00:00:00.00 iandawsonmackay Question again? 00:00:00.86 Mike Piekarski Well, no, no, I think I'm good. so Okay. So, So, uh, so I think when I was fighting, which are on 2011 and it might be, I don't know if it's different now, but the, the sport has grown, but generally that I would see that there was two types of people. There was people that were good enough athletes and and they were skilled enough and they can get into the UFC. Generally you're looking at, especially at the time, entry-level physical, uh, uh, entry-level UFC was like 10,000 to show 10,000 to win with, um, 00:00:31.26 Mike Piekarski You know, I think they're getting their sponsors. So like best case scenario, if you win your three fights, which doesn't always happen, you can kind of make it okay living, right? But if you're not in the UFC fighting for that, like what I would see, there was these guys that would be like outside the UFC and they're, they're kind of like fighting for peanuts. They're taking short notice fights or taking fights injured because ah they just need to get a better record. 00:00:57.39 Mike Piekarski And I was like, you know, I don't think I'm as good of an athlete as I need to be to make a career of this. Like obviously I was good enough to win, you know, but not necessarily to like make a career out of it. So I was kind of thinking about i'm like, do I want to be a personal trainer? Cause I was thinking maybe I would open a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym, but the problem is, is at the time I was living in upstate New York and it really wasn't in my opinion, a desirable place to kind of like set my roots where I would cause like, once you open a gym, you're not leaving. 00:01:27.52 Mike Piekarski Right? I mean, you can, but just put all that work in. So I was like, you know, maybe if I was a personal trainer, I could do that on the side while I try to grow a gym, you know, and then I, really especially at the time, I didn't have the temperament to be a personal trainer because to be a personal trainer, you're a salesman, right? And I was not that guy. So then I looked into physical therapy and I was like, well, I don't really want to go back to school. And I was trying to apply to be a physical therapy assistant. And I don't know if this is a thing where, where you're from, 00:01:56.21 Mike Piekarski but in the US, it's ah an associates level degree. You need a license, I didn't know that. So I'm applying for jobs and someone's like, hey, you need to be licensed for this. So I was like, okay. Well, I was observing to see if, you know, maybe I would want to get my associates in this. So I'm observing um and and then the people, I was observing a physical therapist. So like, look, if you already have a bachelor's degree, which I did, so like you might as well just go and get the doctor. I was like, yeah, you know, but I don't really want to go get back to school for three years. 00:02:25.85 Mike Piekarski and accumulate all this debt. But the problem is is if let's say I was a physical therapy assistant, it's a two year associates and there's no bridge program. And as a physical therapy assistant, you kind of have to like do what you're told. And I realized I don't really like following rules. So I kind of want to do my own thing. So that was kind of what motivated me to go to physical therapy. I actually didn't plan on somehow combining physical therapy and martial arts. It was something I thought that the the fields were close enough that I would be interested and I would actually be interested in studying. And it wasn't until I started practicing that I realized that I could maybe be make a living working like with this specific population. 00:03:09.70 iandawsonmackay Because that was my kind of understanding when I went to rehab. It was just like it was the same exercises over and over again. 00:03:15.52 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:03:17.18 iandawsonmackay You know, there was no individuality, there was no kind of focus on what are you going to do or really even looked at my height compared to the next guy. It was all kind of the same loud raises, the same this, the same that. 00:03:25.49 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:03:29.60 iandawsonmackay what What's your opinion then on the current way of doing it? You know, because athletes say, oh, the hurt should I do this? And they say, well, don't do that. But if that's your sport, like throwing a punch, you can't stop throwing a punch if you're a shoulder sore. 00:03:40.72 Mike Piekarski Yeah. Sure. 00:03:44.49 iandawsonmackay You've got to find a workaround. And I think you're the first person I found to actually look to it. the body, the physiology, the kind of fixes from a ah com combat sort of sport. 00:03:55.88 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:03:56.38 iandawsonmackay Do you find that that's a problem nowadays is that a lot of medical things are more just about just keeping you moving and a alive rather than actually, you know, able to do the sport or the lifestyle you want? 00:04:11.26 Mike Piekarski Absolutely. I mean, yeah, the the answer is if it hurts, don't do it. In my opinion, that's a very lazy, incomplete answer. Partly this is based on the medical field, which is like it's a meta, it's an insurance base. 00:04:23.59 Mike Piekarski Like insurance really doesn't care if you're getting back to jujitsu, boxing, et cetera. They're just like, can you have, do you not have pain? So that's why the, the medical model is kind of focused more on, okay, well let's kind of manage pain. Let's make you feel better. We'll give you some type of Corazon injection and get it calmed down. But again, in my opinion, that but that's a very lazy way to approach it because if you tell any athlete, 00:04:48.03 Mike Piekarski hey, like don't do this. What they're going to do is they're going to ignore you. And I think that's why the jujitsu community or the combat sports community for the most part is very distrustful of the medical system. Cause they go see their, you also have to consider too, a primary care physician, they're Jack of all trades, right? They're really good at a lot of things, but they're not really great at anything. Like their job, if you're a primary care is to get you to somebody who knows more than them, right? So they know a little bit about musculoskeletal, but that's not their thing. So they're like, okay, well, 00:05:17.50 Mike Piekarski you know I go into primary care, i knew I had an injury, I knew what it was, i but I wanted to get an image to confirm. And it was like was like pulling teeth. like ah they They have to do their assessment and they're doing it terribly wrong. you know At the end, they're like, oh, I think you have a knee sprain. And it was like, no, that is not it at all. like I had a bit of cartilage that was floating around in my knee, so I needed the image to confirm that it was there because that's a you need surgery to take it out. like there is you know And they're like, I think it's a knee sprain. I'm like, no, that's not it whatsoever. Like the way that they're doing the tests was wrong. So I think if you're an athlete, you should be going to an orthopedic physician or a sports physical therapist who really understands a sport who could help you. Cause again, like for me, like I understand jujitsu, understand combat sports. It hurts when I throw a punch. Well, let's kind of work on this because 00:06:10.86 Mike Piekarski I mean, obviously there could be a joint problem, which is true, but there also could be a skill problem. And even though I don't always wanna tell someone you can't do this, a better response is I don't want you to avoid, I want you to avoid this movement, but these are the movements you can do. So now they're goingnna there's gonna be a little bit more buy-in. 00:06:31.68 iandawsonmackay So do you think then that a lot of people, it's almost on as is much as the the practitioner, because we won't be lazy. We want to just take the general advice in men's health or the general warm up or the program that we see, that there are some, of you know, Billy Joe selling, that we, even though it's something about our health that will keep us alive, we we we're lazy in our senses. So we don't know any better. So we just accept what somebody says. Is it that we're badly educated? 00:07:01.54 iandawsonmackay the users as much as the providers. 00:07:05.93 Mike Piekarski I mean, you know, I mean, I'm biased, right? Because like, I do work with people. I work with people remotely too. So it's like, there is the case, which is, okay, well, I'm just gonna go get medical advice. This is what they said. I'm not really gonna try to go out for more. um There is obviously a financial thing, right? So people like, well, I have a medical insurance. It covers me to see this person. You know, and I think especially in the US, seeing people in a cash-based setting is becoming a lot more um common. 00:07:36.37 Mike Piekarski So I think that is kind of changing things, but you know, it's for the person, right? You know, there are some people, you know, they just want the free advice. They don't actually want to be, they don't really want to be as thorough. like I noticed this with combat athletes and i it's been pretty bad lately, just seeing some stuff. 00:07:55.84 Mike Piekarski I think a lot of combat athletes are pretty much like drug addicts. like they don't hey They're gonna do whatever they can to go back to training, whether they should or not. like They hurt the knee, they're like, okay, it's not good. 00:08:04.57 iandawsonmackay But where? 00:08:06.44 Mike Piekarski I'm just gonna put a knee brace on and it makes me feel better. So all they're really doing is they're putting that knee brace on, which is giving that them false security that they can go back to training when in reality, this not the case and they're just more putting themselves at risk of re-injure themselves or making it worse. 00:08:24.01 iandawsonmackay I can remember rolling with a guy in I think I went for an armbar and his arm popped. I think it was at the forearm and it was an old injury and I kept doing it and he said, oh no, it's fine, it's fine. I said, just go south, you know, we'll finish the round here. And he stuck it in his belt and carried on rolling. And I kept seeing him just stop. It's obviously, we don't want to damage it. And he was out for about two months after. 00:08:46.81 iandawsonmackay And it it's it was just that ego was leading him. 00:08:49.89 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:08:49.94 iandawsonmackay Do you think that's where guys go wrong? We come to you when something's truly fucked up rather than when it's on its way. Because I think you had something where you said you'd rather see it when it's an itis, not when it's an actual proper complex oxus. 00:09:01.11 Mike Piekarski Absolutely. 00:09:06.87 iandawsonmackay Are guys idiots and we wait till that point when it's hanging off to come to see you? 00:09:12.19 Mike Piekarski absolutely 00:09:13.94 iandawsonmackay that's 00:09:15.11 Mike Piekarski I mean, from like an acute setting, right? Like, let's say you have your elbow popped. Like, if I can address that early, it's so much easier to manage, right? But the problem is, is people don't. They're like, okay, well, I have an elbow injury for five years. And like, you know, so at this point, it's gonna be so much harder to deal with because, you know, so the elbows, the the most commonly injured joint in competition, primarily from, especially in jiu-jitsu, particularly from not tapping to an armbar. 00:09:43.18 Mike Piekarski So the most common limitation that I see him on among is they can't straighten their elbow anymore because they've had their elbow traumatized so many times because they're not not tapping to arm bars, so they've lost that range of motion. and you you know Obviously what happens first, you're kind of stretching the joint capsule, you're you're traumatizing the ligament, 00:10:04.16 Mike Piekarski But if you keep doing it over and over and over again, now what you're actually starting to do is you're actually creating physiological changes to the bone. And then people start to develop these bone spurs, these bony osteophytes that get lodged in the in the elbow. So if you wait that long, that is now a surgery thing. Like there's no amount of rehab. There's literally these chunks of bone in the joint that you have to take out. So if we can manage things earlier, it's going to be way, way better. 00:10:31.74 Mike Piekarski Second thing, the whole ah hand in the belt thing. So I've been doing jiu-jitsu for a long time. So I've done that before I was a physical therapist. Every single time I try to just train around an injury that I shouldn't have. 00:10:46.10 Mike Piekarski I put my hand in the belt. Not only did I re-injure myself every single time, but I just delayed getting back. And I feel like some people, they don't, they just want to get back whether they should or not. So they're kind of like maintaining, they're like training at like 30, 40% for a prolonged period. When at some point it'd be better to just take time off, rehab seriously, and then come back at a hundred percent because they said they're just in this constant injury state and they just never get back to like where they can train the way they need to. 00:11:15.12 iandawsonmackay So what's the kind of breakdown that you see between, you know, the general weight and tear? I mean, I was training with a broken finger, I strapped it up, I had turf toe, and then I had cellulitis in my leg, which was one of the worst things I've ever had. 00:11:23.16 Mike Piekarski Sure. Sure. 00:11:31.87 iandawsonmackay done And I remember I had to stop training with that. I've seen people sprawl and carry on the next day with a dodgy neck and stuff. 00:11:39.78 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:11:40.20 iandawsonmackay How much is seen mistakes causing serious injuries to general wear and tear between or a mix of the both. 00:11:42.33 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:11:47.76 iandawsonmackay What's your sort of common thing you said about the elbow being the main culprit where are the kind of typical things is it like core, knee, ankle, that kind of areas? 00:11:51.86 Mike Piekarski sure 00:11:59.65 Mike Piekarski Uh, the most common, like when I say macro and micro, so macro would be like somebody like pops your knee in a leg lock or you get your knee pops in a leg lock in like a take down. Okay. That'd be a macro injury. Micro injury is that accumulation of trauma. Okay. So the knee is by far the most commonly injured joint across like all grappling sports, whether it's wrestling, judo, or jujitsu, probably also, uh, mixed martial arts. Um, but the knee is the most common, big, big injury, right? 00:12:29.77 Mike Piekarski I would say the the neck and the back tend to be more of those like micro injuries. It's the trauma. Sure. There's ways that people will will crank their neck, but usually it's not that yeah it's the, just the accumulation of just not tapping or like it's pretty common in jujitsu. Like people are inverting, but they don't really have the body for inverting. So they're just kind of like forcing themselves into these positions. They don't really have, that's really how they're going to get hurt. 00:12:56.66 iandawsonmackay It's like me. I'm like the Michelin man. Anytime I try any of that rolling stuff, I'm just like, how do people do this? 00:13:01.05 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:13:02.95 iandawsonmackay like um Have you noticed a change recently then? 00:13:03.35 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:13:06.68 iandawsonmackay you know Because nowadays it's all about leg locks, whereas before it was kind of, oh, we're stand-up mode. and you know Do you see a more kind of a change in the injuries because of the focus of the sport? 00:13:19.60 iandawsonmackay how it's moved and how it sort of the flavor of the the attacks and the sport change you know now it's all seed guard and leg locks is it different than it was say 10 years ago? 00:13:27.37 Mike Piekarski sure 00:13:32.01 Mike Piekarski You know, interestingly, um most research that I'm, so a lot of this stuff that I'm looking at is pretty consistent in literature. um It hasn't really changed. The mechanism might be differently. So I was, it was like 2011. That was when, or sorry, 2021, sorry. Heel hooks became legal in the IBGF. So like the first big event, which is noogie pans, I went to collect injury data. And it's a paper that I'm hoping to release this year. Hopefully I can get it published. 00:14:02.20 Mike Piekarski But because that was the first major tournament where heel hooks were legal in the IBJF, what we could do is we were able to compare knee injuries from, I think it was 2009. So the knee injuries had increased, but not to a statistically significant amount. However, the knee injuries where heel hooks were legal, if you compare like an adult versus masters, went up like 12 times. was It was a pretty crazy jump from how many times people got injured in the divisions where heel hooks were legal. 00:14:37.30 iandawsonmackay So how much of this is like a badge of honor? You know, is it like that you expect to see the black belt with the the taped fingers that when they take them off, they look like, you know, like some scared crow that the guy can hobbles in and he just sits and he's got amazing pressure because he can't move. So he does pressure passing rather than all the other flow stuff. 00:14:58.49 iandawsonmackay why Why do guys see it as a badge of honor that, oh yeah, I used to bench, that's and such, but my shoulders now, I used to score five touchdowns like Al Bundy and married the kids, but my knees blown now. Why do we see that as a kind of a badge rather than a, you've given up your life because you never got an injury fixed, do you think? 00:15:18.02 Mike Piekarski Yeah, I mean, I think it's. I mean, this is also what I do. So I think it's idiotic. Like most people, you know, like you said, like you, you see those, ah those old veteran black belts, like hobble onto the mat and all they can do is like, uh, knee shield half guard and pressure passings. That's all the body will let them do anymore. And and look if you look at like an athlete, right. And we'll say athlete, whether it's competitive or recreationally, you know, you start the sport for the most part, you don't have too many injuries. You start to accumulate all these little injuries that you kind of ignore. 00:15:49.28 Mike Piekarski then they start getting worse, you know, when an injury happens, you know, you don't go back to like 100%. Maybe you're at like 98%. But then you've accumulated all these things. So then you can look at these like veteran fighters, despite having all this knowledge, their bodies at like 70% of where it was like five years prior. And then there's going to be the point where it's like, they're so diminished that they like, ah well, it's not worth me trying to compete, because my body's too broken. 00:16:15.67 Mike Piekarski And again, we can say this from a competition standpoint. There's also a lot of people that just want to train, but then you get to a point, your body's so beat up. They're like, is it even worth training? Right? Because I mean, the nature, unfortunately, is that father time is undefeated, right? You train long enough. You're going to be 50 years old. You're going to start training with those 20 year olds and you know you're not going to be able to necessarily keep up. So I think that is when people stop you know Training and and I think it's pretty common. You see those older black belts. They don't like especially instructors They just stop rolling because like again, there there's an ego, right? Like they don't necessarily want to go with that younger purple belt who can tap them So they just essentially start training less and less to the point. They're not even rolling anymore So I think it's very idiotic. Like I would like to be like Helio greasy 00:17:06.65 Mike Piekarski Granted, he's not he wasn't like rolling with like pro MMA fighters, but he was doing some portion of jiu-jitsu up until his 80s or 90s. And I think that longevity is what people need to see and do. 00:17:20.40 iandawsonmackay I've had a few coaches like that where they've kind of, they'll tell you it's because they want to observe from the side for promotions but you know fine well it's because they just don't want to take a chance of getting tapped by the interesting spazzing shall we say of some of some athletes. 00:17:30.29 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:17:35.81 Mike Piekarski sure 00:17:37.63 iandawsonmackay I mean I've worked with people where they've ripped an arm on a girl and severely hurt her and then he puts his hand up looking for his next partner and he had to be asked to leave. I've trained with people who are almost too afraid to make a move because they don't want to hurt people. you know There's a whole range of different kind of athletes and achutes and jiu-jitsu but Is it that we are all so affected by our bad postures, you know they kind of the always looking at our phones, our bad postures the way we're sitting? What are our standard movement patterns that we should be able to do? you know Because a lot of people could barely get their legs over their head. 00:18:18.46 iandawsonmackay like if at the start a lot of people can barely squat down or what are kind of basic movement patterns that everybody should reasonably be expected to do if you're fit and healthy. 00:18:18.55 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:18:30.62 Mike Piekarski So I guess that's an interesting question. So the way that I define joint health And it's not ah things that people are gonna be able to reproduce from this video, but essentially is I want a joint to be able to move in every degree of freedom it can without pain and compensation. And the range of motion quantity is gonna be based on what you need to be doing. Meaning, so you take the shoulder, the shoulder moves in every degree of freedom means it goes in the sagittal plane, in the frontal plane, and then the rotational plane. So I have to make sure it can do that. 00:19:05.03 Mike Piekarski A lot of times when people are we're doing that, they're trying to rotate their shoulder and they're getting compensation somewhere else, which essentially means that they are unable to do that, right? So we already know it gives us idea. Maybe they're not doing it because they've never done it and they've just that their shoulders lost that capacity. Maybe it hurts because they have an injury. 00:19:24.99 Mike Piekarski um There's some people like that's pretty common with people who have a lot of, maybe they do a lot of yoga, they do a lot of stretching, but they don't have great control they don't have great body control. So their joints can move really well, but they can't control themselves. right So that's how I would look at it. From a movement, the way that I break it down would be there's several um movement milestones that I use with my athletes as I'm returning them to sport for a combat art. So for me, 00:19:56.43 Mike Piekarski One of the first ones is can someone do a full deep kneel? Can you kneel? right It's like sitting in a clothes guard. So if someone has an injury or they have an arthritic knee and they can't do that, that's gonna be a problem. If someone tries to sweep you back, you're gonna hurt your knee. Next is I wanna make sure someone has a deep squat. 00:20:12.07 Mike Piekarski right because you're gonna be doing a lot of jiu-jitsu you need to be in those deep positions with your passing and if you think about it a combat base is kind of the combination of a deep squat on one side and a kneel on the other right so those are some like basic movements that I want to do for like the lower extremity for the upper extremity I want to make sure that people can like do essentially like a ah single arm plank, right? So, cause I have to make sure that if let's say I'm passing or if I'm trying to maintain top position, someone one bumps me, I can make sure that I can catch myself versus if I can't support myself with one arm and someone bumps me, you know, I'm going to hurt my my wrist, my elbow, my shoulder. For the spine, you know, you don't have to be an inverter to be good at jujitsu, like inversion and Grammys, that's obviously based on your style. 00:21:01.42 Mike Piekarski But I do want to make sure that people have the ability to create like a spine rock. So can you rock up and down? You know, your feet don't have to go all the way down to the ground, but I want to make sure that your back can create this rigid wheel. That's how I know that it's going to be safe for jujitsu. 00:21:19.22 iandawsonmackay It's really hard not to start taking notes because I love how deep diving that you do in all the like every one of your posts, every one of your videos, it's always kind of like there's so much to take from it. 00:21:21.65 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:21:31.40 iandawsonmackay There's that scene in the Terminator. era I think it's number two where Sarah Connor says the Terminator. you've got files on the human anatomy and he says yes and she says oh because it makes you a better killer do you think it makes you better a jujitsu that you understand that if i come this way if i pull the arm that way you understand the body so if we understood the physical i can't speak today the setup of the body a bit more it'd make us more efficient in submissions and stuff like that 00:21:42.08 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:21:55.45 Mike Piekarski Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like, ah so I remember when I was in physical therapy school, um one of the first classes you take is kinesiology. So kinesiology is the study of human movement. And one of the the The biggest takeaway is that every sweep and every takedown is going to be based on um understanding balance, meaning that your center of mass, which is usually around your belly button, and then your legs, your base of support. Anytime you can move the center of mass outside of the base of support, they are now off balance. So every takedown, every throw, means that you first, you have to move their center of mass, they're off balance, then what what people are gonna do is their response is either a step, like they step to to alter their set their but their base of support, or if it's on the ground, they reach, right? Because that that's the the point, right? So now your next step is to block the step or reach. And if you think like that, that's every takedown and every sweep, right? Boiled it down. 00:23:01.07 Mike Piekarski make them off balance, block their step or reach response. And if you do that, you essentially succeed for the from a joint lock perspective. I would say um before physical therapy, um like before I went to physical therapy school, I was terrified of heel hooks. Essentially, i was I was at a point where I would just lock the heel and I just said, okay, I'm not gonna apply pressure because if I do, their legs gonna explode. And then I remember, 00:23:28.85 Mike Piekarski um I was in a tournament, I'm trying to footlock people and they just didn't tap, right? Because I i had really poor braking mechanics. And then it wasn't until i was I was finishing physical therapy school and I went to a Gary Tonin seminar. And that's when things clicked because that's when the the topic of braking mechanics for a heel hook really like set in on me. You know, and I'll be honest, you kind of have to try a little bit to try to break somebody's leg. 00:23:55.72 Mike Piekarski um Obviously you shouldn't be doing that and competition in in training competitions, a different beast. But um once I had a better understanding of of the the way that the knee moves, it absolutely enhanced my ability for breaking mechanics for like a heel hook. 00:24:12.56 Mike Piekarski or even an armbar because traditional you're thinking like when you do an armbar right you want thumb up because if they're thumb up that means their elbows down so when you apply pressure right you can hyper extend the elbow but really the the key thing is you need to just make sure that they don't have their thumb down so if I have their palm up I can armbar someone just because I understand that actually could be a better position to break the arm because like when you have an arm bar and your thumb is up now you're supported by the bone locking in place but when the palm is up you don't have that support it's all ligamentous so that actually could be a potential way to injure the elbow more if you were in a situation you needed to. 00:24:54.65 iandawsonmackay because when I initially did it, Jiu Jitsu got to Bluebelt and I was, I didn't really understand it and I kind of plateaued and I'm going back in the start of October, I've like signed up, I'm cut be really excited obviously, shitting it because I know I'm going to get barred for the first 19 years. 00:25:07.94 Mike Piekarski true. 00:25:11.03 iandawsonmackay But in my head, my brain is kind of, I'm watching a lot of videos and I'm starting to notice a lot more of these analytical kind of, you know, they stop the scene as the sweep comes in and they'll show you momentum and they'll use like the graphics on screen to show you the how the joints going or how he's going to play into it. I'm getting to understand it on a deeper level and as I started reading your post I was thinking I'm getting to understand how the knee moves and why that move works because you're moving it against its natural play and your stuff is superb but it's also really kind of of all these nefarious uses I was thinking you know you could use to it. 00:25:49.49 iandawsonmackay But how would you want somebody who's new coming to this or a fat guy like myself coming back to jujitsu? 00:25:56.83 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:25:57.41 iandawsonmackay How much is between skill development, sport specific, physical preparation, mobility, flexibility, strength? 00:26:05.48 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:26:07.27 iandawsonmackay how How do we break it down? 00:26:08.29 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:26:09.48 iandawsonmackay Because I'm assuming we should do some weight training as well. We should also do some cardio because everybody says roll more. Doesn't work. 00:26:17.39 Mike Piekarski sure 00:26:17.58 iandawsonmackay and you know how How do we start reducing our weaknesses and building our strengths and that kind of scene? 00:26:24.75 Mike Piekarski Well, so the overall answer is it should be based on the individual, right? So if you come to me and you're like, okay, I want to get back to jiu-jitsu. So we could talk about skill development and physical capacity development, right? And then we can kind of define what people have, you know, their maximal strength, their muscular endurance, their power. We can look at their joint health, their joint mobility. We can look at their aerobic cardio. We can look at their anaerobic cardio. So that would be physical capacity. 00:26:52.35 Mike Piekarski You know, and I think that for the most part, that's a little bit more relevant for a competitor. Like for you, if you're not competing, you're just training. Like if you get smoked or you smoke everyone in the gym, it doesn't really matter, right? Like that's, I'd almost want you to have less of a focus on the physical capacity. um Strength training absolutely is gonna help reduce injury. I mean, that's just that it's pretty consistent in the literature. um You should be doing joint training ah or strength training, I should say. 00:27:20.96 Mike Piekarski joint training it would be a little bit more specific way to look at it because most when people are doing strength training they're just doing like what you see so it's going to be very common bilateral meaning both arms or both legs sagittal plane movements so like a bench press a squat and a deadlift and those are all ah obviously really important but from an injury prevention standpoint we want to be training the joints in the planes where they're gonna be injured. So you take a shoulder. The shoulder typically gets injured from a rotation. So you should be including some type of rotational training for your shoulder, right? You look at the knee. Knee injuries are often either a degree of freedom the knee doesn't go, which is the frontal plane, like some collapse on their knee, or they're rotational based. You should be probably incorporating some type of rotational knee training into your program. If your goal is injury prevention, right? 00:28:17.62 Mike Piekarski um We look at mobility. How much flexibility do you really need? Well, that really based on you and and what you need to be doing for your sport, i.e. jiu-jitsu. So what do we need in jiu-jitsu? We need to have good shoulder rotation. We need to have good spine flexion to be able to curl into a little ball. We need abnormal hip rotation specifically. 00:28:39.74 Mike Piekarski So these are some of the things that we can do. And if you don't have them, I would say I would prioritize that. So usually what I do is my baseline is making sure people have good joint health, good mobility, top, tap that out of some type of base strength program. Conditioning is really based on the person, right? Because, um, again, if you're just a recreational athlete, like how important is cardio, right? I think having a strong aerobic base is going to be very important. One for just. 00:29:08.52 Mike Piekarski like overall longevity, not just in jiu-jitsu, but the better ah aerobic capacity you have, the better that you're gonna be able to recover between rounds, the better you're gonna be able to recover between jiu-jitsu sessions. So obviously that's super important. And maximal strength, again, in power, those are obviously important, but I think they're a little bit more needed for a competitor, okay? And we talk about, ah skill training. I mean, really for recreational hobbyists, like that should be your focus. It's just like get better at jujitsu. I always tell people, um you know, I don't care if you get tapped by someone lower, all I cares that you're getting better at jujitsu. So um I wish if when I was a blue and purple belt, I didn't try to just win gym rounds, because at the end of the the day, who gives a shit if you're the king of the mat? No, nobody cares, right? It's better to be 00:30:02.30 Mike Piekarski better at Shajitsu. So if you kind of like lose lose that day, but now you're better at Shajitsu, you're gonna continually like reach your goal. So, you know, for for people in training, who cares if you tap, you should be focusing on skill building. Don't try to do ego building just by beating people in the gym. 00:30:25.85 iandawsonmackay I mean, is that why you think that like maybe people are told to go as hard as possible in the gym? It's it's just a stupid way of training. You know, the guys that go balls to the wall and they end up blowing out and hurting. I can't remember when I first seen it, but they were on about strengthening your tendons or stabilising them and working on your body. and You know, and I used to always think, okay, what's the best exercises for stabilizing the body? 00:30:52.51 iandawsonmackay But like you're saying, it's it's all kind of unique to the person because there's no point being super able to defend in a certain method if your body can't handle a certain 00:30:56.71 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:31:02.66 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:31:04.56 iandawsonmackay excess push on an extra range of motion and it immediately hurts. you know see you're You're dictated by your body but do you hate that question of what's the best exercises to pick because it's so unique to the person in their history? 00:31:20.93 Mike Piekarski No, I mean, people just might not like the answer because that's my answer is it's it's person specific. So I can't give them the answer, you know. So I don't is it as long as they can. They're OK with my answer that I'm OK with the question. 00:31:33.99 iandawsonmackay because it probably comes down to like we're saying before and it's that the laziness approach of like okay just give me a general answer you'll just say here's a program to go work and I don't you know you've given me your 45 quid I don't care if it works or not 00:31:40.68 Mike Piekarski Sure. Yeah. no 00:31:48.07 iandawsonmackay I mean, how would you want somebody to start building up this endurance, this work capacity? Because I used to think I could power a left, I could throw deadlifts around. oh Oh, I was the man. I used to think it was the, bolt you know, barely big bollocks is the Scots say. But as soon as I came to Jiu-Jitsu, I couldn't get my legs over my head. I was out of breath just after a five minute round. It's a completely different beast. How do we build up to the label of work capacity, so we're not engineering ourselves, just turning up in the model. 00:32:20.05 Mike Piekarski I think some of it is also the way that you approach training so don't get me wrong like people to listen this and like Like I train, I can train hard. I've, I've competed in mixed martial arts. I still, you know, I've, you know, competed at black belt level. So like I'm still going after it, but when you're training, your job is not to be a better athlete than your opponent. Your goal is to try to make them a less, but a less, less athletic than you. So a lot of training is going to be based on obviously being efficient with movements. Cause you can think. 00:32:56.16 Mike Piekarski There's some people that have a ah cardio deficiency, like literally they just have a poor cardio. But then there's some people that are just very inefficient with their movements. That's why I like white belt versus a black belt. There's actually a lot of black belts that have like really piss poor cardio, but they're so efficient you would never know. oh So when I'm training, like I'm trying to be as a efficient as I can, I want to use as little energy as possible to accomplish whatever my task is, whether it's a takedown, a sweep, submission. 00:33:25.38 Mike Piekarski whatever whatever it is, the goals use as little energy as possible. So like for me, even though I teach class, I actually like don't want to be promoting people because like for me, like Like I wouldn't give someone a purple belt if they can't flow roll, meaning that you should be able to train without relying on physical gifts. Don't get me wrong, having good cardio helps, being strong, super helps, being big helps, being flexible helps, but you should have a game that is not reliant on those capacities because you might be in position a position where they're no no longer there, right? Like maybe you take Tim off, you come back and your cardio is terrible. you have an injury, so even though you were strong, now you're not. So ultimately, you wanna have a game that's independent of physical traits. When you when you compete, obviously, they will they'll matter. That's why someone, it's very fascinating, if you watch guys who are small, like Gordon Ryan, he was my size and now he's not, but he is a a little guy game and a big person body. like He doesn't, I mean, yes, so um um I'm sure that him being strong helps, 00:34:32.48 Mike Piekarski but he was winning like EBI absolute as like a 180 pounder. And then now he's like a two, 230. So imagine like he had the skill of a smaller guy, but now he's the body of someone 50 pounds bigger. So like, that's probably why he's one of the best ever. 00:34:47.67 iandawsonmackay Because I think it maybe was Ryan that was watching and he barely moved except for to better the position. He kind of controlled it and held it and every move was just an incremental little change, a little push in to get into the position he needed. And I don't remember rolling with my coach, first time I'd ever rolled a black belt and it was like, bloody hell. 00:35:09.92 iandawsonmackay you just felt like he was like a jaguar ready to strike. There was no kind of like fighting every constant, it was just moving and as soon as he was ready you felt like you had no control over it. how So how would you start analysing somebody that came to you? you know How do you look for the energy leaks, the dodgy rotation, the Whatever it is, how do you you start giving the them that individual plan to break it down? What kind of tests and focuses would you put on the athlete to see where they're going right and wrong? 00:35:43.03 Mike Piekarski Well, so we can look at two ways. We can look at it from the instructor perspective, or we can look at it from the you know the the training perspective. So for training, I actually wear a heart rate monitor when I roll. And then I can watch. I can look at it afterwards. And sometimes what I've noticed, and I'm actually going to get a VO2 max test in two days, um but i took I had this test about five years ago. And one of the things that was very interesting is they said that I was um I went into my anaerobic threshold a little bit early, but I was able to stay there longer, meaning that if you take cardio, so before you get to your anaerobic threshold, you're using your aerobic, not using oxygen, which is a much more efficient. When you're using your anaerobic system, it's now you're using glucose and it's less efficient. 00:36:32.52 Mike Piekarski And I think, um and that was very interesting because this was before I really wasn't doing any outside cardio. I was just kind of curious. And then since then I have been, so I want to see how things change is if my aerobic capacity has gotten better. Cause if I have a strong anaerobic capacity, but then I also have a strong aerobic capacity, that means that when I am pushed, I can go into that capacity and I'm good. It's like, like like a good way to think about it for people is When people have a strong aerobic base, they're able to keep that strong consistent pace that doesn't fluctuate versus there's some people that like they they get to a pace and they can hold that pace for like three minutes and then they completely gas out. but that was That would be like when their anaerobic threshold fails because they go to that point where they can't maintain it. 00:37:21.14 Mike Piekarski so For me, what I would do is if if this if this athlete was was training, I would put a hurry monitor on and I would observe to kind of see how are you doing? Are you able to stay in like that blue recovery zone? 00:37:33.94 Mike Piekarski Are you in that conditioning zone? Are you in that overload zone? um Specifically trying to stay out of that red zone. Because usually that means that you're probably using a lot of energy. That makes sense? 00:37:44.20 iandawsonmackay Definitely, because I remember rolling table tennis or something in PE and they used to get to wear heart rate monitors over a selection of sports to see how you went and I used to think I'm not tired until I so noticed it on the graph. 00:37:44.59 Mike Piekarski Yeah. yeah 00:38:03.20 iandawsonmackay and the data didn't lie, but how much of data analysis, how much of testing, all these graphs like the whoosh arm bands and all these kind of things and the mood rings and stuff, do you find any of them actually work or is it down to specific testing, putting people into the environment where it mimics the the you know the environment they're going to be facing? 00:38:14.65 Mike Piekarski yeah 00:38:27.72 iandawsonmackay Are any of these add-on accessities and data mining methods worth it, do you think? 00:38:34.33 Mike Piekarski Yeah. It depends on how they use it, right? if If you just wear it and then you roll and you don't do anything, it doesn't help you, right? But I feel, um For me, and I think the equipment wise, chest strap hurt monitor tends to have the best results when there's like a ring or an armband, they tend to be less accurate. 00:38:55.53 Mike Piekarski um But again, if let's say, like, perfect example. So today I'm teaching two classes. I taught one class the morning, I'm teaching one at night. So generally there's one class I'm going to take a little bit lighter and then one I can roll a little bit harder. 00:39:07.95 iandawsonmackay so 00:39:08.04 Mike Piekarski So what I did was I could say, okay, well, let's see, am I actually where I need to be? from a And what this does is this gives me information, right? So last week I had two hard training sessions and I'm in my thirties, right? So then the next day I look at my recovery and it was pretty piss poor. And I realized it took me like three days for my recovery to really bounce back because I just overtax myself on Monday versus if let's say I have a light day and then a hard session. 00:39:40.38 Mike Piekarski I'm gonna compare and see, do I recover better? How do I feel? right you know Like I said, I'm getting a VO2 max test in two days, so like I don't wanna go in with my recovery shot, because that's gonna affect testing. right I would like to go in on Wednesday when I do that, because for people who don't know, VO2 max test is essentially like an absolute failure, like you're going until you cannot go anymore. so um But it's a way that I can kind of assess my aerobic and my anaerobic capacity, so I am very curious. so and Again, it depends on the athlete, how they use it. um You know, there's times where people, they don't realize that they're using so much energy. And and that's why I talk about from like a skill perspective, like when I teach, um um I try to teach more concept-based, like when I'm teaching something like, so like today we were dealing with leg entanglements and how to kind of stay safe from leg locks. But first people need to kind of like understand like what is the leg lock or trying to do? 00:40:37.37 Mike Piekarski what are your paths for success to escape? Because like what happens is, let's say you just like, you go roll. Like, and someone's trying to break your foot. Like a lot of times people don't have a good answer. So now, and they have to make the decision very, very quick. So they're just kind of spazzing out to try to get out versus first you have to know what your plan and your pathway is. Then you can try to speed up so you're you're more ready. But again, that's more of a, like a cognitive speed than like a physical speed. 00:41:06.53 Mike Piekarski But when people are inexperienced, they don't know better. So they just go faster because they're trying to not get tapped. 00:41:12.84 iandawsonmackay But how much of that is like that spatial awareness that people don't know? Because I can remember when I first started, I thought I was doing great. And then when you'd watch a video that your your professor would record and it'd be like, I didn't realize my arm was rolling out there. 00:41:27.00 iandawsonmackay You know, how much of it is... Can't we learn to train so you understand yourself as components rather than a body? So you can actually think, well, I'm using my head to rest here to create a frame. 00:41:41.66 iandawsonmackay I'm using my ah arm here. 00:41:41.95 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:41:43.18 iandawsonmackay I need to lift leg. you know How much of it is that we don't know ourselves? you know We don't know where our body is in the 3D game of chess. because like you you could ask people like what did you eat and they won't understand the effect coughing has on their body their food their the night out a couple weeks ago like you're saying people coming in absolutely knackered but we don't even know where our bodies are in space half the time how do we develop that understanding so we can keep ourselves safe from leg locks how we can sprawl without leaving something and landing on a elbow dodgy how do we become more aware of our bodies in that sense 00:42:23.28 Mike Piekarski Sure, so again, it goes back to skill and physical capacity. Physical capacity training, so I do a lot of joints training. There's an exercise called, it from the functional range systems called a controlled articular rotation or a CAR. And essentially it's an isolated joint movement and I can do one for every joint in my body. And I think those outer range rotational movements are very good for stimulating the joint capsule, which is what how people develop which is how people develop proprioception, right? So this is kind of like activity independent. Then we could talk about sports. So as there was a beginner and there's a study by, I think it was Bernstein. So essentially like when you learn a sport, and this is really easy if you've ever seen people who do like striking arts. So like you're showing someone how to throw a punch. 00:43:19.92 Mike Piekarski And they look kind of like a tin man, like everything, because everything's super tight and they just kind of like throw just their arm. And then as they start to develop, they start to loosen up degrees, meaning they have, let's say they're punching, people don't know any better, so they just tighten every joint in their body. Well, we know from a striking perspective, the tighter you are, it's actually going to slow you down. So then as people get better, they start to release some of those joints. 00:43:45.90 Mike Piekarski So then you look at a good striker and essentially they're like their their punch looks like a whip, like it's super fast. They're rotating their foot, their hip, their knee, they're they're they're rotating their torso. So essentially it's it's a very fluid movement. 00:44:01.67 Mike Piekarski but that's I think a skill development. Whereas as people learn the movement, they learn how to kind of relax. That's why it's very fascinating when you watch two beginners training the gi, because people don't know any better. So they just get their two grips and they just kind of like do this like six minute isometric contraction and nothing happens. That's why I'd almost argue, and I'm not being like super, it's just more of a philosophical question than me being like ah hard about it. 00:44:30.21 Mike Piekarski I actually would argue that training no gi might be better for a beginner just because I want to teach someone to learn how to control the body without the gi. And then I also want to make sure that when you add the gi, there's just other constraints to worry about. You're just adding things like when I watch beginners they don't know anybody, they just grab the gi, and they don't really know what they're doing, they're just holding onto the gi. When it's like, you should be using your feet and your legs to like maintain guard, pushing them away. Obviously you could argue one way or the other, just kind of like an interesting thing to think about. 00:45:05.29 iandawsonmackay It makes a lot of sense because when I first started it was a lot of ghee. I only did no ghee and about a couple of months into it and suddenly not having the field safes like you would always be looking for and you'd be like, oh, I don't know if I can't control somebody. 00:45:08.99 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:45:19.90 iandawsonmackay And you know, people say, oh, well, they would always be wearing a jacket. They'd always be whatever. But you kind of think maybe you should be doing like a mix of the two. and what Talking of clothing and that, you know most people sitting there just now going, it's okay, I wear straps, I've got my knee thing on, I've got my knee sleeves, I've got my elbow pads. 00:45:32.40 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:45:40.18 iandawsonmackay Does any of this really work to point of just, I know it probably loosens up and heats up the joint to get a bit more flexible and more violent stuff. 00:45:47.72 Mike Piekarski sure 00:45:49.29 iandawsonmackay What point is it more of a prehab versus rehab? hope How much are these useful? 00:45:57.38 Mike Piekarski Uh, the literature is pretty consistent that. Strength and conditioning, proper rehab is by far the most important thing. Like it's not even comparable. Like if your knee is compromised, no brace is really going to make a big difference. Like you should, if you are a serious athlete and you want to do combat sports and you have an injury rehab, have a good strength and conditioning program. So I've done, um, because I've been getting into these, uh, people see that I've been very frustrated with like the Anaconda brace, which is like their ah a very, um despite what how good or how bad the brace is, the the company is a very unethical way of marketing. And I feel like they're kind of, they're they're reliant on those jujitsu, like drug addicts who like, they just want anything to get back on the mats. Oh, I'll wear a brace, it'll be good. So I've done like a deep dive into like what braces actually do in 00:46:56.56 Mike Piekarski to try to not make this too long of a conversation. There's gonna be like three types of braces. So you're gonna have a patella femoral brace. So like one that'll keep the knee kneecap in place. Then we can have what's called a functional brace, which is gonna be those ones with like a very thick metal hinge, which you can't actually train with. But you might see like like people like doing football or soccer, like they might wear those, right? Those functional braces. And then what you can see in jiu-jitsu most classically is gonna be those prophylactic brace, which is like those Velco braces where they wrap up. So um research is pretty consistent. The functional brace you can't train with might reduce MCL strain by like 30%, but that's about it. We can't actually wear that. Those prophylactic braces you can wear in jiu-jitsu don't actually give you any physical stability benefit. So if you had an MCL strain, it doesn't actually help you. 00:47:56.02 Mike Piekarski There is some theory that the brace does enhance that joint sense you talked about, those proprioception. There was one study that I don't think really matters. It's like, how well can you, it with this one sense is like, we move your leg in one way, can you reproduce it? I don't think that's super relevant. There was a different study that looked at ah two different movements. It was like a jump and a pivot. They'd found that people with a brace would have a little bit better rotational control, which we know that the mechanisms of injury are rotational. However, if you look in jujitsu or combat sports in general, almost every knee brace that I can think about or knee injury is going to be a contact injury, meaning someone falls on your leg or they forcefully twist. 00:48:44.72 Mike Piekarski non-contact injuries, they do happen. And, you know, like a, I think that happened to Calvin Kater like a year and a half ago. That's a little bit more common in like field sports. So like soccer, football, where people are doing those quick pivots in turn in jujitsu, you're not really seeing them as those, as the contact injuries. So if, if you, if all injuries are most injuries are going to be contact injuries, 00:49:12.27 Mike Piekarski and the brace doesn't give you that physical support. I don't think it really actually helps. And of all of the data that I've looked at, and there's no data specifically on grappling or combat sports. So most of the research that I'm looking at is field sports. 00:49:28.18 Mike Piekarski But I mean, the research is pretty consistent that you know knee braces are ink inconclusive if they actually reduce injuries or not. So for me personally, like when I'm working with an athlete, I try to get them off braces as soon as possible because I think it gives you a false sense of security. And again, if you feel like you need a brace to train, you probably shouldn't be training. 00:49:52.24 iandawsonmackay because how often do you see that the guys that come in and They start training, suddenly they've got their wrists up, they've got the sleeves, the knees, the elbows, they're wearing the head guard, and then all they do is just sit and up and try to keep you in close guard for the whole six minutes and you're like, what is the point? 00:50:06.13 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:50:08.23 iandawsonmackay And they're like, oh, but I need all this to survive. 00:50:08.87 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:50:10.43 iandawsonmackay And it's, I'm trying to think, was it Jack's in Mortal Kombat when they rip off his arms and they realize he's actually better without his mechanical arms compared to his normal arm? 00:50:18.73 Mike Piekarski Yeah. Yeah. 00:50:19.83 iandawsonmackay And I used to think that, that I needed the spots, I needed the rash garden a lot. 00:50:21.30 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:50:24.95 iandawsonmackay The day I forgot it, I was like, yeah, wait a minute, this is actually freedom. I still wasn't any good, like, but I was better than in my head. 00:50:28.53 Mike Piekarski yeah Yeah. well yeah 00:50:32.83 iandawsonmackay So how much was I? 00:50:33.23 Mike Piekarski Well, I'm going to build off that. So for people who say, well, I actually do have personal experience because so if you guys remember from the beginning of the podcast, I had a history of a patellar subluxation, meaning my kneecap used to slide out of place. 00:50:48.55 Mike Piekarski so I had the surgery. It wasn't great. I still had some issues. Now my legs weak. I start in jujitsu. So for about my first five years of jujitsu, I was religious about having a patella femoral knee brace. I wouldn't get on the mat if I didn't have that brace. So then I was fighting in Pennsylvania. So the state athletic commission will not let you fight with a brace. And it was actually really bad timing because I also had rolled my ankle. Like I had a really bad ankle sprain. 00:51:16.92 Mike Piekarski like 11 days before. And it was like the perfect storm. Like I couldn't walk up until that last day, but like I was, I'm just gonna take my ankle. So I'm like walking to the cage and they're like, you can't be braced. So I had the ankle wrap and I had two knee braces. They made me take it off. And I was like, well, I'm literally like literally outside the cage. I'm not gonna just not fight. So I go, I fight and I win. I was like, you know what? If I can have a mixed martial art fight and my knees don't explode, 00:51:46.48 Mike Piekarski i probably don't need them. And that was the last I wore a knee brace and I've had no issue since. 00:51:53.09 iandawsonmackay I love it. It's that kind of moment of, it's like the heat of work in a story, you know, it's that kind of, you lost your, the weapon that gave you the confidence, but you came back and thought, and I think that's a lot of us just now is going, yeah, but I need such and such. 00:52:02.35 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:52:07.55 iandawsonmackay And it's that kind of, reliance on something, it's that self-belief that we're not capable or our bodies are not capable. 00:52:10.69 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:52:14.79 iandawsonmackay Because i mean we a lot of the vernacular we've used is like exploding, fighting, grappling. 00:52:19.19 Mike Piekarski sure Sure. 00:52:20.95 iandawsonmackay Where did peace and love come into this? Because I love how you use those as kind of a breakdown of how to fix and heal and stuff. How do we use peace and love, but also at what point, you've kind of mentioned it earlier, where if you can't Neil, you shouldn't be on the mat, because obviously a lot of garbage stuff there. 00:52:39.10 Mike Piekarski Sure. Yeah. 00:52:40.96 iandawsonmackay What point does an engineer become a... Okay, you can train through it, tie it up, piece love, rice, whatever it is. 00:52:48.75 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:52:49.56 iandawsonmackay At what point does it become a... Don't be so bloody stupid, go and see somebody, get it fixed. 00:52:55.55 Mike Piekarski yeah Yeah, and that's kind of hard for me to give like a blanket answer. A good example, like I strained my back two weeks ago. I took one day off. I was able to modify the way that I trained. I have no issues since, right? So I would say like mild injuries. 00:53:09.47 Mike Piekarski like you know and like that That's what like you know people are gonna argue. like they they Their physician, their physical therapist is like, well, they don't train, they don't know. like I'm actually on the mats, and and I do hurt myself. But it's the awareness of when you have to take time off You know, and and there's just times where um it's gonna be a little bit tricky. I would say general statement. So I cannot tell you when you can or can't, but these are some warning signs that I use. So if you're having like a resting pain, like you hurt your knee and like your knee is like aching before you even get to jiu-jitsu, you probably shouldn't be training, right? Resting pain means you have an active inflammatory process. Like you should be calming that down. You should at minimum have no resting pain. 00:53:54.83 Mike Piekarski If let's say, you know, like your knees unstable, like you feel like your knees wobbly and you don't trust it, I wouldn't be training. I would go see a physician, right? Because that could be a ligament or a meniscus issue. um um Unable to walk, that's ah that's an important one. And the reason why like I say that is you'd think, you know, you can't walk, you shouldn't be on the mat. I was on this um discord group and this guy was saying how someone Like he, one of his training partners just had a knee surgery where he had staples, which means that he probably had a major knee surgery and he's on the mat. I'm like, you fucking idiot. Like that dude should probably not be anywhere close to the mat for like four months. And not, not only does the knee is the knee not able to take any stress, but just the infection risk, like. 00:54:45.68 Mike Piekarski after a major surgery like they don't even want you to go into a pool for four weeks because of the infection infection rate and you're gonna go on a jiu-jitsu like a dirty jiu-jitsu mat like come on like yeah so so there's there's some stuff that you would think would be common sense but it's just not common sense so i'll say it anyway um you know obviously if like uh 00:54:56.67 iandawsonmackay Staff Central, yeah, oh. 00:55:09.01 Mike Piekarski you like you take a spine injury. So you're having radiating symptoms. So like you're feeling like radiating symptoms down your arm or your leg. I wouldn't be training. I mean, that's an important one for me. like If someone has some type of like disc pathology and you can reproduce those that radiating pain soon I would hold them off the mat because a lot of these things like for like a disc pathology like there isn't really a good way to test it but if if if if I can't reproduce it then I hope that the the disc is at this point no longer pressing in the nerve. If I could reproduce that 00:55:45.75 Mike Piekarski Because in jujitsu, you have to think, now I'm a black belt, right? I can try to pretend like no one's going to put me in danger, but that's just not true. Like the nature of jujitsu is someone's going to put me in a position, whether I want to or not, might be by accident. So I could say, I will avoid this, but you just don't know what's going to happen. So for me, I would want to make sure that I cannot reproduce those symptoms before I get them on the mat. 00:56:09.02 iandawsonmackay It probably goes back to got the ego thing, doesn't it? It's like, because I've been able cartilage many years ago, and but it's not a technical term, but I remember coming back and being ah agony and terrified of my ego in certain places. 00:56:17.53 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:56:22.50 iandawsonmackay And it took me ages to get back into football. It's all good. And they thought of coming back with staples of my knee. 00:56:27.25 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:56:30.21 iandawsonmackay Oh, it's just terrifying. 00:56:31.35 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 00:56:34.22 Mike Piekarski yeah 00:56:34.50 iandawsonmackay um How much of that, though, then is people not understanding how to come back from an injury. Because I know it's a difficult question, but how but what are the stages of an injury? 00:56:46.97 iandawsonmackay And then how much do we use love, um you know, like peace, injury planning, toughening the joint, building back into coming to training? 00:56:52.84 Mike Piekarski Sure. 00:56:58.63 iandawsonmackay Or is it so unique to the individual that it's difficult to answer? 00:56:59.41 Mike Piekarski sir ah So the way that I break an injury down too, the acute phase, like your knee just popped. It's swollen and it hurts. Then we have the subacute phase. your Your resting pains calm down, but you still have activity pain, meaning you do certain movements. Ah, that still hurts. 00:57:17.40 Mike Piekarski Then the next phase that third phase is going to be that return that's going to be a returning to like strength and condition that's where rehab will almost look like you're just going to the gym and working out, but your needs not quite ready for sport and then that last phase is the return to sport so that's generally how I look at it. 00:57:36.16 Mike Piekarski I would say for the most part phase one and two, so the acute, sub-acute phase, most physical therapies or physios are gonna be pretty good at managing. I would say the sports physical therapists, so the people who specialize with athletes are gonna be a little bit more knowledgeable about um returning to strength and conditioning and then return to sport. I would say, unfortunately, and this is kind of like my unique niche because I understand Jiu-Jitsu well, is I would say that that returning to jiu-jitsu is gonna be a lot different than like a field sport, right? Like I think a sports physical therapist that deals with like soccer and football is still gonna be better than your just your generic physical therapist, but returning to football is very different from returning from to jiu-jitsu or kickboxing. So for me, and a shameless plug, ah you know I have a course for physical therapists for this exact thing, it's called treating the jiu-jitsu athlete. 00:58:31.42 Mike Piekarski um Which is me kind of like going through the different levels and i include these different movement milestones kind of what treatment should look like. and kind of like guiding people back to Jitsu. I'm gonna um working on a second course, and then I'll probably do a third course on the striking athlete, because a lot of times when you go to martial arts, people are like, oh, you do martial arts, they're all the same. Well, kick a kickboxer or a boxer is going to look very different from a judo athlete. So I did want to break it up. At one point, I was going to try to make it all one course, but I mean, my first course alone is like 00:59:05.62 Mike Piekarski 10, almost 11 hours. so And that's just jiu-jitsu. So I decided I was gonna break it up and just have multiple courses. 00:59:14.78 iandawsonmackay i important so Before we go on, what is peace and love in terms of injury rehab by if you were to look at those things? 00:59:23.45 Mike Piekarski Sure, so so the acronym piece, the first one, so this is more of like an acute management. So you just hurt your knee, what do you do? So the first thing you wanna do is protect it. So when people look at rice, that would they would say rest. And the idea is that a lot of people are really stupid. So they're like, well, I don't really know what you're gonna do. So let's just rest so you stop irritating the injury. But protect is a little bit more specific. So it doesn't have to be do nothing. It's just don't injure the already injured area. Then we can look at the E for peace, which is gonna be um elevate. 00:59:58.62 Mike Piekarski Obviously, someone has an active and inflammatory process. We want to reduce the accumulation of inflammation. So then there's the A, which is a lot of people don't realize this, but you actually want to avoid anti-inflammatories. And the reason why is because if someone has an injury, the initial inflammatory process is the beginning to the healing cascade. So if you blunt that initial inflammation, you're actually slowing down healing. 01:00:28.01 Mike Piekarski The problem with swelling isn't the initial inflammatory process. It's the accumulation of swelling. So you want the inflammation to start. You just don't want it to hang out, which is where the elevation goes. Or the next for peace would be compression. My favorite method of dealing with a swelling is a compression. So even though I don't like knee braces, I really like knee compression sleeves to combat that. I find them very, very helpful. 01:00:56.85 Mike Piekarski um And then I think the last one e is education, which is obviously you can translate like all these other things. And this might be, you know, actual physio. And then we can look at love, which is the L is I believe load management. So people don't realize that like you go in and you have an injury, right? We're like, well, I want to get rid of the pain. Pain is not really my goal. My goal is I want to restore that previously injured joint 01:01:27.48 Mike Piekarski to its pre-injury level resilience. And probably I want it to be better because you if if it already got injured, so your pre-level, pre-injury level is already not good enough. So how do we accomplish this? Well, this is ah appropriate loading. This could be something like a light asymmetric. This could be a heavy deadlift. It just depends on where you are in that spectrum, but we do want to appropriately load the injury. 01:01:56.21 Mike Piekarski Um, I think the, the O is optimism. So a lot of times, you know, a lot of times you're an injured athlete and they say, okay, I want you to take time off. Well, that sucks. And we know that right after an injury, these athletes are going to have a lot of like sadness and depression, which is going to really unmotivate them. So you really want to be optimistic V would be that vascularization. 01:02:19.80 Mike Piekarski which is obviously want to increase blood flow, which is exercise. And I forget what the last E is. It might be educated again, I'll have to double check, but ensure that that's what the peace and love acronym stands for. 01:02:36.56 iandawsonmackay And how much of an education does the user need to understand? Because you'll have people who will sit there and say, OK, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to do some rehab. I'm going to do some, I don't know, like dumbbell, lateral raises for this. I'm going to use, i I don't know, like a certain machine for my knees and stuff. But. 01:02:56.69 iandawsonmackay When we come to at the core, does the core exist in terms of an actual thing? Because is it not a group of muscles and you should be treating it in different rotational patterns and different stresses or can you can we think of the core as one piece of the puzzle, so to speak? 01:03:14.23 Mike Piekarski You know, so there are, rare situation where people have a quote unquote core dysfunction, but I really find that with athletes. Like if you're like an elderly person, you might actually have a weak core. I was working with this guy and he had a spine surgery and you know, he had a knee, he had ah a back brace and he wore it. He had, he had to wear it for six weeks, but he wore it for four weeks longer than he's supposed to. So it was like 10 weeks. So because he essentially didn't move his spine for 10 weeks, 01:03:43.30 Mike Piekarski His core became so weak. and I like honestly wasn't ready for it. like I just didn't anticipate because it happens so infrequently. I would say for like ah a combat athlete, it's not that they have a weak core. It's more of an integration problem. Meaning, like let's say you throw a punch. 01:04:01.72 Mike Piekarski So what's supposed to happen when you throw a punch is you push off the ground with your feet, the energy travels from your feet, then your trunk needs to be rigid enough to not bleed energy. And then you can transfer the energy from your foot to your hand where you actually ah hit the hit like hit your target, right? So I don't necessarily think it's that the core as weak is weak, it's just are you integrating the movement pattern appropriately to actually transfer as much energy as possible. Does that make sense? 01:04:36.15 iandawsonmackay Definitely, definitely. because i much like As you start coming back into that, and you start working with somebody like yourself, and you start getting healthy, how much do we then continue that going forward? 01:04:50.51 iandawsonmackay Because I know in Mu Tai, for example, they used to say about kicking bamboo trees to damage the shins. So they would heal up harder. So you wouldn't feel it. 01:05:00.37 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:05:01.79 iandawsonmackay You'd kill off the nerves in your legs. kind of How much of this applies to jujitsu? I know it's sort of individual, but how much do we need to think, okay, well, I need to keep my rehab in, I need to keep my prehab in, I need double ability, or how much, well, how often do you see guys just go straight back in and come back out injured? 01:05:24.23 iandawsonmackay Straight away, yeah. 01:05:24.43 Mike Piekarski Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have to think that your body is like always in this constant state of homeostasis, meaning that if you stress your body appropriately, it will adapt the way that you're looking for, hopefully positively. If you continually stress it and you don't ah like allow that adaptation to take place, like you over train, well now because you're not letting adaptation happen, 01:05:48.75 Mike Piekarski it's going to respond negatively. Same thing is if you don't stress your body, your body is going to adapt negatively because it's not getting that stress. So that's what a good strength and conditioning program should be, which is, you know, there are people that will graduate from rehab to strengthen conditioning, which is hopefully that strength and conditioning program will be enough stress to maintain your body for your sport. 01:06:17.94 Mike Piekarski The key thing is the appropriate amount of stress, right? Because when I'm when i'm developing developing a strength conditioning program for an athlete, I want to stress them as little as possible to get whatever my adaptation is. Meaning if let's say, you know, you could lift like a hundred kilos and you'll get strong, but you're like, but I want to lift 150. You only needed the hundred to get the adaptation. So why would I stress more, right? Or if you're running, let's say you only need to run for like 30 minutes. 01:06:48.16 Mike Piekarski you like, but I want to run for 60 minutes, that extra time might not have the same effect. So for me, what I want to do is I want to, I want to only do what I need to do to get my stress. And then as an athlete gets stronger, or they get better cardio, that's when you have to up the intensity. That's when you have to lift, lift more, more intense, or run longer, right? Because now your body is a different level. 01:07:12.95 Mike Piekarski So to now get the adaptation, you have to stress it more, but I want to do it as little as possible so that I can use all my remaining energy for skill training for my sport, martial art training. Because you have to think like in a lot of sports like football, soccer, 01:07:30.65 Mike Piekarski They have a season. So they're off season. They're just doing strength and conditioning. They're on season. They train their strength and conditioning because they're adding skill training back in. 01:07:41.26 Mike Piekarski For the most part, for combat sports, there is no season. So you really don't have that time to build a solid strength and conditioning program. And so you're kind of doing it while you're training. 01:07:50.23 iandawsonmackay down. 01:07:52.70 Mike Piekarski So because of that, because you never really let off skill training, you kind of have to make sure you're only stressing them enough so that they don't, you know, you don't blow them up. And then now that they go to training, now they're too broken and and now they're more prone to injury because they're going in too tired. 01:08:10.81 iandawsonmackay That's a really brilliant point lot because you it's not like a sport where you have an on and off season or you have friendlies and warm ups and all our teammates. You're kind of literally just training all the time and a lot of times it's because it helps your mental health or whatever it is. 01:08:22.18 Mike Piekarski yeah 01:08:26.07 iandawsonmackay You know you're training because you've got a kid and yeah it's your me time or whatever compared to people are training to win competitions. start How much of your training programs do you do cognitively? 01:08:37.84 iandawsonmackay You know how much Do you work with a person to have a smarter think approach to training, to stop comparing themselves, to approach training with longevity in mind, rather than, I'm going to just take everybody on because I'm taking it as a slight to my masculinity. 01:08:50.22 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:08:54.57 iandawsonmackay How much do you give, well, you want to be on the mats for another 50 years? 01:08:58.57 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:08:59.44 iandawsonmackay Do this instead of that. How much do you work on I want to say it's like the stupidity of the man, because I know I would fight every role to try to win. 01:09:06.93 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:09:10.53 iandawsonmackay Now I'll go back, I will try to better every role, regardless how much I top. 01:09:14.17 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:09:15.38 iandawsonmackay But at the start, I would have fought you on every single fight. 01:09:15.64 Mike Piekarski Yeah, yeah you yeah it it depends on the person, obviously. 01:09:19.58 iandawsonmackay But now I'm like, my brain is working. How how much do you work with that person to mature them? ah 01:09:28.01 Mike Piekarski So like with some of my students that come to my class, you know, I work with a lot of college kids, so they're that like young age, So, you know, a lot of stuff like in my jujitsu class, I'm really kind of focusing. I kind of preach, Hey, skill building's our goal. And I always tell people like I'll tap, you know, and people will see me tap, you know, but that doesn't mean I can't go hard. And they've seen me go hard with people like I'll roll with, you know, Brown or black belts that would weigh me by 80 pounds and I could do just fine. So this, the key thing that I show there is like to where I train, I'm the smallest black belt. 01:10:01.63 Mike Piekarski but I can roll with every single, even if the even if the brown or black belt weighs me by like a hundred pounds, I can still have no problem rolling with them. So I think, you know, by by showing this, like, look, I'm not just like making shit up, like like what I'm doing is is working obviously, you know, my even though I have physical capacity, this guy who's like, you know, 280 is way stronger than me. So if I just try to out muscle, I'm gonna lose, right? I need that technique. From a client perspective, 01:10:31.68 Mike Piekarski Because again, i even though I have several different jobs because I i teach jiu-jitsu, but I also work with people remotely for like strength conditioning. And then I work with like in-person people for physical therapy. So it depends on the person. So those people deal with injury, obviously, I kind of have to say like, I'm giving them a game plan on how to get back for the remote client who might be more of like a competitor. You know, it depends on them. Like as we're feeding, I can kind of see like, 01:11:00.85 Mike Piekarski You know, are they the younger guy who I kind of need to like calm down or, cause there are a lot of people that I work with that are going to be those master athletes that get it. It's usually the younger people that I kind of have to kind of roll the, uh, like rain them in a little bit and say, Hey, like, look, this is what we, we got to do to stay in this sport for a long time. 01:11:20.93 iandawsonmackay because it's the number of young guys I remember rolling with, they would come in and they they would fight you on everything. 01:11:22.62 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:11:26.93 iandawsonmackay And you know yeah they knew you you knew more technique, but they would seem to fight thinking that they could come out and they would always like try to bench press you off, given the arm, or they would like give the neck and do really silly stuff once you learn about technique. 01:11:30.43 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 01:11:41.49 iandawsonmackay And thinking back, I was terrible, and I've made you a problem that much better now. 01:11:47.04 Mike Piekarski yeah 01:11:47.31 iandawsonmackay How much... is ah How much time is a reasonable amount of time to start changing? Say we come and see you, we put a plan in place, how often how long is a reasonable thing to start seeing some improvement or some increase or fix or however you want to describe it? 01:11:58.09 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:12:06.66 iandawsonmackay And what tests are you doing along the way to see, are we getting better? Are the healing, are they getting tough in the ligaments? are we more flexible their endurance, whatever the the goal is, or is it dependent on the person? 01:12:21.72 iandawsonmackay Say I want to peek from a competition or I want to just get back on the mat. How much time and how do you play it as you work with a client? 01:12:30.84 Mike Piekarski Sure. Sure. So obviously it depends on how I'm working with them from an injury perspective. It depends on the injury. Like when people have like ACL reconstruction, they're like that's like a nine month process. But like let's say someone hurts their knee, it's like an MCL, depending on the severity. um but There's a tissue healing time, which I can't arbitrarily say. But based on whatever tissue is damaged, we have to keep in mind tissue healing. But along the way, I'm doing several tests. We're checking range of motion quantity. Can they can they move? 01:13:04.00 Mike Piekarski There are limb where it needs to go. We look at the range of motion quality. Can they do it without pain? Let's say it's the knee, like when it's getting compressed, does it still hurt? That gives me information. 01:13:15.84 Mike Piekarski We use some of those movement milestones. I said, can you full kneel? Can you squat? Can you combat base, et cetera? um I do a series of return to sport tests, which might be, I look at their deep squat. I look at their single leg squat. So first one, I look for like your quality. Then I can do a quantity so I can compare one side to the other. We can do various jump tests. So there's one jump test, which is like ah a power endurance. You keep going side to side for a certain amount of time. 01:13:42.24 Mike Piekarski I have one which is just maximal jumping, whether it's horizontal, whether it's like inside or outside, it might be three jumps. When I'm in person, I can do an isometric denominator test. So literally I compare like how strong is one leg to the other. um So those are some of the things I do from like an injury perspective. 01:14:03.08 Mike Piekarski from a ah physical capacity standpoint. If let's say I'm working with someone on flexibility and joint health, I'm going to say it's going to probably take about six to eight weeks to see changes for for strength, 01:14:17.87 Mike Piekarski hypertrophy, same thing. We're looking at about six to eight weeks to start seeing changes. And then from the cognitive perspective, like what you just mentioned, how to rein people in, that's really based on the maturity of the athlete. 01:14:29.67 Mike Piekarski Like some people get it, some people don't, and you know, that just depends on the person. 01:14:35.04 iandawsonmackay Because there's so many rabbit holes I'm trying not to go down and there's so many things I want to just focus on my own training, my own best at body, I would love to ask you about. 01:14:38.98 Mike Piekarski Sure, yeah. 01:14:43.48 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:14:46.06 iandawsonmackay But how do you keep on top of this? Because you're doing all your coaching clients, you're doing all your assessments, you're training, you're competing, you're just taking classes, just being you off the mat. 01:14:51.21 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:14:58.10 Mike Piekarski True. 01:15:01.14 iandawsonmackay How do you keep on top of the ever changing research, the white papers, even just the terminology sometimes can be difficult to understand. 01:15:11.96 iandawsonmackay How do you keep your mind on it or is that part of the enjoyment for you is doing the deep dive into it? 01:15:19.63 Mike Piekarski Oh, you know, so interestingly, the deep dive that I've done was, you know, there was a while, like, you know, I was just a physical therapist and, you know, I was a black belt and and and I knew what I was talking about. 01:15:31.60 Mike Piekarski But when I started going down that deep dive, like, so I almost, so, um, people know I, in the U S there's something called a board certified specialty. 01:15:42.49 Mike Piekarski So I'm board certified orthopedic medicine, which just means that I'm like good at dealing with musculoskeletal stuff. I did so much of my research, researching for social media to answer a question. So for me, the fun part is that when an injury happens, like it might be related to Jitsu or m MMA, when I have to answer that question, I do some research. I'm dealing with a client that might have like ah a tricep repair or a pec repair. I'm doing research. So for me, 01:16:14.25 Mike Piekarski The reason why I like physical therapy is because I have to do that extra outside work. It kind of keeps me interested. So it could be, like I said, I'm answering a question on social media. It could be based on the client from an injury perspective, or it could be sports performance. um And actually, another thing I could do is from a skill perspective. So for the longest time, I was much more heavily no-gi. Like I would train the gi like once a week and I would do it begrudgingly. 01:16:43.70 Mike Piekarski But I didn't really enjoy gi training. And then I started working with athletes that were gi athletes. And they're doing some stuff that I was like, like, even though I'm a black belt, there's some gi things that I'm not a black belt in. I'm just not that good. So I was like, well, if I'm going to help this athlete, I need to get a little bit better at the sport, you know, I'm obviously understanding mixed martial arts and no gi. So then I started diving a little bit more into the gi specific stuff. And again, that's what like, what's so fun about jiu-jitsu is like I've been doing jiu-jitsu like 18 years, and I still go to class, I'm excited to learn and and try things because there's so it's so vast, you'll never get good at everything. So there's just all these different things. The hardest part is to try to do everything, right? You know, and that's the real trick, but 01:17:30.39 Mike Piekarski The interesting thing for me is just trying to learn and get better at my craft, whether it's as a physical therapist, a strength and conditioning coach, or a jujitsu athlete, or a jujitsu coach. 01:17:41.42 iandawsonmackay And would that be your kind of recovery away from jujitsu, that kind of, that self-betterment, that kind of self-improvement? How should people be, you know, sort of recovering between sessions and jujitsu? 01:17:54.89 iandawsonmackay How should we be, you know, setting habits for better sleep, for better diet? 01:17:58.42 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:17:59.77 iandawsonmackay But also just to recover cognitively, emotionally, spiritually, whatever it is, you know, away from the mats to become better people, do you think? 01:18:10.42 Mike Piekarski Yeah, I think that's what what hurts a lot of jujitsu people, is that guy who I told you about the staples. He had mentioned his, because he was talking about his training partner, he was like, well, my training partner has nothing else. 01:18:21.67 Mike Piekarski I'm like, that's really, really bad. That's when you do those stupid things. 01:18:24.10 iandawsonmackay no 01:18:25.97 Mike Piekarski I think one of the the best things I ever did for my career was I had a knee injury. So I had ah a loose bit of cartilage, which meant that the cartilage would float into my knee and my knee would lock up. 01:18:37.25 Mike Piekarski essentially I couldn't really, there was times I couldn't even walk because my knee would be locked in about a 90 degree angle and I needed surgery. This was around the time where I was working full time as a physical therapist, but I used that time. I was like, well, I could try to like do a bunch of bullshit on the mat and like hurt myself and not really getting where, or it could just take time off and like better. So I started working on my online platforms. And because of that, and you know, my wife was always like, 01:19:06.15 Mike Piekarski Why are you doing so much like I would wake up at like five in the morning to see a client, right? Or I'd be like waking up early to go film some video, but all of that kind of carried over. So now I'm in a situation where I can train pretty much, I can train pretty much as much as my body will let me. 01:19:22.96 Mike Piekarski i in a financially a much better position. I enjoy what I do in a much better spot because I did something else. So I do think it from a um ah mental cognitive situation, it is good for athletes to have like a side hobby, something that they can do a aside from jiu-jitsu. So they when that injury happens, it's not like they're completely lost. 01:19:47.71 Mike Piekarski um Yeah, I think that would probably be I don't know if I quite answered your question, but. 01:19:56.08 iandawsonmackay because there's that I can determine who said it that it was something like have three hobbies one that made you money one that was physical that allowed you to exert your energies out and one that was scratching your creative itch I mean i that's why I love the podcast but I need that and jiu-jitsu and probably getting rejected and every day I go for well that's become a sport of my own just now but you used to train with your your partner 01:20:10.16 Mike Piekarski Yeah, sure. 01:20:24.60 iandawsonmackay How did you find that helping your relationship when you were dating somebody who trained as well? 01:20:29.68 Mike Piekarski and ah I think that just a good thing is that she understood my passion for jiu-jitsu, because she also really likes jiu-jitsu. From a ah skill development perspective, it's actually been super helpful, just because I'm a black belt, she's not, I'm bigger than her. So like a lot of times, like I get to just like try things out, and if like my wife wife taps me out, like I don't care. like It's not like, oh man, this little woman's gonna tap me. like I don't care. 01:20:59.13 Mike Piekarski so For me, it allows me to work on things that I wouldn't be working on with other people. like I can work on late-stage escapes. um So from a skill perspective, it's really good. From a skill perspective, from her, it's beneficial because I can help her and I can show her things. She does get frustrated with me. But ah but then again, because it's like a passion, she understands that. 01:21:24.53 Mike Piekarski so You know, it's not like, oh, I have to go to jujitsu. Like she gets it, you know? So I think overall it's good, but you know, like, again, there's things that we do outside of jujitsu as well, which, which is just good for, um, a healthy relationship. 01:21:39.48 iandawsonmackay I mean, it's try to explain, I remember one of my exes, and she was like, what do you mean you get dressed in pajamas and roll with sweaty men, honestly? 01:21:41.48 Mike Piekarski Yeah. 01:21:47.85 iandawsonmackay Yeah, it's it's difficult to see unless you get into, it's like a cult, unless you get into it, can I? 01:21:48.56 Mike Piekarski yeah 01:21:53.66 iandawsonmackay How often do you get asked things like, what's a secret sauce supplement? 01:21:54.10 Mike Piekarski well 01:21:58.24 iandawsonmackay You know, are you asking for the latest mushroom, the latest lion's mane, the latest, whatever it is, 01:21:59.60 Mike Piekarski Sure. Sure. 01:22:06.22 iandawsonmackay do Do we always want the sneaky... there must be a little supplement you can give us. is ah 01:22:12.60 Mike Piekarski Uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not a big supplement guy. I keep it super simple. Um, creatine, fish oil. Like I just keep it super simple. 01:22:23.98 Mike Piekarski Uh, I think a lot of times these, these secret supplements, if anything sounds too good to be true, it probably is like when you're like CBD, like it cures everything. 01:22:34.49 Mike Piekarski I'm like, that's a load of shit. Like it doesn't. 01:22:36.15 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:22:37.11 Mike Piekarski Uh, but I think for me as a, as a, um, you know, someone who's. you know, an academic, like what is the research saying? You do have to consider too, a lot of time research is behind. So like people talk about peptides. Peptides might do stuff. It just right now, there's just not enough data for me to like endorse them. Like not only do we not know like what tissue is gonna respond well, we don't know the longitudinal studies, like what are the negative repercussions. There's some evidence that it might like enhance tumors. A lot of times with something like peptides, 01:23:10.53 Mike Piekarski Now I have seen, now you're in the UK. So I work with an athlete who was prescribed peptides by his physician. And I think if you are going to do it, you should be working with a physician. A lot of times, especially in the US, like people get like a black market supplement from a peptides, i like meant for horses. I'm like, dude, like what are you doing? Like, so the best that I can is I look at what research says and you know, I look at, 01:23:37.35 Mike Piekarski you know I'll talk to medical professionals because something like stem cells, PRP, they've been used for the last like 15 years, but only now is it starting to see evidence of support just because research is always gonna be behind. So you can kind of see, but again, I would trust what the the the physicians are saying, not like what your buddy in the gym who's just taking some black mark black market supplements saying. 01:24:00.85 iandawsonmackay Because it's quite amazing just now how many people will take what a presidential candidate but says as gospel, how much, you know, like their late celebrity will they'll start taking something. 01:24:07.75 Mike Piekarski Sure Sure Yeah Yeah 01:24:11.80 iandawsonmackay No idea if it'll counteract any medicines or anything like that. You know, it's just because it's the damn thing. If Taylor Swift says it, they need to do it or so and so says it. What would you want the the evolution of your brand to be? 01:24:24.04 iandawsonmackay Because you keep everything you hit seems to just be knocked out of the park. You know, you're doing all these ah great programs. How do you want to build or are you just happy doing as you are kind of exploring and putting out your own findings to help yourself learn and understand and help your clients? 01:24:40.83 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:24:44.12 iandawsonmackay What do you want to do in the future? 01:24:46.33 Mike Piekarski Yeah. So that's interesting. Um, I think for me, I want to get more products out. Like I said, I want to, there's another physical therapy course I want to release for jiu-jitsu guys. I want to release one for strikers. Um, I've considered doing like a physical therapy mentorship, like an online, so people who want to work with me directly. Um, 01:25:05.64 Mike Piekarski I was thinking about doing like an online community for physical therapists. So like, we're like, we can all just kind of like brainstorm and talk. um I'm thinking about trying to make like a website, find a provider. So for you, if you're in the UK, you're like, well, is there any physio that are seeing jujitsu? Like what if I could find someone, right? Because the local physio down the road probably doesn't know anything about jujitsu. But what if there was one in the town over, right? 01:25:32.31 Mike Piekarski um So I think those are some of the like products I wanna do. I definitely, I did a longevity course um in Seattle a few weeks ago. That was a lot of fun. I wanna start doing that more. I would like to have an in-person physical therapy course. So for people who don't know, ah like physical therapists and physios have to do like ah continuing education. So like if you come to my course, I can give them that con ed that they need to maintain their license. So that stuff's fun. 01:26:01.05 Mike Piekarski um At one point I was thinking about doing a podcast, but this is my sixth podcast this month and I'm getting burnt out. So I don't, I don't know if I want to do that. 01:26:07.63 iandawsonmackay Jeez. 01:26:09.95 Mike Piekarski So, uh, yeah, there's just, there's a lot of ways I can go right now. 01:26:11.27 iandawsonmackay I love that. 01:26:13.70 Mike Piekarski I'm in a pretty good situation in my life where again, I have a, again, I get to teach jiu-jitsu. I get to train jiu-jitsu. I get to learn judo. I get to work with jiu-jitsu athletes all over the world and I get to work in person physical therapy for for people. So I have a lot of different hats, but it kind of like makes it so I never get burnt out. 01:26:33.75 iandawsonmackay ah love and what was What's your um your way of looking at life? Like, you know, how if you look back at this in 10, 20 years, 50 years, whatever it is, what would would you want your legacy to be as Mike the man, Mike the content care? How much do you think of, like, Momento Mori about dying in your legacy? Or are you just enjoying the ride in life? Because a lot of guys just now are We don't know what we want from life and suddenly you're 80 and go fuck what happened? 01:27:04.68 Mike Piekarski Sure. 01:27:06.97 iandawsonmackay What would you want your legacy to be? 01:27:09.48 Mike Piekarski From a personal perspective, I just would like to experience things, travel. Me and my wife, we're in a situation now where we can travel, so it's like go see other parts of the world. um I think just experiencing traveling and doing like that is just a ah way that you'll, you just need stuff to look forward to. From a professional standpoint, 01:27:30.68 Mike Piekarski I think if I can kind of um somehow make these combat athletes, these traditional athletes less of these like bonehead muscle, you know, these just just people being idiots, I think if I can change the the culture, I think that I would say that like my effort in social media was successful. Just kind of make them less idiots about injury. Like let's let's focus on longevity, let's not be a moron. 01:27:57.84 iandawsonmackay That should be the tagline for a lot of jiu-jitsu, Jim. I mean, I know we've gone way over time. ah I'm really sorry for you so much for your time, but you're such a joy to speak to. 01:28:03.65 Mike Piekarski sure no we're good yeah sure 01:28:06.82 iandawsonmackay It feels like 10 minutes and there's so many rabbit holes. I'd love to go down and do future ones and bring other people on as well. But what do you want people to take from this? You know, and how can we... 01:28:19.79 iandawsonmackay like summarise this. Is there something we can do? Is there a challenge? Is there a remembrance of a focus that you want people listening to this who are going into jiu-jitsu, maybe a fat sweaty guy like myself, somebody who's taken it up as a completely newbie? How can we approach jiu-jitsu and use the teaching from this podcast to better ourselves in jiu-jitsu and in life? 01:28:46.22 Mike Piekarski I would say the point of ah class is skill building, not ego building. So get better at jiu-jitsu, that doesn't mean you have to be winning every role. 01:28:57.59 Mike Piekarski I would say tap, I mean, I tap, I'm a black belt, I'll tap to people, I don't care. When I stopped caring about tapping is when I noticed a lot of improvement with my jiu-jitsu, like who cares? 01:29:09.58 iandawsonmackay No. 01:29:10.72 Mike Piekarski Like, you know, I think Gary Tonin was saying something like he might be going in a training session, he might tap like, 20 times. Now it could be an exaggeration, but it could be he's wrong with the killers of new wave. But like you dig someone like Gary Tonin, who's like one of the best black belts in the world. And he's tapping 20 times in a session. If you're a purple belt, like what do you care? Like it doesn't matter, right? So tap, ah you have an injury, address it early. Don't let it become this chronic thing that, you know, now in 10 years, you're going to need surgery to address. I would say that those are some key things you could take away from this podcast. 01:29:46.19 Mike Piekarski that you know really anyone who who does combat sports or interested will benefit from. 01:29:51.66 iandawsonmackay love it. And until we can get another one in the books and really kind of go down into these sort of theseer pockets, how can we follow along? How can we find out about these training courses? 01:30:02.46 iandawsonmackay See, because I'm assuming that you should be doing TED talks, books, you know, you're one of the few people that could actually fix people before they get completely fucked up. 01:30:10.48 Mike Piekarski Sure. sure 01:30:12.78 iandawsonmackay How can we follow along on this amazing journey you're on 01:30:17.26 Mike Piekarski Yeah, I would say the best way is Instagram. My handle is doctor underscore kickass. And in my bio, I have um all of my courses. If people want to work with me remotely or or contact me for you know any type of, you know, that'll be the best way to to contact me. 01:30:35.30 iandawsonmackay Well.