The Strenuous Life Podcast with Stephan Kesting

I'm STOKED that Survivorman Les Stroud came on the podcast today!!! We talked adventure, survival skills, navigating in the wilderness, the closest he's come to death while filming, work-life balance, music and more. I hope you enjoy listening to his episode as much as I did recording it for you! Go to http://www.lesstroud.ca to find out more about Les, his appearances, shows, and concerts.

How often and how hard to train are tricky questions. Too much hard training and you'll grind yourself into a pulp. Not enough hard training and you'll never reach your potential or expand the limits of what you think you're capable of. In this episode I dive into the topics of over-training, under-recovery, and the single most important legal supplement for recovery! To support the podcast and allow us to bring you more episodes with more amazing guests consider contributing a buck or two a month at https://www.patreon.com/stephankesting And if you can't do that then please remember that rating or reviewing the podcast on iTunes (or your podcasting platform of choice) is a huge help as well. Train hard, but smart too! Stephan

This was a neat interview I did with Emily Kwok from Princeton BJJ and star of the first How to Defeat the Bigger, Stronger Opponent series. We focused on creating positive learning environments in BJJ, looking at the roles played by the students, the teachers, and instructional technology. We also covered whether I would do anything different if I was starting my BJJ training all over again, competition vs training, and breaking through plateaus. I hope you find this interesting!

How to improve your BJJ almost instantly. No, this isn't hyperbole; microdrilling is a training method that will have immediate effects on your game by finding ways around the sticking points in your techniques. Give it a try and if it works for you then please share this episode with someone you train with who might also find it useful.

This is an important episode because it's all about managing the adrenaline dump and the fight or flight reflex. Shane Fazen from Fight Tips and I talk about what fight or flight feels like, what you can expect in your first few competitions, how to use adrenaline to your advantage, exactly how to use visualisation and meditation to lower your heart rate, stay calm, and actually fight the way you train. If you compete or are interested in self defense don't miss this episode. Find out more about Shane Fazen at http://fighttips.com Download my free video guide for learning BJJ for iOS and Android devices at https://www.grapplearts.com/roadmap And if you found this episode useful please give the podcast a rating and/or a review - that type of support is really helping!

How do you know when to attack? It's actually pretty simple math!! In this episode I share the "what's the score" concept that I learned from Rob Biernacki. At any given point in time both you and your opponent have a score, determined from your base, posture and structure. The relative score tells you whether an attack will succeed or fail. This is a very useful idea and it will allow you to create and recognise opportunities for your sweeps, submissions and guard passes! Videos referred to in this podcast include The Three Most Critical Concepts in Jiu-Jitsu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5RaxEV9fx8 and My New Favourite Triangle Choke Setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB2A-hAv04A

In this short rant I talk about 3 or 4 training methods you can use when sparring someone significantly smaller than you so that you BOTH come out winners! These methods also apply, to some degree, to sparring people who are less experienced and not as good as you are. Training time is a limited commodity wo you really want to maximise what you get out of your sparring sessions!

David Brown has spent many decades studying and teaching martial arts, including Muay Thai and Wing Chun. He's also a clinical neuropsychologist which gives him a unique insight into the mindset at work within martial arts cults. Then we also went down some major rabbit holes, including the science of sticking people's brains into scanners and the elimination of disease through new genetic technologies. I hope you like this one as much as I did! 01:02 - A journey through the martial arts 04:15 - The business of running a school 07:51 - Martial arts cults and the psychology of delusion 20:29 - Passive vs authoritative teachings 26:26 - Research in the autism field 44:35 - Treatment of autism 49:37 - Gene modification and CRISPR 57:52 - Muay Thai vs Wing Chun You can find out more about David's school in San Antonio, Texas, at totalconfidencemartialarts.com

In a self defense situation you have to have a high level of environmental awareness to keep track of multiple attackers, improvised weapons, escape routes, etc. Today I'm joined by classical Japanese Jujutsu practitioner Alex Kask to talk about how this important aspect can be incorporated into your training. We also talk about gun grappling, multiple-opponent MMA, 'dirty' fighting techniques like eye gouging and biting, and more! In other relevant news, check out the brand new Grapplearts instructional called The Self Defense Guard at https://www.grapplearts.com/selfdefenseguard. In this organised and detailed course BJJ black belt Ellliott Bayev and I will show you how to correctly use the BJJ closed guard to stay safe in a situation where someone is trying to punch your teeth down your throat!

If you're doing any kind of martial art - be it BJJ, MMA, Kickboxing, Taekwondo or whatever - then your game needs to evolve every decade to accommodate the changes in your body. I got this from the legendary Dan Inosanto who started training at age 11 and is still practising martial arts in his 80's.