The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

Joe is joined by the Vice President of Performance Duncan French, Vice President of Fighter Relations Forrest Griffin, & the Director of Sports Nutrition Clint Wattenberg at the UFC's Performance Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duration: 1h 56m
Broadcast on: 01 Apr 2019
Audio Format: other

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wow Big or something. Yeah, my buddy from Australia gave me those in that head That's an Asian water buffalo. It's an invasive species Well, I oh it worked Jesus Christ ladies and gentlemen you have seen performance Institute boys Hey, what's that I'm in for his grip? Hey for his Griffin. Good to see you. We've already talked over each other Yeah, we've already bloated. No, we've got it. We've got it nailed Well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I've I was blown away when I went to visit The you know you hear the performance Institute you go. What is this gonna be like you go? They're like, oh my god. They thought of everything. It's like the ultimate state-of-the-art facility for training for recovery for Nutrition it's fucking amazing. I mean, I was so happy that we're posting a link to that shit right say it dude I mean, it's it's amazing when we went on tour and check that place out. I think it was a Dela Grazie was with me. Yeah, yeah, we were like, holy shit Like you imagine you have access to this fucking place like you guys have really created something special It's very interesting and I don't know much about other sports But I know this never really existed in combat sports before something like this That's I mean you guys have athletes from all sorts of different walks of life come through there when I was there There was many many top-level fighters that were training out of there. It's really really interesting. Yeah, cool Well, we appreciate the kind words obviously And I mean ultimately yeah the the vision of the USC was to build a performance Institute that was truly a world-class high-performance Center that had everything that fighters would would need But not only are we trying to align ourselves as the leaders in mixed martial arts, but certainly leaders in human high performance Yeah, don't can tell people what you do there like explain. Yeah, so my role is the vice president of performance I essentially direct the the philosophy of how we're going to interact with the fighters How we're going to support the fighters and obviously manage our our world-class staff that Work in within the performance facility and Clint you you came from a background in amateur wrestling and Tell everybody what your job is over there. Yep, so I'm the director of performance nutrition. So Anything related to feeding of athletes is essentially managed by myself and in our ever-expanding team So it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan integrating within the other performance services As well as feeding athletes on the ground integrating within our kitchen at the performance Institute Supporting athletes as they prepare for for a fight week weight descents etc And then supporting athletes on fight week and preparing at that even at the last moment of fight day to fuel up and to be really Well-fueled for for their performance. My background is like you said in amateur wrestling. I wrestled and coached at Cornell University Graduated in '03 was on the US national team with a number of actually current fighters right now So Cormier Daniel Cormier and a number of other athletes Chris Weidman and some others and I used to train together And then I went back to school and got on my my credentialing to be a registered dietitian And so that's kind of led me through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC with a you know pretty unique combination of the nutrition the dietetics and then obviously the Experience in combat sports and weight-cutting. Yeah, and in my opinion the most grueling combat sport I mean, I think wrestling it's just we talked about on the last podcast It's just it's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real competition and the the actual physical struggle of getting through wrestling practice And it's trying to conditioning grills most kids that are coming up in high school and in college I think they don't really work that hard in any other sport. I mean, it's it's a crazy sport I remember in high school like walking into the wrestling room and it's a bunch of gross dudes Like in a sweaty hot room and then it was like basketball was right next to it I wasn't because the basketball there's like dudes in ten tops and some like cheerleaders. I'm like, I know what I'm doing Little did I know little did you know? Yeah, I mean it's in my opinion still I think it's the most important skill because you get to dictate where the fight takes place I mean, there's no one skill that really overpowers all except for the ability to hold a guy down Like the ability to hold someone down and control them on the ground It's so critical and everything else you can learn from that submissions ground and pound

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