Name: JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French
Uploaded: 2019-04-03T01:18:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-04-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-04-03. Transcript available.

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

A boar or something, yeah.
My buddy from Australia gave me those in that head.
It's an Asian water buffalo.
It's an invasive species.
Are we live?
Yes, it worked.
Oh, it worked.
Jesus Christ.
Ladies and gentlemen, the UFC Performance Institute boys.
Hey, what's up?
Duncan, Forrest Griffin.
Hey, Forrest Griffin, good to see you.
We've already talked over each other, so we've already blown it.
No, we've got it.
We've got it nailed.
Well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I was blown away when I went to
visit
the, you know, you hear the Performance Institute and you go, well, what is
this going to be like?
And you go, they're like, oh my God, they thought of everything.
It's like the ultimate state-of-the-art facility for training, for recovery,
for nutrition.
It's fucking amazing.
I mean, I'm so happy.
We're posting a link to that shit right there.
Say it.
Dude, I mean, it's amazing.
When we went on a tour and checked that place out, I think it was a, Della Gratze
was with me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We were like, holy shit.
Like, can you imagine you have access to this fucking place?
Like, you guys have really created something special.
It's very interesting.
And I don't know much about other sports, but I know this never really existed
in combat sports
before.
Something like this that's, I mean, you guys have athletes from all sorts of
different walks
of life come through there.
When I was there, there was many, many top-level fighters that were training
out of there.
It's really, really interesting.
Yeah, cool.
Well, we appreciate the kind words, obviously.
And I mean, ultimately, yeah, the vision of the UFC was to build a performance
institute
that was truly a world-class high-performance center that had everything that
fighters would
need.
But not only are we trying to align ourselves as the leaders in mixed martial
arts, but
certainly leaders in human high performance.
Yeah, Duncan, tell people what you do there.
Like, explain.
Yeah, so my role as the vice president of performance, I essentially direct the
philosophy
of how we're going to interact with the fighters, how we're going to support
the fighters, and
obviously manage our world-class staff that are working within the performance
facility.
And Clint, you came from a background in amateur wrestling.
Yep.
And tell everybody what your job is over there.
Yep.
So I'm the director of performance nutrition.
So anything related to feeding of athletes is essentially managed by myself and
our ever-expanding
team.
So it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan,
integrating
within the other performance services, as well as feeding athletes on the
ground, integrating
within our kitchen at the Performance Institute, supporting athletes as they
prepare for fight week,
weight descents, et cetera, and then supporting athletes on fight week and
preparing at that,
even at the last moment of fight day, to fuel up and to be really well-fueled
for their
performance.
My background is, like you said, in amateur wrestling.
I wrestled and coached at Cornell University, graduated in 2003, was on the U.S.
national team
with a number of actually current fighters right now.
So Daniel Cormier and a number of other athletes, Chris Weidman and some others,
and I used
to train together.
And then I went back to school and got all my credentialing to be a registered
athlete.
And so that's kind of led me through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC
with a pretty
unique combination of the nutrition, the dietetics, and then obviously the
experience in combat
sports and weight cutting.
And in my opinion, the most grueling combat sport, I mean, I think wrestling is
just, we talked about it on the last podcast.
It's just, it's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real
competition and the actual physical struggle of getting through wrestling
practice and strength and conditioning grills.
Most kids that are coming up in high school and college, they don't really work
that hard in any other sport.
I mean, it's a crazy sport.
I remember in high school, like walking into the wrestling room and it's a
bunch of gross dudes, like in a sweaty, hot room.
And then it was like basketball was right next to it.
I walked next to the basketball.
There's like dudes in tent tops and some like cheerleaders.
I'm like, I know what I'm doing.
I'm not an idiot.
Little did I know.
Little did you know.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, in my opinion, still, I think it's the most important skill
because you get to dictate where the fight takes place.
I mean, there's no one skill that really overpowers all except for the ability
to hold the guy down.
Like the ability to hold someone down and control them on the ground.
It's so critical and everything else you can learn from that submissions,
ground and pound.
But the difference in like an elite wrestler like yourself and a person who
doesn't have that skill, it's so hard to bridge that gap.
It's hard to learn later in life.
GSP is one of the few people that's just like, I'll just take this up and be
amazing at it because I'm GSP and then I'll become a gymnast.
Who knows?
I think that's the thing with him, though.
He had such physical abilities.
We were talking about this almost on the last podcast as well, that he used to
do that karate blitz.
You know, so he was so used to that lunging in stuff that he sort of
incorporated that with a blast double.
And he's so physically strong and such a smart dude and so good at learning
things that he just figured out the essential techniques that he needed to
master.
And he just got better and better at him.
Way back in the day, obviously, UFC 1 was kind of a discipline versus
discipline kind of grudge match.
And having been a lifelong wrestler, that's when I started tuning in, actually,
and taking pride in all the wrestlers, taking names and growing within the
sport.
And obviously, with the evolution of the sport, it's a different dynamic.
And obviously, each athlete coming from their own discipline is really fun for
us to work with as practitioners, having their own kind of sport culture.
But wrestling is obviously a core component to what each athlete is doing.
And when I'm working with athletes and talking through their weekly training
plan and, you know, how to feed and fuel for each of these types of training
sessions and hearing them bitch about how hard those wrestling practices are, I
always get a little bit of pride there.
But, yes, it is hard.
And imagine doing it for eight months straight for a college wrestling season
and grind that out.
But it's definitely been fun for me to watch wrestling as a component of MMA
grow and be able to contribute to the sport on a few different kind of levels.
Yeah, I mean, I think the way I've always looked at it is pressure makes
diamonds.
You know, there's no other way.
Those hard-nosed dudes, they come out of those environments.
Like, if you think about guys with crazy determination and mental fortitude,
there's a giant chunk of those you could attribute to wrestlers.
I mean, there's a lot of them in kickboxing and everything else as well.
But there just seems to be, it's such a unique sport in terms of hardening,
like, your mental toughness.
For sure.
I wouldn't do it.
Fuck that.
I play basketball.
I mean, at the Performance Institute, we always talk about mixed martial arts
as the decathlon of combat sports.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, our philosophy is to try and understand all the
respective components that makes a world-class MMA fighter.
I think, you know, if you're in the UFC, you've got some certain X factors that
allow you to be world-class.
And, you know, wrestling is a huge component of that.
But what we try to do is understand limitations.
Because in a decathlon, you're only ever as good as your weakest event, right?
Right.
So if you're a striker, if you're a grappler, or if you're a wrestler, you know,
we're trying to support each of those to understand how we can elevate the
whole thing.
Now, how much input do you put into fighters, if any, into how they incorporate
their skills and, like, how they combine their skills together?
Do you guys offer, like, coaching on technique and approaches?
Let me, yeah.
So break down the philosophy.
We don't do sports-specific coaching.
So physical therapy, sports nutrition, strength and conditioning, sports
science, and then Duncan oversees all those to make sure that they work.
All right.
So our philosophy, anything that doesn't make you better in the octagon is
pretty pointless.
So what I do is I'll just go over what your training schedule looks like with
you, and then, you know, where do we feed accordingly for this practice?
You know, what, and then Roman, our sports scientist, when can you be recovered
enough for this practice?
And that's, you know, that's the philosophy.
So it's not specific.
If you think about it, if you guys are fighting and the Performance Institute
is working with both of you, we make you as big, strong, healthy, have the
easiest time making weight, go into your fight as fueled as you can.
But if I start saying, hey, you know what, he's pretty susceptible to leg kicks,
then it becomes, you know, now we can't support every athlete.
So when you talk to people, it's just like, here's how to get the most out of
your practices, right?
Here's the way to lay this out, just your training blocks.
I don't think a lot of people understand, like, basic training periodization
leading up to a fight.
And then that's the other problem with the UFC.
You don't always have eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks.
Sometimes you've got four weeks, and it's like, all right, well, where's your
weight?
Where are you at?
Where's your skill?
Where's your conditioning?
How can we put those things together in time to get you ready on, you know.
But never specific, like, instruction on how to deal with a certain fighter?
No, never, never.
But that's, it's almost like, for a young fighter to have the access, first of
all, just the access to the physical facility,
like, just all the different modalities you guys have, and, you know, the
strength and conditioning stuff,
and the fact that you can, one of the most impressive things was the camera
setup around the octagon,
so that you could film sparring sequences and technique sequences, and the
fighter, you can back them up and rewind them and watch it,
and you can see how you drop your leg here, see how your, you know, your chin
is up in the air, and all these different little factors.
Well, you think about the philosophy, right?
You have to get close to game speed once or twice a week.
So, for 15, 25 minutes, you're going to get, you're going to risk injury, you're
going to take physical damage that you're not getting paid for, make the most
out of it, right?
Like, review it, treat it like a fight.
Think about our athletes.
They fight two to four times a year.
So, that's a very limited amount of actual footage they have, but if you start
recording your sparring sessions and treating them like a fight,
like, oh, shit, I did this wrong, I did that wrong, then you're going to end up
with more like 80, 90, which is, you know, baseball, basketball, even football.
You've got 20-plus games to, you know, review.
Yeah, and I think it's really important for young fighters also to see
themselves doing certain techniques.
Like, they might not notice, they might think they look better than they do,
like, it's good.
My coach is full of shit, man, and then you, oh, the film, don't lie.
And you're like, yeah, oh, okay, I see what I'm doing wrong there.
It's hard sometimes to mimic, you know, without actually seeing yourself.
Now, you guys, you've been Forrest Griffin, former UFC champion of the motherfucking
world.
No one can ever take that from you, sir.
How's that feel?
It's a beautiful thing now.
It's good, yeah, sure, yeah.
Yeah.
I've moved on.
I've moved on.
I'm over it.
And now I'm VP of Athlete Development at the Performance