
The movement philosophy teaches that moving efficiently and dynamically drives energy flow, health, and performance in MMA, prioritizing mind-led activation over maximal muscle gain.
Breathe with your movement to improve dynamic, efficient, and balanced performance; keep breath moving to fuel the muscles, engage the core, and reduce fatigue in MMA strength training.
Explore the secret move: a yin-yang alternating pattern with full-body rotation that underpins powerful movements like throwing, swinging, running, and jujitsu techniques, and learn to integrate push-pull rotation in conditioning.
Move weight around with curvilinear arcs, rotating the core and limbs inside a small 'bubble' dome to train dynamic, efficient bipedal movements using lighter weights.
Define functional movement by its purpose: perform real functions through curvilinear, bipedal movement with core rotation, prioritizing efficiency, power, and balance over isolated muscle strength.
Explore size versus strength and how motor unit recruitment and coordination enable true strength in MMA by prioritizing movement muscles, efficient patterns, and movement that saves energy over bulk.
Develop head movement and full-body rotation from feet to head to boost agility and core strength in shadowboxing, while mastering hip extension and foot rotation through front and side kicks.
Master stand up mechanics that combine lower body, upper body, and core through hip lifts, posting the foot, tucking under, and turning the hips for MMA.
Explore wall movements that develop pushing power through the legs, core, and arms, with jab-cross patterns, step-ups, kicks, and hip mobility drills for MMA.
Explore grounded movements that build hip rotation, core activation, and agility for mma, including the grounded cartwheel, roundhouse with a hook kick, and ground-based hip escapes.
Learn cable pulley and elastic band drills that fuel core rotation, leg patterning, and push-and-pull coordination to boost MMA balance and rotational power.
Explore dynamic kettlebell drills, including windmill, mohawk, and figure-eight swings, that rotate the core and hips while sweeping from hip to face, emphasizing momentum and safe progression.
Master battle rope movements that fuse tricep extension, bicep curl, and core twisting to deflect an opponent while moving hips, knees, and heels in sync.
Identify contraction types by duration, intensity, and pattern to align training with sport movements, emphasizing quick, alternating push-pull patterns that match bipedal cross crawl and rotation.
Success in sports is always relative.
As a high school athlete, I was relatively successful. I was a national champion wrestler, an all-state football player, and I could bench press 400 pounds. I traveled the world competing internationally, I set high school records, and I earned a scholarship to wrestle at Purdue University. As a student athlete, I was the team captain of the wrestling team, and I earned two degrees in kinesiology, Movement and Sports Science, as well as Health and Fitness.
Despite my relative success, I was relatively unskilled. Wrestling isn't a sport where you can get by without skill, but I was usually much stronger than most of the competition. I often bullied my opponents with my strength, using poor technique to blast through the opponent. If I wasn't so strong and fit, I wouldn't have won so many tournaments or scored as many touchdowns.
However, when I started wrestling in college, my strength had begun to peak, and my mobility had taken a nosedive. I had actually become too strong, and too inflexible, as my competition caught up to me physically. My big, strong muscles had actually become a detriment to my success, as it became more difficult to move fluidly and dynamically. Not only that, but I had also begun to suffer from a string of injuries.
After college, I became a professional mixed martial arts fighter at the American Kickboxing Academy for nine years. I had fought for Strikeforce, which was eventually bought by the UFC. I trained with the likes of Kabib Nurmagomedov, Daniel Cormier, Cain Velasquez, Luke Rockhold, Jon Fitch, Herschel Walker, and many more.
During my career, I learned a great deal about how to create movement that is powerful, balanced, and efficient, because functional movement is so necessary in MMA. No other sport is as unforgiving and punishing, and it eventually broke my body in many ways. MMA exposes your weak chain links like no other, and it had shown me that I needed to change the way I think, live, and train.
Since then, I have been focused on recreating particular strength training exercises, to better fit my needs as a mixed martial artist. I put down the heavy barbell, and began moving lighter weight around my body, instead of pushing away or pulling towards my body. I focused on core rotation and functional movement patterns, instead of size and strength. I learned how to move again, by performing movements that are more appropriate to human biology.
Building muscle mass and lifting heavy weights can be very beneficial to your health and ability to perform as an athlete. However, it can easily be over done, leading to decreased performance, pain, and injury. Becoming big and strong isn't that difficult, but moving with power, balance, and efficiency is.
This course is a quick overview of my training philosophy, followed by demonstration of my favorite, most unique movements. This course is is for people that want to learn something completely new. I guarantee that you will learn something new and begin to see things in a different way!