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Mark Wulfe:
From the global headquarters of The Aasgaard Company in beautiful downtown Wichita Falls, Texas... From the finest mind in the modern fitness industry... The one true voice in the strength and conditioning profession... The most important podcast on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen... Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
Thank you, Mark Wulfe. Appreciate the intro. Thank you for joining us again on Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
We're here with our friend Nick Delgadillo today. And today, we are going to start a new series of discussions here on Starting Strength Radio. We're going to talk about the two- factor model of sports performance preparation. And I'd like to refer you just for background to the article we wrote on on that topic on the website. And I think it's just called the two-factor model of...

Nick Delgadillo:
I believe so.

Mark Rippetoe:
...sports performance. Something similar. Easy to find. Look it up in the article section - it's under my name - and you can prepare by reading that. But basically, the two- factor model is... recognizes that a performance in sports occurs at a certain period, in a certain timeframe. Sports have a season. Competitions have a date. Tournaments have dates. Your preparation leads up to that event. And there's two different components of preparation - training and practice. And we'll talk more about this later. But today, we're going to talk with Nick about fighting and training and practice for fighting.

Mark Rippetoe:
Nick, what is... for those of us that don't know this, don't have this all memorized... What is your what's your background beating people up? For instance, could you have helped Andy Ngo...

Nick Delgadillo:
Who the hell is Andy Ngo?

Mark Rippetoe:
...yesterday in Portland?

Nick Delgadillo:
I don't know who that is.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's the guy that got beat up yesterday in Portland.

Nick Delgadillo:
How did he get beat up?

Mark Rippetoe:
Antifa beat him up real bad.

Nick Delgadillo:
No, there's too many of them.

Mark Rippetoe:
There's a bunch of them. They beat the piss out of him.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's why you need to carry 18 rounds.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yes, 18. He could. He could. He could have probably shut some of that down with the first 8 or 10 rounds, at least. But it's Portland and you're not allowed.

Nick Delgadillo:
You're not allowed to defend yourself.

Mark Rippetoe:
You can't defend yourself in Portland and the police aren't allowed to help up you either. And put him in the hospital. Little concussion. Had a little bleed. Kept him overnight.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because even though there was a bunch of them, they weren't able to effectively beat him up.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, they don't know how to. They just threw a milkshake at him. You know. Threw a rock at him. [Rip mimics the ineffective throwing action] Really one of them goes like that. That's how Antifa fights.

Nick Delgadillo:
And he's actually slipped and got kicked a few times.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. Yeah. He fell down. He got kicked.

Nick Delgadillo:
I can visualize the whole thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's got a big chunk out of his lower eyelid here. You know, they hit him in the head. Those guys are running around swinging bike locks on the ends of chains that they carry. I don't know why none of them have a proper knife or a...

Nick Delgadillo:
Because they can't have them.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because they can't have knives in Portland. Would that actually look bad or something? I don't know what the deal is.

Nick Delgadillo:
What what was this guy doing around these assholes?

Mark Rippetoe:
What he was doing was filming them.

Nick Delgadillo:
Oh he's a journalist.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's a journalist. He's a photojournalist. He happens to work for Quilette. And he was just walking along with them filming. And he's done this several times and he's just a journalist and he gets labeled... Well he gets labeled a conservative journalist when Antifa beats him up because they're left.

Nick Delgadillo:
Of course. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. So who you get beat up by defines who you are. If you were beat up by the Proud Boys - they don't seem to be famous for doing that. But if you were beat up by the Proud Boys, you'd be a leftist journalist, right? And since he got beat up by the fascist anti- fascists, he's a conservative journalist, even though he's not. You know, he's a he's a gay journalist. And he just happens to be interested in people getting beat up by Antifa.

Mark Rippetoe:
So they beat him up pretty bad. And I looked at some of this video and it didn't appear to me that he had any of the tools necessary to defend himself, because, I mean, it's Antifa...

Nick Delgadillo:
If he expected to get beat up...

Mark Rippetoe:
These people are little turds.

Nick Delgadillo:
Sure. And if he expected to get beat up, he would have hopefully taken some precautions.

Mark Rippetoe:
You would think.

Nick Delgadillo:
You would think.

Mark Rippetoe:
But nonetheless...

Nick Delgadillo:
He wasn't... he wasn't expecting to get beat up.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't think he was. I think it was... because he'd done this before. And and I don't think that he'd ever been hurt this bad. But he got hurt pretty bad. And he could have been hurt a hell of a lot worse.

Mark Rippetoe:
Somebody hits you in the head with something... I don't think most people understand that it's not like in the movies where you get hit in the head and you're unconscious for 10 minutes or a convenient period of time for the for the script. And then you just miraculously wake up. If somebody hits you in the head with a crowbar. You're going to... You're going to be fucked up.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's not gonna be good.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not going to be good. Fractured skull's a bad, bad deal, lifelong consequences. And Andy was not prepared for this.

Mark Rippetoe:
I mean, there is a case to be made for everybody... Everybody ought to know what to do in a fight. Because you can't control when it's going to be. Sometimes they oh... things overwhelm you when you don't intend to be antagonistic, when you don't intend to be in a fight. Sometimes... sometimes it happens that they come to you and attack your ass just like they did him.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah. And the moment to figure out that you don't know how to fight is not when you're in the middle of a fight.

Mark Rippetoe:
When you're in the middle of the fight... when you're on the ground getting kicked in the head by some fucking clown with Doc Martins on. And and a fucking pussy - black mask over his face and pussy fucking goggles and a pussy hat on his head so the little pussy can't be recognized because he's a pussy. Everybody in Antifa is a pussy.

Nick Delgadillo:
In one of the most well-off cities in the most well-off country in the world.

Mark Rippetoe:
Everybody in Antifa is a pussy.

Nick Delgadillo:
Goddamn it. I'm going to have to protect myself from Antifa now.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, you are. So am I. I don't mind doing that.

Nick Delgadillo:
There's no Antifa in North Texas. At least in Wichita Falls.

Mark Rippetoe:
Not yet.

Nick Delgadillo:
Not yet.

Mark Rippetoe:
Maybe tomorrow.

Nick Delgadillo:
They won't last long here.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, no, no. It's too hot here for Antifa.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's too hot. Yeah. The masks make them sweat too much.

Mark Rippetoe:
We don't have enough coffee shops.

Nick Delgadillo:
Everybody has guns.

Mark Rippetoe:
Everybody has gun.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's amazing. You don't see a lot of people getting robbed or you don't see mob attacks.

Mark Rippetoe:
You don't see carjackings.

Nick Delgadillo:
Even in Dallas. Every once in a while you get some asshole. What did this guy do the other day? He, like, wanted to have a shootout with the cops. Did you hear about this? He dressed up in a bunch of stupid tactical gear. Oh, and what he... go to a bank? Where'd he go?

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, yeah, I read... about three weeks ago. Yeah, I heard.

Nick Delgadillo:
And the Dallas cops just took him out.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, they just shot him.

Nick Delgadillo:
Just shot him. Oh, it was a government building. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just shot him. Yeah exactly they should've done. Or liked those two guys that tried to tried to invade the book signing.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah the Mohammed drawing contest.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah Mohammed drawing contest. That was about three or four years ago.

Nick Delgadillo:
It didn't last long.

Mark Rippetoe:
These guys got out of the car and started running at the building going Allahoooo Akbar or whatever it is they say. And that the off-duty cop that's outside just pulled his Glock out and went and shot him up. Whap. And they're dead. Yeah. That's just perfect. Oh, my God. That's how it's done here. And but in Portland, apparently it's...

Nick Delgadillo:
Wide open. Open season...gun free zones, man.

Nick Delgadillo:
So here's the deal. So the the the answer your question first of all is, is the... none of us are likely to get involved in these kind of situations. We're not likely to get robbed. We're not likely to get beat up. We're not likely to get stabbed, shot. We're not likely to be involved in an active shooter situation. But with that said, I personally...

Mark Rippetoe:
Especially if we don't go to Portland.

Nick Delgadillo:
Especially if you don't put yourself in shitty situations which is a smart thing to do.

Nick Delgadillo:
So number one problem is most guys especially think they already know how to fight. And they don't.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just because they are guys.

Nick Delgadillo:
Just because they're guys. It's just built into us. We all think we... we're bad ass. And then the other thing is that... just in general, it's good. I believe it's good for everyone. Not not not just guys, but everyone to be able to fight. So just to even have an understanding of what fighting actually is.

Nick Delgadillo:
And let's not even talk about just individual styles or whatever, but the the idea that you and another human being are competing with each other with some stakes involved in a very close and physical encounter, even if, you know... And I'm not talk about fighting street fighting, but where you're training and you're practicing this stuff. It it gives you a perspective that is important. That a lot of us in this comfortable technological world don't have.

Nick Delgadillo:
You get a lot of people walking around who have these silly ideas about their status and their position in life that is completely made up. Because at the end of the day, what you know, I mean, we're we're still animals, we're still mammals, and we still have this hierarchy thing in our brain.

Nick Delgadillo:
So when you get on the mat with somebody, it humbles you because you know you're not a bad ass. Because there's somebody better than you. And it's hard and it's difficult and the process is hard.

Mark Rippetoe:
You can be beat.

Nick Delgadillo:
You can be beat. You can beat. Right. So all the fantasies go away. All the the things that you put into your head from the time you're a little kid about what fighting is like...

Mark Rippetoe:
About what you're gonna say in situations...

Nick Delgadillo:
What you're gonna say and what you're gonna do...

Mark Rippetoe:
Running your mouth. That sort of thing.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you understand that you may be running your mouth at the wrong guy you tend to...

Nick Delgadillo:
And guess what happens? When people train...

Mark Rippetoe:
Like when I said Antifa was bunch pussies, you know that kind of running your mouth. Except that that's true.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's OK. Yeah, that's all right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Except that that part's true...the masks and everything.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah, absolutely. The... what you find is that when you when you're around people that train hard and that actually do things that are difficult and have fought other human beings - even if it's not competitively or, you know, just even in training - those are some of the best people you'll ever deal with because there's no bullshit bullshit. They know what they're capable of at a very, very real level. They know what they're capable of.

Mark Rippetoe:
They know what they can get into. That's what they can get out of.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right. Yep. In all my years of doing this stuff, when I so I got into the fighting stuff in my early 20s, like 21, 22. And in that time I've gotten in one serious fight and it was a huge mistake. Dark time in my history. But since then, as I got more experienced in that kind of world, I mean, you just start avoiding things and you know how to avoid things. You don't want to be in those situations.

Mark Rippetoe:
You cannot always control the outcome of this thing. Like the Antifa pussy might sneak up behind you while you're dealing one of his buddies and hit you in the head with a bike lock. Like a pussy.

Nick Delgadillo:
There's one guy in that group...

Mark Rippetoe:
You know take a sucker punch or stick a shiv in your ass. You know, and and there you are bleeding out like our friend Konstantinovs.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right. There's one guy in that group...

Mark Rippetoe:
The baddest motherfucker on earth is dead.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah. You've got 20 you've got 20 people who are to put in your words, pussies. But you have one guy in there who's not.

Mark Rippetoe:
Or even if he is a pussy and he's willing to sneak up behind you...

Nick Delgadillo:
He's willing to go another level.

Mark Rippetoe:
And stick you in the back. You're still gonna bleed out.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because there's that group mentality and everybody's kind of jumping in, but there's one guy who's real serious about this. And he wants to hurt you. You know, and you can't predict that. I can't predict when that's going to happen.

Mark Rippetoe:
You can't control it because you can't see 360. And you just don't need to be in the situation. Even if it is with a bunch of Antifa pussies. You don't ought to do that. So fight practice teaches you these important things.

Nick Delgadillo:
Of course. Of course. Well, anyway, let's answer the second question, which is my background. I guess so. I always liked martial arts. Everybody does. You know, you like Bruce Lee in fighting movies and kung fu and stuff like that when you're a kid. But martial arts in my head growing up was going to the karate school. You know, that was that was what was everywhere. Karate and Taekwondo everywhere. And I was never interested in in wearing a uniform and in doing katas, sensei and all that stuff. So I never got into it. I played football, played rugby. I like violent things.

Nick Delgadillo:
And in my early 20s, a friend of my brother's told him about Muay Thai. He was doing Thai boxing. And we... And he invited us to come. I was like, I don't know what that is. I looked it up online in the beginnings of the internet. I saw some pictures like this looks cool.

Nick Delgadillo:
So we went down and we go to this little basement, Gold's Gym, downtown, St Louis. And I was blown away. You know, there's just about eight people in there. And these guys are kicking the shit out of these pads. And, you know, nobody's bowing, nobody's doing any formal stuff. And I was like, well, this looks like boxing, you know, it's like an actual fighting, you know? Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Not a bunch of dojo shit.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah. Yeah. So that was it. That was it. I was in. And I started training in that stuff through through that. This was Ron Smith's Muay Thai Academy back in St Louis. And from there, we did some submission grappling stuff too which was my first exposure to any kind of wrestling or anything like that.

Nick Delgadillo:
And, you know, from there I was training anywhere from five to 25 hours a week, depending on what was going on. Then I got into Krav Maga. Krav Maga by the way, is is is mostly bullshit. You know, it's like CrossFit now. Where you started with good intentions and it's just spread too fast, too quickly, affiliate-type thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
Too much commercial potential. And it lost sight of the whole point of the whole thing. In its purest form what is Krav Maga?

Nick Delgadillo:
In the purest form... so you can think of it in terms of like principles. It's taking stuff that from boxing and whatever stuff works and trying to put it together into a system that that you can take somebody who's never done any fighting and get them proficient pretty quickly. All right.

Nick Delgadillo:
Now, that sounds like a good idea and it works pretty well. But the vast majority of Krav Maga going on in the world is basically fitness. You know, with some self-defense kind of stuff thrown in, but there's no real actual fighting going on there.

Nick Delgadillo:
So over the years, you know, I taught Krav Maga for a very long time, was certified through all the big organizations and stuff. But over the years, you know, I learned more about fighting, got more involved in fighting. Actually, I actually did some serious training with people. You know, you put on a suit and you you actually try the things that you're teaching in self-defense class and you quickly realize that shit doesn't work. You know, somebody grabs you and does this, it's not going to work.

Mark Rippetoe:
So may martial arts depend on... How would you say it? An understanding between the two people that are fighting that when I kick you, you're supposed to do the following thing. Right. I've seen that a lot.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's... you go to demonstrations and you you sit there for 10 minutes and you realize this is choreography. This is not fighting this choreography. That' all it is.

Nick Delgadillo:
It really is. And then. Yeah. And it's completely unrealistic in terms of what actually... how people are... So let me give an example. There's a lot of really popular videos out on social media and on YouTube of guys doing really, really amazing looking things in terms of like self-defense, you know, combat. tactical. All this shit that you hear people say. But, you know, all you have to do is watch the the guy that's being demonstrated on and ask yourself, is that actually what somebody would do in this situation?

Nick Delgadillo:
So, for example, someone choke chokes the instructor and he does this awesome move, throws the guy on the ground. And then it looks impressive. It's fast. It's looks cool. But look at the other guy. Don't watch the demonstrator. Watch the other guy and see... if I was being choked like that, would I actually do that? And usually you just see a guy who's kind of just going along with it.

Nick Delgadillo:
So. So that's, you know. So anyway, my my point is that my the thing that I've tried to do over the over the last 10 years is try to figure out stuff that actually works. So, you know, and that means pressure testing. You know, you teach somebody a technique and you have to actually have to test it. And you can't test a headbutt. But if you put a suit on somebody, now you can test the headbutt.

Nick Delgadillo:
And even though you're not creating any actual damage, there's still a reaction. Right. Because your brain will still say, "Oh shit, something's coming at me.".

Nick Delgadillo:
So. So anyway, I've hooked up with various people over the years. More recently, like fit to Fight. Ryan Hoover and those guys. They're doing not Krav Maga, but really Krav Maga in a much better way now. And along the way, you know, still, still have done Muay Thai. Taught striking and then have gotten into jujitsu, especially more recently. I've always kind of been involved.

Nick Delgadillo:
But for the regular person. So here, here's my point. I guess for the regular person to learn how to fight, if you can find a good self-defense instructor, someone who can teach you how to actually fight without beating the hell out of you. And it can be done. That's who you want.

Nick Delgadillo:
But those people are very, very rare, very few and far between.

Mark Rippetoe:
Probably as rare as good barbell coaches.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's exactly right. It's a great analogy. So the next best thing is, is I think Brazilian jujitsu or wrestling. Now, there's no wrestling that adults can do typically. Right. You've got to do it in high school. There might be some wrestling clubs out there and stuff. But, you know, so we're left with jujitsu.

Nick Delgadillo:
Jujitsu is very, very popular. And from day one, your wrestling with somebody and applying these techniques that you're learning against somebody who doesn't want you to do it right. You learn an arm bar, you learn to choke. And this guy doesn't want you to choke them. So you're having to learn this stuff from day one.

Nick Delgadillo:
So anyway, at this point, jujitsu is kind of my thing. I ran a little Krav Maga school here for a little while, got too busy. And now I'm just focusing on jujitsu as far as training for this stuff.

Nick Delgadillo:
If you're if you're talking about actual fighting. And we saw you see this in the evolution of things like the UFC. If you're talking about actual fighting, it ends up looking very much the same. Right.

Nick Delgadillo:
So if you think about it, what...

Mark Rippetoe:
Once we're on the ground...

Nick Delgadillo:
Once we're on the ground. If we're standing up... Guess what? Everybody's throwing a Muay Thai kick. Everybody's punching like a boxer. They're doing takedowns like a wrestler and they're doing groundwork like a jijitsu guy. Because this is all the stuff that actually works. The MMA fighter is good at putting all that together into a into a complete package. Right. So and if we went back thousands of years and you looked at what the Greeks were doing in those early Olympics, I bet it looks very much like what's going on now in an MMA cage.

Mark Rippetoe:
We'll there's only a couple of ways to solve the problem.

Nick Delgadillo:
Exactly. Exactly. If you're going to throw a hard kick, there's only one way you're going to throw a really hard kick. If you're going to defend yourself.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just mechanics.

Nick Delgadillo:
Exactly. Exactly. So. So in terms of training people there.... It all kind of looks the same and... it and getting to our discussion here, it's all about force production. And there's so much technique involved. There's so much time that needs to be spent gaining experience on the mat, practicing, pushing and pulling with another individual, you know, being locked up, learning how to be efficient in your movement that it gets it's easy to blur the training and practice thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it is for lots and lots of sports. And this is why the the two-factor paradigm is so useful, because it allows us to correctly analyze the act of preparing for a performance, no matter when that performance might take place in in any number of sports. But for today's discussion, for fighting.

Mark Rippetoe:
Strength is force production against an external resistance. The external resistance in this particular situation is the opponent. It's fairly easy to understand this. The stronger you are, the more force you can apply against your opponent.

Nick Delgadillo:
Or the ground or anything.

Mark Rippetoe:
Or the ground between your feet and your hands, you're generating force between the point of of force application and the point of force production, which is the ground and the hands. And your kinetic chain between the ground and your hands is where the force is being produced and it's fascinating to me that so many fight guys don't seem to understand that force production is kind of central to their to their to their deal. You know, and they'll argue with you about it.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because they're trying to... They're thinking about... I mean, they all know this. They all know this. If you if you hear people talk and you you see them maybe commenting on a fight and they say, "Wow, she looks real strong." They know. They know. They know. Right. You know. Then know that somebody stronger and bigger.

Mark Rippetoe:
They don't link it back to preparation.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because because they want they want to load the movement pattern, which is functional training. Right. They want to load load a movement pattern rather than actually get strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. They want to load the movement patterns are going to use in the performance. And that's not where strength is built. Strength is built by loading movement patterns, but what movement patterns, when loaded, produce strength? This isn't complicated. It's the squat, the deadlift, the press, the bench press. And that's about it. Yep, that's about it. If you get your deadlift from 200 to 500, you're stronger.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, what movement pattern are you stronger in?

Nick Delgadillo:
Well, all of them.

Mark Rippetoe:
The deadlift, but every other movement pattern as well. Because if you improve your strengths involved in picking a weight up off the floor by 250 percent. There are very few movements that you can perform in any kinetic chain that are not applied.. that that strength does not apply directly to it.

Nick Delgadillo:
I would say no, none. I would say none.

Nick Delgadillo:
What these guys don't understand... and again this applies across all sports, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Sport.

Nick Delgadillo:
Across all sport. They don't understand that the strength is is acquired... is general, right? It's acquired generally. Let's get the whole body strong. And then through your practice, you're you're you're applying that strength into the movement pattern. What you hear is "that doesn't look like fighting." That's the the the thinking the process is. It doesn't look like fighting. How does how does a squat you know... It's the same shit as the Olympic lifters. How does a squat help my kick? How does a squat help me when I'm laying on the ground on my back with somebody on top of me?

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And this is the two factor model. Training is a pattern of what we call it is... accumulating a physiologic adaptation. And the accumulated physiologic adaptation we're talking about here is strength and the accumulation of the adaptation takes place over the whole system. The whole body is stronger.

Mark Rippetoe:
When you when you take your squat from 135 to 405, your whole body got stronger. Yes, the squat does not look like fighting, but it doesn't have to look like fighting. It just needs to make you stronger.

Nick Delgadillo:
It shouldn't look fighting, in fact.

Mark Rippetoe:
It shouldn't look like fighting because.

Nick Delgadillo:
If it does, you're doing the wrong movement.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're doing the wrong movement. You're doing a movement that looks like fighting that's not as capable of making you [as] strong as a squat. A proper barbell squat.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now we get you strong. And then we teach you to apply your new strength, your newly accumulated strength to the problem of fighting by practicing the skill of fighting. And as you get stronger and as you continue to practice, as the strength is accumulating, your strength is being applied through the movement patterns that you utilize in that particular activity to the to the problem. The movement pattern problem you have in the sport. And that sport could be baseball could be tennis, could be golf, could be fighting.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if you can separate these two ideas in your in your in your mind, you'll see that that... Oh, for example, a classic a classic problem that we might run into the strength and conditioning professionals is the idea that our kid who's getting stronger in the gym, his boxing coach, has got him punching the bag, working his heavy bag with weighted gloves.

Nick Delgadillo:
I did that. I've shadow boxed with 10 pound dumbbells.

Mark Rippetoe:
With 10 pound dumbbells.

Nick Delgadillo:
And it doesn't do a goddamn thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
All it does is allow you to practice punching very, very slowly...

Nick Delgadillo:
And you get your shoulders tired.

Mark Rippetoe:
But it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the two processes that're involved in in getting better at punching. If you want to get stronger for punching you bench press, you press, but you also squat and deadlift. Because punches come from the hip. That's right. Punches come from the floor.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's a ground reaction, right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Punches come from the floor.

Nick Delgadillo:
The rest of it is all practicing the movement and efficiency.

Mark Rippetoe:
And then you take your now stronger body and you punch with it.

Nick Delgadillo:
And look, they all know this, right. Because of the guy that walks into the gym the first day, whether it's a Muay Thai gym or a boxing gym or even a jujitsu class. The guy who's strong because he's a body builder or whatever.

Mark Rippetoe:
Or just a strong corn-fed Nebraska boy.

Nick Delgadillo:
He's gonna hit really hard.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's gonna hit you hard.

Nick Delgadillo:
He's gonna be...

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, he's going to hit you hard and you don't want him to hit you, because you know you know what? He's strong.

Nick Delgadillo:
And he's gonna be and he's gonna be difficult to deal with on the ground. Even if he has no skill, he's gonna be difficult to deal with.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. In fact, the fact that he doesn't actually know how to spar correctly with you is.

Nick Delgadillo:
Actually a problem.

Mark Rippetoe:
Makes him more dangerous. Makes him more dangerous on the mat because we're just sparring and you don't want this guy pulling your head off accidentally because he could do that.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, we used to when I was fencing a long time ago, we used to have the biggest problems we'd have is with brand new guys that didn't know how to fence. They'd slap the piss out with their foils and you know... because they don't know how to fence. And they'll hurt you. Specifically because they lack the skill to spar correctly.

Nick Delgadillo:
They don't have a skill that none of the efficiency but the force production is there is the. And the the the unbridled movement, you know, where they just do whatever is unpredictable. And when you're used to going against skilled people, you you kind of know what they're gonna do. You kind of know what they're not going to do.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. And in a situation like fencing where the thing is extremely formalized and they're abiding by rules and all that stuff that these new guys don't know. There... that's more of a problem. But if you come into I mean, you got a big three pound, strong white belt jujitsu guy.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah. It's gonna be bad.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's gonna be he's gonna be a problem for a one hundred eighty five pound purple belt.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah he is.

Mark Rippetoe:
He damn sure it's.

Nick Delgadillo:
No not that the...so, so. Yeah. I mean that's a kind of a different discussion. This ...and dealing with self-defense stuff. Teaching, teaching self-defense stuff, teaching women you know who are who are gonna be smaller, who are gonna be weaker. The smaller they are, the weaker they are, the better their... the more skill they have to have.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yes to compensate for a lack of strength.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yes. Yes. Or they need to carry weapons. I mean, that's just the truth.

Mark Rippetoe:
So ideal situation...Get strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. Get strong. Now there will be people that are... And you're one of them. You're listening to this right now and you're saying, "Ah, Rippetoe doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Ah, Delgadillo doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about".

Nick Delgadillo:
Just another fat guy.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, the problem is Delgadillo does know what he's talking about and Rippetoe does know what he's talking about. And you know, 30 years ago, I did quite a bit of fighting myself. I haven't discussed this with many people because it's none of anybody's business, but we used to have a little group at the gym. And we'd we'd spar twice a week at the old gym location...long time ago.

Nick Delgadillo:
Like boxing gloves, bare knuckles, what are we talking about?

Mark Rippetoe:
No, we were doing a kind of a informal version of so we were just going about three quarter speed, you know, not full contact, but just practicing and movements and stuff and thinking about how to solve these kinds of problems.

Mark Rippetoe:
And we did this for three or four years. And we had mats and we'dd grapple a little bit. And you know so I've done a little bit of this. You know, not it be difficult to find a guy that hadn't fought a little.

Nick Delgadillo:
Hadn't messed around with it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Messed around with what we did. But we you know, we actually applied some attention to it at one time, long time ago. So I kinda. And, you know, every once in a while I'll find myself in a situation. And the the the patterns of analysis that I learned are still there.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm standing in a particular position where a guy comes up behind me. What am I going to do? My foot's thinking about it. That's what you... That's the point of doing this kind of thing for self-defense is thinking through situations and determining in advance what you would do in that situation.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm going out to the car. What if there's a guy waiting at the front quarter panel. What am I going to do? Thinking about it, don't ever get just absolutely unprepared. Let somebody get the complete drop on you. And that's what we're talking about is why you need to practice your fighting.

Mark Rippetoe:
But the two-factor model is... while it may not be important for for self-defense thinking.

Nick Delgadillo:
No, it it is though. It is though.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's certainly... it's certainly important for competition.

Nick Delgadillo:
It is. But it's also important for self-defense because because the the... to the extent that you are going to hit somebody, you need to be able to hit them as hard as you can. If you're doing self-defense. To the extent that somebody's going to pick you up and slam you on the ground or grab you, you have to be as strong as you possibly can. To be able to handle those situations to the maximum to your maximum ability. Right. Right. And not only that, but the... But having more muscle mass makes you more resilient.

Mark Rippetoe:
Makes you harder to pick up, harder to move around because you'll resist.

Nick Delgadillo:
And if you do get hit, you have more protecting you. You know, you have more stuff, more mass. Things break less easy. Yeah, right. So and so for. Yeah. For it for self-defense. Is this this thing applies. Absolutely.

Nick Delgadillo:
And the more self-defense oriented you are, the less you probably need to worry about cardio and all this other... because that's the next thing we need to talk about. Because the other the other side of this thing is, "Yeah. OK. Strength is great. But what about cardio, bro? You got to have cardio to fight."

Mark Rippetoe:
You gotta have abs to fight.

Nick Delgadillo:
You got to have abs. You got to have cardio. And if you if you listen to commentary on MMA fights, it's like, "Oh, he's a cardio machine." You know, that's why he's so good. Cardio this, cardio that. You know, so. So that's gonna be the big argument here. OK. Let's train like power lifters. And this is what you hear people say all the time: "Do you want to be a powerlifter or do you want to be a martial artist? You want to be a powerlifter or you want to do this." We're not powerlifting, we're getting strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
They think that anybody with a 500 pound squat is a powerlifter.

Nick Delgadillo:
Or who does sets of five.

Mark Rippetoe:
Who does sets of five is a powerlifter. At that point

Nick Delgadillo:
But what about my cardio?

Mark Rippetoe:
Puzzles me. "What about your cardio?" How long does a fight last?

Nick Delgadillo:
Well, like ring or like a real, real fight.

Mark Rippetoe:
I mean, like a fight.

Nick Delgadillo:
10 seconds, 20 seconds. I think 20 seconds is a long time.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's a long ass fight. That's a long.... I've never seen one that lasted two minutes. Some altercation in some guy's front yard across the street might last... might last that long. But if you really look at that...

Nick Delgadillo:
If two guys don't actually know how to fight, it might go a minute, 30 seconds.

Mark Rippetoe:
Two guys yelling at each other are not fighting. Two guys yelling at each other in the front yard for five minutes are not fighting.

Nick Delgadillo:
But they might be grabbing each other's shirts and rolling around on the ground or something. But if anybody knows how to fight, that's gonna be pretty quick. 20, 30 seconds.

Mark Rippetoe:
Pretty much over with pretty quickly.

Nick Delgadillo:
10-20 seconds.

Mark Rippetoe:
And 10, 20, 30 seconds a minute, two minutes is not a cardio situation.

Nick Delgadillo:
Not. Well, look, and even even a five minute round is not a cardio situation.

Mark Rippetoe:
Not really.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's not because it's it's short bursts of very, very high intensity.

Mark Rippetoe:
That accumulate to five minutes...

Nick Delgadillo:
To accumulated to five minutes. I've seen... I heard people - and I used to do this and I used to do this. Ok, I'm sparring for five minute rounds. I'm sparring for three minute rounds. So I'm gonna set a timer for 10 minutes and push the prowler for 10 minutes.

Nick Delgadillo:
Guess what? After the first 10 seconds, you're not doing anything like fighting. You're just trudging along behind this prowler. You know, it's not like that. So a better way to train is to do 10 second sprints on a prowler.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ten second heats.

Nick Delgadillo:
And do them over and over and over.

Mark Rippetoe:
Accumulate 10, 10 second heats on the prowler. Ten seconds, rest ten seconds, ten more seconds...

Nick Delgadillo:
Or even better, just practice the fucking thing. That's an even better way to do it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Get strong...

Nick Delgadillo:
Forget the prowler.

Mark Rippetoe:
Get strong and spar. At 75 percent.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because there's nothing more specific to the thing that you're doing than actually doing the thing. So. Right. You know, and the problem is when when the first time that somebody gets into a... starts sparring, first time that somebody goes to jujitsu class, the first thing that they'll tell you is, oh, my God, that's the hardest thing I've ever done. Your heart's beating. You know, it's and that doesn't feel like lifting weights, lifting weights doesn't makes you feel like that unless, you know, you're hitting a PR set of five deadlifts. You might get close, but it doesn't feel anything like drowning, like you feel on a mat.

Nick Delgadillo:
So people are trying to recreate that, that feeling in the gym or, you know...

Mark Rippetoe:
When they were better off experiencing that and obtaining the conditioning for it on the mat.

Nick Delgadillo:
While getting strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
While getting... while getting strong over here in another workout. In another workout.

Mark Rippetoe:
This is I you know, this comes up in discussions of soccer all the time. You know, "What are we going to do for conditioning for soccer? I know you say we need to squat and deadlier for soccer. And do presses and benches to get strong for soccer. But what about getting ready for soccer? What kind of cardio do I need to do getting ready for soccer?"

Mark Rippetoe:
And the question is always, "Are you practicing soccer?" Are you practicing soccer real easy or are you practicing soccer? Do you not think that soccer practice provides conditioning...for soccer? How often are you playing a game? Once a week? You think that two hour game is not producing a conditioning effect?

Nick Delgadillo:
And if your practice isn't producing a conditioning effect you're not practicing right.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're not practicing correctly.

Nick Delgadillo:
Because it's not only the movement pattern. It's not only the skill that you're practicing, you also need to be practicing the conditioning and use of it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, you ought to be playing at at game intensity.

Nick Delgadillo:
Or somewhere close.

Mark Rippetoe:
To obtain the conditioning at game intensity.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you can't divorce the conditioning aspect of performance from the context of preparation for the next performance. A soccer game on Saturday contributes to next Saturday's game. And this... this is true of all of these sports that people think, well, we have to... We have to go run a mile for.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, you don't, because you're playing the sport. What kind of conditioning? For tennis is better than tennis? You know. If I was conditioning for... If I was going to try to dream up some conditioning for tennis, it would probably be cone drills or something like that. Direction change, kind of short, rapid things like that. But I don't even know it's necessary.

Nick Delgadillo:
I don't think it's necessary either.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because that's what it would look like if you wanted to do something off the court. But on the court you're practicing not only the the circumstances that that produce the conditioning effect, but you're practicing racquet skills too.

Nick Delgadillo:
I think with I think with conditioning and... you disagree. Tell me if you disagree with this. But with conditioning, the spectrum of what's useful is much, much smaller than on the strength side. Right. So if... here's what I mean by that.

Nick Delgadillo:
If you've got like let's let's imagine just a spectrum or a triangle or something. You have your sport at the top of that. The most specific thing you can do for that sport is the sport. And then that drops off very, very quickly. So anything that deviates from that... so your cone drills might be maybe one step below that and, but... there's not much else after that.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, running a mile is not even in the triangle.

Nick Delgadillo:
Right. So if you if you were to if you were to try to match from a from a a metabolic standpoint or from an energy system standpoint, the... what you're going to need. Probably the best thing is... is just pushing a prowler because I mean, it's not going to match the the sport, really. But you're you're using your energy systems as much as you possibly can for short durations. And then maybe some of that will transfer into your sport. But it's again, it's I don't think it's necessary.

Nick Delgadillo:
So, yeah, I mean, if you if you want conditioning, make it as general as possible so that it... you use a prowler or something. Otherwise you just need to be practicing the sport, you know, use a prowler because it's going to do what you want in terms of the energy systems, but really you don't need to.

Mark Rippetoe:
That is actually a training...

Nick Delgadillo:
That's training. That's exactly.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's a training problem. You are accumulating a physiologic adaptation.

Nick Delgadillo:
And that was my clumsy way of saying that. So you're using the prowler to accumulate that that physiological adaptation, where trying to do like tennis with a weighted racquet or with ankle weights on or or sparring with weighted gloves or hitting a heavy bag with heavy with heavy gloves on is too much like the sport, like with the movement pattern to to be of any use.

Mark Rippetoe:
In fact, there is a there is an argument to be made that your conditioning activities, really, and... your training activities in general, whether it's strength training or conditioning training, should not look like the sport prep... the sport practice itself because movement patterns that are specific in terms of accuracy and precision demand specificity, so to speak.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you are going to throw a hundred and fifty five gram baseball at the catcher's mitt, 60 feet, 6 inches away, the practice needs to be a hundred and fifty five gram baseball. thrown at the catcher's mitt 60 feet, 6 inches away. You don't practice throwing it at 75 feet. You don't practice throwing it at 30 feet. You don't practice throwing a two hundred and twenty five gram baseball. And I know that heavy baseballs are are thrown by these guys. And I'm just... I just think that's insane.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, the the more work that you can do that is specific to the performance, the better. And the less work you can do that is semi-specific to the performance, then the last chance you will have of interfering with an extremely specific motor pathway that you're trying to trying to establish. The motor pathway - practice. The part that you must do with accuracy and precision is exquisitely specific to the performance.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you get strong for baseball by squatting, benching, pressing and deadlifting. And you get good at pitching by throwing the ball at the catcher's mitt the proper distance away.

Mark Rippetoe:
Batting practice is the same thing. You don't practice batting with a heavy bat. If you get good at practicing with a heavy bat where you can hit the ball with a heavy bat, what happens when you go back to the game bat? Now you're swinging it faster and you just practiced the timing incorrectly.

Nick Delgadillo:
And that makes that... that'll make sense, even even to... I think that argument makes sense to a broad range of people. The argument you just made. But when you involve something. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but when you involve something like fighting, there's this there's this like magical aspect that people have in their mind. And that can't possibly be the same. It can't possibly be the same because now you're you're involved in combat with another individual. But people don't want to understand that it should be approached the same way as any strength and conditioning should be approached. Get strong. Practice the sport.

Mark Rippetoe:
Practice the sport as close to the sport as you can practice it. Get strong. Spar. Get strong. Play soccer. You get strong. Play tennis. Get strong. Practice football. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
If there's a sport that has a conditioning component that you can't obtain in practice. There aren't many...

Nick Delgadillo:
There aren't any. What is there? What is there that would be like that.

Mark Rippetoe:
Marathon.

Nick Delgadillo:
Well, yeah okay.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now you get into a situation where you've got extreme endurance sports or...

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah, I got you.

Mark Rippetoe:
See training for marathon is the same principle as training for strength. You are trying to accumulate a physiologic adaptation that you don't have right now. What's the best way to train for a marathon?

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, I don't think it's running twenty six point two miles.

Nick Delgadillo:
They'll agree with you.

Mark Rippetoe:
None of them do that.

Nick Delgadillo:
None of them do that.

Mark Rippetoe:
None of them actually do that.

Nick Delgadillo:
But but that the reason for that is, is because the marathon is so stressful. And so damaging. You can't do it.

Mark Rippetoe:
You can't do it but two or three times a year. Even crazy people don't do it any more than that.

Nick Delgadillo:
Sure. But most most sports don't fall... I mean, there's cycling, there's distance cycling.

Mark Rippetoe:
An extreme example. That's an extreme example. And...

Nick Delgadillo:
Most sports are somewhere in the middle.

Mark Rippetoe:
Most sports are somewhere in the middle. That's absolutely true.

Mark Rippetoe:
Powerlifting and marathons...

Nick Delgadillo:
That's the other end. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Are are two sports where training and practice are kind of similar.

Nick Delgadillo:
Right.

Nick Delgadillo:
But even that is not absolutely 100 percent true because power lifters have to use equipment. They use heavy, heavy singles for third attempt. You can't really practice third attempts in your training because then that doesn't become it... it doesn't look like training. You can't just do heavy singles all the time. And you've got to do some other stuff for it. But on that spectrum, training for powerlifting looks more like a performance than training for football does.

Mark Rippetoe:
On the other hand, endurance stuff like marathon... training for marathon and practice for marathon are kind of the same thing as marathon technically is not complicated. There's some strategy involved in it, but it's one foot in front of the other. And it's just a bunch of running. Training for powerlifting - bunch of lifting weights.

Mark Rippetoe:
But football. He's here in the middle. He's here in the middle. The game doesn't look like anything but the game. The game doesn't look like lifting weights. Right.

Nick Delgadillo:
So any use that they use to understand this. I mean, when I when I played football in high school, you... everybody knew you lifted weights in the offseason. And you did football in season.

Mark Rippetoe:
You got big and strong.

Nick Delgadillo:
Right. So the way I used to explain it is... it's just it's no different than football. You you train in the gym and then you go do the thing that you're gonna do. And it's just it's just baffling. You see, the classic thing is the boxers doing roadwork. Yes, boxers doing roadwork, you know, and it's just they still they I think they still do that.

Mark Rippetoe:
They still do that.

Nick Delgadillo:
They still do that. Running five miles. Now, there might be some mental aspect of that. To suffer for that long.

Mark Rippetoe:
I can't. You know, I just I really have thought about that quite a bit.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's completely useless.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't see point in it.

Nick Delgadillo:
There isn't any point.

Mark Rippetoe:
In road work for boxing... It's just what we've always done, so we're going to continue to do it. Muhammad Ali did road work. So by God, he was the best boxer that's ever lived. So by God we're going to do by God road work.

Nick Delgadillo:
And was running for Muhammad Ali difficult? It wasn't. It wasn't difficult.

Mark Rippetoe:
No. And Muhammad Ali wasn't the greatest boxer probably that's ever lived because he ran five miles.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right. Other shit was involved, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. Do you understand this? I hope you guys understand what I'm talking about because this is terribly important to understand. Sometimes we're good despite the fact that the people who are training us are morons. OK, happens all the time.

Mark Rippetoe:
Functional training for football now. Past 10 or 15 years. Strength conditioning profession has jumped off a cliff. They have jumped off of the cliff. They have decided that the weight room is the place to display your athletic ability that the recruiter hired kids to do.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's everywhere, though. It's not just... Look, you've got these... you've got these high level jujitsu people and you follow them on social media and stuff. And you've got like you've got a champion jujitsu person, jujitsu player, and they're they're doing jujitsu stuff with like a band. With a band like as if as if...

Mark Rippetoe:
That's going to make you stronger.

Nick Delgadillo:
As if having another person on top of you is not enough when you're actually doing jujistu. So let's put a band on it. Because the strength and conditioning guy doesn't know what jujitsu is.He just sees a move and he's like, oh, yeah...

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, let's just load that movement.

Nick Delgadillo:
Let's do that with a band.

Mark Rippetoe:
Let's load the movement. Let's take the movements we're going to use in the performance and load them. Because that should be obviously the best way to get strong for that movement. No.

Nick Delgadillo:
It's not.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not. And I should not have to explain this to any of you. This is... you have to understand that there's not any better way to get strong than a heavy deadlift and a heavy squat and heavy press and heavy bench press. There's no better way to get strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
How many weight rooms at D1 schools and pro weight rooms - you know, at the training facility for the team - are set up to do resisted rotations because the sport is perceived to be rotational, right? Most of them. Most of them. For baseball players. Resist the rotation.

Mark Rippetoe:
Do you not understand that... Here's here. Let me make it... Let me put this in terms that you can understand. Are steroids rotational?

Mark Rippetoe:
Do steroids act in a way that makes your rotational strength specifically strong? Are there any rotational steroids? No. What do steroids do?

Nick Delgadillo:
And why are they banned?

Mark Rippetoe:
And why are they banned?

Nick Delgadillo:
Why are they banned in the UFC?

Mark Rippetoe:
Because they make you stronger generally, because strength is a general adaptation.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, once you get your brain wrapped around the idea that there aren't any technique steroids, that there aren't any rotational steroids, that steroids just make you stronger then you are beginning to crack the nut of the problem.

Mark Rippetoe:
The problem is that you are either too lazy to do your heavy deadlifts to get strong or you're relying on somebody for strength and conditioning advice that doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. All right. This a bad problem.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you understand that steroids are good for your performance, then it's not much of a leap to realize that strength is good for your performance and that the general acquisition of strength - like steroids give you - are beneficial for your sport. And they're not specific. Strength as a generally acquired characteristic. Taking steroids makes you stronger generally. They don't make you stronger rotationally or positionally. They make you stronger generally.

Mark Rippetoe:
So do deadlifts and squats and deadlifts and squats are not illegal. Deadlifts and squats... WADA doesn't test for deadlifts and squats...at least not yet.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yes, steroids on steroids don't improve your reaction time. They don't improve your ability to throw a punch, other than that, they make you they make you punch stronger.

Mark Rippetoe:
They make you punch stronger. They make you able to hit harder.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right. That's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. So Barry Bonds has to go - favorite topic - Barry Bonds has to go talk to John McCain. My dislike for John McCain started with the hearings. The Barry Bonds thing. Here is this pompous old man in the Senate of the United States - the greatest deliberative body on earth, right - who has decided to involve itself with professional sport.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. Now, I'm sorry. I think they have other things to do.

Nick Delgadillo:
Maybe. A budget maybe?

Mark Rippetoe:
Maybe produce a budget every once in a while, you know. But no. No. We've got to talk to... We got to talk to a baseball player about growth hormone and steroids in sports.

Mark Rippetoe:
Okay. To begin with, nobody in the Senate of the United States understands any aspect of either growth hormone or steroids or professional sports. They just wanted the cameras on them. They just wanted the photo-op to say, wanted to.. they wanted to look involved in popular culture. They're doing something. They're making making America safe for the kids. That's exactly, exactly what the hell they're doing.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it made me ill to watch these fools up there talking about Barry Bond's trainer having once injected him with human growth hormone.

Nick Delgadillo:
And Canseco's like [Nick looks around] And everybody else, too.

Mark Rippetoe:
John McCain is not dead yet, I'll have to go talk to him.

Nick Delgadillo:
They're all sitting around the locker room like, oh shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh Shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
Like human growth hormone does a goddamn thing for sports performance anyway. That's the stup... But what did you do, you idiots?

Mark Rippetoe:
What did you do when you sat there and told every kid in the United States that growth hormone is all that separates you from Barry Bonds? What kind of idiocy?

Nick Delgadillo:
Or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mark Rippetoe:
This makes exactly as much sense as promising free health care to illegal immigrants.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, you don't think that'll make them want to come?

Nick Delgadillo:
No and they believe it, too.

Mark Rippetoe:
And they believe it.

Nick Delgadillo:
They believe it, too. Yeah, he's a cheater. He's a cheater. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cheater because he took steroids.

Mark Rippetoe:
This whole thing started back in 1988 with Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis. And this was the first extremely public airing of the steroid controversy.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the news media spent about a solid month telling every high school kid in the world that all they had to do to beat Carl Lewis was take steroids. That's all they had to do to beat Carl Lewis, is do what Ben Johnson did and take steroids. Like Carl Lewis hadn't taken any.

Mark Rippetoe:
But what the hell do you think you're accomplishing by focusing so much attention on something you so thoroughly misunderstand?

Mark Rippetoe:
And what is the net effect of that? Why you just advertised steroids to a whole bunch of people who had never even thought about it. You didn't know what the hell they were, but now you've told them. And because, you know, you're Sports Illustrated, you know, you're ESPN, you're the experts, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
You just told all those kids that they need to go get some steroids...

Nick Delgadillo:
And you're forcing them...

Mark Rippetoe:
And guess what they did?

Nick Delgadillo:
They got some steroids.

Mark Rippetoe:
They got some steroids.

Nick Delgadillo:
And then you're forcing these guys to lie too, you know. Look, Lance Armstrong is an asshole, but everybody on his fucking team is on shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. Yeah. Like he's the only cyclist...

Nick Delgadillo:
He's the only one. Right. He's the only cyclist... And not only on the team, but how about in the entire thing. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
The whole sport. It's the dirtiest sport on earth. If you're considering drugs to be dirty.

Nick Delgadillo:
That's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
But, once again, boys and girls. What do drugs do? They make you stronger generally. They don't make you stronger in a circle. They don't make you stronger swinging a bat. They make you stronger. And what is the easier way to do it? Far more effective way to do that, especially if you've never trained for strength?

Nick Delgadillo:
Get strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
Get strong: squats, press, bench, press, deadlift. Get strong.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you don't have to go talk to John McCain if you do that. Thankfully, we don't have to talk to him anymore.

Mark Rippetoe:
But you don't. What it basically boils down to is, is everybody knows that strength has to be trained for for sports, everybody.

Nick Delgadillo:
And they know it's important.

Mark Rippetoe:
They know it's important. It's important enough that they want to take steroids to get stronger. But the strength and conditioning people who abdicate their responsibility for showing their athletes how to accumulate a strength adaptation - because they don't know themselves because they're not any good at their job - are really kind of the gateway drug here for for steroids. Because what we're doing in weight room is dancing around with 10 pound dumbbells on bosu balls and stuff.

Mark Rippetoe:
How am I supposed to get strong doing that? And I know I need to be strong. So what am I going to do?

Nick Delgadillo:
Or how do I keep my how do I keep my knees healthy for the next five years.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because a strong leg muscles keep my knees from getting injured. How am I going to do that if I'm not squatting and deadlifting?

Mark Rippetoe:
Guess I'll go get some steroids.

Mark Rippetoe:
Anytime you say steroids, what you're saying is strength.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yeah. Strength.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's what you mean when you say steroids. You're saying strength. And how is strength best acquired? Squat, bench press, press, deadlift.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you're not doing that, then you're ignoring the training part of athletic preparation. You may be practicing baseball in a perfectly adequate way, but if you're not doing the other half of the preparation two-factor paradigm, then you are not prepared for performance. This applies to everything. And especially fighting. When laying your hands on an opponent and moving him around is the nature of the win.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yep. And you and nobody will really understand this until they've actually done it. That's that's the thing though, right?

Nick Delgadillo:
So everybody everybody is comfortable doing what they're doing now. And there they're hesitant to shift into another way of doing things. But for for the people out there who are who are thinking about this stuff, thinking about how to train, how to get better at their sport, there's nothing that you can do - and this is this is, again, a fundamental thing about the two-factor model - there's nothing that you can do for a given period of time that will improve your performance more than getting strong.

Nick Delgadillo:
So, you know, after the after the initial three months, four months, six months of your sport, let's say you get in jujitsu and you suck the first day, you don't know anything. But after that phase where you have have established a level of competence where you you're actually a little bit effective, beyond that point, the timeline of improving stretches way, way out. You're not going to get any much better, significantly better for another year.

Mark Rippetoe:
In terms of skill.

Nick Delgadillo:
In terms of skill. But what you can do is spend three months getting strong, getting brutally strong. And guess what? You'll immediately be better.

Mark Rippetoe:
Immediately be better at the same level of same level of skill.

Nick Delgadillo:
Yes, right. At the same level skill. Yes. But it's going to require that you take a step back and get the ideas you have about strength and conditioning out of your brain. And look, just go to class, practice your skill, do your stuff, and then spend two to three days in the gym getting strong and watch what happens.

Nick Delgadillo:
You know, you can always go back to doing heavy weighted walking lunges. You can always go back to punching with a band wrapped around your shoulder. You always go back to all that bullshit. But, you know, spend some time getting strong. And your performance, the performance will improve. It happens every single time.

Mark Rippetoe:
Every single time without fail..

Mark Rippetoe:
Nick, thanks for being with us today. Nick's been doing this a long time and you need to listen to what we're talking about. Fighting may happen to you. And a smart man is prepared. A smart woman is prepared.

Nick Delgadillo:
Be prepared. Scout's honor. Be prepared.

Mark Rippetoe:
Thanks. See you next time on Starting Strength Radio.

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