Learn These Lessons Young
When I was 18 I met this professional heavyweight boxer named Leo. He was a local legend where I was from and he had a reputation for hitting super hard.
His signature punches were a nasty left hook and liver shot.
Leo taught me a lot when it came to boxing fundamentals and knocking people out. Most importantly, he taught me a lot about being tough.
But he taught it to me the hard way.
Leo knew I wanted to be an MMA fighter. So he would pick me up and take me to his small and crappy looking boxing gym in Great Falls, Montana.
He had the keys to this place, so we could train whenever we wanted. But as soon as we stepped foot into the gym, it was go-time.
We laced up our 16 ounce gloves, put our mouthpieces in, and set the timer for rounds. Then Leo whooped my ass round after round.
He’d rip me hard into the liver, making me wince on impact. I would feel my body shut down and have no choice but to fall to one knee.
Leo would step back and give me a standing 8 count. 1, 2, 3, 4…
But I would force myself to get back up when I knew he would put me down again. Sometimes with a combination to the head, but his liver shot was money.
I would leave Leo’s gym beat up and probably concussed sometimes. Be all up in my emotions.
This was the routine. Every time, Leo said, “Alright, I’m picking you up tomorrow and we’re doing it again.”
We did multiple sparring sessions in that gym.
But I had an epiphany moment after so many beatings.
If this guy, a heavyweight boxer, can’t knock me out… and I can keep getting back up to my feet… then I can take on anyone.
Leo taught me how deadly body shots are. But he also showed me how much of a man I am.
To be able to take those ass whoopings and come back for more.
Those sessions changed my life. And I think for new guys, it’s important to have similar experiences early on. To have someone who’s not afraid to whoop your ass, not with bad intent, but to see if you can keep coming back.
Those lessons have paid off for me.
New Techniques
Let’s say you’re training for a new opponent and you need to add new techniques to your game.
How long it takes you before those techniques become instinctive really depends on where you’re at.
If you’re a very green beginner, it’s gonna take you a long time before you can implement techniques in live situations.
You need to be able to drill a technique perfectly slow at first. Do it over and over until it’s pretty much muscle memory.
Once you have the movement and reaction down, then you can work on speeding up the pace. After you can perform the technique at a fighting pace, you can try it in a sparring session.
But it’s gonna feel uncomfortable. You have to be okay with failing at your attempts or losing the session altogether.
A lot of guys in the practice room don’t want their coach or anyone else to see them lose. So even though they’ve learned new techniques, they’ll default to what they’re best at so they can try to win.
That’s not how you level up. You have to keep trying and failing until it clicks.
When you’re at a high level in MMA or jiu-jitsu (around purple belt and above), there’s not much room for improvement with just drilling.
Tanquinho taught me this. He said at a black belt level, your biggest opportunities for improvement is from going live with other black belts.
A lot of fight camps are around 2-3 months. If you’re trying to teach someone a whole new style in that time period - that’s not smart at all.
People think that going to new fight camps is gonna help change things, but it’s hard. Especially for vets, it takes even longer to change them.
Because it’s one thing to learn the technique, you have to also gain confidence in it.
Be patience with new techniques.
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Training For Elevation
If you’ve never trained at elevation, it’s a whole new experience.
Imagine getting that hard pump and first push in the practice room. That’s how it feels constantly at elevation.
Going on a normal run can make your heart feel like it’s gonna explode out of your chest. When you go live grappling and wrestling, you’ll feel your gas tank depleting way faster.
But it’s something you slowly adapt to.
I remember when Benson Henderson was training to fight Frankie Edgar in Denver. I was a part of that camp for a few days.
John Crouch (the coach at the MMA Lab) rented out a house with 8 bedrooms in Flagstaff, Arizona. We all went up there to train, and the training had to be different. We had to take the elevation into account.
It’s a huge mistake to ignore elevation. Check out what happened to Cain Velasquez and Fabricio Werdum when they fought.
Fighters who don’t train in elevation and don’t take the time to acclimate, they’re gonna gas out in their fight, guaranteed.
If we ever take a fight at elevation, we’re gonna have to do our training camp somewhere else. We need to be there for at least 5 weeks to get the heart pumping.
For the fights this weekend, you’ll see who ignored elevation and who didn’t.
Building Mental Resilience In The Training Room
Do you want a workout that will strengthen your mind?
Try combining the Airdyne with mitts. We had a little competition this week to see who can burn 40 calories the fastest. And you need to keep the Airdyne to over 700 watts.
Watch how fatigued you’ll be after. It gets your shoulders, quads, and chest pumping. You’ll get heated up fast.
Try it out and let me know in the comments how fast it took you. My best time so far is 1:35 and I beat the other guys.
But that’s the first part of the workout. Jump off the Airdyne and immediately go into mitts, it’s intense. And you can throw some heavy bag work and wrestling on top of that.
We were tracking Suga’s heart rate the other day and this got his heart rate to 192-200 BPM for most of the 25 minutes.
You really gotta dig deep to get through this workout. But it’ll feel good after.
Another workout you can do is treadmill sprints. Vary it with highs and lows. Maybe you’re sprinting for a minute and standing for 30 seconds. Then repeat.
9-10 mph on 2-3 incline. These are hard. You’ll get your heart rate above 180 for sure.
If you want to go live and take this up a notch, do live competition rounds with other high level guys.
8-10 minute live rounds. And you’re really fighting for points. No stalling, you’re trying to win.
But if you really want to build toughness and see how tough you are, this next workout is the ultimate one.
Sparring a fresh guy each round. Imagine pushing yourself for an entire round, you’re breathing heavy, and now there’s a fresh guy in there trying to kill ya. That’ll show you how to dig deep.
The very best guy I’ve seen do this is Benson Henderson. He would take on 5 of the best lightweights back to back to back.
Absolutely insane.
Quick Hits From This Week
Red Hawk Recap Ep. 99
Art of Podcasting
99 episodes in. People think this shit is easy, but it’s a lot of work. But I love it, I wanna podcast until I’m 60.
Khamzat vs. Paulo Costa
This is a massive fucking fight. I can’t wait for it. Costa is a big dude so Khamzat might not be able to rag doll him around as much. But Khamzat is gonna be so strong at 185. What a scrap.
Suga vs. Aljo PPV Buys
Sean is definitely the A-side here. He’s bringing the eyeballs. We’ll see in August.
Bradley Martyn vs. Nate Diaz
I think Brad just likes to stir the pot. But Nate definitely gets him in a streetfight. A tiny boxer like Devin Haney is a different story, I think Brad wins that.
Excitement is a better motivator than discipline
This is so true in jiu-jitsu. The people who just love jiu-jitsu and study at home and come to every practice, are the people who will be successful.
TimboSugarShow Ep. 245
Cory vs. Rob Font
Rob is no joke, but Cory is a nightmare to fight on short notice. We’ll see how it goes.
Izzy vs. Strickland
Sug doesn’t know if the UFC wants Sean Strickland to be a champ. I disagree, he’s a character. Not sure if Sean Strickland is gonna box Izzy for 5 rounds, but he is a good grappler too.
Writing Comedy
That’s such a hard skill. It’s so impressive that these guys have to write new material each week.
UFC 291
I think Dustin is so sharp. He might take it again. And I want Alex Pereira to get it done, but Jan is so big. Rolling with Wonderboy and Bobby Green too.
Red Hawk Academy Patreon
On Patreon this month, we’ve done a bunch of giveaways, podcasts, and vlogs.
We’ve been going 4 years strong with our Patreon. There are hundreds of videos on there, with new content going up all the time.
You can get exclusive access to technique videos, extra podcasts, and general healthy living videos.
I reply to everyone on Patreon, so if you have any questions, hit me up there!
»» Click here to check out Red Hawk Academy on Patreon
That ends it for this week’s Red Hawk Essentials.
Hope you enjoyed this one. Give me a like/comment/subscribe below.
If you’re new here, welcome to the fam! We’re dropping gems like this each week.
Luv ya, talk next week.
Tim
I heard Tony used to spar fresh guys for multiple rounds, wear them all out and then go and hit the heavy bag for an hour
outstanding! definite book material