Joe Rogan - Martial Arts vs. Martial Skills

I think there's a balance to doing things and it's highlighted by what you just said. There's a balance and it's a lot of what we were talking about earlier about Joel Jameson versus Louis Simmons versus like someone who's like super technical versus someone who's just a fucking mad dog and just wants you to just go out and do it and don't be a pussy. Your mindset that allowed you to take that fight with no training and then take another fight after that with no training and then take another fight after that with no, just this mindset of fuck it, let's just do this. There's a balance between that and then you realizing okay, I gotta really learn how to do this. If I'm gonna really be a fighter, I'm gonna really define myself and I'll really go out and make a mark. I gotta learn what the fuck I'm doing. Exactly. There's both things there. That's that balance. Like you need both things. You have to have a certain amount of fuck it in you. You have to have a certain amount. For a sport, is it called an MMA sport? It always seemed to me to be, it's too defining or too, it's too limited. Fighting is more than a sport. It's an expression of what you're capable of. Absolutely. Who you are is a human. That's where one distinction I've made over the years is the difference between martial skills and martial arts. Everybody always calls everything and compasses it into a martial art. When we go to the gym and we're training arm bars, do 100 arm bars, that's not an art. That's not your expression of your body in a combat scenario. That's a martial skill. When we go in competition, now we're expressing our art. I think this is an important distinction to be made. I think it's something that I get so tired of hearing. I train martial arts and I train martial skills and then I express my art. That's a very interesting way of putting it. How many years after you initially started seriously training were you on the Ultimate Fighter? Four or five. I remember when you were on the Ultimate Fighter and they stole your chew. Somebody fucked with your chew? That's what everybody remembers. I remember that because I remember there's some guys that play tough guy, there's some guys that put on a show and puff up their chest and say some shit that they might not necessarily mean. Then there's some guys that say some shit and you go, uh-oh, this dude's fucking serious. I remember when they fucked with your chew. I remember watching that and I'd go, this motherfucker's serious. Matt Brown's not a joker. When you fought Matt Arroyo, that was another example of it. There's skill wise. Matt Arroyo is a very talented guy and still is. Good jujitsu guy, good fighter. That was a battle of minds. Your mind. I don't know if you knew that I fought him before that too. But the first time I fought him, and this is why it was such a no brainer to say to fight, I fought him the first time on 24 hours notice. I wasn't training her, I was training a girl and she was going to Florida to fight. When I got there, we're driving to the weigh-ins and the promoter, I heard him talking on the phone and I heard him say, oh, we don't have an opponent for him? I said, hey, what do you need an opponent for? He's like, well, this guy, Matt Arroyo, 170. I said, dude, I'll fight. How much will you pay me? They're like, I have 400, 500 bucks. I was like, dude, gotta pay my rent. I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. I said, I can't make weight because I got like one hour. He said, it's cool. I fought him on 24 hours notice and beat him. He wanted redemption for that. That fight was an... One of the things about watching you fight is someone's seen a lot of people fight. There's moments in exchanges where after the exchange, a guy will try to take a break or a guy will try to catch his breath or move pace. The obligatory break, you should call it. There's little breaks and then there's guys who recognize those breaks and push in. You're a guy who pushes in. When there's a break, you're like, oh, no, motherfucker. There's no breaks here. There's no breaks here. You just get on, dudes. It makes things very intense. That's the thing about all your fights. They're very intense. There's a certain level of violence that you bring into the octagon that someone has to be prepared for. There's some guys that are prepared for it and makes for amazing fights like your fight with Robbie Lawler. Holy shit, was that a crazy fight. Then there's guys who just can't keep the pace. They just can't keep that, keeping you off of them. I think my goal as a martial artist, as a fighter, a martial, whatever you call it, combat guy. I got to get my skills up to the point where it matches the mind. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. I mean, a lot of guys struggle the other way. I think one of the things that I talk about a lot that ... You see, I don't think that I was necessarily born this way. This is where I think a lot of people get confused. I mean, I was certainly born with an inclination towards fighting. I wouldn't be where I'm at without that. I work a lot on my mind. I do a lot of stuff. I've always been obsessed with martial arts and combat as a whole. I hear other people say they're obsessed. Connor made it really famous when he started saying it. I think my obsession goes far, far beyond what anybody's even close to. I don't think their definition of obsession even is comparable to mine at all. I'm far more obsessed. I've read probably ... I got a library of sports psychology books, of strength and conditioning books, of martial arts books, all that stuff. I mean, it's literally on my mind 25 years later. One of the things I really focus on is the sports psychology part. I think that is why it's expressed that way in the fight. You hear a lot of people, they'll say ... How often have you heard like, man, my mind's already strong. I ain't scared when I walk in there or stupid shit like that. I always say, do you think Michael Jordan stopped practicing layups? Do you think Jordan Burroughs stopped practicing double legs? Do you think that Arnold Schwarzenegger stopped doing bicep curls? Because it's good doesn't mean that you stopped. Can't be improved upon. Yeah, it can be improved upon and you don't stop. I think the mind is one of those things that can always be better. We're not tapping into ... I mean, what are we tapping into? Like 10% of our brains? That's all bullshit. That's bullshit. Yeah, that's bullshit. They used to think that. They used to think that. That's something they say, but the reality is your brain has a bunch of different quadrants for all sorts of different functions. When you're utilizing a certain portion of your brain, that's the portion of your brain that's responsible for those actions. Okay. Either way, our minds are certainly far more unlimited and far more potential than we're tapping into. Well, I think your mind is a lot like your body and it performs and it does what you ask of it. If you just are a lazy bitch, you doesn't do anything but sit around and watch TV and you don't ever challenge your mind, I think your mind is weak and it atrophies. Absolutely. Yeah. When you say that you have all these books and you say that you work on your mind, do you have a daily practice that you do? Do you meditate? I meditate. You know, daily is sort of a... I hate saying I do it daily because I skip days and I'm going to have three kids, which you know how that goes. Yeah. But at the same time, I try to use everything as an opportunity to practice on my mind too. Right? How you do anything is how you do everything, right? Yes. Right? So I think we can use opportunities all the time. And but yes, I do meditate. I do tons of visualization. I have my strength and conditioning coach I work with now. He's also got a degree in sports psychology. So we integrate a lot of that in the training itself. For instance, like doing... We do these 200 yard sprints on the force treadmill that are just miserable. That I mean, by the time you're done, you just don't have anything left. It's a complete drain. And then as soon as you're done, like if you stand out of tension, right? I have to stand like a military attention straight up and down and not let the concept of your body shutting down affect your ability to maintain a posture. Right? And that's just a mental thing. A hundred percent, right? It's solely mental. That's just one example. We do a million things like that. But yeah, I do tons and tons of visualization, which is a consistent marker of how to do high performers, a consistent thing that high performers do. I think this is well known. I have a mental coach specifically that kind of holds me accountable for a lot of the things. You know what I mean? And we talk a lot back and forth about the different ways to create habits. I think that's probably the number one thing is creating habits, right? But he holds me accountable for everything. And I think that's probably the biggest key is just being held accountable for every action that you do. Have you ever used a sensory deprivation tank? Absolutely. My strength coach has one. Beautiful. Yeah, I love it. And I go in about 45 to an hour. Do you work on shit in there? Do you think about techniques? You know, I don't really. I use that as a time. So I try to practice this form of meditation that I, you know, I can't remember the name of it. Kishnamaru. You ever heard of him? Kishnamaru? I don't know why it's not coming to my head right now, but he was one of Bruce Lee's guys. He's an Indian meditation guy and everything. His form of meditation was to completely clear your mind, which is, I guess, like is actually impossible, right? Like there's no way to just have no thought at all. But that's sort of what I try to strive for is go literally no mind at all. What I do is think about only my breath. That's it. I concentrate on my breathing in and breathing out. And there's a bunch of other shit that gets in there, but eventually I can kind of overpower it and just think only about breathing in and only about breathing out. So that's what I do to get to that state, right? To get to a state where I can release everything. But at that point, once I'm relaxed, then I go for the no mind, which again is impossible. But my personal system of visualization or relaxation is I see the thoughts as clouds and that my mind is a sky or space. So my mind becomes this gigantic entity and the thoughts are just clouds that pass by. But again, when I start thinking about things like that, now you're not in the no mind. If you start thinking about your breath, you're not in the no mind. And I want to get as close to that as possible because in a fight, in a combat situation, I want no mind. That's the way that Musashi talks about. Right. Yeah. That's Musashi right there. Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was a play on Musashi. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.