the story. It's always more complicated. However, there is a there is a correlation between eating flesh foods

and cancer.

So and many other ailments. So I would tell you that personally, from my researches and studying this for so many years, I will tell you that

I'm not vegan. I think also veganism will lead to problems. Yeah, you have a BB vitamin deficiency problems. Yeah, calcium deficiency, a loss of muscle. Okay. They try to say no you don't need i don't i i believe you lose a muscle. I would love to debate somebody who who says different

because you can get your proteins on a plant diet, but it's hard. It's difficult. Most people won't do it right. It's complicated. That's my point. It's called a vegan, vegan diet, you have to you have to be you have to know so much about everything. It's very complicated. So I don't recommend it. But I recommend,

because you see, when the animal eats certain nutrients, and you eat that animal, you get those nutrients.

Make it simple, just eat a serving of meat two or three times a week. And again, it can vary, some people will do better on one portion of meat a week, some people do better on one portion of meat per month, you have to experiment. So me when I feel my best is when I have meat, let's say three times a week, and I'm talking about small portions of meat. That's when I'm feeling my best. I feel the most energy I feel the most active, I feel the most lean, I feel the most vibrant. So there's a lot to say with cutting out animal products, but people are so conditioned that if they don't eat animal products, something bad's gonna happen. It's not true. It's actually the opposite. When you

Laurie animal products, your cardio will go up, your well being will go up, your energy will go up, everything will go up. You don't need so much flesh food.

And so Okay, you've kind of you've alluded to the fact that going vegan sometimes is I mean, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but being being vegan sometimes is a good thing. But you've also said that we need meat. So how would you play it? So you got 52 weeks in a year? You got 365 days? Do you do it in such a way that okay, like you're one week on one week off? Or how would you how would you play? I would I would recommend people try eating meat if you eat meat every day. Yeah, try to eat three portions a week now. Alright, then go to once a week slowly work your way don't do anything drastic. Does that apply with that animal products as well like everything that comes from Jesus,

Jesus everything the the farming industry has completely polluted our food. Everything has been touched.

Unless you're ready to spend a million dollars on your food a year you can't eat untainted foods very difficult. Okay, like I'm a million dollars in exaggeration. I'm just trying to Yes, but a lot of money trying to get organic, never been touched by anybody food. It's tough.

I really recommend people experiment with lowering the amount of flesh foods they eat. We've been we've been brainwashed we've been marketed to to eat milk, cheese, flesh foods. This is very important. This is number one. It's not true. It's not true. So saying go down. So if you're if you're eating a three times a day, go once. Oh yeah, if you eat meat three times a day, you're killing yourself. Like I don't see how you could function like I I couldn't picture myself eating meat three times a day I used to what's your diet like them. And the morning I eat generally oatmeal. Okay, I think oatmeal is the ultimate breakfast because it makes you feel satiated. For

longer white eggs and stuff. no eggs, no eggs for pleasure. If I'm sitting down to Saturday morning, and I'm eating when my family will make eggs. It's I love eggs. I can eat eggs every day if you gave me because of the consequence of eating eggs every day. I do not eat eggs every day. But in terms of enjoyment, I don't love there's nothing more I love than toast and eggs in the morning.

I'll have eggs once in a while but having eggs every day is bad for you, in my opinion is not good. Alright, so that's breakfast. So source lunch, like for lunch, I'll have rice, potato salad. And a little bit of meat maybe if I'm training really hard with chicken, okay, a lean chicken, you got to try to keep it lean and a small portion. Like we're talking about a deck of cards, or about dinner. Dinner, I'll probably do something like, Oh, it'll be very similar to lunch, it'll be pasta or rice or a sweet potato with a little catch up.

Maybe a few fruit. You know, I try to keep food low as well. And I do a lot of lentils. Sometimes I'll make hummus with bread, hummus and bread. It's vegan. It's good if you have that. That's it. That's enough. And sometimes I don't even eat dinner. When I want to lose weight. I don't even eat dinner I'll eat from 10 to six. So for me, I go to practice after six. So after training, there's no there's no meal after I drink water and go to bed. That's it.

And so do you have only three meals a day.

I eat about three meals a day with with a few snacks, but in a window, small window and I think people have to learn to skip meals. Okay, so tell us about intermittent fasting because this is a big thing for you, isn't it? Intermittent Fasting is huge if you want to keep your youth Yeah, intermittent fasting is massive. What is it? First of all, for those who are intermittent fasting is

it's hard to define because you can say look, I fasted for 12 hours is that intimate fasting? Yes, but a very, very beginner level. So I always tell people look, try to eat from nine to nine. Then from 9am to eight, from nine to seven, and slowly because it gets easier then all of a sudden you're eating from nine to six and you're full after six you don't want to eat anymore. What are the benefits of that when you don't eat for at least 16 hours? about 16 hours now this is a guestimation okay, it's not exactly the 16 hours for everybody depending how how, how much you exercise, how much you ate the day before etc. But approximately 16 hours we know that phenomenon now we that they call

autophagy the Nobel Prize was given for this discovery in 2016. So it's it's a scientific fact, what the 5g is

Greek word for soft digestion, your body when it after 16 hours of eating starts to eat itself without eating sorry, after 16 hours of no food, no intake, your body starts to consume its own cells.

The cells that will consume first are the more the poorest cells, the weakest cells, the poorly replicated cells, I should say.

And those are the cells that are toxic, cancerous, etc. I'm relying on the work of Jason Fung, okay, I'm not a biologist here. But Jason's funds work. The all you need to know about fasting, he goes into it, he has a great book called all you need to know about fasting. He has a few books on fasting. And he talks about how his claim mind that even fasting combats cancer. And for this reason, for autophagy, again, if you want to get into the specifics, you'd have to rely on his work. He's a doctor out of Toronto, he's the one who helped George St. Pierre, combat his colitis, without drugs without using drugs just using fasting. And he did it successfully. And many of us started

fasting after that, as well. And we saw a huge benefit. And of course, we fast because we're Muslim since we're young. But doing fasting throughout the year also has major benefits. And I feel that

it's something that's very, very beneficial even for your hormones. However, I think, again, it should be gradual, and there's you can go too far, you can fast for too long and make yourself weak and frail. We don't want to fast for too long.

16 hours of fasting seems to be really good. And some you can experiment with 18. Sometimes I even do one meal a day.

Like today, we ate a meal together. That's my only meal for the day. And last time I ate was yesterday morning. Wow. So that's it for today. Why? Because today I'm not training, I'm not exercising, I'm doing very little of weight training, then you do want to, I would I wouldn't have eaten such a large meal. And I would have had I wouldn't eat throughout the day. I see. So it could be digested when I get to practice. So look, I really believe I really like this app called the fast tic FA s t i see because it kind of gives you the roadmap of what your body's doing. So you start fasting, you click the button, it tells you what phase you're in, don't get commissioned for saying

no, no.

No, it's a great app because it kind of like explains to why you're feeling this way. I feel like it's yeah, the warrior Wait, wait a bit longer your blood sugar levels are going to stabilize. And it does and it's just a great way to train yourself to know the different phases of fasting and fasting. The great thing about fasting can be quite addictive. Because if you fast long, often enough, you start actually to get a cognitively charged being really alert very high Plato within the except students that were in a fasted state because you become cognitively charged. Oh yeah, absolutely. If you can, if you fast, long enough, intensely enough, over time,

you will have this cognitive charges. It's hard to explain. It's just a mental alertness. It's kind of like drinking five espressos you know, instead enjoyable feeling. Because when you when you eat all the time, the blood flow goes towards the stomach, it drains blood from the brain. It doesn't mean there's a chain reaction. But after a while of not eating, you're totally totally digested.

You've given your system a break.

Your system seems to one way or another have more energy for it. Some people say it's the ketones because your body starts burning ketones and ketones. It's almost like hate your buddy starving, give him the good fuel, let him find resources right now, you know, make him super alert make him super cognitive. Because,

again, this is a narrative, I'm just giving a narrative. Give him the really good stuff the ketones so that he goes out in nature and find some resources, you know, make him super alert, you get this level of of a heightened awareness that comes with prolonged fasting.

And so what breaks your fast because people might be thinking about dry fast right now, as the kind of only experience they may have had the Ramadan fast, for example. So you're not talking about that. You're what you can still drink water, right? Yeah, especially because we're training throughout the day, we need water. That's number one. 2% dehydration equals 6% loss in performance. So again, 2% dehydration really equates to 6% loss in performance. Wow, this is this study was done on soldiers running through gauntlets they have to run shoes, etc. And they could only ethically dehydrate them. 2% not more. So all we have is 2% studies on 2% dehydration. Imagine what like maybe

a law of diminishing returns, right? Could be Yeah, but ethically they say they can only go 2% So what happens? They got 6% and they say even the top of the top soldiers had a diminished ability by 6%. Yeah, so it doesn't matter what a few hours you need hydration. Hydration is more important even than food. You said you can also have black coffee, right? Black coffee, tea and water milker was that no no, no, no, no, no not milk will will spike your insulin. So you have a you have an incident response which you don't want during your fast. Okay. Now this is in relation to diet. I think you've kind of covered a lot of bases there and that maybe many people will be changing their lives

for the better

And that's what we're really hoping for. Because last time we had this conversation, you spoke, you gave a very, very succinct piece of advice and actually went viral. I'm not sure if he, you know, got like 400 500,000 views or something like that, just how

people really, really enjoyed it. And that's why I think I started with at this time,

I want to talk a bit about before we get to self defense, obviously, which is your area of specialism to training more generally for people that may not necessarily be into self defense, or may have kind of weakened because of the years the wear and tear of whatever they want to get into a gym program. Just a normal gym program. What would you recommend for a beginner? I think the number one workout for just general fitness is a bag workout, a punching bag workout, really, it's the ultimate, I'll tell you why.

Number one, you're learning a skill, you're learning how to throw a good punch. Yeah. If you get up every day, and you hit the bike for a few minutes before you go to work. Compare that to somebody who's running on a treadmill.

The guy hitting the bag is gonna have less injury. The guy running is gonna have more injury. Yeah, the guy hitting the bag is gonna have less inflammation, the guy running, he's gonna have more inflammation, and the guy hitting the back is gonna have higher testosterone, the guy running, he's gonna have lower testosterone, like you beat him every which way. Plus, if we ever get into an altercation, he's gonna run. I'm not you know what I mean? Like you could throw a good punch, you could defend yourself, you're also cultivating a skill. So what I tell people is, the thing is like, when you run, you can get overuse injuries, especially if your technique is poor. And most people's

reading technique is poor, unknowingly. Their mechanics have been changed because they're wearing shoes. If you look at barefoot runners versus people who learn to run in shoes, their mechanics are different.

The best mechanics are those who learn how to run barefoot third world countries, the best Kenyans, etc.

So because we have poor my reading mechanics, if you run for a prolonged period of time, your knee starts hurting you your hip starts hurting you I have one of my students is an orthopedic surgeon and asked him Which sport has the most injuries. He said, runners, runners, it's incredible, like they injure themselves by prolonged running over years. So when you work the heavy bag, but you need to do it with instruction, like for example, you're saying that you learn new skill, but if the person is just doing on their own volition with their own devices, right? Yeah, they could be kind of reinforcing bad habits. Yeah, true. But what's so good about our day and age is that you can

easily get a digital coach, go on YouTube, there's 1001 tutorials how to jab how to throw, good that because if someone is if someone does that, say, and the person's not overseeing what they're doing, and then correcting them, then is there still the issue of reinforcement of but I think over the years, look, if you're looking to be a world class boxer, then yeah, you need a coach. Yeah. But if you're just a layman, you know, visually regular job learning just getting in shape. I think it's more than enough. A digital tutorial is plenty. But what I see a lot of is a lot of people that go into personal training and get personal trainers, and they do like pad work and stuff. And the

personal trainer is not a trained martial artist. So he will teach the client a technique, which is not the correct one. There, that'd be more harmful than good. I think there are levels of instructors, some could do more harm than good. But the vast majority boxing's unknown art, like if you go around the world, they have boxing. Yep, yeah. And there are different levels of boxing instruction, but it's fairly good. Yes. So I would say you know, find yourself a reputable instructor online using boxing or using kickboxing or both. I would start with boxing graduate to kickboxing or Muay Thai. Yeah. Because the thing is with punching bag, you can you can you don't

even have to hit the bag hard. Let's say your shoulders are sore. Just kind of you can even shadowbox zero impact. Very good cardio. Yeah. And I like to mix bag work with calisthenics, right. So I like to do one minute hitting the back woman it's swinging a kettlebell so I put on MMA gloves so I can swing the kettlebell woman hitting the back one minute, Kimbo. I do that for maybe six minutes, take a break. Repeat it one more time. And then like even kettlebell might be a little bit for someone to do push ups and squats. One minute exercise one minute hitting the back woman and exercise when it's a phenomenal workout. What about when you're sorry to cut you off? But you know

when you said shadowboxing, right, when you're when you're doing that, before you start the round. Are you thinking this is what I want to establish in my shadowboxing? Right, I want to establish a job in the right hand I want to establish like, are you just doing it? haphazardly? Sometimes I'll watch a fight and I'll see a guy do an eye sequence and that's what I'm excited to work on tomorrow. Okay, you know, I mean, I'm just gonna maybe work my job today. Okay, now my upper cuz there's so much to work on. There's so much to there's so much to cultivate that that's the fun part you get in your workout. And then after a while you want to spar sparring is the funnest. Why because three

rounds of sparring is incredibly demanding on the body. And the time passes like this. Like I could run forever. I just get the reason why I stopped running is I'm bored. Reading is easy for me. Like if only jogging. Jogging doesn't do anything to me like it'll make me sweat. Yes, but it won't fatigue me because it's so much more. The intensity is so much lower than what I'm used to doing. However, I will get bored reading unless I'm listening to a good podcast or something I'll get bored reading. So it's boring. It's I find it very boring and it's not good for your your body.

You're not your period, especially for heavier people, right? Yeah, exactly. I like to run in a short burst like I like to do 100 meter sprint. Okay, it's done. I did in 20 minutes. It was painful but short

that I enjoy. However boxing I have a lot of fun when I box at night. It's fun, you know, we're playing a game and the Time passes so fast. That's the key to fitness. Do something that the time passes. We should actually say that you've got some tutorials don't use what's the name of your website? GG club.com. Yeah, and how is that spelt? Because people might not Juliet uniform Juliet, India, then clubs CL ub.com. I've actually to be as you know, you know, I've consumed much

you know, the striking tutorials. You have some tutorials of your children. Yes. Had like basic basic headlock and sit very important. Yeah. And this is kind of veering us to the next part of this discussion, which is the basics of self defense. Maybe we can not now after this we can you can show maybe some some demonstrations. We'll get some somebody else we could do. But you know, how important is it?

I couldn't imagine myself without my martial arts skill. I was so bullied as a kid. That boy yeah, definitely. I told the brothers I was small. When I was growing up. I was smaller than everybody. So I got picked on a lot. So martial arts really carved the part of my my psyche, quit, like I needed it so much. And now you've become you know, what, you just, I was watching a video of your sparring with I mentioned this, some some huge guy.

Seven. The guy was the longest arm or something like that. At one point, he was world champion right hand and left hand really both hands. At one point, you know, he got you got. You got on top of him. And his arm was there. And you're commenting on the video. And there goes the world's strongest.

And then you got him in the heel foot position isn't Yeah, he'll like Yeah, yeah. Which many people will not know what we're talking about. But obviously, you have graduated from the school of Danaher, like, you know, well known for, you know, legs. And it's just so amazing, to be honest, for me anyway, to be able to see that someone who, if it was a boxing affair, and both what like it wouldn't be the same. But because you're able to get the weakest parts you use Donna has language, right? The weakest part of the important is body and the strongest part of your own, you're able to get someone who could be almost double your size in terms of weight. I don't know how many you had

at least 100 pounds on you or something like that into a position of subordination.

You know, I mean, if I tried to arm wrestle him, he'd rip my arm out of out of the socket. Like he's so much stronger than me like we play arm wrestled, and I could just see like his hand, I'm like, I feel like a child, you know, I'm holding. Well, that's the point. Someone's wrong. It's incredible. His power is incredible, his physical look, during that time I as we were first started wrestling, I went on his back, and I couldn't put my legs around his back. And he was grabbing my arm. And I knew like, like I understood right away what submission I have to get to have to isolate his ankle and get to the ankle. And you didn't think about any other move? No, I think it's, I think it would be

every other submission is very risky. Very risky for me. And the leg lock is the one that's super super, almost impossible for him to defend. And super easy for me to access. So it's, it's because the thing is, the bigger they are, the easier they are to leglock you have, you can have much more trouble like locking somebody your size and somebody who's much bigger because the foot is this big. It's such an easy lever for me to hook on to. Whereas the guys the size, a normal size foot is very hard. So someone like myself, what should I do to

get you know what, I'm going

to shoot for that leg? What do

you better know your leg, like the fence and just don't let the guy get there? So you see like, like, as we're engaging, trying to lift him would be ludicrous. Because he's so tall. It's easy for me to slide underneath him or something. Yeah, yeah. But actually, I didn't use a menorah I use this actually slide is a slide underneath straight into leglock. So there's no resistance, there's no there's no lifting. There's no, there's no, I'm not exposing my neck. Because you know, when you should double it, you're exposing your neck. Like there's just so many dangers, if he puts his weight on me could hurt my back. So it's, you have to ask yourself, what is the what is the easiest

way for me to attack him from safety, a position of safety and it's for that situation? Not all? Not all situations are the same. If I was fighting somebody my size, I would use different tactics. I was Yeah, absolutely. Because he's so tall. It's very, he's very vulnerable for an actually slide. So what should he do then? Just so I know, for reference.

He's got to not let me get here. Like he'd have to, he'd have to, you'd have to control my grip so that I cannot actually slide which should be complicated to explain. Okay, okay. You have to fight my grip so that I cannot grab him in a way that I can actually slide. But then there's other things I can do if he if he does that, you know, it's a we're playing chess, you know, of course he's being a great sport. You know, he's a

he's just playing obviously, I'm not going super hard, he's not going to go, we're still we're still getting over the list. We're still giving each other just to give people a kind of a taste of this. Because people look at the heel hook. And they don't know what the ramifications of the implications are, if you finish it. And if there's nobody to stop it, you're destroying the man's life. You're breaking the reverse irreversible damage, right? It's very dangerous on the knee. Like it's you could you could have it repaired, but your knee might never be the same either. You know? So yeah, it's it's a nasty some promotions actually had banned the heel hook right? In all of IBJJF heel

hooks are illegal. Yeah, till very recently in Nogi. And in the higher divisions only brown and black. Yeah, brown and black. But for many years, it was from the pond because it's considered so dangerous. Yeah. And you can injure something. The thing is, when you injure your knee, it's funny because I should have just released a video called strong and stable for life. Yeah. And strong and stable, nice for life. And the reason why I did it, because that's the number one question I get all the time. So I'm like, You know what? I'm gonna do because while I'm on the mats, I always have somebody tapped me on the shoulder and tell me, Hey, Coach, I have a knee injury. What do I do? I

heard you. You're, you know, you can fix my knee. And then I go through the whole spiel. Oh, as I said, You know what, let me put it on tape. Got that on your chat? Yeah, let me let me get it on tape. And now from now on, I'm just gonna give it to my members is it is on the dude, dude. Calm. Yeah. Its knees are so important. Because here's the problem with knees. If you injure your knee, like a serious injury, like an ACL tear, yeah. On average, two years later, the other ACL goes, why they explained, they explained to us that your your body overcompensates one side.

So what happens, you never recalibrate your joint your legs like they were before. So for instance, if I injure my shoulder, I can go under the knife. But that doesn't affect my left shoulder. Yeah, if I injured, my right doesn't affect my left. But when it comes to the knees, because your knees, your legs are carrying your body, they have a certain calibration between the two. When you injure one, the other one takes over. So when you're overusing the one that's compensating, so on average is a tear of the second one. Now, when George tore his ACL, we knew about this, they warned us we brought in every expert to make sure that his ACL, the second one doesn't break because cost us a

pretty penny. And he's in the height of his career. Now we want to, you know, keep them as healthy as possible. Still, it broke. And it broke, the second ACL broke. And it wasn't like a very intense wrestling, he was wrestling like usual.

But his knee failed. It was a scary thing, because now he broke a trust with his knees like he doesn't trust his knees like he used to. Wow.

So we have to rebuild him physically and psychologically to retract his knees again, and he fought two world titles after that successfully. But again, there's a distrust with the knees. Don't forget you're applying all your weight and the weight of your opponent. Sometimes when you lift your opponent, it's your weight and his weight on your knees. It's not the same thing with the shoulder, you don't rely on your shoulders. As much as you rely on your knees. Your knees are so important because of the base of your power. Every time you generate power, whether you throw a punch, you're using your legs, your posterior chain, it starts with the feet, knees and hips, and it goes up the

shoulder does does definitely contribute to the kinetic chain. However, it's not as fundamental

and it's not carrying as much stress. And it doesn't rely. We don't rely on the sensitivity of calibration. My shoulders don't need to be calibrated as sensitively as my knees. So all these problems I tell like I wrestle every day, twice a day. I do MMA, the most brutal sport, the most brutal sport MMA. Yeah. And I've never torn an ACL humbler? And shall I never do. I've never torn ACL, why? I'm very religious with my prehab as we call it, suppose what should you do? I do a lot of high level of stabilization work, okay. I use the stability ball a lot. Like I jump up on the stability ball, I call it the forbidden exercise. Jumping up on the stability ball is very

dangerous. You fall down break your neck, you got these catchphrases for

the touch.

You can make a book called

The hobbies catchphrases.

Yeah, I, you know, I learned that teaching, giving a good name, a member will name two things. It's good for a point of reference. Yes, those are talking about strongest song in the world.

Almost like an exotic, novel. It's important. It's important. I want my students know exactly what I've been pointing. Yeah. And, like, I'll jump up on a stability ball, but just to demonstrate the stability I've built over the years.

Not that I would do that as an exercise that's highly dangerous. You know, you wouldn't what what's forbidden, you'll break your neck and I'm gonna get 1001 The lawsuits if I you know, that's why I named it that. So make sure that if I've ever occurred, I'm like, Hey, I told it was forbidden.

And it's just to demonstrate

stable stability but we don't build stability in a dangerous with a dangerous exercise. We use safe exercises to build that level of stability but then to demonstrate stability, okay, we can do the forbidden exercise as a demonstration. But stability training is huge. Number one is alignment. Number two, is making sure you don't have tight muscles because tight muscles pull you out of alignment. And number three is my opinion is stability.

That's the one thing I think that's missing from other programs. I'm a big believer in cultivating far more stability than you need in your sport. So the stability needed in MMA is far greater than any other sport. I can play basketball, tennis, soccer all day long, I'll never hurt myself. Why? Because that's a far less amount of stability I need than in wrestling when the guy is actively trying to throw you on the ground. And the guys actively trying to break my leg. He's not It's not I broke my leg kicking a ball. No, no, the guys trying to grab my leg and twist my knee off. That's I need a tremendous amount of know how and stability and

and athleticism to to keep my knee from breaking. So it's a far more dangerous sport. I just had one of my fighters. Kevin Lee, he fought in the KIBS. FC. Is he was you know, yeah, a few years. And the first kick in the first fight the first round, broke his ACL, one kick. He fought the rest of the fight on one leg basically wobbling when he won the fight on the line did amazing. But that's showing how dangerous a sport we have. We're kicking each other in the knees trying to break each other's legs. And so don't tell me after you play tennis and you hurt your knee. That's a very low level. That's, that's as an MMA trainer. I can help you protect your knees as a tennis player very

easily. Really? Oh, absolutely. Because tennis is very good. It's a controlled environment. The same thing about gymnastics though. gymnasts is more dangerous. Yeah. Because gymnasts when they jump, if they've they've measured the landing force is sometimes up to 21 times their body weight. Yeah. Gymnastics can be very dangerous. Of course, they're very intelligent trainers. I have a high regard for gymnastics. I actually use gymnastics a lot to my program. I'm the one who put it starts disappearing gymnastics. I'm a big believer in gymnastics training. They figured it out. They figured out the body how to make you decide because you see the famous, you know videos of him.

Yeah, I put them on to Jeunesse really? Absolutely, yeah, definitely. They've understood the body more than anybody else.

When they dismount, or they do certain jumps, they've measured 20 Imagine 20 times your body nobody could squat 20 times their body weight doesn't exist. But they got to levels of up to 20 times because they're they're spinning and turning crushing towards the rouse probably the most dangerous sports it's a it's injuries because they do it on maths etc. And they know how to control the the landings. They're brilliant athletes no doubt.

Is it the most dangerous sport? No, I wouldn't say is the most dangerous sport because it's more controlled than let's say football. Football, in my opinion is probably the rugby and football in my opinion is create is very dangerous. I assume they're all on on PDS because the brutality of that sport you know, every every plate, they crash into each and every play the most recent CTE studies that have been done as usually done in the context of American football, right. And there's, I saw something or heard something where by I think it actually might have been Joe Rogan. He was saying, where he was saying that basically, even if you just do a year of American football in, in school,

or college or whatever they call it in America, because we could call it something else. Universities, the idea of college, I think, but college, whatever. If they spent one year of doing that they can develop CTE, which I think is only detectable through autopsies. I'm not sure. I'm not sure actually. But they're saying that so from that angle, right. I mean, because smashing and all this kind of things into It's a brutal sport. It's a brutal so you there's no way class, you can get your kids into that. So no, I wouldn't put my kids in that. Well, look, you can get hit by a guy who's 70 pounds heavier than you. That's part of the game. keep you running at you at full speed.

Yeah, he can hit you without you seeing him. You're here breaking a tackle. He's hitting you in this direction. It's a brutal sport. I've seen tackles that were brutal. So you say MMA comparatively is less dangerous. Yeah. What types of injuries sustained this I would say it's as dangerous because Also don't forget a knee to the head kick to the head. A Shin to the head is brutal, too. So I will tell you football, rugby, MMA, I would say they're on par. Okay, because believe me, I'm a flying knee to the head while you're shooting a double could be disastrous as well. You could literally break the facial structure the skull, you know, it's unfortunate, but I've seen what was your own

kids? And so would you what would you want them to be like? Would you want them to be? Would you would you push them in particular direction would you want them to? Because you've said before, I think that you'd want them to be black belts in jujitsu? Yeah, at the very minimum, would you want them to stay in something like grappling to us to avoid the impact on the head? Yeah, yeah, there's definitely like I want no impact on the head till they're adult they're finished developing and then if they're really passionate about it, I want them to learn kickboxing boxing and jiu jitsu no doubt because they live with me it's so easy for them to get the black belt in that way that's such an

advantage. Why not take it like I feel that jujitsu prepare them for life and we'll teach them to work hard and think just you have to work hard you have to be smart, you can't be a brutish and you can't just be smart you have to have both. You're not an intellectual living behind a book and you're not a guy who's just lifting weights and getting strong NO NO YOU'RE THE to jitsu is like it's chess is body chess. So you're developing the body, the mind it's a beautiful thing. I really enjoy that system. So I want them to be black about some Jitsu, master the striking arts and then decide if you want to fight. It could be

Bonus, but I would be happy if my kids were doctors, professionals, some, you know, pursue academia would make me equally happy. However, I'd want them to be able to defend themselves. For me, it's very important. Yeah, because this is this is obviously a tension between the likes units like the MMA stuff and the Islamic stuff in particular. Because there is a very famous Hadith of the Prophet says a lot about how to call Maha for the tequila wedge and La Holika. And the mala salata, if you, it's very interesting, actually, if, if you're fighting with your brother, then you know, be careful of the face. Because Allah is created other than his own image. So the idea being that in training

environments, and I think this you're a proponent of low level, don't break your, your jaw in the gym or not lose your your joining the gym, or your chin in the gym

kind of thing where you're smashing your head all the time. Now, science is telling us CTE and all that kind of thing as well.

It because the thing is, if you have an intellectual pursuit, which I think I, for example, in the community, we want our people to have intellectual pursuits. We also have a physical pursuit, you wouldn't want those things to kind of work against against one another. And so heavy like so for me, I mean, soldier, like, I've got my kids in BJJ.

And grappling like focusing on grappling with them. But I do realize I see the very important need for striking, and I understand also, to get to develop that martial literacy, you need to do some sparring. But if you're doing sparring with someone who wants to take your head off every time, then there's an issue here as well, isn't that, you know, every gym has its culture, what's the culture of Tristar than culture is controlled is we have classes called Touch sparring classes, where there's no hard hard shots to just play sparring. And then after you develop a certain ability to move, then we invite you to the more robust springs. Yes, and those robust springs are limited two

times a week, and for training camp, and they're done. They're done more sparingly. And even then there's a control even then, so he wouldn't, you wouldn't allow like elbows and knees for only only the guys I trust the most, we're gonna like simulate it, and I'm gonna throw it for real. Okay, the reason why you want to build the body? Yes, yes, you don't want to destroy the body. When you go in the gym, you have to build the body, not destroy the body, people go in the gym to destroy the body, it's wrong. It's the wrong way of thinking. Now, there are two methods to build a very strong gym one, you put everybody, all these alpha males in one room, you're in a metropolitan city where

there's millions of millions of people, that you're flooded with guys who want to make it, you put them in the room, they kill each other. There's one guy who survives it all and he's your champion. Then you have 1001 dead bodies, but you have one champion. Yeah. And the other method is, you teach each one of them how to be their best, you exhaust our potential. There's a you create a synergy where everybody respects everyone, nobody injures the other. We're here to develop our skills, not kill each other. And then you have a variety of of excellent fighters. Yeah. And then from there, they they feed off each other because excellence breeds excellence and so on you have you got this

type of synergy. But many gyms are the Darwinian style as if you know it's killer be killed, and you didn't make it too bad. There's another guy waiting, take your place. Because we're in a very, we're in a city where it's too jam packed, we have too many people. And you got hurt, there's less space on, there's more space on the mat for us, because there are some places where they're so full of people that they don't care if they lose a customer or not, or a fighter, they have another guy coming in town he wants to make it to so it all depends on what kind of atmosphere and I breed an atmosphere of building. Right? Not Last Man Standing type atmosphere? And is that I've heard I'm not

sure to what extent. But for example, in Dagestan, the way they do wrestling and stuff like that they're soft, they're play, they're more playful. Yeah. And do you think that's, that might be a secret to their success? Because we're seeing the rise of I mean, you've got sajer live who's a wrestler? Like he's, he's, I'm not sure, seen as powerful, pompous freestyle wrestler in the world right now. And then you've got like, all these kind of fighters, I've could be being notable, but I'm doing really, really well now in light heavyweight division, and other fighters as well. They seem to have a real kind of pedigree. And at the heart of it is grappling. So is that because

they've developed team spirit, that they're all working with each other? Or is it because of the playful kind of training? What is it really think is that I think, I think they have a, they have a, learn the sequences they have, they have a higher regard for technique.

And so if you do something and you do it using force, it's considered your wrestling is ugly, it's not aesthetically pleasing. Why? Because if you master the technique, and then you unleash your force, you'd be even better. So they breed a culture of Wow, you got the technique, right.

We're in America, if you do something athletic, it's Wow. We'll call you bypass the system. Yeah. Whereas them No, do it right. There's a wrong way in the right way and then demonstrate your athleticism. So it's really the tradition of teaching and training because not at that moment.

Archons are not technical, they are definitely, they just also have a great enjoyment to watch something athletic, just something that's freaky, you know, that guy can jump so much, or you can pull so much or when they have more they breed more culture of do you do it? Right? Do you understand why we do it this way? And if the answer is yes, it's good. If the answer is bad, explain it to him again, you know, because they have this. And that's why like, the European wrestling, there's a lot to say they have a lot more gold medals in the West. Okay. And also the support their athletes more, there are other there are other factors. But generally speaking, most wrestling

experts will tell you that they're more technical. The wrestling is more its superior.

Is have to do with state funding, I would say yes. But also the culture of learning. Like, for instance, if you look in Scandinavian countries, they do really well in school, even though the less hours and less homework and they started a later age. Why is that? Well, in America, if you see something like Not, not everywhere in America, but like,

let's just put it this way, they have a high regard for

education, education is seen as a good thing. It's seen it it is to an America but maybe more so in Scandinavian countries. Sing something like for instance, I remember watching Dr. Phil.

And there was this girl, she was 16 years old. And she was like, getting angry at the crowd. And she's like, take cash me outside. How about that? Catch me outside. Let's go fight outside. She's saying and when she said that, I don't understand what she was saying. But she became a star now in Scandinavia should be it would be frowned upon because she's doing something a bit of a behavior that's probably ignorant, you know, it seems like but in America, the the Marvel ad, they'll laugh about it, because it's cool. It's funny. And she later became a millionaire, she signed a $16 million contract or 40 millions of dollars to do like a music video where she's just lip singing.

And it's like crazy that they made her such a star. Why? Because she went on Dr. Phil, and she behaved in a certain way. Now in certain other cultures that would be rejected. That would be frowned upon. That would be embarrassing. They probably wouldn't even show it on the air.

However, in certain cultures, hey, it's considered cool and fun and funny and then marvelous. And so culture makes a huge difference. Right? Like, you know, especially in India, China, like, why why do they excel so much over and above Western countries, and for example, substantial mathematics.

Probably the same kind of reasoning that the education and the teacher gets to maintain his integrity. Whereas in the West, the teachers almost like dispensable asset like, you know, you can just replace him, if you don't like him, you can vote him out or something. You know, I remember watching a documentary where they they said, they brought in a Chinese, a group of Chinese teachers here to England.

And they separated a grade one would do the Chinese system, one would do the English system. And the Chinese teachers were like,

in China, we don't have to discipline because they were asking the students to do A, B, and C, and the students weren't doing it. And that the Chinese teachers were perplexed. They're like, in China, we don't have to discipline They're born disciplines. Meaning in their culture, they're raised by the time they go to school, they already understand that you have to follow the rules, and it's natural to them. So in the West, they had this different challenge where they had to, they had to try to discipline the children, but they had no means to they had no program for this. And they were making the kids work harder and longer. And eventually, they compared the grades. And the Chinese

school had better grades the Chinese group.

But then the Chinese teacher said something very interesting. He said, Look, in China, we have Kung Fu, and we have pandas. But we will never have Kung Fu Panda. Meaning that by being so rigid, they kind of kill creativity. And that's something the West has that was complimentary. Yeah, hard work will make you book smart. Yes. But what is it taking from you? You know, Mark Twain said the best one time he said, Don't let don't let school get in the way of your education. Wow.

So look, being I should have said that to the teacher when I was being

a detention center.

I think I think you can go too far in being rigid and academic, because it can cost so I think both sides have something to learn from one another. Yeah, sure. It's complimentary, that we have to strike a middle ground somewhere. But comparing the two it makes for interesting

content, like, you know, it'll teach us to think differently and experiment with different methods. But I think culture is something that's overlooked. It makes a massive difference like me, my kids, I try to instill instill into them, that our knowledge, knowledge,

knowledge is good for you always. Truth is always good for you one way or another. Truth is good for your truth is something to be desired. And one way or another, it brings you a benefit one way or another. You have to have that kind of

belief in truth, you know, one way or another the truth is always good for me. Even though I think it's bad now down the line is gonna it's gonna provide something. Truth is truth is a very special phenomenon.

You know, what, I have these conversations with you especially when we have private conversations. One thing that always comes up is family, and even those who kind of follow you

on social media, we have seen the video that you very famous viral video that you done was like a day in the life of a hobby. Very beautiful video fantastic. And one thing that really sticks out or is your relationship with the children like you do as many people that would watch your content with no you do like jujitsu jujitsu with them, you do martial arts with them, but you do a lot of conversation with them. And this is something that I think has been lost in translation in our communities, like when fathers are actually taking, you know, a responsible role with their children. What do you have to say about the extent to which we should as men, for example, be

responsible over our children? And what kind of fruit does this have one's life? Look, I would say after after God, what's the next important thing in your life? It should be family is the greatest good? Yeah. Nobody ever had a successful family and said, Hey, I would have traded my family for a Lamborghini or a mansion or a music career or, or a career in politics. All that is secondary.

You If you failed your family if you're if you're a millionaire, movie star, and your family's broken, I don't consider you successful. I don't consider you successful. I think you failed. So be careful with your family. Your family is paramount. Super important. I really tell you no, I was telling my friends you should have something in common with your kids. Maybe not everything but something that we share together. My kids a sports sports sports but more things we play video games together. It was it yeah. Oh yeah. We like to kind of like to play. We used to play a lot of what fortnight or is it? a I'm a I'm a noob some of those guys go crazy on fortnight. Yeah. So on

different level addictions and all this kind of Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you control it right you can we prank each other really? Like making fun of each other? Yeah. My son's call me boy.

We call I'm superior to him. So I call him Boy.

Boy, son, my son. Yes. My son like he's lower than me. Yeah, he'll call me son also, like, you know, we play we were friends. We're buddies. Especially when we drive to the gym. Yeah, we're in the car together. Mom is not there. Sister is not there. I tell him to talk about anything. Hmm, you have complete immunity. When we get in the car. We're driving. Ask me any really? Yeah. I would never speak to my wife. No way.

She thinks there's still little young boys.

Still 100% Boy, I said no. He's a man. He's still an upset boy. She's in denial. Could you give us a little flavor? We know okay. When you make this, PG 19 other boys are curious. They want to know, female that I have set time. Okay. All right. Want to know everything about the opposite sex? Right? So I have to tell them where else they're gonna learn anything and learn it

somewhere else somewhere else, right? Yeah. So I let them know I talked to them. And I was gonna say like, what do you have set times? Like, in a sense that okay, obviously with martial arts, you're going to probably go to school or whatever, and they come up and you probably go, you know, training with them. Kids classes, I'm guessing or maybe home classes, but you have set timing for Okay, I'm gonna sit down and talk to you guys about the stories or do you have anything like that? Generally, we talk on the way to the gym because it's a one hour commute half an hour. They're half an hour back we talk about everything religion, women history, science, politics, money, Bitcoin,

everything. Everything Everything make sense, or Bitcoiners. To they want to know everything. I try to teach them everything. Why? Because if you don't talk with your kids, yeah, I want to know their thought process. How do they by the way? Just 13 my son oldest son is 13 the second Simon right. No, Noah and Noah as old as the second one was Ayman the troublemaker, he's, he's 10. No, sorry. He's 11. He's 11 1311. And my baby girl Elisa. Yeah, seven years old. She's the gem of the family. homolog. She's my favorite. I saw I call her the favorite. I saw you in the video I saw I saw the glow in your eyes. With it with the baby doors, something.

There's a fear in that because my my youngest daughter as well, to be honest with you. I'm actually in a similar camp. I worry that you know, she's going to be spoiled. Let's put it mildly, you know? Because, you know, she can always like get her way through kind of cry or smile make a face or something. She knows how to play the system. Absolutely. Do you see that?

I mean, there was a time where I do this with her because I feel that if I see her I'm doing her a disservice. To be honest. There is a time I draw a hard line but I do spoil her. Every time I travel. I bring her back gifts I shower with love. I take care of my daughter. My daughter's number one. Yeah. But there's a time I have to draw the line. I have to discipline her. I think it's just because it's for her own good. Yeah. And, or else she'll become spoiled. And that's very important that she's not you know, because then one day she'll have difficulty functioning in society. Yeah, well, it's not always about her. Yeah, no, she's got to know that. Yeah, we have this playful time

where I make it all about you but then we get serious and look, everybody waits their turn. Everybody gets their fair share and you have to you know, get on with the program.

The idea is that in the future

She's gonna marry a guy who takes care of her. Yeah, like her father takes care of she has a map in her mind. She knows how it feels to be treated well. And that's how it should feel if she's gonna marry somebody.

I think I make my sons take care of her. Because one day when I die, they're gonna take care of her. It's a reflex. She needs something I said her brother says, would you say to your sons? Absolutely. If I hear my baby girl crying and my son's don't get up to check on her. It's gonna be a problem on that level. Oh, yeah. If she's in if she's in pain, or she needs help, or she there's no toilet paper, they got to get up and go get it for like, they better get up right now and do it. Why? Because I want to cultivate in them a sense that she's the most important person in our lives. And you have to take care of her why she's the youngest. Okay, she's young, she's the baby girl. Look,

my sons they take her to the bus stop and they bring her back home if she wasn't the youngest there would be more he would say there's be more give and take. Yeah, because I was telling my sons when they get fed up taken care of I say, who used to take care of you? Yeah. used to torture me the same way. I used to cry a knack for this and I took care of you. Yeah, I want them to know how to take care of someone else. Don't be selfish Don't be it's all about me. So I think it's really important to unite them to make them feel good about one another. And I always tell my daughter be be grateful. Look, he took care of you. He waited for you. He took you here took you there. He watched

you. She wants to go to the park while she has to go with her brother. Okay, he's gonna take you he doesn't want to go to the park but he's gonna go spend an hour with you. My daughter likes to wrestle Believe it or not reading just like pop I want to fight. I do five minute round with her.

How old is she going? Seven. Oh, she loves to fight. Yeah, little five minute rounds with her five minute rounds. Okay.

Yeah, of course they let her you know, she she loves to wrestle. She loves to she's a tomboy. Okay, she's a tomboy. She likes to throw down. You guys like maths everyone. How's the whole house is math. The monsters are dojo. So the wrestle they have fun. And I tell her she wants to do three rounds. You know? Tell us enough. You did too. He gave you his time. I'll do some rounds or 335 minute rounds with the five minute rounds. Have you ever do you ever do full fully fledged sparring? No, no, no, the kids? No, no, no, no, no, no, just just grappling, grappling, we do body shot sparring. I'm a big believer in the Kyokushin style system. Like if you look at Georgia grew up in

that system, where they kick and punch to the body, really. And then later as they're older, they teach them striking to the head. Don't think that one of the drawbacks of that system is that if you learn to punch the body, and defend the body that when you go into sparring, fully fledged defenses will be they quickly catch up. Are you sure? Yeah, absolutely. Because

there's many world champions in key one that came from a karate background that had hard time earlier in the beginning then they adopted boxing and George is one of them George exactly like this, he had a great kicking and punching to the body but no punches to the head. And it's very easy to hit the he quickly transformed the why because it's very similar. And it's just basically putting the icing on the cake. It's not really you're not building the whole idea of reflexes and distance control. And the thing is, because they haven't gotten hit in the head there, their mind is completely well developed and clear. You know, so I really believe in the system, I think it's

fantastic. Because you learn how to kick punch, this is controlled. And actually it's more painful to get hit in the body than the head, the head, you don't really feel anything. It's just you might see a spark here and there a star here and there. But you don't feel pain, like get hit in the body. So it's actually more resistant to pain. And they're less likely to headhunt because they've been hitting the body their entire life. It's a brilliant system. I think it's very, very good and well in Kyokushin karate

the karate system, because they're they start in the youth, the only attack the body, even in Taekwondo. They just did they put a shield on the body. And you can hit the body as hard as you want. Right, right. Gotcha. Okay, well, not not every Kyokushin tournament is as hard as you want to have somewhere you're not allowed to his heart you want but it's very, very safe for the brain. Like the worst you can get is really hard in the body and winded.

So basically run out if you get dropped to your knees and you can't breathe for a second or two. And it's very rare, but it's nothing serious. I mean, George came from that background absolutely became world champion. So I'm telling people, it's better to do it that way. Then because if you look at boxers, and Muay Thai fighters after they retire, the ones who started very, very young, a lot of them unfortunately become alcoholics dysfunctional, they're completely dysfunctional. They can't go into society. Why?

The way that they explained it, the way I've heard it to be explained, is that

when you get hit in the head, often the brain the receptor in your brain is not as efficient. It's not as sensitive. So what happens

if 100 is feeling normal? They're at 80.

So they need a substance to self medicate. They say they take drugs or alcohol to bring them up to just 100 just to feel normal. And I don't know if this narrative is true. You know, I've heard experts say this, but I can't say that I have no study explains this for a fact, but I've definitely noticed a trend that ex boxers are not functional after UFC. Yeah, I've been in Thailand. Well, they've been I've been in the thick of it. Okay. I can tell you when they retire like 32 years younger when 526 Yeah, because it's just too much because they used to be on the stage and all that they have a regular job and that's what's depressing them I don't know. I can't tell you that

either. Narrative is true. I don't know for sure. I thought it was because their bodies had enough I think has a lot to do with loss of the head. Is that Yeah, I think excessive loss of the head No forget they do with elbows.

To the head, it's It's brutal. Yeah. That's why I'm very sensitive to that issue your brain is developing. So the thing is in Thailand, they make them fight with elbows and knees as kids, like we're talking about seven year old, eight year old, six years old. And they make them cut weight. We knows what that does your organs and brain, I don't know what it does. There's no study that tells you that there's no study following kids cutting weight. So I think it's too much I rather my kids have a development, your body's fully developed. And then I'll add them to this gentleman MMA. There are two kind of if you want to call them that schools of thought someone's come from a specialist

background. And then they learn the other two or three sports, whatever they're going to learn all together as someone who's trying to be a generalist. In terms of effectiveness, and general efficacy, who What do you think of it? Like where has success in more seen people that have, for example, freestyle wrestling backgrounds, and then they come and they learn like a bit of striking, and jujitsu, or someone who's trying to do all three at the same time, I would recommend doing wrestling and jiu jitsu first wrestling, Jujitsu shouldn't be separated. And do that because you're going to build an athleticism. The wrestlers have a better athleticism, then let's go into striking

and quite talking about him. I would say, look, after your brain finishes developing, I would teach my kids how to hit the bank earlier on like my kids, they don't do a lot of striking. They do a lot of wrestling jujitsu, and then I make them hit the back, let's say once a week, once every two weeks just so they can develop that coordination when they're young. Because we've seen World Champions pick up kickboxing at the age of 14 and become a world champion by the time you're 25. What happened he learned in such short period well, it doesn't take that long. It's not that it takes forever to learn however, jitsu is complicated. Yeah. And wrestling is there's a lot of possibilities. Whereas

in kickboxing and Muay Thai, it's more about speeding timing. The pulse possibilities are not that complicated. Comparatively, comparatively, don't forget and jujitsu, Jesus, there's so many nuances, there's so many positions, so many things. You have to learn cerebrally. Now, boxing is also, you know, there's a lot of detail, but nowhere near nobody can. The possibilities in wrestling and jiu jitsu are far greater than the strike.

I saw a video of John Jones one time he was asking what's the most potent sport, kind of martial and sport? And he said it was freestyle wrestling? To what extent do you do that? If you have a time limit, I would say yeah, it makes sense. If there's no time limit, it's jitsu right because look, jiu jitsu was developed in the time of value, total value, total means anything goes mean, you would fight but there's no time limit, the winner gets the videotape. That's how it was.

Fights will last two, three hours. So what you took me down. So what however, if you take me down, and there's only two minutes left on the clock, and you just fend off my submissions, and you just kind of hold me tight and you just and the bell rings that gives you the round. You repeat, repeat, you repeat the process two more times, and you win. However, that's just 15 minutes. That's not a long time for two guys to find out who's a better fighter. Now, let's say that, let's say we made it unlimited rounds. And the fighter The Wrestler gets subbed in seventh round. He will like oh, the grappler is better. Yeah, but you didn't get to the seventh round in competition like you only saw

the first three. Because believe me when I tell you

the wrestlers don't have a way to end the fight often.

So I've seen many fights where there was no time limits and the wrestler gets subbed or knocked out or hurt because he just had the weight and the fight he can get the guy down he can't do anything about it. It takes years to refine how to pass their guard mouth and take their back etc. So with because we've made it more of a sport, it's more time sensitive, I would say yes. Make sense. And on this point, what do you think without comes from that Shamaya and burns? If it becomes a grappling affair then on this analysis, it should favor bonds because then he could Yeah, but because of the time limit. I don't think there's much you can do like you have to look the better the guy is the

more sequences I need to trap him.

And the guy knows that's what it is gonna stop. He's gonna stall tactics. He's not even gonna do the sequences. He knows that if he keeps breaking grips keep interrupting the sequences. He can eventually kill the time so what do you think's gonna happen? I think comes that's gonna weigh in it's going to be a stand up affair is it Yeah, I think he has the reach the power the distance he's a southpaw. It's an open stance can be harder for burns he's a blue belt compared to Yeah but that's that's misleading because he's been wrestling his whole life and people think wrestlers don't do ground that's not true. See the fatal flaw in jujitsu is that they do just ground a lot of them. I

can my academy we do standing and we do ground wrestlers do standing and ground it's a myth that it's it's not true that they do a different type of ground but it's very relevant to what we do on MMA is with the difference being with anchor 11 Khabib is that they did sambo. Right. Where's Where's where's humse? That's coming from a freestyle wrestler but freestyle they do ground Yeah, but they do like what you call it the ranch, etc. That's plenty. They do a lot of ground there is a lot of ground so they know how to control their balance. They know how to hold you down from getting up. I don't think it's going to be too much of a grand affair. What surprised me I mean, nothing's

impossible, but I think it's a very good comes out. It's a very good fight friend. It's gonna be interesting. I think if it gets through this one, you know, very often

Marshall is a world champion in IBJJF and burns, burns here he is right. So if he gets through him I think that would definitely mean that he's, I think one of the top guys there. I think the winner is going to get Kobe Covington Hamzat or burns. Both of them. I think either whoever wins the fight gets Kobe and the winner of Kobe vs. Comes out go back tomorrow, or Yeah, I think it would go to tomorrow. But even then, if it's

the thing is if Kobe wins would they do a third time? It's boring, isn't it? It's I think it wouldn't solve Yes. I mean, I mean, I would watch it but I don't know if it's sell because he lost twice glancingly. Yeah, I think it would have to be a comes out beating a Kobe and now we have a new contender saying Kobe is going to go to middleweight now, I think that's what No, he said he's called a son. Yeah. Oh,

maybe he's called them out. You don't think he's because he's got grappling pedigree right or do I know he's very look at Kobe is a real he's a legit fighter. Yeah. I don't know if he beats.

Tanya. I don't think so. Because at assigning his fatal weakness was his grounding. Yeah, sure. Sure, sure. But he's much bigger, longer, stronger. Dangerous. Guy, young vlhova He was bigger and stronger. That's the difference. Yeah, blood Lavich was to a fiver. Yeah, I think pound for pound at the center is better than Lavich. Yeah, but there's a massive there's a 20 pound a week difference weight away in difference, not even weight difference. Lavich was even bigger than that. That's a massive order. So at assigning your beats COVID Covington us, but you'll be Covington What do you think is gonna happen between him and comes out if he goes? I think it comes out as his number.

Really? Yeah. With the grappling and stuff striking is gonna strike him. Really? I think so. Here's the thing. Here's my I want to say one thing. We haven't seen him that in later rounds. Sometimes the guy looks so good in round one and round two he falls apart round three falls apart. So I don't know that about him yet. I don't know if he fights hard all the way to the third. But if he can maintain what he does at rounds one, because all I've seen is wrong one from him. Yeah. To beat everybody. We've seen a lot from understanding. I mean, he's Sanja, we know we know what he looks like around five, very durable. Yeah, he's very durable. Yeah. In my eye. There's a question mark on

comes that does he have that durability? I think so. But we haven't seen it yet. That's why I don't want to jump the gun and say yes, he has. I don't know. I haven't seen that yet. But I really like him against cool because would you think he said he faces better chances against

either Sonia than he does against then he does against

Colonel wasman

that's tough to call, I think was men's ultimate challenge for HUBZone right? Yes. Awesome. It's very mentally tough. Also, not that Alessandra isn't but I said it's gonna be easier to take down I think, then kumara

that's the problem, isn't it? Because tomorrow's he's only ever been taken down once in his career. Not that they counted it when Kobe took him down the last fight didn't statistically count it. But in my opinion, it was it was a takedown. Who do you have to incur it was Martin George St. Pierre.

I get in trouble now that Listen, I love both those guys. Yeah. But if I have to be totally candid, I think George just has more skies prime. Yeah, just more skills, even though he's more developed. Yeah. Even though he's game goes deeper. He has more layers and Roebuck was man, I love this man. I really love this man. I love the guy. He's sure if you met Adam, if you met him, we met him and he's a very sweet, humble person kind salted the earth guy. Speaking facts, the truth and

this goes beyond. But I gotta sell it. So yeah, but the exact social I hate to pick one over the other because I like them both so much, but George's game just goes deeper. Yeah, he just he has a greater understanding of Obi Wan Kenobi versus

pound for pound. Or if they had a catchweight let's say.

We were gonna people are gonna grill me for this, but I'll pick a B, I think I think that high lift can be I think it'd be the ultimate killing machine is incredible. So I just feel the cabbie has a few more layers. And he's just, he's as tough mentally as as Guzman. And not that ever want to see them fight. They're close. You know, they're they would never fight each other. But I think it was I think Khabib is like, special cut above.

He's very special can be.

I wanted to speak to you more about your philosophies.

But I think what we'll do is we'll do

when you're when you're back in Canada, we'll do an episode just for them. Because last time when when I did this, and we said we got for us a hobby, we made it the opposite way. We kind of spoke more about the philosophical issues more, and the and the the sports stuff less. But this I think, you know, the first time we really had a fleshed out conversation about these things. I think this is very important for the Muslim community. But obviously people don't realize that you have been really deeply involved. I mean, one time, maybe you wouldn't mind me saying this, but in addition to your training, you do hours and hours of studying, don't you like yeah, maybe 345 hours a day or so?

How many hours? Yeah, I would say two to five sometimes. Wow.

Wow, when I travel, you read that much. Yeah. What do you read? What what do you do? I do a lot of, you know, I really like is audible audible.com I use a lot of their audio books, I do a lot of lectures, I find lectures online science, history, philosophy, religion, I like to listen to debates, lectures, I mean, absolutely everything on science, history, philosophy, religion, I listened to all that I buy all the books, I buy hundreds of books. And for me, it's a pleasure just listening to it is a pleasure, like people listen to music, I listen to audiobooks. Well, yeah. And as it helps you gain a sense of spirituality. Now, we're two weeks away from Rome, Ramadan, like the

spiritual aspects of Islam, you've been with a lot of ezeli recently as well, haven't you? And yeah,

what have you what have you kind of taken from that? And for people that might be listening to this, who might not be aware of the summer tradition in particular? What would you guide them to in terms of reading material?

I think that is that is hard to read, honestly. Okay. I think I think if I didn't study philosophy, so many years before as early I wouldn't have understood anything he meant. So I think Russell is actually a quite a difficult read.

It's not a good place to start, per se if you don't have a background. Yeah. If you if you don't have a background and you solve the problem of sunlight, you see likely the profit or loss it's a long ways away.

I don't think I don't think philosophy is a place where you start Yeah, I definitely don't think you start there. But you can you can build to that. And

you know, it's again, you know, we start with the Quran, the Sunnah. And then

I listen, I studied the Greeks. I studied Muslim philosophers and British empiricism and Lightman period, I think the three together

because I think a lot of them they're each one of them was commentary of the on the past, there were influenced by the past. And logic is an innate thing.

So it has Eddie said it beautifully said, Doesn't matter who said it, we have to study each, each claim by itself standing alone and see whether it's true or not, doesn't matter if Aristotle said something, or this guy said something, it doesn't matter, we have to verify it for ourselves, we have to have demonstration. And this is I think, very important. But ultimately speaking, everything boils back down to the fitrah.

Like, you can't go further than that, once you try to go further than that this is the limit.

And this is what gives certainty has Ellie's work is all about getting to certainty. And certainty is a very special thing, we have to differentiate between knowledge and belief.

And certainty is a type of knowledge. That's, that's unique. And once you find that nucleus, everything else makes sense. Everything makes sense. But you have to get to that nucleus. And that's what has led us so that was his his his

crisis, as he describes it, you know, you went through a crisis is you want to know, what's the bedrock of it all. And that's quite a profound thing. And for you reading the Quran,

and reflecting over it and and things like that, what are some of the main things you have taken away from, from that reading? I think, I think the Quran, it

touches on every type of logic.

And it ultimately tells you look,

you're born with this special thing called the fitrah, this innate belief, this Tawheed within you, and you have to revert back to that natural religion. And the Quran is reminding you and telling you about it. And like we were talking about earlier, there are levels of truth, there are levels there. When we talk about what is true, that's a very complicated thing. You could put 10 experts, and epistemology in one room, and they won't agree on the definition of truth. So how are you making claims to truth when we don't even have the definition of it? I think Islam ultimately is asking you to discover the ultimate truth. Now, God Himself, in my opinion, as I understand it, is actually the

only thing that is 100% objectively true. You know, there's actually a beautiful Hadith on this. There was there's a poem, a poet, a pre Islamic poet called the beat. And

he was one of the people that actually because before Islam, there were the poems that were hung up on the camera, called the mandala caught. One of the one of the main people that wrote punk was a person called levied. But he was also a time he was at the time of the prophet as well. And he had a very interesting line of poetry, which was mercy Allah Who bolted on whatever is other than Allah is in vain was not true. It was not fully true. And the Prophet actually commented on this line of poetry and he said that this is the truest thing a poet has ever said hamdulillah which is kind of in line with what you're saying, isn't it?

It's

it's something we all know.

But

I think as I say, I don't believe in atheism, bring me an atheist, I'm gonna find you a deity he believes in being an atheist. They all believe in some, some he believes in, he believes in a deity somewhere, somehow I'm going to find the date in his beliefs. I'm going to cross examine long enough and how are you defining a deity deity

Something you project from your mind onto the world. And that my definition will go further than this. But just to keep it simple, let's give for instance, nature nature's the most famous deity in today's age in nature, what brought this about nature? Nature's is that the word is a sound you made with your mouth. What does it mean nature? See, nature comes from your observation of particulars. If I asked you What is nature, you would say, well, you'd have to point to examples. He would say, look at that flower.

That's nature. Okay, if I destroy all the flowers, nature's gone. No, no, no. There's also the river. The watercycle The trees, the bees, the ants, the cattle. Okay, what if I destroy all that? Oh, no, there's still more than what if I destroy every particular thing? What if we had a universe and empty universe? Would you know nature now? You wouldn't know nature. There's nothing there's no collective. So how do you know nature? Well, you saw blades of grass.

You felt the wind. And the word nature is just a collective to name all those particulars you experienced? I mean, this is exactly what I think it believes in that and so nominalism Yeah, nominalism and Ibn Taymiyyah was you could say conceptualist as well, like in the sense that he didn't believe in a coolie at all, like the geniuses or the universals existed in reality, did you only know the particulars? We're projecting them from our minds? This is a name I give like for instance, how many trees is it take to make a forest? Well, that's subjective you might have a different number than me it's a projection of our mind What do you think it it's there's there's

subjectivity is always mingled in what you what you call truth, except in one instance. So there's part concept part observation in a Quran says, Do they not consider the seed that they saw like, your nature is coming after your observation? So I observed particulars, then I came up with the idea of nature.

Without the particulars, that universal doesn't exist. The Universal is dependent on particulars. Allah is telling you Look, I don't depend on particulars. I am the particular this is the chronic point of view.

So one example I've come up with recently is to help make this even clearer is remember the Ship of Theseus? Yeah, okay, so let's think about the Ship of Theseus. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna go through it again real quick, cuz I know we've done it before. Yeah, the Ship of Theseus is a ship of 99 parts. It's belongs to a man named thesis. Everyday he changed the changes apart. After 99 days, his ship has been completely re every piece has been changed. 99 days 99 parts, those old parts, we put them in a warehouse somewhere. He's sailing that ship. We all identify it as the Ship of Theseus. Then one day I go in the warehouse I put the the old pieces back together. Now there are two ships

on the ocean. We call them both the Ship of Theseus and I've asked you which one is the Ship of Theseus? Well, now has a lot to do with your subjective sense of what identity is. There's no objective way to differentiate which one is the Ship of Theseus. Now imagine these two ships are I'm gonna make the problem even worse. Imagine these two ships are going on on the ocean.

And every day each ship is still changing a new piece.

And the old piece is I'm taking from both ships and I'm creating a third ship.

And the ships are changing piece everyday and their, their their particulars are being mingled, shuffled like a cart of deck of cards. I'm making 1000s and 1000s of ships. Now ask you which one is the Ship of Theseus? You're like, hey, well, you know, it all depends on how you see it. Hmm.

The Ship of Theseus is an archetype.

There's an archetype in your mind, and you use that archetype. This is what Plato called the forms to identify what's out there.

But now, I want you to put this example to the side, think about a ship. Now, if I told you about a ship, it's the divine ship.

This ship is not trances doesn't transition, it doesn't change it always was will always be and they'll never be another ship. You no longer need this archetype. There's no more form of ship.

You had an archetype because that thing, the original example I gave, the Ship of Theseus, that goes through a change like me, and you are bodies, after seven years of life, your entire all your cells have been changed in your body.

We are like the Ship of Theseus, we are part archetype, we are part observation we are part object.

But imagine a ship that was divine, never changes and never will change it will always was.

If I told you if I asked you something about that ship, if I told you where's the Ship of Theseus? You say that's the Ship of Theseus. Now, there's no more archetype there's no more subjectivity. There's no more Your opinion is different than mine. And we're equally true. We're not equal footing, the more now there are facts now it's truly objective. The original example I gave you, it was subjective, the truth was subjective. There was part object, part archetype, so there was room for subjectivity. Now there is no more room for when there is only one.

See like with

Give me a up a pagan god, there's an archetype to their gods.

This is why I refer to oftentimes as the Abrahamic experience, you have to strike down all the multiplicities. Because to get to objectivity, pure objective, which is what I personally was looking for, when Allah tells you I am one, he's telling you Look, I am literal, I am the particular

you all are particulars and universals. You are not like me, well, let me call Luke one is one category, and you will never be any category like this.

This is what the Quran is telling Allah like, you have to understand when, when I teach you language, when you learn language, every word is dependent on another word.

If I want to explain you what table means, I have to explain to you the words, I have to use words. And those words that are used to explain the word table also are contingent. On other words.

How can I explain to table if there's an infinite regress of contingent words? Well, I have to give you experience, I have to tell you, Look, this is a table. Mm hmm. Now you have direct experience with a table. The word table goes with it. If you didn't see a table, I can never use words to explain to you what table is. I have to have to tie it with some experience you have. This is very important. Because when I tell you about Allah, you don't tell me. What does that mean? I never heard of this. No, you know, exactly. But I never pointed. I never pointed here this is Allah.

You know, Allah. So I say there's no atheist. Because I've never spoke to a person who said, Look, I'm not even understand what you're talking about.

Because if you cannot truly make up something, all you can do is take things that exist and make a collage.

So if people tell me Look, I believe in the God of War, I'm gonna say, No, you took God and you took war, and you mingle them together.

But like a blind man could never know the color red. Unless you fix his eyes, and he sees red. Like that, when I talk to you about Allah, you know exactly what I'm talking about why?

So I came up with another thought experiment to try to teach this to make it more simple, because he's trying to say,

we've all you've heard about the Beetle in the box. So for instance, this is to point to the hard problem of consciousness. Imagine I have inside of a box, and inside this box, I open the box inside, there's a beetle. You have your own box, you open your box, you see a beetle. But there's no beetles in existence. We don't see them. When we observe the world around us. We'll see books, we see microphones, we see cars, but we don't see any beetles. But when I look at my box, I tell you, I try to explain to you what I'm seeing, and you try to explain to me what you're seeing. We're like, hey, we will have one.

We will have a Beetle in the box. Every person we meet, they'll have a Beetle in the box, but we can't look in each other's box. This is what's known in philosophy as the egocentric predicament, you're trapped within your own body.

If I tell you Hey, guys, my beetle has blonde hair.

You're like, wait a second, no blonde hair is that's dunya

you're taking the beetle and you're mixing it with what you saw in the world. The Beetle in the box is not we're not seeing it in the dunya we're seeing it internally, we're having direct experience with the Beetle in the bucks.

Anything if I tell you hey, my, my Beatles, wearing boxing gloves are gonna like No, no, that part's not true.

That part's not true. Because that's not what I'm seeing. When I'm looking. You're taking dunya. And you're mixing it in with the Beatle in the box. So every every human being is born with this fitrah this belief in one God.

You're incubated in it. Then when you're born, you find things that you want to associate with it. You want to mingle with it. And then therefore you have polygamy.

That's another another

sorry, I say polygamy. Freudian slip.

Yeah, I meant

simulation. No, no. For God's integration. No, no monotheism fully. Yeah. No. polytheism Yeah. See, we're both thinking polygamy.

Sorry, my fault. Yes. Fine. Ended apart from my wife, please.

It's okay, though. But yeah.

Yep. Not polygamy. polytheism.

So that's where we're polytheism comes from? Yeah, I always tell people you learn the number one first, then you learn to you can't learn the number two to is one in one.

You cannot explain the number 10 without referring to the number one every other.

Suppose the dadey

is a mingling of the number one. So like all words, rely on experience experiences.

When we say the word God, it also relies on experience. There's not a word, you know, that doesn't rely on a very deep liar. Very important. It's amazing. That's why there is no there is no atheist on the face of the earth. There is not an atheist when they told me nature did it. Unlike land, he still hasn't understood the difference between universal and particulars. Wow. Well, with that, I mean, I have to say it's been a pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure. I think many people would have benefit

More than this podcasts and many podcasts.

Honestly, anytime this office is your office, you know, I can come down and one day inshallah we'll come down to Quebec as well, Charlie. Yeah, we fantastic. And I want to thank you above the Muslim community and all the other communities for coming on to my podcasts

for as a hobby. And that's another episode of The MH podcast, the most irregular podcasts on the internet. Thank you for watching. We're just gonna huddle Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.

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