Daniel Strauss AKA The Raspberry Ape - S8E2

Wil Brown: since I've started following you, you're not how do you say it? Like data-driven or science, ⁓ first, experiment, you go experience first data metrics second. And I quite, I'm quite interested to know like how you manage, do you track and
Daniel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm.
Wil Brown: I think some people get caught up in a bit kind of bogged down in data and in kind of, you know, research that's 10 years too late. And actually it's nice to hear from people that are at the forefront of a training modality that's niche. And I really love the people that push toward being, you know, quote unquote weirdo, which is like, not calling you a weirdo, but I fucking dig it. ⁓
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. Mmm. You wouldn't be the first and I hope you're not the last.
Wil Brown: And I'd love to kind of dive into that kind of, I guess, aura in the way of like, okay, a lot of people choose not to do certain things because they feel like it's outcasting them, especially in the training world. It's like all about trends. It's all about copying X, Y, and Z. And I'm really interested in this series in particular is talking to people that are doing things that are not so similar to the norm and are breaking certain things down and actually going, well, I think this.
Daniel: Mmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Wil Brown: One of the issues I find with social media is that people don't put what I think out, they put what they've seen other people do out. And it's a constant echo chamber of people repeating the same three top tips for X, Y, and Z. And it's not, here's my theory, here's what I've experienced, here's an open discussion. And I'm hoping through today we can kind of move a bit towards that direction and just kind of see what comes up from your perspective. That's cool. Yeah? Awesome.
Daniel: Yep. Yeah. Mmm. Mmm. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it.
Wil Brown: So let's go maybe right back to the beginning. As a child, were you at all physical or were you, you know, what was the situation there?
Daniel: Yeah, I was pretty much the opposite the antithesis of a sporty or a physical child in any way. I did not enjoy or indeed excel in any sort of physical endeavor for my entire childhood up until my mid teens when I started jujitsu. So I didn't have the build or frame or you know, there's a very important couple of years pre puberty, especially where what you're doing from sort of four, five, six up into about 11 or 12 lays a really strong foundation for your physicality in the future. And I just skipped all of that. And that wasn't, you my parents were very supportive of anything I wanted to do. They, they took me to the clubs, but I just had no interest in it, guess, which looking back now it's, know, the scene in Interstellar where he's like banging on the, you know, the intergalactic wall and he's trying this, that's me banging on the wall, telling my
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah.
Daniel: six year old self to like go do gymnastics or something.
Wil Brown: So what were you doing with your time? Were you at all physical or were you just kind of hanging out, chilling?
Daniel: No, no, not at all. Not at all. ⁓ No, I just I didn't really care for sports. ⁓ I never, I guess is the big one. I never was drawn to team sports. There was something inherently ⁓ that I didn't like about the fact that if you won, it was shared and you could lose without it being your fault and that sort of whole thing. So most of sports that you play as a kid in the UK, it's football, right?
Wil Brown: Mmm.
Daniel: So I was never in the football. ⁓ a little bit older when I went to secondary school, was rugby, but I was never in the rugby. Yeah. I just really didn't do anything. And then people asked me, well, what did you do? And the short answer is I have no idea. think I watched TV and ate biscuits. Yeah. It didn't do much. Yeah. It sounds all right now when you talk about it.
Wil Brown: Yeah, the good life. Yeah, right. So then what was it about? Was it BJJ with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? What kind of style of JJ Jiu-Jitsu did you first dive into? Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, which j did I j? Yeah. So I mean, I was interested in martial arts from a relatively young age. I think it was I think I watched like Dragon Ball Z whilst I was on holiday in America and it was on TV. Like the original one, not not Dragon Ball Z Dragon Ball with with kid with with Kid Goku. And I remember watching that and I thought, Damn, that's cool. I want to do some of this stuff. And so I had a real interest in martial arts. ⁓ My
Wil Brown: Hmm. Hmm.
Daniel: Parents weren't particularly or my mom especially was not particularly keen on me doing any martial arts But I'd say when I was in my early teens, I began going to various martial arts gyms Some for a single session some for a couple of weeks some for a couple of months but none of them really stuck for longer than three or four months When I was about 14 or 15 Again, I tried another one and it was a Japanese jujitsu like traditional jujitsu gym called Mill Hill Jiu Jitsu Club. that was at the time it was pure Jiu Jitsu. I started training there and I was training there for about four or five months. ⁓ And I was enjoying it, but I don't think I was enjoying it that much. think the big sort of that perfect, know, Kairos, Kairos, that sort of the Greek idea of like that time in that moment. I think that moment for me was the fact that even though I wasn't particularly engaged by Japanese jiu-jitsu, I was in that intermediate sort of liminal age where I was too old for a kids class, but I was right at the bottom age-wise of an adult class. So I was 14, hanging out with adults. And I think I just liked being there. was the only kid there. There were no kids classes. Like it was just me and a bunch of like 20, 30, 40 year old guys. So I think I stuck around that for
Wil Brown: Mmm.
Daniel: that more than anything, more than the fact that I enjoyed the actual sport I was doing. About six months after I started, ⁓ one of the instructors left and the other instructor took over who at the time had started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu already. So he would go to the Japanese Jiu Jitsu class, but he wouldn't do any of it. Because once you see the light of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, you're talking about real fighting, you know, it's it's that moment, that epiphany where you realize that
Wil Brown: Hmm.
Daniel: everything else is a complete waste of time. So he would go to the gym during class time, but he would just do jiu jitsu, Brazilian jiu jitsu in the corner. And eventually when the main, the other instructor left, Nick Brooks took over and then slowly he turned the gym from Japanese jiu jitsu, the pure Brazilian jiu jitsu. That's where I trained, ⁓ you know, up until, to a degree. Now you could say,
Wil Brown: Mm.
Daniel: But I left, a lot of things changed over COVID, but up until COVID, that's where I trained through competing for and got my black belt from.
Wil Brown: ⁓ well, amazing. Going back just a small step. So you said, you know, I stayed for that. I'd love to just dig a bit deeper into what exactly was it about being a 14 year old training with 30 to 40 year olds that was really engaging? it the progression arc? Was it the challenge? What kind of stuff was it?
Daniel: Mm. Mmm. Yeah. No, I think, think when you're, you know, when, when, when you, when you're old, you just want to be young. And when you're young, you just want to be older, right? And I think that being around ⁓ older men, ⁓ it makes you feel it makes you stand up a little bit taller, makes you lock in a little bit more. ⁓ You know, they say that, what's the saying, you're, you're the amalgam of the five people you spend the most amount of time with and
Wil Brown: Hmm.
Daniel: If you're hanging around with five 14 year old boys who are, you know, doing whatever 14 year old boys do, that's different than if you're spending time with ⁓ older men and you can, you you try, you, step up your game a little bit. So I felt that that really matured me as a, an individual. ⁓ and I, and I credit that specific fact for a lot of what I was able to do, ⁓ you know, in my mid and mid and late teens.
Wil Brown: Mm. Yeah, nice. So then you then...
Daniel: Because there's not many opportunities for a 14 or 15 year old boy to ⁓ be brought in and kind of treated like an equal ⁓ with a bunch of older men. There's very few opportunities. You're still any younger. Like I said, there was that moment if I was 12 or 13 being introduced to Japanese Jiu Jitsu and I found had to find a kids class. I think it would have gone the same way as all the others. And indeed, if I was 20, it wouldn't have had that unique pull to me. So it was the fact that it was that perfect timing ⁓ of that age.
Wil Brown: Yeah, I think that's where BJJ and other sports for me arm wrestling right now that has such quality is the ability to have older generations still active in a sport. You look at things like mainstream team sports, football, rugby, usually the older generations have dropped off by 30, 35 years old. And so there's no real role models that are actively, you know, being physical with, with the younger generation. think it's so special climbing is another example. You can go out climb.
Daniel: Mmm. Mmm.
Wil Brown: you know, 50, 60, 70 years old. I think that's a really impactful, positively impactful part of something like BJJ. It's obviously hyper from a lay person's point of view. I've not done too much BJJ. It's a hyper intellectualized sport. It's a bit different to, something like football where there's this tactics, but there's, there's the yoga, but need to, or there's the flare. There's the improvisational kind of quality that maybe some people miss.
Daniel: Yes. Mmm.
Wil Brown: in BJJ and I'm interested from your perspective, you, you don't strike me as someone that's hyper intellectual, but would you say your style is more improvised? Is it more technical? How do you approach it?
Daniel: Yes, good question. I think that the idea that jujitsu is, is, ⁓ has to be intellectual is really wrong and possibly even damaging to the sport. And this is, this is not an assertion that you're making. This is absolutely something that is almost stereotypical to it. You know, it's seen as human chess, ⁓ and you know, it's a cerebral thing. It's for nerds and all of that stuff. And jujitsu is
Wil Brown: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: it's very, it is very unconstrained. It's almost limitless in a way that almost the very few sports are. So arm wrestling is a really good example of you. can look at arm. You can make a very interesting debate as to arm wrestling being a combat sport, you know, it's not really, ⁓ but you know, in a way you're wrestling, but you're only wrestling with the arm. Now, obviously
Wil Brown: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a hyper constrained wrestle in the same way that BJJ is maybe unconstrained.
Daniel: To the layman, it's a very constrained wrestle. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And almost any other form of wrestling. ⁓ when I said, you just like pure grappling submission, grappling is by far the most unconstrained rule set of a ⁓ non striking one on one combat sport. You will find some rules, you know, some events where you can basically do anything grappling wise, you know, There's Greco-Roman, you can't grab below the waist and in other wrestling styles, you can't grab the head without having an arm on the inside. And if you pin them for three seconds, it's done. With grappling, you sort of just go and you stop when someone quits. So it is incredibly broad. And what comes with that broadness is the ability to, like in anything, you take something, you take the universe. and you can look up at the stars and you can marvel at its beauty. Or you can look through a telescope and work out how many light years away this thing is and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You you can, you can intellectualize jujitsu as much as you like, but because it's so limitless that intellectualization becomes limitless, but it's not necessary at all, you know? And it's actually, it's a funny thing because
Wil Brown: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Daniel: And again, talking about like grappling and, and, sort of over intellectualizing it. I'm in Rome at the moment, as we speak, I was in Athens a couple of days ago. And one of the things that have really stuck out to me, as I've been traveling around, you know, going to museums and stuff like that, I posted a picture a few days ago, of ⁓ one of the metapeas, one of the statues from the Parthenon in Athens. And On the south side of the Parthenon, there is 32 metopes, think 32 statues all depicting this battle between centaurs and humans. And a lot of them are in grappling positions. I posted a picture of one of them. One of the most well preserved metopes is the centaur doing a one handed guillotine, which is a very popular joke and it like a position that one of my favorite positions position that I'm known for.
Wil Brown: Hmm.
Daniel: doing the center doing this technique onto a human. And you look at that, you go down like this. This shit is, it's been around for thousands of years. You know, this is innate, know, they weren't intellectualizing it then they just knew it was a thing. And then yesterday I was in the Vatican Museum, and they have some relief sculptures depicting the same thing. And it was so crazy. I walk in, I see these three, these, these four images lined up next to each other on this same block. And it's a Centaur doing a heel hook. I'm not fucking kidding you. He's doing a goddamn hill. Let you look at it You're like he is obviously doing a heel hook One of them is doing a guillotine with both hands locked in and he's like arching backwards trying to finish it It could almost be like the follow-up picture of that of that initial one I did and then on the other one there's a human doing a camora on their centaur and you look at it and if you do grappling you're like this is not a Scramble that's accent like that is a heel hook. You know, that is a leg lock. That is a guillotine choke
Wil Brown: Ha Hmm.
Daniel: and that is a camora and there's no doubt about it. You know what mean? So this is something that is ⁓ inherently emergent from ⁓ the human anatomy. So when you have something like that, you you can find videos of kangaroos doing real naked jokes, like it can't be that intellectual. You know what mean? Yeah.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. I like the word emergent. I feel like from the outside, there's been a huge push towards almost task-based learning and trying to bring a lot of schools of BJJ away from kind of over intellectualized learning and pushing people more towards these emergent qualities and process of learning that they try to allow things to emerge as opposed to
Daniel: Mmm. Mmm.
Wil Brown: forcing it in and you know, put your left thumb there, put your pinky there. I wonder when you're teaching seminars or when you're rolling yourself, do you have a leaning towards an emergent practice, an emerging teaching style or do you go a bit more nitty gritty and detail oriented? What's the balance there?
Daniel: Yeah, so. For me, I've always been a huge proponent of live training. That's when really you integrate, that's when you develop the skills. And that's what it's all about. For me, it's less about techniques and more about positions and concepts to move into and out of and through those different positions. ⁓ Focusing on techniques, it's about where you're going, not about how you get there. You can find the way to get there, but you've got to know where you're going. ⁓ I think that, that, I think that the problem with the, the, the pure constraint led approach, even though I believe that that is the way to develop skills best is that the intellectualization that you, we see often in jujitsu, when people are going very detailed on certain things, that doesn't necessarily help someone learn that skill. But learning a skill is not the only important thing when it comes to teaching. know, something that's even more important in teaching is engaging with the person that you are teaching. You know, it's actually not what's optimal. It's the emotional investment. It's the interest. It's the engagement. And I find that if you do it well, going into details about stuff can pull someone more emotionally involved, you know, engaged in to what you're showing, which then when they do move into something that's more live, there is more interest and there's more engagement there. I think it was common the name of the author I think it was talent, the talent code. ⁓ Where they
Wil Brown: Hmm, Erickson maybe? No, probably here actually. Yeah.
Daniel: something like that. Yeah. I think it was that book where he talks about some book I read last year. They were talking about like the best indicator of how far someone will go in whatever sport they were talking about is like they ask them, you know, will you be doing this in 10 years? And the people who went, maybe and the you know, they didn't do as well. They weren't as good as the people went 100%. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.
Wil Brown: Hmm. Hmm.
Daniel: So actually the emotional investment into what you're doing is something that I think is really underrated as a longer term tool for skill acquisition and just longevity in the sport.
Wil Brown: Yeah, I it. Talk a lot on this podcast about resonance. It's of course a bit of a woo woo term, but there's something there and just kind of vibing with something, someone getting the emotional content across to let people hook into something and then go through the nitty gritty. And without that emotional hook, it's really hard to be dedicated into something. And it kind of segues quite nicely into my next question, which was go back to when Dan was, you know,
Daniel: Mmm. 100%. Mmm.
Wil Brown: 14 to 20, let's say, in the first kind of four five years. Did you have a feeling of, yeah, I'm in this, I'm gonna be a black belt, I'm seeing myself reaching the top of this sport, or were you just kind of going along as any other teenager would, just kind of fumbling through?
Daniel: Mmm. Mm. No, I was obsessed with it as soon as I started it, as soon as I started grappling and I knew what I was doing. And, you know, I was watching the UFC at the same time. And again, I was in this privileged position to be the youngest in the class. and I was very lucky to, and this is, you know, you get onto the next thing where you're talking about the importance of teachers and mentors and, know, you look at some of the highest performing athletes in the world and high performers in non-athletic endeavors as well. And you ask him, you know, who's the most important people in your life? They'll be like, ⁓ my physics teacher from third grade, who was the first person in my life who believed in me. And, know, you hear this story all the time. And for me, that person was was ⁓ Nick Brooks, who, you know, I was young, he saw something in me. He's a very generous person, you know, he went out of his way for a lot of people. And I was lucky that, you know, he took me under his wing. He would drive me to tournaments. He would drive me to training sessions. And when someone else believes in you, it doubles down, it echoes, but it gets, you believe in yourself, but they believe in you and it goes back to you. then that's when you really, yeah, it's a mirror. And for me, that was a massive part of what, again, we go back to that emotional investment. That was a big part of it for me. So yeah, I fell in love with the sport pretty fast and that's all I thought about. It's all I wanted to do.
Wil Brown: It's a mirror almost.
Daniel: you know, I was at school at the time and, then at college afterwards and people would be doing work and I'd be talking, you know, okay, what I'd be doing, ⁓ spider charts, what techniques I can do from which positions and stuff like that. So, yeah, I lost interest in everything else. Just wanted to do Jiu
Wil Brown: Obviously, back then, financial gain wasn't really a part of the sport, it's still not really part of the sport. I think Craig Jones is trying to help that, but there's obviously, you know, there's been a stutter comparative to other combat sports, and especially the UFC was driving forward. Was there ever a thought from yourself or from your family of like, what's the career here? Or was it just pure love and focus?
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, a 16, 17, 18 year old kid does not give a shit about money. Parents slightly more concerned, but I pretty much wouldn't listen to anything they said. And I was just like, this is what I'm going to do. Yeah, no, no, no. You're a hundred percent right. There was, I guess the goal always for someone who is still kind of, if you want to make money doing jujitsu, unless you're really, really, really high level athlete is you're going to open a gym.
Wil Brown: Ha ha.
Daniel: So that was the intention down the way. But when you're that young, you're not thinking about stuff like that. You're thinking about only being the best in the world. That's what you care about. Who cares about money? I just want I want glory. That's what Yeah.
Wil Brown: Did you have... Yeah, yeah. So ⁓ before we started recording, we mentioned Luke Trainor, a mutual friend of ours, and he's quite specific in his goal setting and how he goes about fights and kind of writes them on a whiteboard. a quite specific way of doing his goals and the timeline. And I wonder, before you started to compete internationally and before you got your black belt, did you have a specific goal? and then how did that change through your career?
Daniel: No, I love I love Luke stuff. He's got the whiteboard. He writes the goals down, you know, he's manifesting, he's visualizing, he's lures of attraction, he's all of that stuff. No, I didn't do any of that stuff. I just I just trained and competed and onto the next one. Yeah, it was a lot more less, less, not less thoughtful. It's probably a poor choice of words. But you get the idea. Yeah, I wasn't doing I wasn't doing all the stuff that Luke was. But I do love that stuff. It was emerging exactly. Yeah.
Wil Brown: Yeah. It was emergent. Yeah, so obviously adjacent to BJJ, the growth of the UFC was happening. Was there ever a conversation, was it ever on the cards that you might move towards striking and actually trying to go full MMA into the UFC?
Daniel: Huh? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that was my goal from when I started. So I started jiu-jitsu at like 15 and I was watching UFC around about that time. I was like, I want to, I'm going to be a UFC champion. So I said, I want to be a UFC champion. Yeah, of course. Uh, and I think the deal that was made with my family, I believe is that I could start doing striking when I turned 18.
Wil Brown: Hmm. Wow, okay.
Daniel: So, you know, get a good base in grappling and start striking when I turned 18. And essentially what happened is after three and three or so years of, of grappling training and success in competitions, ⁓ when I got to 18, I was less willing to take my focus away from grappling. So I just put that on the, on, on, on the back burner and I focused more on the grappling and it kind of continued like that. I was, you know, Okay, you know, I'm 21 now. Okay, let's let's do a kickboxing class and then you know I'd hit a few pads and go nah I prefer the grappling stuff. So I never did it and in hindsight Very glad that I never did it. Very glad
Wil Brown: Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Really? What, can I ask why?
Daniel: It's a really brutal sport. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a tough game. It's a really tough game. MMA. think any striking sport, Thai boxing, ⁓ any full contact striking art, ⁓ good to weigh up the benefits to the costs. There's a lot more costs, ⁓ which come in, in, the form of brain damage, essentially. So in hindsight, and this was sort of became even more aware. I, by the time I was in my late twenties, I was fully aware of this. and you know, I had no desire to really do it. You know, maybe I was in my late twenties. Okay. I'll train for one MMA fight and have a one MMA fight. And then I can say that I did it. ⁓ and as I got a little bit older and I, ⁓ when I started working for cage rise in 2020, so just before I turned 30 and That's Europe's biggest MMA organization. And I was able to see the sport much more up close and personal. And since doing that now I'm sort of even more doubled down and happy that I never got in there. Even though I have huge respect to the people who do. I think that MMA is the greatest sport in the world. ⁓ But I don't want to do it. Don't want the brain damage. Yeah.
Wil Brown: Hmm. respect. So let's go to your competitive career because I'd love to hear a bit about Polaris events and kind of what went on there. So can you remember your first, let's call it international event?
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah, I can I can remember yeah, I can remember the first international event I did I think was Europeans Juvenile I was 16 at the time I think Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I started competing at So I competing at 15. I think I went to Europeans when I was 16 the juvenile ⁓ Come about how I got on I think I Think I came second
Wil Brown: So super young.
Daniel: You it was okay. I fought some Polish kid who just was just a bit. I can't remember his name. It's like, no, no, thankfully not. Uh, and then, uh, when I was, when I was 17, I went to, uh, the first ever war, no gear championship. Uh, again, juvenile division, um, just two of us, but I won. So I became juvenile war champion at blue belt. Uh, which, which of course becomes, it's a nothing, you know, it's nice when you're a blue belt kid and then you, you.
Wil Brown: Hmm. He'll hook to you or something. Cool.
Daniel: But the next, you know, a month later I was in adult and it doesn't matter anymore. Uh, yeah, no, I, I competed a lot. did Europeans multiple times. I went to Brazil when I was 17 and competed at adult in, uh, a blue belt adult in Brazil, which is an experience everyone has to do at some point. And I won the Rio state open there. That was cool. Definitely a highlight competitive wise, you know, they don't want to, they don't want the gringo to win. That was five fights to win, I think. And, and
Wil Brown: Yeah, of course.
Daniel: and they were not happy for me to take meds all time. They were like, you know, it was one group of us who were from the UK, you know, this is, this was back in the day where people were not going to Brazil to compete really, especially from the UK. So, so yeah, that was cool. And yeah, you know, was active, pretty active competitively, especially in my late teens and early twenties.
Wil Brown: Coming from a childhood of non-competitive activity, let's call biscuit eating, what was the process like of you diving into competition? Was it a weird thing? Did you have to turn it on? Did you have that inside you? What was that like?
Daniel: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah, good question. think I'm even though I wasn't very sport is a kid I was competitive, very competitive, overly competitive, probably some people would say, I think that was from my dad, my dad, whenever we play games, he'd never, he'd always fuck us up, you know, like, doesn't matter what we're playing cards or Monopoly, or we're playing pool or, know, whatever tennis. Yeah, like he wouldn't give, you know, he beat us. And I think that like, that makes you fight harder for it. ⁓ But I do remember I remember my first ⁓
Wil Brown: Hahaha Yeah, gotta teach him a lesson.
Daniel: as an adult, one of my earliest tournaments in the UK. And I was watching a lot of pride at the time, which was the big MMA show for those who were too young in MMA to have heard of pride. But I was watching at Vandeve, Silva was my favorite, the ex murderer. And he would, you know, he'd be very intense and he, and I sort of tried to embody him. And, know, later on I would, I would learn about optimal state of arousal stuff, but essentially like I completely overshot my arousal levels. ⁓ the most I ever had, like almost impressively, like I was psyching myself up into like, like a berserk rage. I had like tunnel vision, no peripherals. couldn't hear anything. And I ran out there and I got submitted like instantly. I was furious. I punching the mat. The next talk, the next tournament I went to, I, ⁓ I did the opposite and I was listening to classical music beforehand and meditating.
Wil Brown: Frenzy or something.
Daniel: I went in there and I was flowing and got my past God pass and I got beaten there as well because I was too relaxed. So it's a really good way of teaching you the two sides of the the spectrum. And then obviously worked on finding my way to the middle and getting that down.
Wil Brown: Okay. Awesome. When you got the black belt, obviously then you're competing against the black belt, that correct?
Daniel: Mmm. yes, but also no. So I was competing against black belts from when I was purple belt. So obviously in no gay, ⁓ especially back then when we didn't really have belt divisions for no gay, it was just experienced levels. ⁓ yeah, by the time I was purple belt, I was, I was pretty high level in the UK. I qualified for ADCC as a purple belt when I was 20. So was one of, I was one of the top guys in Europe as a purple belt. ⁓
Wil Brown: ⁓ cool.
Daniel: I won advanced division at Naga Europe. I won the British Open at black belt when I was a brown belt. So I was already, I was already competing at a black belt level. Essentially I did a few super fight shows where I was submitting black belts as a purple belt and brown belt. So by the time I got my black belt, the black belt didn't mean it wasn't a, it was just a ticket to compete in more tournaments against black belts.
Wil Brown: Hmm.
Daniel: It wasn't you know for some people the belt is we recognize you as being this level I didn't need someone to say we recognize you as being a black belt because if you tap a black belt You're like, okay, I don't give a shit like you can say tell me that I'm not a black belt I don't care. It's it's kind of redundant at that point. So ⁓ My my brown to black took longer than it should have for a number of reasons ⁓ but it was frustrating. was like, just you're holding me back. know, you're the gates closed. Let me let me out and let me go and compete against who I want to compete against. but yeah,
Wil Brown: Was that a conscious holding back or was that something that was just circumstantial?
Daniel: essentially the person that I was that I wanted to get my black belt from was in Brazil. And then he had a spate of illness where he wasn't able to come over. ⁓ And then ⁓ you know, so that that delayed it somewhat. And then you know, very common thing is to hold people back belts to compete at high level tournaments. ⁓ But essentially, I got, you know, basically offered, you know, you can wait for Marissa or you or Roger can give you a belt. the next grade and I was just like, just give it to me. And in hindsight, that was obviously the right move to make because, you know, the other person would have been Mauricio, Roger's dad. But in hindsight, know, Roger's one of the best grapplers of all time, arguably the best grappler of all time. So actually having a belt from him is about as good a lineage as you can get. Yeah.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, bigger name probably as well. pretty cool. Just as a little sidestep, what I find really interesting with martial arts is the grading systems and the belt systems and it offers a real, almost a gamification of a sport and a graduation system that we don't see really in other sports. Do you think it's entirely positive or what's your experience of the grading system?
Daniel: Hmm. Mm. Yes. yes. ⁓ look, there's, downsides to everything. think that it helps people. Again, we go back to that thing we were talking about, that emotional investment. ⁓ some people don't care about the belts. Some people say they don't care about, the belts and they do. Some people say they don't care about the belts and they really don't. For those people, it just doesn't matter. And if it doesn't matter who cares. And there are some people who it really means a lot to. And this is especially true of the hobbyist people. you know, the older older gents or, or, or ladies and people who aren't able to quote unquote, prove themselves as much in the training room for them being acknowledged as a blue belt or purple or brown, of course black for a lot of people, they have a goal of achieving their black belt. It's a nice thing to do in your life. And with jujitsu, there's no stronger belt in the world than a jujitsu black belt. because everyone knows that it's going to take you a lot longer than any other, you know, than any other sport, any other martial art. So getting your jujitsu black belt is an accomplishment, regardless of your competition, credentials or anything like that. You know, there's going to be 10 to 15 years of hard work consistently. So I think it's nice. ⁓ but depend, it depends who it's for, you know, it's relative to the individual.
Wil Brown: Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: For a serious competitor, doesn't matter. for a hobbyist, it's a really nice, you know, and I'm sure like, I don't know, other sports kind of have, whether you're in the A team or B team, you know, it's,
Wil Brown: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I think my feeling is also it's a genius business move, right? If you own a gym, like a commercial gym, there's no real graduation process and you see people jump in, jump out all the time. But with something like BJJ, if people really dive in and they get the first couple of notches on the belt, all of a sudden it's like, ⁓ I've got a ladder here and it's kind of, it's there in front of me. I've got this path I can follow and I...
Daniel: You have a little bit. Mmm. Mmm.
Wil Brown: in 15 years time if I stay here for 15 years I'm going to get my black belt which seems like a really ⁓ smart move from the get go.
Daniel: Yeah, no, I mean, there's, there's no shadow of a doubt that, um, that the belt system helps with retention. It can, you know, I don't think it always helps with retention because what you'll find a lot of people is, uh, famously we have blue beltitis, which is you get your blue belt and boom, you disappear. You never come back. And I think that's what happens. That is a symptom of someone putting real emphasis on a belt.
Wil Brown: Mmm.
Daniel: getting that belt and then nothing changing because it's just a piece of cloth that you, you you're no better on the, the Monday after you got the belt than you were the Monday before you got the belt, you're not a different person. You just wear a different colored cloth to hold your gear together. So a lot of people, they, they put so much focus on getting this one thing and then, you know, cause they're externally driven and then once they have the thing, they go, ⁓ damn, two more years, three more years to the next belt and they'll just quit. So that does happen a lot. But I think if you, you're gone. No, no, no, no, please.
Wil Brown: think this is... Sorry mate, go on. I wanted to parallel this because I think it's such a key point for people in my audience especially, which is achieving a goal, putting so much stock into that goal and realizing that nothing really changes other than you've succeeded in a goal and then you have to reset and choose a different goal. A lot of people when they achieve the X goal, the handstand or whatever it might be, they get their 10 seconds and they're like, ⁓
Daniel: Mmm. Yeah.
Wil Brown: I feel almost lost now. What's my gold star, my North star, my focus point is no longer there. And I wonder from your point of view, who has been through that process over and over again with bout after bout after bout, and then in all these other sports, what is your process? How do you work with goal setting and feeling intrinsically motivated or emotionally engaged in a goal, but not having that as a weight on your back dragging you down? What is the balance for you?
Daniel: Yeah. Mm. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. You know, if you if you rely on external validation for things and and you know, one, maybe you don't get it and you start to become disenfranchised by the idea or two. God forbid you do get it and then you don't know what to do. You know, it's what it's the car. It's the dog chasing the car. It doesn't know what to do once he grabs it. ⁓ For me, jujitsu wise, wasn't an issue because I never cared about the belts. ⁓ I cared about competing and winning and.
Wil Brown: Mm.
Daniel: the belts were all it was is okay, now you can go and compete against purple belts. Now you can go and compete against Brown belt, you know, etc, etc. And when I started doing more no game, almost that didn't matter. So so the belts were only things they were only limits. weren't goals ever. But for other stuff, for a lot of people, they are and I have I've had you know, I have and I've had lots of outside of jujitsu, you know, with the strength stuff. And I think an important part of it is identifying. with, you know, the identity of someone who chases goals, not as someone who chases this one thing. You know, so like a big goal of mine was to lift the dinnie stones. Once I lifted the dinnie stones, I was like, okay, what's next? You know, like, it's always what's next. Because if I go like my, my one goal in life, you can't say that my one goal in life is to do this one thing, because then, if that happens, you got a problem. So I think you always need a
Wil Brown: Hmm. Mmm.
Daniel: you always need another goal in your mind. You know, I've got 10 things that I want to do. And maybe I, you know, hopefully I won't get all of them. I think that's the idea. There's always, there's always something next to work on. What about you? You,
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of the anti-library. There's a guy called Nassim Taleb, he wrote Anti-Fragile. ⁓ And he, in the book, quotes, ⁓ I forget, the Italian philosopher's idea of the anti-library, which is basically, he has this ginormous library at home with books that he's never going to be able to read. And it reminds him that he doesn't know everything or he can't possibly understand and know everything. And it kind of almost keeps him humble, which I think, you know.
Daniel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mmm.
Wil Brown: that the anti-goal is to have loads of goals. So you never quite achieve all of them.
Daniel: Yeah exactly, like what goals do you have at the moment?
Wil Brown: So actually I'm competing tomorrow. So my main goal the last six weeks is my first. I, I long story short, I started to arm wrestle last year and got quite interested in actually similar to you. think the, the, the, the training parallels, I'm just interested in training. love training. love being physically active and grip strength, forearm, elbow health, and coaching that comes with that. All of the stuff I love, but
Daniel: Wow, amazing.
Wil Brown: One thing I always felt in my training that was more general was that it never had grounds to be tested. And climbing to a certain degree was a sport that I could test my physicality in a certain way. But I wanted something more, I wanted something a bit more combative and a bit more physically engaging. And arm wrestling was just something that kept coming up for me, kept coming up for me. And it was something that with my uncles and my dad, I was always really motivated by.
Daniel: Mmm.
Wil Brown: And whenever I was around other people that were willing to try, I'd always go for it. And I always got some positive feedback and genuine resonance from it. So last year I quote unquote, threw caution to the wind and accepted the weird choice to really specify into something super niche. And I entered a competition after just six weeks of kind of arm wrestling and I came third in the national.
Daniel: Mmm. Mmm.
Wil Brown: like the amateur nationals, which was like a massive shock, which was great. But it now meant that I was then a pro, technically a pro in the UK. So for the after six weeks of training, I was like, well, now what do I do? And so we really went into the, you know, into the training phase of, well, what does it mean to be a pro? What can we actually do to kind of push forward and super simplified my training and dropped a lot of things I was doing around the periphery.
Daniel: Awesome. Wow. Hmm.
Wil Brown: And tomorrow's the first event as a pro since the Nationals back in November. So let's see if anything's actually worked. Yeah, I'm super stoked. It's thanks dude. Yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be so good. ⁓ Again though, it's not, it's one of a multitude of goals that I've got.
Daniel: Wow, how exciting. Awesome, man. Well, best of luck with it. Yeah. So, okay. So let's say, let's say you go tomorrow and you win the event tomorrow. What's the goal of?
Wil Brown: So I've got done a super match then six weeks after that, that I've been set up. Yeah, yeah. Then I go to the professional nationals in November. Exactly. And we go, we go, we go. And I've also got smaller goals that I've got in my mind around that. it's, know, nail on the head, I think you, always have to have that anti-goal of having too many goals to actually achieve them. And the skill.
Daniel: Can you win that? Okay, you win that. Mm. Yeah, and also like not getting upset if you don't.
Wil Brown: Right, exactly. Because the likelihood is I'm not going to win tomorrow and I have to, you know, change a few things and actually I'll be shown up for being a complete novice really. And actually that's where I learn and that's the beauty of it. And that's where a testing ground can be so powerful. sometimes we get stuck in the, you know, training by yourself in your garage for years on end and you don't actually get to test the fruits of the labor and actually see what's, what's working, what's not. But I was going to say that the skill of
Daniel: Yeah. Mmm.
Wil Brown: Having loads of goals, feel, especially coaching people is being able to decipher and cut away the noise and actually choose then one to work on or two to work on at any one time. And I really love the modular approach of going, well, you know, I've got these X goals. What in the next six to 12 weeks do I want to really dial into? And for me, I really try and pull going back to our previous conversation on resonance.
Daniel: Mmm.
Wil Brown: And I really try to pull on, well, what am I really drawn to right now? And I'll push that until I feel like I want to change. And it's that kind of emotional process. And I wonder for you, you know, you've just said you've got 10X goals. What is your process of working with them? Do you, you know, set yourself a New Year's resolution? Do you just flow with it? Do you go day by day? What's your process?
Daniel: Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Yeah, well, you know, at the moment, ⁓ I'm on the road, I'm traveling. I'm in Italy at the moment, but I've been away for, I mean, time has become a truly abstract concept for me. And I the days, but something like, ⁓ two and a half months or something. And, ⁓ I'll be away for the foreseeable future. So no goals at the moment, you know, I have these goals, but they're on hold. And, ⁓ I think that's also a big part of it is, ⁓ being able to.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah.
Daniel: Especially when when when you're someone who's been so goal focused and goal oriented always had something that you're chasing Is actually being able to exist for a little bit without chasing anything not getting closer to it only getting further away from your goals You know, had a goal I guess my my main goal of the last year or so Has been been to lift the inch dumbbell. I Was trying to hammer it as hard as I could pro. No, I wasn't able to and and I thought I was hoping
Wil Brown: Mmm. Have you managed yet? ⁓ dude, I really want to try.
Daniel: Yeah, I was hoping I was able to do it before I left to go away in February, but couldn't do it. And so I'm gonna have to wait till I get home and see that 78. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you know, that's, that's kind there's like a background itch, you know, just go home, you don't need to travel anymore. Just go home and get your hands on the dumbbell and, you know, other things, stone lifting is a, is high up my priorities. You know, there's some various stones around the world.
Wil Brown: Is that the 70, 78 kilo one? 78, yeah, okay.
Daniel: the, you know, really the main physical goal for me has always been to do the Husafel. Um, but that's a seriously hard, uh, event that will take a lot of training to do. Um, yeah, there's always, there's always something.
Wil Brown: Hmm. How do you treat being away on the road so much? you try to stay active and do you have like a holiday routine or are you just like, no, ⁓ I'm in off-season, I'm in relaxation mode?
Daniel: Well, I can't do that because I'm not on holiday. I don't really know what I am. guess I'm traveling, but it's not a holiday. too long for a holiday. Um, you know, if you're away for a week or two, if you're away for a week and you train really hard, just take a week off. Just take a week off. Just fucking enjoy yourself. Like if you go three days and you just feel super sluggish, pop down to the, to the local gym and, and, and get a pump on or go for a jog on the beach. You're like, just do something to make you feel better, but don't feel any guilt.
Wil Brown: Mmm. Yeah, yeah. Silly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: for one or two weeks. But if you're away for six months and you just go, I'm just gonna have pasta and gelato every day and I'm not gonna exercise then you end up feeling pretty shitty pretty quick. So I'm not being harsh on myself on how I train but I'm making sure that I I'm going to the gym. I'm trying to roll and gym once every destination because I'm traveling very quickly I'm spending between like three and six days per location. So ⁓
Wil Brown: Mm. ⁓ yeah.
Daniel: So yeah, so I'm just trying to get it in there. But again, it's just not, you know, I don't like traveling, which is funny for someone who is traveling for a significant part of the year, but I've never liked traveling. I travel quite a lot for work. I'm not, this is ⁓ completely a volunteered or optional traveling that I'm doing at the moment. ⁓ But I've never liked it because I lose the control of my food and my training really. ⁓ And you know, you get this.
Wil Brown: Yeah.
Daniel: fear after 20 years of training that you're gonna get weak or you're gonna get smaller or you're gonna whatever you go fuck if you've been training for 20 years and you're scared that you're gonna get a little weaker a little skinnier in six months and that stops you from traveling the world that's pretty shitty isn't it it's pretty pathetic actually when you think about it so for me the one of the one of the big tests of this whole traveling thing for me was to
Wil Brown: Mm. Yeah,
Daniel: force myself out of the comfort zone and to let go of ⁓ that idea that I need to be this strong or this big or whatever and just allow that. I know that in six months time I'll be back to where I was before I left. Who cares?
Wil Brown: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. One big realization for me was being able to go away and accept that I might get a bit weaker and be like, okay, well, what is the joy? What is the most important part of any process for me? And it's the process, not the end product. And so if I'm a tiny bit further back or further away from the end product, it just means I get more time to enjoy the process again. Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, even better. Yeah, yeah.
Wil Brown: Exactly. that change of that reframing of what am I doing this for the ends or the means is actually a huge reframing in my opinion. And I think a lot of people could do to it to do great in understanding, okay, if you just keep achieving things, it becomes empty because they become less meaningful because they're too easy. Or they're just in your swag bag that you're dragging along that gets heavier and heavier. And actually, maybe that's not quite the
Daniel: Hmm. Mm. Mmm. Yeah.
Wil Brown: the meaningful process. I'd like to dive into more of your training. So think that's where we have this huge crossover and I'm stoked to hear more about your grip sports. I'm yet to do any official grip sport competing, let's say, but I absolutely love to. What was your, let's go back a bit. Let's go back. So obviously BJJ, full on BJJ competing. At what point did you go, you know what, I actually need to do some general conditioning, some training outside of my sport.
Daniel: Pretty early. So, you know, a couple of years into training, you know, you start training Jiu you're to get beat up. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, you're going to get beat up for a little while and you get better. Hopefully you stop getting beaten up. I got better, but the problem was I was 55, 60 kilos and I'm competing. Yeah. You know, was a kid.
Wil Brown: Oh wow. How tall are you? I thought you were a big guy.
Daniel: No, I'm 5'9". So on a good day with a deep breath. Yeah. No, I was a skinny kid. so I was, yeah, you know, I started training. I was probably closer to low fifties. So, you know, I was 55, let's say I 60 kilos and I'm getting...
Wil Brown: Okay, I was thinking how did you get into 55 kilos? Yeah.
Daniel: I'm not performing to my skill level against my against people because they're 70, 75, 80 kilos. So, you know, I'm getting beaten up by bigger guys, even though I'm better than them. And this breeds frustration very quickly. So of course, I luckily I'm aware that we have the capacity to change how big and strong we are. So I start looking towards doing some sort of gym work, which I'd never done prior to this point.
Wil Brown: Mm.
Daniel: So I started, know, Nick gave me a little workout that he does and I did a few times and yeah, so, so, and then my friend gave me a book called dinosaur training by, by a guy called Brooks Kubik. And I went through this book and it became my Bible and I still consider it to be the Bible. And that again, it's that inspiration. It's, it's, it's, it's a really cool book. I think everyone, I've recommended it, you know, more than a thousand times more than any other book I've ever read because it is sort of the origin story of my physical training. But it's all about, you know, the dinosaurs in dinosaur training is the old time strong men, you know, the Eugene Sandow, the Arthur Saxons, the George Hackensmiths. And, you know, it's very hardcore. It's heavy, low reps, thick bar and all of this stuff. And, and that's, and, know, big focus on grip. And that's where I got into training. I wrote out my program and I started going to a commercial gym and I kept reading the book and it would always talk about, know, you don't want to be chrome and Fernland. He would call it these commercial gyms because you've got to be a garage gorilla. And I was like, okay, say less. So I bought a 2.5 inch handle barbell at 90 kilos of weights, cleared out as much space in the garage as I could. And I started working out there and uh, yeah, that's been the way ever since.
Wil Brown: you Very nice.
Daniel: And yeah, that's how I got in the strength training. was, it was, you know, it's been a long time. It's been almost 20 years that I've been lifting weights now. and always, you know, always with a big focus on grip. Because, because my hands are naturally weak, you know, I was a kid, you know, yeah, weak. But in jujitsu, that's your connection to you to the other person. If you try you train jujitsu, you know, chuck someone in jujitsu for six months and pull them out and go, where'd you wish you were stronger? They got my hands, make my hands stronger. I want to be able to hold on to the gear. I want to be able to hold on to you know, so you don't need to tell someone that they need to that they need strong grip for
Wil Brown: at that time. Yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel: especially Gijujitsu, they know.
Wil Brown: I come from a decade plus of climbing and even in a sport that is so intrinsically focused on the hands and grip, no one actually talks about grip as a kind of, everyone talks about it as one thing. And I think you were one of the first people that I saw that was actually talking about grip as a multitude of various aspects, let's call them qualities. And you know,
Daniel: Hmm
Wil Brown: even just kind of this versus the forearm flexion versus everything else that could go on. What was it about grip that pulled you in and how did you begin to, I don't want to call it a system, but maybe you'd call it a system. How were you able to systematize grip training to the level that you have right now?
Daniel: Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, I go pretty deep in, everything that I do. My friends may say a bit extra. I'm a bit extra. Um, so, uh, so yeah, it's same with jujitsu. You know, I went, I went deep in on the jujitsu stuff and I did the same when I was getting into the strength training and, and obviously there was more of a, of a focus towards grip always has been, you know, I, I, I focus on full body training, but the grip has always been for me, the most intriguing. Because I think it's the strongest, you know, it's the the most bang for your buck you can get for so much stuff and the grip requirements for in the same way we talking before the physicality requirements is Based on the the level of constraint within a sport so if you have a Very constrained sport the physicality will be more specific and if you have a very broadly constrained sport, the physicality will have to be more general. And ⁓ jujitsu is very, as we already said, it's not very constrained at all. So you're especially great requirements. And if you're doing gi and no gi as well, different materials, you double it, you know, so so there's just so many different ways to train with climbing. There are lots of different ways. But it's far more constrained than jujitsu is mainly because
Wil Brown: Very different.
Daniel: The wall isn't shaking itself trying to get you off of it. That really changes the game.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also in climbing people still see, the gen pop will still see grip as a thing. I just hang and I'll improve my grip as opposed to I have a different formation of my hand in a different way that my musculature is actually working to do a pinch or a kind of slope or a, you know, an awkward crimp or whatever may be going on. And I feel like gi versus no gi is a great example of
Daniel: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Wil Brown: Okay, I have to, I'm not even sure on the technical terms that you would use, you know, grab, um, give us is, you know, pinch someone's arm, for example, or clasp someone's wrist. Like it's, there's different hand positions that you're to have to train to get strong in and actually be able to be dominant on the map. So then do you have, if you, if we move towards your work, do you have categorizations of what you'd call the terminology and then
Daniel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mmm.
Wil Brown: how you train, example, an open hand gripping motion versus a closed hand versus.
Daniel: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're always there. So like you can break it down into hand, hand and wrist for hands. You have crush, which is that sort of grip of closing that so many people know, the continuous movement through a range of motion and having strength through that entire range, ⁓ closed hand support, just holding on to something, you know, that where your fingers can fully wrap around your barbell. That's your lapel. ⁓ you have open hand support where your hands can't grab all the way around. So that's grabbing onto your wrist. That's
Wil Brown: Okay. crush. Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Daniel: thick bar training. ⁓ You have vertical gripping, is usually open hand, but sometimes closed hand support, but with the wrist in a fully deviated position, which you're going to have, you you're climbing a rope or you're pulling a rope or you're grabbing someone's wrist. So in a lot of positions, some people can be very strong with their hand in a neutral position. You put it into deviation and the hand becomes weak. But it's a very important, you know, strength to have. You lift the sword out of the stone. You better be able to
Wil Brown: deviated. Hmm. Yeah, right.
Daniel: to pull vertical bar, all of that stuff. Exactly. ⁓ You have finger strength, which is more of your climbing stuff. know, this is more strengthened by that, the ligaments and tendon stuff, ⁓ but flexion in the middle and base knuckle in the top and middle knuckle and having the strength here, this is going to be your ⁓ crimping stuff. ⁓ You have then cupping, which is like a, a flexion of the fingers from the base knuckles.
Wil Brown: Lift the sword up. Gotcha. Hmm. crimp work.
Daniel: in arm wrestling, cupping and hooking are basically the same thing. For me, cupping is like making a cup with your hand and hooking is the wrist flexion. So then you go into wrist and then you have, you have, ⁓ and then of course pinch with the thumb, opposing the fingers. Those are the main ones. You still have different ones, this sort of claw position here where you're like grabbing onto a ball or something. And then you have the wrist, which is of course, flexion extension and radio and on it deviation. And then
Wil Brown: Mmm. Duh. Hmm.
Daniel: Technically, I always include in the wrist, but it's technically not a movement of the wrist. It's of the elbow, but supination and pronation as well. So that's sort of, have your two categories and you have your different variations. And if you train all of those, you're going have a pretty well rounded grip. And you don't have to, you don't have to train them all, you know, you don't have to train them all, but, understanding in the same way, you know, what are you doing today? Legs, which is fine. But you go, okay, what am going to do? I'm going to do my hamstrings.
Wil Brown: Yeah man, yeah. I always love.
Daniel: I'm going to do my quads. I'm going to do a squat. I'm going to do a lunge. I'm going to do adduction. You know, you have the different ranges of motion. Yeah.
Wil Brown: Mmm. Yeah, Do you have a grip day or hand day or wrist day? How does that work for you?
Daniel: depends on the situation, but generally no, you can get, ⁓ you know, I'll, work in grip with most of my training days. Occasionally I'll have like a day where I've got some time or I want to work on this and maybe I'll go out there and I'll just do, know, I'll focus more on grip stuff than other stuff, but not necessary. You can, I mean, if you want to be really efficient with your time, Two or three grip exercises a day in my opinion, if you're just a gym pop, you're trying to get stronger. You're not competing in arm wrestling or you're not competing in grip sport. Grip sport guys are going to do just grip days. You know, there's some people grip sport guys that will only train grip. They're not going to train anything else. So for them, it's different. They'll have a pinch day and a, and a, you know, a pinch day and a open hand support day and a whatever vertical bar day instead, whatever. ⁓ but for most people you can do two or three grip exercises.
Wil Brown: Mm-hmm. Mm-mm.
Daniel: one or two hand and one or two wrist per session that you're doing other stuff. And you can do that supersetted in between full body exercises for the biggest, the most efficient use of your time. Or you can just do it at the end of the workout. You can chuck in two or three grip exercises and very, very easily done.
Wil Brown: Yeah, nice. What's the frequency like? Because what we found through the arm wrestling, like cupping type work for the forearm is that actually similar to the calves, the forearms do pretty well with a high frequency, high volume, lower intensity process initially. And then depending on the goal of are you trying to build hypertrophy or strength, then you kind of adapt the rep ranges. Have you found similar or different?
Daniel: Hmm. Yeah, the foreams have an incredible capacity for recovery for obvious reasons. You know, we're using them as humans every single day. And, and yeah, if you, if you do one, if you never worked out your foreams and you do a forearm session, then you're going to be absolutely wrecked for a couple of days. But if you're an iron worker or you're working on oil rig or your scaffolding and you do that every single day, the foreams have to recover. So there's a huge, there's a huge amount of blood flow to the foreams. ⁓ And you can in theory train your grip every single day on lower intensity. I don't think it's necessary to do that, but you can do it.
Wil Brown: Do you have a preferred frequency per week?
Daniel: Yeah, three or four times a week. Three or four times a week, I usually train it, but I'm not going crazy on it, you know, not going crazy on it. And also you can make an argument that you you train jiu jitsu on the other days and you're training your grip a little bit there as well.
Wil Brown: That's good. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, definitely. think that's one thing to consider for everyone is what are the, what is that, especially if you're doing a sport like climbing BJJ, even arm wrestling, if the sport has a huge demand on your grip strength and your grip, then of course you have to see the cross reference there. Yeah. Yeah. We keep talking about climbing, sorry, arm wrestling. And I asked you already about the UFC and if you'd ever decided to kind of push towards that, I feel like
Daniel: Mm. Yeah, you got to factor that in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'm Russell.
Wil Brown: Yeah, because right now feel like your training, your physicality, everything leads you towards the table. It's one of the fastest growing sports in the world right now.
Daniel: Yeah, I think I will. I think I will compete in arm wrestling at some point. Yeah, I think I will. I said many years ago that I'd compete in arm wrestling after I, you know, after I finished with Jiu Jitsu and I guess I haven't competed in Jiu Jitsu for a while. So maybe now's the time. Well, not right now, one way but maybe next year. Who knows? I don't know what's gonna happen. can't. got Yeah, absolutely. But I'd love to. And so yeah, I really love it. I will compete in arm wrestling at some point. I don't think I will
Wil Brown: Yeah? Awesome. Yeah. I think you should. Now's the time, Come down and we'll teach you.
Daniel: take it very seriously long term. You know, I probably give myself six months of training and do one or two comps, ⁓ kinda for the same reason that I wouldn't do MMA, which is you get brain damage with the MMA and pretty fucked up elbows from the armrests in. And, you know, maybe I've got, maybe I've got a better base than most for that, but you know, you go hard with that, you know, all of the top armrests have a little bit of, of elbow issues, I think.
Wil Brown: Yeah. Hmm It really depends. Yeah. I was gonna say. Yeah, my perspective is evolving, of course. Yeah, a decade. Yeah, so my forearm is... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, but you're a climber, How long you climb for? If you climb for 10 years, climb for 10 years, your connective tissue climbing is the best. Climbing is the best base for grip sport. I truly believe that.
Wil Brown: is developed. Yeah, Also for arm wrestling, calisthenics or gymnastic strength training is amazing for the connective tissue of the elbow. So I think we've got a kind of double whammy there. I was a lot, I was really into gymnastic rings and then kind of muscle ups, one arm chin ups and kind of connective tissue wise, that's really preferable.
Daniel: Yes. Yep. Yeah. Well, you could say, mean, climbing is kind of a form of calisthenics in it, isn't it? Yeah.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah, in a way. I was trying to use my feet more and more. I'm a heavy guy, so for me, I was trying to get into the feet. But yeah, of course, you have to be strong. Man, I would absolutely love to see you in arm wrestling.
Daniel: Yeah. But yeah, I'll do it. When I'm back, I'll come down and we'll do a session. We'll do both. I'll come down, you come up and we'll sort it out. Yeah. But I'll definitely, I'm definitely up for it.
Wil Brown: I'll come up. I want to come to see the Gaines Garage, whatever you call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you... You know Yves Gravalier, right? The Canadian guy. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever met him in person or seen some of the grips of what he's doing?
Daniel: Yes. I haven't known enough since incredibly strong. One of the one of the strongest grip guys out there for sure. Again, climbing base. Yeah. Yeah.
Wil Brown: you know, he's turned to arm wrestling. So he just won, think, or came second in the Canadian Nationals already. He's a phenom. But I really think he'd do a really, really great job at it. think he'd be, lends itself really nicely for you.
Daniel: Wow, wow, crazy. Yeah, yeah, I just got to get my pro I played around I got to do a lot more pronation stuff. That's the that's the secret. My wrist my flexion strength is strong. But I got I got to be able to pronate.
Wil Brown: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, That'd be awesome, man, that'd be so cool. Have you ever done much hammer curling or work kind of like lifting in the vertical? You said you did some grip stuff in the vertical plane? Like kind of like thumb to shoulder? Have you played around a lot with the elbow flexion? Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, what you call what you'd call riser. riser. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a little bit. I like to do that hammer lever and stuff with it. But I haven't do you know, you I guess in arm wrestling, you have your metrics of like how much you can lift in a riser pickup and I haven't tested that.
Wil Brown: I think the sport would be hugely benefiting of your experience and what you could bring to the table. It's such a niche sport, the same as, you know, parkour or whatever back in the day. It's like the more people that come into it with different perspectives, the better the sport is through that perspective of training. So, man.
Daniel: Yeah. Mmm. Yeah, maybe. You know what I'll see? I potentially going to continue traveling next year, but also potentially not. If I don't, then 2022 2027. But but but me and put me in a competition. There we go.
Wil Brown: Mmm. We're in. If I've still got elbows at that point, it will do it. I feel like a lot of the old strongmen, so you've got Terry Hollands coming over to professional arm wrestling, Laurence Charlet, obviously Brian Short. Did you watch the match that he just had with Leonidas? Are you aware of it? Yeah, so was very interesting. Kind of, I thought about bringing it up later on, but he was someone who comes in as a very... ⁓
Daniel: Yeah, Brian Shaw, yeah. Yeah, I didn't watch the match, no. No, he's a beast though. Leonidas, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a freak.
Wil Brown: cognitively focused person. He's incredibly meticulous in his preparation, Brian.
Daniel: Brian? ⁓ yeah, Brian's probably my favourite strong man of all time, he's awesome. Yeah.
Wil Brown: Amazing, amazing guy. I really love what he's bringing to the sport. think his whole perspective on life is fantastic. Even his video he put out recently after his loss and his perspective on his loss, I think it's beautiful. But yeah, he got beat really badly, He came in obviously huge pressure, big guy, managed to Eddie Hall in a close match last time out. Huge hype, they go to Germany and he faces off against Leonid Sarcone, who is a monster.
Daniel: Mm. Mmm. Mmm.
Wil Brown: He's only three, four years into the sport and he just destroyed him. I think it's so interesting how you talked a bit about kind of emergent arm wrestling versus, you know, struggling through, not arm sorry, emergent rolling and just kind of having things emerge and things happening for you versus being overly cognizant and actually getting stuck in the mud. And it seemed very much like...
Daniel: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mmm. Mmm. You think maybe Brian got stuck in the mud a little bit.
Wil Brown: I really feel like it because his physicality and the metrics suggest that he would of course win. But sport is so not about metrics. There's something there that I think is so beautiful in sports like MMA, BJJ, arm wrestling, climbing, that metrics can't overcome.
Daniel: Mmm. Yeah. That's the technique there. That's the technique. Yeah.
Wil Brown: It is, man. It is. Yeah, I love it. Dan, I don't want to take too much of your time on holiday, but as I said at the start, is there anything towards the end of the conversation that you'd like to kind of bring up or just kind of mention or talk about that I'm more than happy to do so?
Daniel: No, think, you know, I'm pretty open. I think we've had a good combo and yeah, I don't know. I'm easy.
Wil Brown: My one goal was to get you into arm wrestling, so I feel like I've achieved that now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. Let me know. I'm more than happy to discuss some ideas there. I would absolutely love to pick your brain. Yeah, dude. It'd be great. I've actually got one question for you. So you have possibly the UK or Europe's largest kind of grip strength palace.
Daniel: I gotta go back and test my arms and fear if they still they still got the strength in them. Yeah Now what once I'm back with we'll hook up and and and we'll see how it goes and I can see how far for a fan Hit me with it. Yes.
Wil Brown: How long has that taken to slowly curate over time? That's a behemoth.
Daniel: Yeah, probably like 15, 16, 17 years. It's been a while. Maybe longer actually.
Wil Brown: Wow. Is it official? Is it official that the biggest most well, what would you call it? Well established grip, grip den?
Daniel: Subject subjective metric, isn't it? Yeah, it's subjective. It's subjective. I don't know. All I can tell you is that Jujy Mufu said it's the best home gym that he's been to. That's I need that in a plaque. I am I think I will actually get that on a plaque. That's quite funny. But yeah, no, there's some really there's some really cool place in the UK. And indeed all over the world with some really cool grip setups. You got come on a temple and in
Wil Brown: What else? Yeah. I think you should. Yeah, that's pretty big. To have Jujic fly over just for your grip then, that's pretty special.
Daniel: down in South London, you got obviously David Horne's, ⁓ the, what's he call it? The grip. What does he call it? The shed or something? Yeah, that place is, that's got its own unique special character and, and charm to it because you've got, you know, the history and you know, all of David's crazy stuff. It's like a mad scientist lab. But yeah, I'm pretty proud of that cave and my cave and missing it at the moment.
Wil Brown: Yeah, right, Dungeon or something. Mm.
Daniel: going to this at any time fitness and not having a good time. Yeah. But I'll get my hands on that stuff again soon.
Wil Brown: Yeah dude, yeah. Getting dusty. I feel like, let's go man. So I wish you all the best of the trip. My goal for next year, one more goal for next year is to suck you up with Jujube Mufi in an arm wrestling match. I think that must be, I know he's into it, I know.
Daniel: Thank you, brother. Okay. Yeah, we never we never we never looked we never looked up actually, which was funny. We should have done that we should have done that I'm going to I'm trying to get you
Wil Brown: Really, you missed out man. Or maybe we have to keep it, you know, for next year. We'll put it on East versus West, or West versus West. No man, that's the perfect first one. If you love the guy, no pressure. You're good. I think with your profile it'd be such a special thing to introduce. It'd so cool. Mate, I'm planning it already. I'm there. I'm there. Done. Robert Baxter. Dude, thank you so much for the chat. I really, really appreciate your time. The guys will really enjoy this.