Transcription
Let's start by saying this. If you have two teams and they're equally skilled, whatever it is, a football team, a basketball team, a soccer team, it doesn't really matter, but they're equally skilled, which team is going to win? It's going to be the team who has the most endurance. It's like two fighters. When you have two fighters equally skilled, which one is going to win? It's probably going to be the guy who has the most endurance because he can keep on pushing. That other team can keep on pushing and just crack and just break the other team. So, stamina is super important.
Okay. Now, I'm going to give you an exercise that helped me tremendously with my fighting. For the people who don't know me, I used to be a professional mixed martial artist. And when I started fighting all the way back in '93 in Japan, there was one round of 30 minutes and there were no weight classes. So, for a 30-minute round, you had to be in shape.
But before I start, I want to be like Jack Daniels, the coach who was the best endurance coach in the world. And I say "was" since he passed away last month, which is September 2025. I'm dating this video right now. So my condolences go out to his wife Nancy Joe and his family, of course.
Now, Jack and his wife were both running coaches and they both worked together. This guy, oh my god, he was named Coach of the Century in 2008. NCAA Division III national championships, 31 individual national titles, and then more than 130 All-American awards. Silver medalist in Melbourne with running in the Olympics, and then four years later, a bronze medal in Rome. Then later, he earned a PhD in exercise science, and his book, "Daniels' Running Formula," has decades of research. I mean, pioneering research for physiology for runners. I mean, the guy was insane. He trained many Olympian trial runners, Olympians, and so many Olympian and other endurance coaches are using his system right now.
Now, I'm mentioning this because he made a gigantic impact on the sport, on endurance, and on stamina. He did something that I haven't seen a strength and conditioning coach in fighting do. Never. Others, of course, who read his book, they probably will. And it's the most important thing before you start working on your stamina and endurance.
So, when you would come in as a new student, right, as a new athlete, he would tell you to take your shirt off and jump on the treadmill and run, just run. And then he would sit down, check you out. Now, did he look at your running technique? No. Absolutely not. Something much more important, he would check if you are actually breathing the way you should breathe. Whoa. If you didn't, well, he would fix that first. Why? Because he knows that once that is fixed, you can endure longer and more productive workouts. And of course, which is very important, at the very end, when you start competing, you have a much higher chance of winning.
Now, since he was the freaking Coach of the Century and the best coach, I would really pay attention right now, especially when endurance is part of your sport. And if you're a pro, well, it's part of your job. So, right now, before I start explaining about breathing, otherwise you're not going to do it, you're going to change it. I want you to do something. All right? Okay. Please, if you're serious, do this in a minute. You first listen to the instructions. I want you to pause this video. Then, you take your phone and you make a video of yourself breathing. That's it. So, one, you just sit or you stand, you know, film yourself from the waist up and your head. And then you just exhale. And from that moment on, you take a gigantic deep inhale. You breathe out again, stop the video, and bada bing, bada boom, come back to this one. Okay, let's do that. Did you do it? Okay, then.
Now, I want you to take a look at that video. Wait for instructions first. I want you to take a look at that video and then see if you raised up your shoulders when you were taking that deep inhale. All right, pause this one. Check it out. Do it. Did you raise your shoulders when you were breathing in? If yes, 85 to 90% of the people, it was way worse. It was like 95%. But now, finally, people stop paying attention like myself. I was also breathing incorrectly as well. I mean, look at this. This is my breathing during a world title fight. Completely wrong. Now, thankfully, I knocked my opponent out like 30 seconds later. But if you raise your shoulders like I was doing on your inhale, then this video is going to help you tremendously in stamina and endurance.
Just think about this, right? Let's look at me again. Look at my breathing in my last fight. Raising my shoulders. This means that every time you breathe, you have to pull up your upper body the whole time with your neck and your shoulders. And during an active event, those are a lot of raises. So, just by doing that, you are already wasting much more energy. That's why actually heavier set people probably have better breathing than the lengthy and the skinny people. Why would that be? Well, because they don't want to lift that weight up the whole time. So, their body starts adapting and automatically they start breathing diaphragmatically, which in that case is great, but of course, then you're going to have to lose weight as well because you want to be a healthy person, right? It's just dangerous.
So, why on earth do we breathe wrong? I mean, we took our first breath when we were born, right? Sure, God made us breathe the way we have to. Yes, he actually did. We all are breathing perfect when we come out of the womb. But what we do as humans, well, it's the same thing. We like to mess things up. Not on purpose, though. But studies say that it all goes wrong around the age of five and a half. I will add a link below, and then you can click on that and you can read why that is. Let's focus on fixing the problem. Just know that we are the only mammal on this planet that breathes incorrect.
Okay, let's look at the size of your lungs. This is what the lungs look like. Now, let's add another visual right here. If you think this size can fit in your chest, it is of course when it's exhaling. Think more because we're going, this is just two-thirds. We're going to have another third attached to it. We have six liters, a gallon and a half. A woman actually has less than us, but a man has six liters. The average human being, because Michael Phelps, by the way, he's got 12 liters. That is three of those puppies right here. So, of course, this will be inflated. So, if it's in your chest, it will be completely inflated, but you know, still, is that going to fit in your chest? Now, this is just made of lung tissue, of course, not this. And it's also, it has no muscle, just like a lung has absolutely zero muscle.
Now, the thing with the lung is, and it goes all the way down. The most dense oxygen-rich part of the lungs is at the bottom of your lungs. So, when you're doing raising your shoulders to breathe, you're not using this part. This is very important. You don't fill anything up. Now, studies say, breathing studies, that four to six shoulder-raising breaths, or as they call it in breathing, a vertical breath, pulls in the same amount of air as one diaphragmatic breath, which is also called a horizontal breath. Think about that. Or you do four times this instead of pulling in the same amount of air by one correct breath.
How do you breathe? Well, my lungs do it, right? That's what everybody thinks. Okay. So, what if I told you that your lungs are just two bags? There's zero muscle in your lungs. Well, if they don't have muscle, how on earth do they open up? Now, that's a good question. I'm going to do this in steps. We'll make it easier to get. So, wait with reacting. All right. So again, how do they open up? Well, by chest expansion. There's something more, but that's going to come. Your chest expansion creates a vacuum between your body and your lungs. And that vacuum, that negative pressure, that suction that opens up your lungs. That's why this next line is very weird. Your chest doesn't expand because you put air in it. Nope. Your chest expands, and that is how you pull the air in.
The biggest muscle for expanding your chest is your diaphragm. It's a thin, dome-shaped muscle tendon, looking thing like this vegetable steamer right here. It's a very thin muscle, but it's a very strong one. It's only like four millimeters thick. So, it's really not that thick, but super strong. And it separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. It's attached to the bottom of your rib cage. And it drops down like this. It flattens out. Poof. This is what it does inside your body. It can drop down four to six inches on a deep breath. You know how much that is? This much. It drops down. So, imagine this thing dropping down. From that angle, it shows poof. See that expansion? That expansion together with your intercostals, which are the muscles in between your ribs, the external intercostal muscles, those are opening your chest. And this diaphragm drops down. What it does, imagine that your lungs are on top of here. It creates a negative air pressure inside the chest cavity, and that pressure, that negative pressure that sucks open your lungs. So, your lungs not only go to the side when your chest is expanding, they also get pulled down because the diaphragm goes down, and that creates that suction as well. So, right now, the lungs not only go open like this, they also go open downward, using 360-degree circumferential muscles around your body, and you have about 11 pounds of breathing muscles everywhere around you. Think about your rib cage in the back. Nobody trains that. Well, you can work those out.
So, as I mentioned, you have breathing muscles 360 degrees circumferential around your body. Now, if you're an athlete and you have a lot of muscle and your chest is tight, and your back muscles and your back ribs are very tight, this diaphragm has to work really hard in order to push those ribs out. So, it's very important for an endurance athlete to stretch his chest and to stretch his back muscles. There's a video, and I put the link underneath this description here in the description that you can watch, and that's where I show you how to stretch your chest and how to stretch your back. Guys, if you have a very tight chest, this by itself can give you 20% or more endurance. Think what I say right now. 20 to 25% better endurance. It's a freaking insane number. That's of course only when your chest is really tight. So, as an athlete, you always want to make sure that your chest stays nice and relaxed because once it's nice and relaxed, it's much easier for the diaphragm to push it out and for the ribs also to stretch it out.
Okay, so now let's talk about stamina and endurance. What's the difference? Stamina is a person's ability to do something at maximum effort for as long as they are able. And endurance is a person's ability to do something not at maximum intensity, but for as long as possible. So, stamina focuses on maximizing output, while endurance focuses on maximizing time.
Why does your endurance get better when you train hard? What happens inside your body? Now, people might say you're getting used to it. Yeah. Okay. That would be more mentally, which of course is also true. But one of the biggest reasons is very simple. Physically, when you work out a muscle over and over again, that muscle becomes more efficient at its job. And the word "efficient," well, it already says it, right? It needs less oxygen to do exactly the same thing. Therefore, your stamina increases.
What happens when you are guessing, guys? Now, it becomes really interesting. Check this out. Let's say you're doing an assault bike, right? It kills you really fast, right? I mean, I've been doing it, if you've been doing it, you know it's really freaking out. So, let's say you're crushing it hard, and suddenly you go from 60 to 20, and poof, everything starts tightening up. What on earth is happening? Well, you are guessing, my friend. What does that mean? That means that your body starts making priorities. You see, the average human body can go three weeks without food, three days without water, but only three minutes without oxygen. It's the number one priority in your body. Three minutes, and you might pass out. You might be even dying. I mean, so it's very important. So, the body starts redirecting oxygenated blood, and it takes it away from the muscles that you are using at that very moment, and it sends it to the number one priority in your body, which are your breathing muscles. By the way, you have 11 pounds, as I mentioned before, of breathing muscles.
Wait, wait, wait, boss. Back up, back up. Did you just say that when you work out a muscle over and over again, it becomes more efficient at its job and it uses less oxygen? Yes, I did say that. Okay. So, why don't I work out those 11 pounds of breathing muscles that I have so they don't have to use that oxygenated blood from my limbs anymore? Bingo. There you go. How do you work them out? And that is what the O2 trainer does. This little, very super effective thing is like weight training for your breathing muscles. It takes only five minutes a day. Oh, boss, I don't have time. Wake up five minutes earlier. What about that? I'm doing it since for seven years straight now. This thing works out all those 360-degree circumferential breathing muscles that we have, but especially your diaphragm. So, you will always have a very strong expansion. And now you're going to give those muscles more endurance so they don't have to steal that oxygenated blood anymore. And another thing, it forces you to use your breathing muscles since when you raise your shoulders, listen, you're not going to have enough power to pull it in. You're going to feel your core when you use this thing. Actually, bodybuilders are buying it for their abs right now. Pretty much every Olympian endurance athlete is using inspiratory muscle training, and that is what the O2 trainer is. There are over a thousand published medical journals about this.
You remember how I started this video? I started by saying two teams equally skilled or two fighters equally skilled. Which team, which fighter is going to win? Okay, let's think about this right now. Imagine I have a clone, an exact copy of me. Okay, my fingerprints, our fingerprints are the same. Everything is the same. We think the same. The body connection, everything is identical. Now, we're very competitive, and we want to compete against each other. And we decided to do a triathlon. Okay. So, we get a swimming coach. Come in. He sits in front of us, and he gives us the swimming instructions while we're both are receiving it at the same time. So, everything the same. The same happens with the running coach. The cycling coach comes in, and then while we're doing it, and if we do something wrong, he will tell us, "You do this right, you do this wrong." Bada bing, bada boom, we get the exact same information. Now, the only difference is that I, the smart one. Well, we're both the same, but let's say I'm the smart one. I'm also working out my breathing muscles. Who do you think is going to win the competition? And there you have your answer.
Let's talk about my endurance exercise that I used to, uh, do my 30-minute fights. This is a very hard exercise. It will bring up the VO2 max as well. Although I believe that doing four-minute intervals is even better. But a lot of studies say now that also these short intervals are doing it. So, what I'm doing, it's on a treadmill. I put the incline all the way up to 15%. That's when I was training. Right now, you have freaking inclines to 20, 25. So, every week you can go maybe 1% up. That's what I would do. Now, I start by running flat for about 12 miles an hour for 10 minutes. I go up. After 10 minutes, I jump off. I stretch. I stretch really well because now it really is going to start because now I put the incline up to 15%. I go back to 9 miles per hour. I stand on both sides. On the side, I let the band go in between my legs. And then I'm going to jump up for 45 seconds and off for 30 seconds. 15 rounds of this is a freaking nightmare.
Now, the first three rounds, you're going to go, "This is easy, boss. This is really not that bad." And then round number four comes, and number five comes, and number six comes, and then it's going to go all down freaking hill. It's a very hard exercise on your legs, on your mental capacity because somehow you know those 45 seconds take a long time, and the 30-second break, of course, like it's almost looks like they're speeding it up. So, in the beginning, there's no way you're going to do 15 rounds of this. It's, it's just way too hard. So, what I started doing, I do as many rounds as I can for 45 seconds, and then I, instead of 30-second break, I take 45-second break. And if I can't do that anymore, I take one-minute break. Then I might go back even to 30-second sprints. But everything I do, I write down. So that every week you're going to try to make one extra round, one extra round until you hit 10 rounds or 45 seconds, 30 seconds break. That by itself, don't do it too many times a week because it's a very hard exercise. I mean, the people were looking at me because I was screaming. It is so freaking hard, but it will get the heart rate up, but it gets the heart rate down. And that's what fighting is, right? Up and down, and up and down. So, you better be prepared for it.