Episode #87 with UFC Veteran “The Immortal” Matt Brown

September 08, 2021

Matt Brown is a legend in combat sports. With over 10 years experience, Matt has racked up 3 Fight of the Night, 2 Performance of the Night and 1 Knockout of the Night awards and is tied for most finishes in UFC welterweight history. In today’s podcast Matt shares some of his experiences, lessons and tactics that have allowed him to stay at the top of the fight game for over a decade.

The hunter is afforded many mistakes. The hunted can make only one.

How did Matt start his fighting career?
The Ultimate Fighter Show experience
Training at Westside Barbell
Using a SWOT analysis to determine an athlete’s “why”
Becoming the COO of your career.
From fighter to martial artist
Managing life’s ups and downs
Matt’s Immortal Strength Equipment
Opening a new gym
and more!

Stay in Touch with Matt:

@iamtheimmortal

Facebook

Twitter

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with UFC Veteran “The Immortal” Matt Brown:

Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, just Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning and today I’m super excited to guess we got today has had fight at night three times in the UFC. He has had performance of the night two times knock out of the night one time and he is tied for the most finishes in UFC welterweight history. So a guys, we got Matt Brown on the line. So Matt, how you doing?

Matt Brown [00:00:26]:Very good.

Corey Beasley [00:00:28]: Good man. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. I know we got introduced this weekend, finally met up out there at the NFCA combat clinic at the UFC performance institute last weekend and I’m kind of excited to share some of your insights and stuff you were sharing with us over the weekend.

Matt Brown [00:00:49]:I’ve had a great time out there. I got to meet a lot of good people and we got to learn a lot of new things and I’m truly honored to be presenting next to some of you guys. Especially just a little bit ago I was going through some of the notes, the presentations and slides and stuff from the weekend and wow. Like what a plethora of knowledge.

Corey Beasley [00:01:14]: Yeah. It’s been cool to kind of watch everything evolve and change and learning from all the different people. And that’s one of the pieces of training that I always kind of geeked out on was just being able to constantly change and evolve and learn. And I didn’t have any work setup I’ve ever been to in the last 20 years and I didn’t learn something.

Matt Brown [00:01:34]:Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And it’s just like, not too far off from the martial arts, where it’s just a constant evolution and things just constantly getting bigger and better. And there’s just, once you begin down that rabbit hole, there’s no end in sight and you can just go on forever and ever.

Corey Beasley [00:01:57]: Yeah. I think that’s the coolest part about it.

Matt Brown [00:02:00]: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And there’s something always to the re stimulate and then as soon as you start getting a little cocky and thinking you know something, you realize you don’t know a damn thing. And I guess that’s what the old adage says, the wise, understand how little they know and the stupid or the ignorant thing that they know everything or something like.

Corey Beasley [00:02:25]: That is very true. But it was an interesting, I’m sitting here, I remember you over the weekend you talked about it, but before you even started fighting now your fight careers epic, I mean legendary, you have to sit there and look into all the different people you fought for how many years and I mean there are a lot of experience there, but before you even started fighting, you were a personal trainer?

Matt Brown [00:02:56]:Yeah, I was. So when I really started getting away from drugs and alcohol and I started competing and MMA, like the martial arts is what saved my life and got me away from all that negativity. I didn’t really have much in the way of coaching. I couldn’t afford to go get real coaches or anything. So I had to kind of go out and figure out my own knowledge. And I guess I was smart enough to realize that the one thing that I could absolutely control myself was the strength conditioning I knew from the very beginning that was a totally in my hands. So I had to go learn about it and I was fortunate that pretty early in my career I met some people that had a really good knowledge in the strength conditioning and I was introduced to the book Super Training, pretty early on and we’ll just kind of a blessing and curse. It was a blessing because I still read that book regularly and reference it and go back to it. It was a curse in that it’s the most complex book maybe next to rocket science.

Corey Beasley [00:04:18]: Yeah, I mean it’s one of those things, I mean it depends on who you’re talking to. And I think for a lot of new guys or people that don’t have that background, you can, I mean, shit, you’ll read that thing three or four times and you’re still learning stuff to this day?

Matt Brown [00:04:36]:I think a lot of it too is can be certainly for me was misinterpreted and I kind of had this feeling that I knew what I was talking about and knew these different things cause I read it in there and I didn’t realize, a lot of that is, I wouldn’t say theoretical, but it was kind of like this is what we know at this picture in time. And it’s just wait way too deep. Like you said that book itself is a rabbit hole.

Corey Beasley [00:05:11]: When you kind of get your start there, you got your start, you kind of going down that road and then you, is at that time you kind of start fighting or how that work?

Matt Brown [00:05:20]:Yeah, I was fighting around the same time. Like I said, I just kind of reached out for that knowledge. Just knowing that that’s something that I could control. And I guess when you first start looking and you’re like, oh, this is going to be simple Like I just saw out and learn kind of the basics and what we’re all looking for there at the beginning is just some routines, like just tell me a new sprint routine or something like that, and then kind of start realizing how big of a mess all that stuff can be, getting a book, like Super Training kind of goes through all that. Where it’s not telling you a specific routine, but it’s telling you all the theory behind it and you’re like, shit, what is this all about? Applying that was tough, very tough. And it gets very diluted in a book like that. So I thought that I knew what the hell I was doing and I think I was ahead of my time in a lot of things and that were, I was doing circuits and like, I don’t know, 2004, 2005 we have five minutes circuits trying to replicate fight, I was always in really good shape and I was doing high intensity interval training back in the day. We used to call it shit training, specialized high intensity training. But I’d say I was doing a lot of that stuff back in the day before it was really popular and then when MMA started getting popular, all that type of training and got popular really quick. And then I said I got on the ultimate fighter and then everything changed from there.

Corey Beasley [00:07:06]: We got onto that fight did you have, before you got to ultimate fighter?

Matt Brown [00:07:11]:It was like 14 or 15 professional fights and probably 15 or 20 amateur fights.

Corey Beasley [00:07:19]: Right on. And that was season seven, is that right? And you kind of got into that and then what’d you learn from that experience? I mean, that seems to me like when every time I watch it, it’s kind of a shit show when guys get in there and they pile everybody in new a house and do their thing. But what was that experience like for you?

Matt Brown [00:07:39]:Exactly. Yeah, they like to embellish on TV, the shit-show side of it, but there’s really a lot of good that comes out of it I think for, I can’t speak on the other seasons obviously, but for my season I think we had overall a pretty solid group of guys. Dolce was on it season with me. I learned a lot from him. There’s just a lot of really good guys. And most of us were pretty serious and we were there for one thing and we had Forests as our coach and he was an excellent coach and really cared for everybody and brought in some really excellent coaches. So I think we got a lot accomplished. And like I said, they like to embellish on kinds of shit show side. But realistically, I think we learned a lot. I think more than anything, I think I learned how to deal with a camera being in my face all the time and, and learned how to deal with the pressure of being a UFC fighter, the media age. It’s very huge. I mean it’s sort of a boot camp for being a UFC fighter as the way I like to explain it.

Corey Beasley [00:08:52]: Yeah. I mean, you’re kind of thrown in there. You have nothing else to focus on at that in that a stretch of time. I mean, you got the house, you’ve got training and that’s it?

Matt Brown [00:09:03]:Exactly. Yeah. And you have cameras following you 24 hours and you’re being interviewed constantly and literally everything you say and do could be a projected where millions of people could see it. And that’s a scary thing, I think a lot of people forget that when they are in there and they start drinking and stuff. But I mean, it certainly relaxed me around the camera because at first, I mean, I was worried about every single thing I said and everything I did and over time I was like just be yourself you’re a good person. You don’t have anything to worry about.

Corey Beasley [00:09:45]: Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. So you get your start, you got the ultimate fighter and that was shit that was back in 2008. And I mean that’s a long time ago. That’s eight, nine years ago, 10 years ago now. And10 years down. I mean, what are some of the things that you learned, things that you did well, same things that you screwed up on or improving on. What are some mistakes that start with that, I guess with some of the mistakes that you made early on?

Matt Brown [00:10:21]: Well, we could probably do an entire episode on the mistake part, we could go on for the next couple of hours about that. That’s easy to find. But I would say primarily my biggest mistake that I made and I talked about this at the presentation yesterday too, was really what we call the Unicorn policy now. And that’s just searching for that Unicorn. Always looking for the next best thing. And I think that is a common mistake in all athletics. We’re always thinking the grass is a little greener on the other side when it’s not, where the grass is greener is inside yourself. And that was something that took me a long time to learn. I was always searching, I guess you kind of see the, this mystical stuff, especially with social media and stuff, you kind of see this mythical aura of like say like great Jackson Jim or something where you see all the fighters. That’s the place to be. That’s where you’re going to get great. No, you get great by exploring deeper within yourself rather than outside of yourself. And it took me a long time to learn that and I went to a lot of different places and thought that I was going to the next best place and that wasn’t necessarily true. And I think in terms of strength conditioning that you see that a ton of that, that’s why we have, how many guys do you see, particularly like power lifters, for a good example would they might be doing like say a five, three, one program for a few weeks and then they’re like, Oh man, I’ve been reading about this the[Inaudible 00:12:04]program. And then they get into that, they’re like, no man, the way to do it is the Texas method. And you know, dude, I’ll come, I’ll do that for a couple of weeks and then, and they be far better off just sticking to one program. And sort of my saying now is I’d rather do something with 100% passion and intensity wrong. Then something with half the intensity and passion correctly.

Corey Beasley [00:12:32]: So I know you brought that up and you bring up powerlifting in particular, and it’s a little outside of the point you’re making, but I mean you did spend a lot of time with Louie Simmons out there at Westside, right?

Matt Brown [00:12:44]:Absolutely. Yeah. I guess that’s why the power lifting analogy pretty simple.

Corey Beasley [00:12:49]: That is a pretty cool, I mean those guys are absolute legends out there andtheybuild some, I mean world record after world records coming out of that place. So they’re obviously doing something right. I mean for you guys, I mean for you as slightly different then powerlifted demand, but for you as a fighter training and that kind of an environment, how’d you get that introduction or how’d you get started in there?

Matt Brown [00:13:18]:Well, I was actually introduced to Louie long before I even knew who he was one of my friends took me down there when right after I got off the show and he was like, yeah, this is Louie Westside barbell. And I started go in and I was like, oh, this is some shitty gym, like whatever then I didn’t think twice about, but Louis is a big fan of fighters. So he’s like, yeah, you can come train anytime. I was like, well, what’s a membership is like, yeah, we don’t want to do memberships. And I was like, okay, whatever I think it was right down the street from where I was living and I had no idea what I was getting into there. And I think it was a few months later, I was like, that guy said I could go there, work out there for free. Like, why am I paying, so I go back down there and again, I kind of think that I know what I’m doing right. And I would go into Westside and these people are telling me how to dead lift and how to squat. And I’m like, what do you guys know? And it didn’t take long I started seeing the kind of weights that they are putting up. I’m like, damn, maybe they do know something then. And then that was where I met one of my best friends to this day, Tom Berry, he was a Louise right hand man. He was interning at that time. And now his Louie’s right hand man, well he’s like, you know, first year just internee. So he’s like, okay, I’ll help this guy out and hold up the clock for him and things like that. And he was Kind of tell me like, hey man, your technique kind of sucks. I’m like, what the fuck you know? And again, it didn’t take long and then I think we’re actually, we were talking about Super Training and he’s like, yeah, I was here not too long ago or something. And I was like, wait what are you talking about? He was like, that’s the only book I read. I started realizing what Westside was over time. I’ll make a long story short here and I wrap it up and I’ll just start kind of figuring out what Westside was and what it meant to strength conditioning and the place that I was at. And they started fixing the weaknesses and stuff and the ball just started rolling downhill from there. And it was all, I became obsessed with Westside after that.

Corey Beasley [00:15:49]: Now training there for you started there when you said just after the UFC, the ultimate fighter show, you went in there?

Matt Brown [00:15:58]:Yeah, within a year after. And then I actually went out to Seattle for a little while and I was kind of going back and forth. And that’s when I was training with Joel Jamieson out there in Seattle and became good friends. And, and then I think it was he may have even mentioned to me about Westside and because we’re using the reverse hyper and he was like, this is the Westside thing. And I was like, dude, this I guess the, the guy that lived down the street from my house. And he’s like, dude, he’s like, you got a legend right there, you don’t know about you, they give you some shitty gym. So what you’re getting you just one thing led to another and then I learned a lot from Joel. I was trying out there with, met you and met AMC with Joel and these guys are brilliant too in their own right.

Corey Beasley [00:16:53]: For sure. And I would really talk about different personalities too. I not only just that but the methods and approaches and stuff like that, but very different people. Right?

Matt Brown [00:17:07]:Yeah. That’s barely even justified they are polar opposites, opposite end of the spectrum. And Louis, there’s nobody else you’d rather be in the gym with then Louie, that’s for sure.

Corey Beasley [00:17:21]: Now from this perspective, you talk about different ends of the spectrum, obviously different strengths and weaknesses from a training perspective for fighters. I’m like when you had just like that raw power lifting influence versus going to Seattle and hanging out with Joel learning energy system development and work and rest and all that of stuff. How did your approach to strength conditioning or the physical prep change?

Matt Brown [00:17:53]:Well, I’ll tell you back in that day around that 2008, 2009, that was when Joel was really, I’d say he was kind of learning the whole MMA thing by himself. I mean, I think you just scratching the surface, he was still really a strength guy back then too. And I think that was when he was just starting to develop that. But he introduced me to the mega wave and HRV about recovery and things like that. And we certainly did our share of conditioning, everything. But back then, to be honest, the majority of the energy system development and stuff was done in the gym, Joel was really, I think, scratching the surface back then. He certainly come a long way and is really at the forefront, I think of all that stuff these days. And his book, certainly a changed MMA, strength conditioning a lot and was a huge factor I think for everyone in that world. But back then a good resource. And back then, I mean, he was just at the beginning I think and really starting to develop all that systems that he’s at now.

CoreyBeasley [00:19:05]: How cool. Now that’s pretty good. [Inaudible 00:19:11] to people recorded the out of experience I’d imagine. But for your physical prep, I mean now you’ve got, I mean, you’ve had how many fights in UFC? So that over the last, what, nine years, something like that, 10 years. So I mean you’ve got 10 years of physical prep board, elite competition. What things have you kind of learned? What’s changed, what’s evolved in that preparation part? And I guess to make it easier, you did talk about when we were in, we were in Vegas last weekend, you were talking about now with all your experience, you got to guys looking up to you, looking to Matt for advice and you talked about something that maybe will help lead us down that road is when you’re talking about that SWOT analysis when you’re sitting down with guys and really just to get there, cause there is, like you talked about with super training and with, your MMA training and what you’d personalize and all these other things. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff going on at right. And it’s very difficult to keep from looking at the flashy lights and the new things and to stay on track and to stay focused. And I think that it sounds like that’s kind of what you’re doing with some of the new guys that you’re working with, but that SWOT analysis, can you explain that a little bit?

MattBrown [00:20:53]:25 fights. That’s another book right there in itself. Yeah, I get where your question is a lot better now. And the whole thing that I really try to focus on with that is really building a core infrastructure of a person and an athlete. So if we’re building a business we always want to start with the why that’s where we want to always begin, why do you want to do this business? And I think books like super training or Joel’s book, all these, I mean there’s a a thousand resources of strength conditioning books between Louis and Zagorski and all these different guys. But that’s all of the how? And that doesn’t really mean a lot if we don’t have our why. So that’s where I really try to start with the guys. And that’s what kind of a SWOT analysis is sort of the bridge and what SWOT stands for is SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And that kind of bridges the gap in between. So the, the why is basically like our mission statement and you can go really deep into, why you want to do something really a lot of soul searching more than anything else. And I think when you write it down on paper, it brings out a lot of things that you may not have realized were even there before. And then we do a SWOT that kind of bridges the gap. What’s your strength, what’s your weakness and opportunity and what’s your threat? And that’s why I have them do that. And then, so once you know what you want out of it and why you want it, then you can start analyzing. So like if you bring an athlete and I’m sure you know anybody listening any strength conditioning coach you bring an athlete and one of the first things you want to do once you see their commitment to your system, you want to analyze so you know what to focus on? Where your focus needs to be. And that’s what a SWOT is. And so that’s how it is between the why and the how. So that’s the entire purpose of that. And that’s what I try to bring to the guys that are coming up. And what I tried to explain to them. And I do a SWOT analysis on the technical side, but you know, the actual MMA fighting side then I do a SWOT analysis on the lifestyle and then we do a SWOT analysis on the actual business, which is our businesses fighting And that’s what I think a lot of people, including myself, it took me and years to learn. We are a business and it needs to be treated like a business. And you’re the CEO of the business and you can create the right culture that you want. And you can, especially with the advent of social media these days, you can really mold whoever you want it to be. You can be basically whoever you want to be. And of course it needs to be genuine and everything, but that’s why we write it down. And once you know your why and your what, then you can start motoring those sort of things. And for some people that might be, your why might be look, I just want to test my martial arts and see how far they can go. And that’s pretty simple and there’s nothing wrong with that law. That’s sort of how the old school approach was most of us guys from the last generation. That’s where we were doing. Like we were just martial artists that wanted to get in there and just get to as high level as we could with our martial arts. And now you’re seeing a lot of guys that are truly getting into the business thing. I guess Conor is the easiest example, Like he’s a true businessman and I’m sure he could break down exactly why he does what he does and then and what his purpose of doing it is. And then he should tell you how to do it. And the how is obviously the easy part, but you can see that he has a clear direction and a clear path to getting what you wants to get.

Corey Beasley [00:25:18]: Yeah, for sure. I think it’s good for anybody, whether they are a strength coach and athlete or just anybody in general. You got to know why the hell you’re waking up in the morning, especially when things go sideways and things don’t go your way or you’ve got obstacles or whatever pops up and there’s a million of those too. But I think that’s everybody gets, that’s when people get derail. That’s when they quit.

Matt Brown [00:25:45]:I agree. And that’s why I do SWOT and a mission statement everything on the lifestyle also.

Corey Beasley [00:25:54]: Yeah. And I think a lot of talented guys take themselves to have a contention because of their lifestyle.

Matt Brown [00:26:02]:Exactly. And again, I think the big difference is when we all see it in like the regular gyms as we start seeing, so a lot of these people, I think they don’t understand the difference between interest and commitment, where a lot of these fighters are really interested in what it’s like to be Conor, what it’s like to be in the UFC or like a Matt Brown and have 10 years in the UFC. They’re really interested in it, but we don’t see a lot of commitment to it. And I think the reason that we don’t always see as much commitment is because they don’t know why. It’s easy. It’s very hard to commit to a diet when you don’t know why you’re dieting. If you don’t know why, why you want that diet. That’s why we see, I was trying to get to the in January you were going to see thousands of people interested in fitness and July and August we’re going to see a couple hundred people committed to fitness.

Corey Beasley [00:27:08]: Now for you, I mean, and then we’ll, I wanted to ask you about your coordination. You had some good thoughts on coordinating your team of coaches. But I mean in going down the road, you were just going right now talking to a kid. I mean you’re how old now? So for a kid that’s 20 years old that just getting started, maybe did wrestling, maybe the Jujitsu guy, maybe you did all of it. I don’t really know these days. There’s a lot of that, but what would, what would be a piece of advice that you’d give a young kid that’s coming up right now?

MattBrown [00:27:48]:I’m 37. I think exactly what I was just talking about, like a really why do you even want this to start with, why don’t you just go to college and get a degree and sit in a cubicle all day? You know, why not. And a lot of people it’s really funny, man, when you, when you start asking these people these questions, they don’t really know why. And I think it can go a long way. I had to go through that process myself and that’s how I learned it all because I kind of especially when, when I had kids and a family and they started life star becoming a lot more difficult. And it wasn’t just me going to the gym and just grinding it out every day and sweating and bleeding with guys, which is all fun and shit. But when it started to take time out of my family time and now stressing my family and whether I win or lose is depends that my kids get a much better Christmas when I win and they don’t get as much stuff when I lose. And you know, things like that really make made me stop and ask myself, why am I even doing this man? Like, why don’t I just go and go to college, get a degree. And I could save the money from one five, pay off college, not even be in debt and just go sit in the cubicle the rest of my life and my kids would be taken care of. So I really had to ask myself, had to do a lot of a soul searching myself and say, why am I even doing this to start with? And that’s really where I rediscovered the martial arts and became I’d say more than just a fighter anymore personally on a person level. I think maybe I got a lot into like just being a fighter and now I’m back into being more of martial artist. And that’s what actually developed a lot more. My love for strength training to where now I could learn I could provide the next generation with some knowledge that wasn’t there previously. The strength coach wouldn’t be able to know or that even a PhD wouldn’t necessarily be able to understand.

Corey Beasley [00:30:08]: Sure. Very cool, as you’re talking about that now too, I know that over the years, the last couple of years in particular when talking to strength coaches and skill coaches and stuff like that, I know one of the biggest things they talked about was the coordination between all those coaches and the communication and coordinated plan to get athlete A or whoever it is to get where they need to be in performing at their best. So you had some cool thoughts on that as well over the weekend and just how do you coordinate with all the different coaches involved?

Matt Brown [00:30:43]:So I think the big problem and athletics and as a whole is the education of the athlete, again, we’re the CEO of our own business. And that’s even if you’re on a team. If you’re a football player, whatever you like, you’re the CEO of your business, you’re the CEO of your life and what a CEO does well, the good CEOs, what they do well is they understand enough about marketing, sales, management and all these things. They understand enough that they can hire the right people. We especially as they MMA fighters, but athletes as a whole I think don’t have enough understanding to do that. So that’s why we end up with strength coaches that were really just personal trainers or body builders and they end up just tearing these athletes down and then the communication ends up a lack of communication and things like that. And then you also end up with these old school coaches that they weren’t educated either. So they’re like, you don’t need strength conditioning. This is kind of full of stuff to talk. And so that education, I think that will go further than anything. Just getting them educated like you could, it’s not that hard that you could say. You don’t even necessarily have to understand like, force velocity curves or things like that. You don’t have to understand that yet. But what would be a good thing that the athlete understands? Like, look, okay, if he has a CSCS, he’s probably a good enough strength coach for you, that’s like is a good starting point. I don’t mean he has to have that to be a good strength coach for either, but just simple knowledge like that. Like if you are the CEO of the business and you bring in a sales guy, you are going to say, what are your credentials? Like, what is your college credentials? But too many of these guys get caught up in a snake oil salesman ship and they get caught up in people that just want to want to be involved in the sport or just want to be a part of something like that. And that just creates a lot of issues. I think that education in my opinion, would be the biggest key that that could really change this sport for the better.

Corey Beasley [00:33:05]: That’s good advice because I mean, like you said, if they just had a little bit of knowledge, they’d realize like, all right, cool, well we’re only doing certain types of training. We’re missing all these other pieces, you can’t just go up a bar or you can’t just do one thing all the time and expect to be prepared for a fight?

Matt Brown [00:33:28]:Absolutely. And then they would certainly see a lot of, I mean, we’ve all seen it for so many years, these, especially when we watch these countdown shows and stuff and these guys are just doing foolish stuff and they’re just breaking athletes down and they’re not really peaking. They’re not really prepping for a fight is they’re not really doing anything that transfers to their training. I mean the countdown shows can embellish and stuff too. So that’s maybe not the best example. But we all know tons of guys that do this and they hire these amateur coaches. And for sure the business becomes a problem. And then I think the second part is creating the right culture too, I mean, again, I’d rather have a coach do it wrong to some extent. There’s a fine line there, but doing it wrong with some real passion and really caring, then someone that does it 100% perfect and doesn’t care at all. I said, that line is a tough one to follow too. But again, I mean, I just wish that athletes could be educated on things like this where they need to consider when they’re hiring people. Why am I hiring this guy and what is he bringing to the culture that I’m building? And if you don’t know what culture you’re building, then you’re not going to know what guys to bring in either. And that goes back to, again, your mission statement and your how and your why and these things and having all that kind of clarified, then it’s pretty easy to look at someone and talk to them and see if they’re going to fit into the structure of your specific business.

CoreyBeasley [00:35:09]: Yeah, because I’ve seen a lot of different situations, but even like, we’re coaches weren’t on the same page. And what happens because of it versus having, which is rare. It seems like it’s funny, but it’s still pretty rare of having everything under one roof having everybody on the same page, I mean it is rare but I mean sometimes that’s a benefit sometimes it’s not?

Matt Brown [00:35:38]:So yeah, I was going to say I’ve seen just as many where it’s all under the one roof and they’re not on the same page as I have teams was not under the same roof and they are on the same page. And again, being on the same page, it’s very simple. If you have two guys and you have a strength coach and jujutsu coach and you know the culture that you’re building and you know what you want out of them and you can sit down and talk to them. I think a lot of athletes don’t even just sit down and talk to their coaches and be like, look, this is what I am doing. This is why I’m doing it and it’s up to you to tell me the how we’re going to do this. Or just sit down with them and talk to them by, look, this is what we’re doing and this is what I want to do. And coach could certainly treat it differently. If a guy says, look, I, I want to be like Conor McGregor. I won’t go out there. I’m going to talk shit and I’m do everything I can to get the biggest fights possible. And you may train that athlete a little bit differently than you would someone that’s like, okay, I don’t want to say a single word. I’m just going to fight my way to the top and take it slow and easy. You know, there’s so many or some guy might be like, hey, like a Damien Maia. He’s like, you know his straight tell you like, I want to further a Jujitsu. So someone needs to train him differently than a guy that’s like, hey, I want do Muay Thai. Like Damien is 100% focused on being a Jujitsu guy and wants to prove that Jujitsu is still a legitimate art and doesn’t want to hurt the guy. So he needs to be trained differently than say like, Israel Adesanyawas, who is out there was really a Muay Thai guy.

Corey Beasley [00:37:30]: Yeah. Absolutely. And for you right now, I mean, what are you kind of focused on, I know you’re coming off a knee injury is what you’re talking about this weekend. You’re Kind of at the tail end of that.

Matt Brown [00:37:50]:I had a knee and ankle reconstruction back to back. I’m six months out of the knee, four months out of the ankle. So that’s really my heaviest focus right now. You know, in terms of myself, I also moved back to my home of Columbus, Ohio opening martial arts academy. So that’s taken up 20 hours of my day right there or 28 hours of my 24 hour day. And I’m learning a lot of these lessons that I’m kind of spouting or some of it comes from doing this too. I’m learning a lot of this kind of stuff and I was fortunate that I have kind of put these things together before I started opening a business and I understand how to build a culture and create a staff and everything. So that’s a big thing. And then of course I had my equipment business that I’ve had for a few years to have a lot of fun with and have a couple of new products should be released pretty soon that I think are going to blow some people’s minds.

Corey Beasley [00:38:59]: Let’s talk about that equipment company and just seeing, I’ve just seen it a handful of times on social media and the minute I saw it, it kind of has a blue collar, strong work of man mentality, kind of a theme it seems like. And, and to be really honest, that caught my eye because a lot of the strongest dudes I’ve ever wrestled or row against were those working dudes. They, it is manual labor type guys, but damn, they were super strong. So whenever I see that type of stuff, it always catches my eye. So I mean let’s talk about some of the stuff you got?

Matt Brown [00:39:35]:So primary, I have about I don’t know, 10 or 15 different products over time are going to be rolled out. And right now we have just the wheelbarrow, we call it the war wagon to weighted wheelbarrow and the sledge hammers to call them the battle hammers. And those were really exactly what you’re talking about, kind of blue collar, hardworking strength that you’re going to get out of that. And that was kind of why I rolled them out first. Because that’s really the core of the business. And that’s what we’re kind of trying to replicate it as that hard working wrangler wearing blue collar strength the old man strength mason laborers and, and construction workers and that kind of farm boy strength that you just can’t get from tingle units and heavy weights and shit. I don’t know why. And it’s a completely different feel when someone’s trying to cue you through the perfect squat wrap and you’re trying to do it just right so that you can get the weight up and everything, then when it’s like, pick this son of a bitch up and carry it around that fucking builder, different mentality maybe or something. It’s just Westside. It was where I started building the wheelbarrows when Louis, he’s been carrying waited, he’s out a way to wheelbarrow in there for 15, 20 years. And it was just an old piece of junk. And I was like, Louis, I could build a better one than that. Like my cousin owns a welding shop, so I went down the three and we welded together this a wheelbarrow. And then I had another guy asked me for one, he’s like, hey man, I like that. Thank you. Build me one. So I built him on and then another guy asked me and the ball started rolling and I said, man, I’m a call my friend who happens to be an engineer. And he actually introduced me to my current manufacturer and we just figured out a way that we could box it up so it’s not welded together. And then we figured out a way to put different handles on there. So that’s one of the things they are going to be rolled out pretty soon is like Dee handles and prowler handles which are kind of hard to explain, but I’ll have to just make a video or two about them. And then of course we start making the hammers and that was really it. The thing with that is, when you’re using those light hammers, if you’re a strong guy, then you’re at the very bottom of the force velocity curve. And I was like, we could make them a little heavier and kind of work our way up to the current here. And more than that too is also, if you’re 115 pound woman, why are you swinging the same size sledge hammer as a 220 pound man? So we put some different weights on them. I made a cylindrical head that just makes sense per slamming a damn hammer. Not the worst thing in the world, but just annoying. And then the last thing I did was I just made it a handle that was a little bit safer where we put a ball on the end. So when your hands do get slippery, it doesn’t slide out and end up. I mean, I have had the Home Depot Hammers, slid out of my hand before and swing across the gym and if someone was standing across by me, I mean that could be a huge liability. So we’ll just put a ball on the end, pretty simple little thing and it just protect from that. And at some point, I haven’t rolled it out yet, but I’ll put a little wrist strap on there so you can just strap it to your arm or something. So just another safeguard in case it happens to fly off. But that’s just a work in progress. And then the one that I’m working on right now is going be probably released in the next month or so, which is going to be like a walking belt squat. So you’re basic to belt squat machine except seven. Imagine a lot of people would hook up like a bar to a landmine and then do a belt squat with that, right? This is just a bar with wheels instead of a landmine and like you could drag in front of you or behind you and you can walk with it. And then we’re going to load the plates on top so that you could do a full depth to squat. So it’ll basically do anything that a belt squat machine will do, but instead of a three or $4,000 machine, which certainly has its purpose and its place, it’s just be a probably three or $400 a piece of equipment that you could fit in your garage or your living room or whatever you want.

Corey Beasley [00:44:57]: If you get that shit in my living room, I be impressed. If my wife to get a landmine belt squat machine in the living room and I gave a gold medal for being a luckiest husband on earth. Well we’ll get some in the garage for sure.

Matt Brown [00:45:13]:Yeah. I mean, trying to do that for 10 years now that I’ve been married, it’s not made a lot of progress on that yet. I was just saying you don’t have a few more projects that we’re working on with that whole business is really just a hobby for me. I don’t really make a lot of money on it. I haven’t lost any money, so that’s the impressive part. But I’m not getting rich on it. I just do it for a hobby because I like making cool stuff and I like to and to be honest, I mean, I think the stuff that I make is freaking the most useful stuff I’ve ever used. So it’s like, I don’t know why. I don’t know why haven’t got rich off of it, but it just is what it is, I’m not really marketed as much as I should.

Corey Beasley [00:46:08]: Yeah. Well it’s cool that you’re doing that because I mean, between your experience with top coaches and then your practical experience in the cage and training and doing all that stuff for a lot of years. And you get around stuff enough and you got a creative gene in your DNA there and, and stuff just pops up. I mean just coming out of nowhere and it’s just kind of like man, you sitting in the shower, driving in traffic or whatever and something comes in your head but then you followed through with it, which is pretty cool because a lot of people just stopped there and they have a lot of great ideas and no action.

Matt Brown [00:46:48]:Will tell you what, that’s the hard part. I figured that out pretty quickly though putting that plan into action as a son of a bitch. And I get why businesses fail. Because, I mean, I don’t know how many times I was like, why am I even doing this? Like I built one for myself. Like, I don’t need to keep putting this out there. That was my only thing is I just want them for myself. And it just got I said just one thing led to another, but I’m happy now as I said I haven’t lost money and it’s a cool thing. The people that have used them and bought them, I get tons, great feedback all the time. Everybody loves the shit out of him. So it makes me happy when people are getting use out of something I build.

Corey Beasley [00:47:39]: That’s great. Well, cool man. Well Matt, again, I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and some of your experiences and stuff with us. Hopefully for some of the coaches’ listen and it gives them a few things to think about. And a good example to be following, but if guys are wanting to reach out, they want to learn about your gym, they want to learn keep up to date on what you’re doing. They want to learn about equipment and stuff like that. What’s the best way for them to reach out and get in touch with you?

Matt Brown [00:48:12]:Instagram, Twitter, Facebook on Instagram and Twitter. It’s at IMD immortal. Facebook is the immortal Matt Brown. And then I have my Gym page was opened up just recently, a mortal martial arts center. I think we have an Instagram, the mortal martial arts center also. And the equipment is in mortal combat equipment, on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.

Corey Beasley [00:48:42]: Cool. And guys, I’ll put all those links down below. So if you wanted to stay in touch with them and are mindful about that stuff, the links will be down below this podcast. So Matt, thanks again, Dude. I appreciate your time and we’ll talk again soon. For sure.

Matt Brown [00:48:57]: My pleasure. Thank you so much, sir. It’s great talking to you.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with UFC Veteran “The Immortal” Matt Brown:
Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, just Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning and today I’m super excited to guess we got today has had fight at night three times in the UFC. He has had performance of the night two times knock out of the night one time and he is tied for the most finishes in UFC welterweight history. So a guys, we got Matt Brown on the line. So Matt, how you doing?

Matt Brown [00:00:26]:Very good.

Matt Brown [00:00:49]:I’ve had a great time out there. I got to meet a lot of good people and we got to learn a lot of new things and I’m truly honored to be presenting next to some of you guys. Especially just a little bit ago I was going through some of the notes, the presentations and slides and stuff from the weekend and wow. Like what a plethora of knowledge.

Matt Brown [00:01:34]:Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And it’s just like, not too far off from the martial arts, where it’s just a constant evolution and things just constantly getting bigger and better. And there’s just, once you begin down that rabbit hole, there’s no end in sight and you can just go on forever and ever.

Corey Beasley [00:01:57]: Yeah. I think that’s the coolest part about it.

Matt Brown [00:02:00]: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And there’s something always to the re stimulate and then as soon as you start getting a little cocky and thinking you know something, you realize you don’t know a damn thing. And I guess that’s what the old adage says, the wise, understand how little they know and the stupid or the ignorant thing that they know everything or something like.

Matt Brown [00:02:56]:Yeah, I was. So when I really started getting away from drugs and alcohol and I started competing and MMA, like the martial arts is what saved my life and got me away from all that negativity. I didn’t really have much in the way of coaching. I couldn’t afford to go get real coaches or anything. So I had to kind of go out and figure out my own knowledge. And I guess I was smart enough to realize that the one thing that I could absolutely control myself was the strength conditioning I knew from the very beginning that was a totally in my hands. So I had to go learn about it and I was fortunate that pretty early in my career I met some people that had a really good knowledge in the strength conditioning and I was introduced to the book Super Training, pretty early on and we’ll just kind of a blessing and curse. It was a blessing because I still read that book regularly and reference it and go back to it. It was a curse in that it’s the most complex book maybe next to rocket science.

Matt Brown [00:04:36]:I think a lot of it too is can be certainly for me was misinterpreted and I kind of had this feeling that I knew what I was talking about and knew these different things cause I read it in there and I didn’t realize, a lot of that is, I wouldn’t say theoretical, but it was kind of like this is what we know at this picture in time. And it’s just wait way too deep. Like you said that book itself is a rabbit hole.

Corey Beasley [00:05:11]: When you kind of get your start there, you got your start, you kind of going down that road and then you, is at that time you kind of start fighting or how that work?

Matt Brown [00:05:20]:Yeah, I was fighting around the same time. Like I said, I just kind of reached out for that knowledge. Just knowing that that’s something that I could control. And I guess when you first start looking and you’re like, oh, this is going to be simple Like I just saw out and learn kind of the basics and what we’re all looking for there at the beginning is just some routines, like just tell me a new sprint routine or something like that, and then kind of start realizing how big of a mess all that stuff can be, getting a book, like Super Training kind of goes through all that. Where it’s not telling you a specific routine, but it’s telling you all the theory behind it and you’re like, shit, what is this all about? Applying that was tough, very tough. And it gets very diluted in a book like that. So I thought that I knew what the hell I was doing and I think I was ahead of my time in a lot of things and that were, I was doing circuits and like, I don’t know, 2004, 2005 we have five minutes circuits trying to replicate fight, I was always in really good shape and I was doing high intensity interval training back in the day. We used to call it shit training, specialized high intensity training. But I’d say I was doing a lot of that stuff back in the day before it was really popular and then when MMA started getting popular, all that type of training and got popular really quick. And then I said I got on the ultimate fighter and then everything changed from there.

Corey Beasley [00:07:06]: We got onto that fight did you have, before you got to ultimate fighter?

Matt Brown [00:07:11]:It was like 14 or 15 professional fights and probably 15 or 20 amateur fights.

Matt Brown [00:07:39]:Exactly. Yeah, they like to embellish on TV, the shit-show side of it, but there’s really a lot of good that comes out of it I think for, I can’t speak on the other seasons obviously, but for my season I think we had overall a pretty solid group of guys. Dolce was on it season with me. I learned a lot from him. There’s just a lot of really good guys. And most of us were pretty serious and we were there for one thing and we had Forests as our coach and he was an excellent coach and really cared for everybody and brought in some really excellent coaches. So I think we got a lot accomplished. And like I said, they like to embellish on kinds of shit show side. But realistically, I think we learned a lot. I think more than anything, I think I learned how to deal with a camera being in my face all the time and, and learned how to deal with the pressure of being a UFC fighter, the media age. It’s very huge. I mean it’s sort of a boot camp for being a UFC fighter as the way I like to explain it.

Matt Brown [00:09:03]:Exactly. Yeah. And you have cameras following you 24 hours and you’re being interviewed constantly and literally everything you say and do could be a projected where millions of people could see it. And that’s a scary thing, I think a lot of people forget that when they are in there and they start drinking and stuff. But I mean, it certainly relaxed me around the camera because at first, I mean, I was worried about every single thing I said and everything I did and over time I was like just be yourself you’re a good person. You don’t have anything to worry about.

Matt Brown [00:10:21]: Well, we could probably do an entire episode on the mistake part, we could go on for the next couple of hours about that. That’s easy to find. But I would say primarily my biggest mistake that I made and I talked about this at the presentation yesterday too, was really what we call the Unicorn policy now. And that’s just searching for that Unicorn. Always looking for the next best thing. And I think that is a common mistake in all athletics. We’re always thinking the grass is a little greener on the other side when it’s not, where the grass is greener is inside yourself. And that was something that took me a long time to learn. I was always searching, I guess you kind of see the, this mystical stuff, especially with social media and stuff, you kind of see this mythical aura of like say like great Jackson Jim or something where you see all the fighters. That’s the place to be. That’s where you’re going to get great. No, you get great by exploring deeper within yourself rather than outside of yourself. And it took me a long time to learn that and I went to a lot of different places and thought that I was going to the next best place and that wasn’t necessarily true. And I think in terms of strength conditioning that you see that a ton of that, that’s why we have, how many guys do you see, particularly like power lifters, for a good example would they might be doing like say a five, three, one program for a few weeks and then they’re like, Oh man, I’ve been reading about this the[Inaudible 00:12:04]program. And then they get into that, they’re like, no man, the way to do it is the Texas method. And you know, dude, I’ll come, I’ll do that for a couple of weeks and then, and they be far better off just sticking to one program. And sort of my saying now is I’d rather do something with 100% passion and intensity wrong. Then something with half the intensity and passion correctly.

Matt Brown [00:12:44]:Absolutely. Yeah. I guess that’s why the power lifting analogy pretty simple.

Corey Beasley [00:12:49]: That is a pretty cool, I mean those guys are absolute legends out there andtheybuild some, I mean world record after world records coming out of that place. So they’re obviously doing something right. I mean for you guys, I mean for you as slightly different then powerlifted demand, but for you as a fighter training and that kind of an environment, how’d you get that introduction or how’d you get started in there?

Matt Brown [00:13:18]:Well, I was actually introduced to Louie long before I even knew who he was one of my friends took me down there when right after I got off the show and he was like, yeah, this is Louie Westside barbell. And I started go in and I was like, oh, this is some shitty gym, like whatever then I didn’t think twice about, but Louis is a big fan of fighters. So he’s like, yeah, you can come train anytime. I was like, well, what’s a membership is like, yeah, we don’t want to do memberships. And I was like, okay, whatever I think it was right down the street from where I was living and I had no idea what I was getting into there. And I think it was a few months later, I was like, that guy said I could go there, work out there for free. Like, why am I paying, so I go back down there and again, I kind of think that I know what I’m doing right. And I would go into Westside and these people are telling me how to dead lift and how to squat. And I’m like, what do you guys know? And it didn’t take long I started seeing the kind of weights that they are putting up. I’m like, damn, maybe they do know something then. And then that was where I met one of my best friends to this day, Tom Berry, he was a Louise right hand man. He was interning at that time. And now his Louie’s right hand man, well he’s like, you know, first year just internee. So he’s like, okay, I’ll help this guy out and hold up the clock for him and things like that. And he was Kind of tell me like, hey man, your technique kind of sucks. I’m like, what the fuck you know? And again, it didn’t take long and then I think we’re actually, we were talking about Super Training and he’s like, yeah, I was here not too long ago or something. And I was like, wait what are you talking about? He was like, that’s the only book I read. I started realizing what Westside was over time. I’ll make a long story short here and I wrap it up and I’ll just start kind of figuring out what Westside was and what it meant to strength conditioning and the place that I was at. And they started fixing the weaknesses and stuff and the ball just started rolling downhill from there. And it was all, I became obsessed with Westside after that.

Corey Beasley [00:15:49]: Now training there for you started there when you said just after the UFC, the ultimate fighter show, you went in there?

Matt Brown [00:15:58]:Yeah, within a year after. And then I actually went out to Seattle for a little while and I was kind of going back and forth. And that’s when I was training with Joel Jamieson out there in Seattle and became good friends. And, and then I think it was he may have even mentioned to me about Westside and because we’re using the reverse hyper and he was like, this is the Westside thing. And I was like, dude, this I guess the, the guy that lived down the street from my house. And he’s like, dude, he’s like, you got a legend right there, you don’t know about you, they give you some shitty gym. So what you’re getting you just one thing led to another and then I learned a lot from Joel. I was trying out there with, met you and met AMC with Joel and these guys are brilliant too in their own right.

Matt Brown [00:17:07]:Yeah. That’s barely even justified they are polar opposites, opposite end of the spectrum. And Louis, there’s nobody else you’d rather be in the gym with then Louie, that’s for sure.

Matt Brown [00:17:53]:Well, I’ll tell you back in that day around that 2008, 2009, that was when Joel was really, I’d say he was kind of learning the whole MMA thing by himself. I mean, I think you just scratching the surface, he was still really a strength guy back then too. And I think that was when he was just starting to develop that. But he introduced me to the mega wave and HRV about recovery and things like that. And we certainly did our share of conditioning, everything. But back then, to be honest, the majority of the energy system development and stuff was done in the gym, Joel was really, I think, scratching the surface back then. He certainly come a long way and is really at the forefront, I think of all that stuff these days. And his book, certainly a changed MMA, strength conditioning a lot and was a huge factor I think for everyone in that world. But back then a good resource. And back then, I mean, he was just at the beginning I think and really starting to develop all that systems that he’s at now.

CoreyBeasley [00:19:05]: How cool. Now that’s pretty good. [Inaudible 00:19:11] to people recorded the out of experience I’d imagine. But for your physical prep, I mean now you’ve got, I mean, you’ve had how many fights in UFC? So that over the last, what, nine years, something like that, 10 years. So I mean you’ve got 10 years of physical prep board, elite competition. What things have you kind of learned? What’s changed, what’s evolved in that preparation part? And I guess to make it easier, you did talk about when we were in, we were in Vegas last weekend, you were talking about now with all your experience, you got to guys looking up to you, looking to Matt for advice and you talked about something that maybe will help lead us down that road is when you’re talking about that SWOT analysis when you’re sitting down with guys and really just to get there, cause there is, like you talked about with super training and with, your MMA training and what you’d personalize and all these other things. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff going on at right. And it’s very difficult to keep from looking at the flashy lights and the new things and to stay on track and to stay focused. And I think that it sounds like that’s kind of what you’re doing with some of the new guys that you’re working with, but that SWOT analysis, can you explain that a little bit?

MattBrown [00:20:53]:25 fights. That’s another book right there in itself. Yeah, I get where your question is a lot better now. And the whole thing that I really try to focus on with that is really building a core infrastructure of a person and an athlete. So if we’re building a business we always want to start with the why that’s where we want to always begin, why do you want to do this business? And I think books like super training or Joel’s book, all these, I mean there’s a a thousand resources of strength conditioning books between Louis and Zagorski and all these different guys. But that’s all of the how? And that doesn’t really mean a lot if we don’t have our why. So that’s where I really try to start with the guys. And that’s what kind of a SWOT analysis is sort of the bridge and what SWOT stands for is SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And that kind of bridges the gap in between. So the, the why is basically like our mission statement and you can go really deep into, why you want to do something really a lot of soul searching more than anything else. And I think when you write it down on paper, it brings out a lot of things that you may not have realized were even there before. And then we do a SWOT that kind of bridges the gap. What’s your strength, what’s your weakness and opportunity and what’s your threat? And that’s why I have them do that. And then, so once you know what you want out of it and why you want it, then you can start analyzing. So like if you bring an athlete and I’m sure you know anybody listening any strength conditioning coach you bring an athlete and one of the first things you want to do once you see their commitment to your system, you want to analyze so you know what to focus on? Where your focus needs to be. And that’s what a SWOT is. And so that’s how it is between the why and the how. So that’s the entire purpose of that. And that’s what I try to bring to the guys that are coming up. And what I tried to explain to them. And I do a SWOT analysis on the technical side, but you know, the actual MMA fighting side then I do a SWOT analysis on the lifestyle and then we do a SWOT analysis on the actual business, which is our businesses fighting And that’s what I think a lot of people, including myself, it took me and years to learn. We are a business and it needs to be treated like a business. And you’re the CEO of the business and you can create the right culture that you want. And you can, especially with the advent of social media these days, you can really mold whoever you want it to be. You can be basically whoever you want to be. And of course it needs to be genuine and everything, but that’s why we write it down. And once you know your why and your what, then you can start motoring those sort of things. And for some people that might be, your why might be look, I just want to test my martial arts and see how far they can go. And that’s pretty simple and there’s nothing wrong with that law. That’s sort of how the old school approach was most of us guys from the last generation. That’s where we were doing. Like we were just martial artists that wanted to get in there and just get to as high level as we could with our martial arts. And now you’re seeing a lot of guys that are truly getting into the business thing. I guess Conor is the easiest example, Like he’s a true businessman and I’m sure he could break down exactly why he does what he does and then and what his purpose of doing it is. And then he should tell you how to do it. And the how is obviously the easy part, but you can see that he has a clear direction and a clear path to getting what you wants to get.

Matt Brown [00:25:45]:I agree. And that’s why I do SWOT and a mission statement everything on the lifestyle also.

Corey Beasley [00:25:54]: Yeah. And I think a lot of talented guys take themselves to have a contention because of their lifestyle.

Matt Brown [00:26:02]:Exactly. And again, I think the big difference is when we all see it in like the regular gyms as we start seeing, so a lot of these people, I think they don’t understand the difference between interest and commitment, where a lot of these fighters are really interested in what it’s like to be Conor, what it’s like to be in the UFC or like a Matt Brown and have 10 years in the UFC. They’re really interested in it, but we don’t see a lot of commitment to it. And I think the reason that we don’t always see as much commitment is because they don’t know why. It’s easy. It’s very hard to commit to a diet when you don’t know why you’re dieting. If you don’t know why, why you want that diet. That’s why we see, I was trying to get to the in January you were going to see thousands of people interested in fitness and July and August we’re going to see a couple hundred people committed to fitness.

MattBrown [00:27:48]:I’m 37. I think exactly what I was just talking about, like a really why do you even want this to start with, why don’t you just go to college and get a degree and sit in a cubicle all day? You know, why not. And a lot of people it’s really funny, man, when you, when you start asking these people these questions, they don’t really know why. And I think it can go a long way. I had to go through that process myself and that’s how I learned it all because I kind of especially when, when I had kids and a family and they started life star becoming a lot more difficult. And it wasn’t just me going to the gym and just grinding it out every day and sweating and bleeding with guys, which is all fun and shit. But when it started to take time out of my family time and now stressing my family and whether I win or lose is depends that my kids get a much better Christmas when I win and they don’t get as much stuff when I lose. And you know, things like that really make made me stop and ask myself, why am I even doing this man? Like, why don’t I just go and go to college, get a degree. And I could save the money from one five, pay off college, not even be in debt and just go sit in the cubicle the rest of my life and my kids would be taken care of. So I really had to ask myself, had to do a lot of a soul searching myself and say, why am I even doing this to start with? And that’s really where I rediscovered the martial arts and became I’d say more than just a fighter anymore personally on a person level. I think maybe I got a lot into like just being a fighter and now I’m back into being more of martial artist. And that’s what actually developed a lot more. My love for strength training to where now I could learn I could provide the next generation with some knowledge that wasn’t there previously. The strength coach wouldn’t be able to know or that even a PhD wouldn’t necessarily be able to understand.

Matt Brown [00:30:43]:So I think the big problem and athletics and as a whole is the education of the athlete, again, we’re the CEO of our own business. And that’s even if you’re on a team. If you’re a football player, whatever you like, you’re the CEO of your business, you’re the CEO of your life and what a CEO does well, the good CEOs, what they do well is they understand enough about marketing, sales, management and all these things. They understand enough that they can hire the right people. We especially as they MMA fighters, but athletes as a whole I think don’t have enough understanding to do that. So that’s why we end up with strength coaches that were really just personal trainers or body builders and they end up just tearing these athletes down and then the communication ends up a lack of communication and things like that. And then you also end up with these old school coaches that they weren’t educated either. So they’re like, you don’t need strength conditioning. This is kind of full of stuff to talk. And so that education, I think that will go further than anything. Just getting them educated like you could, it’s not that hard that you could say. You don’t even necessarily have to understand like, force velocity curves or things like that. You don’t have to understand that yet. But what would be a good thing that the athlete understands? Like, look, okay, if he has a CSCS, he’s probably a good enough strength coach for you, that’s like is a good starting point. I don’t mean he has to have that to be a good strength coach for either, but just simple knowledge like that. Like if you are the CEO of the business and you bring in a sales guy, you are going to say, what are your credentials? Like, what is your college credentials? But too many of these guys get caught up in a snake oil salesman ship and they get caught up in people that just want to want to be involved in the sport or just want to be a part of something like that. And that just creates a lot of issues. I think that education in my opinion, would be the biggest key that that could really change this sport for the better.

Matt Brown [00:33:28]:Absolutely. And then they would certainly see a lot of, I mean, we’ve all seen it for so many years, these, especially when we watch these countdown shows and stuff and these guys are just doing foolish stuff and they’re just breaking athletes down and they’re not really peaking. They’re not really prepping for a fight is they’re not really doing anything that transfers to their training. I mean the countdown shows can embellish and stuff too. So that’s maybe not the best example. But we all know tons of guys that do this and they hire these amateur coaches. And for sure the business becomes a problem. And then I think the second part is creating the right culture too, I mean, again, I’d rather have a coach do it wrong to some extent. There’s a fine line there, but doing it wrong with some real passion and really caring, then someone that does it 100% perfect and doesn’t care at all. I said, that line is a tough one to follow too. But again, I mean, I just wish that athletes could be educated on things like this where they need to consider when they’re hiring people. Why am I hiring this guy and what is he bringing to the culture that I’m building? And if you don’t know what culture you’re building, then you’re not going to know what guys to bring in either. And that goes back to, again, your mission statement and your how and your why and these things and having all that kind of clarified, then it’s pretty easy to look at someone and talk to them and see if they’re going to fit into the structure of your specific business.

CoreyBeasley [00:35:09]: Yeah, because I’ve seen a lot of different situations, but even like, we’re coaches weren’t on the same page. And what happens because of it versus having, which is rare. It seems like it’s funny, but it’s still pretty rare of having everything under one roof having everybody on the same page, I mean it is rare but I mean sometimes that’s a benefit sometimes it’s not?

Matt Brown [00:35:38]:So yeah, I was going to say I’ve seen just as many where it’s all under the one roof and they’re not on the same page as I have teams was not under the same roof and they are on the same page. And again, being on the same page, it’s very simple. If you have two guys and you have a strength coach and jujutsu coach and you know the culture that you’re building and you know what you want out of them and you can sit down and talk to them. I think a lot of athletes don’t even just sit down and talk to their coaches and be like, look, this is what I am doing. This is why I’m doing it and it’s up to you to tell me the how we’re going to do this. Or just sit down with them and talk to them by, look, this is what we’re doing and this is what I want to do. And coach could certainly treat it differently. If a guy says, look, I, I want to be like Conor McGregor. I won’t go out there. I’m going to talk shit and I’m do everything I can to get the biggest fights possible. And you may train that athlete a little bit differently than you would someone that’s like, okay, I don’t want to say a single word. I’m just going to fight my way to the top and take it slow and easy. You know, there’s so many or some guy might be like, hey, like a Damien Maia. He’s like, you know his straight tell you like, I want to further a Jujitsu. So someone needs to train him differently than a guy that’s like, hey, I want do Muay Thai. Like Damien is 100% focused on being a Jujitsu guy and wants to prove that Jujitsu is still a legitimate art and doesn’t want to hurt the guy. So he needs to be trained differently than say like, Israel Adesanyawas, who is out there was really a Muay Thai guy.

Matt Brown [00:37:50]:I had a knee and ankle reconstruction back to back. I’m six months out of the knee, four months out of the ankle. So that’s really my heaviest focus right now. You know, in terms of myself, I also moved back to my home of Columbus, Ohio opening martial arts academy. So that’s taken up 20 hours of my day right there or 28 hours of my 24 hour day. And I’m learning a lot of these lessons that I’m kind of spouting or some of it comes from doing this too. I’m learning a lot of this kind of stuff and I was fortunate that I have kind of put these things together before I started opening a business and I understand how to build a culture and create a staff and everything. So that’s a big thing. And then of course I had my equipment business that I’ve had for a few years to have a lot of fun with and have a couple of new products should be released pretty soon that I think are going to blow some people’s minds.

Matt Brown [00:39:35]:So primary, I have about I don’t know, 10 or 15 different products over time are going to be rolled out. And right now we have just the wheelbarrow, we call it the war wagon to weighted wheelbarrow and the sledge hammers to call them the battle hammers. And those were really exactly what you’re talking about, kind of blue collar, hardworking strength that you’re going to get out of that. And that was kind of why I rolled them out first. Because that’s really the core of the business. And that’s what we’re kind of trying to replicate it as that hard working wrangler wearing blue collar strength the old man strength mason laborers and, and construction workers and that kind of farm boy strength that you just can’t get from tingle units and heavy weights and shit. I don’t know why. And it’s a completely different feel when someone’s trying to cue you through the perfect squat wrap and you’re trying to do it just right so that you can get the weight up and everything, then when it’s like, pick this son of a bitch up and carry it around that fucking builder, different mentality maybe or something. It’s just Westside. It was where I started building the wheelbarrows when Louis, he’s been carrying waited, he’s out a way to wheelbarrow in there for 15, 20 years. And it was just an old piece of junk. And I was like, Louis, I could build a better one than that. Like my cousin owns a welding shop, so I went down the three and we welded together this a wheelbarrow. And then I had another guy asked me for one, he’s like, hey man, I like that. Thank you. Build me one. So I built him on and then another guy asked me and the ball started rolling and I said, man, I’m a call my friend who happens to be an engineer. And he actually introduced me to my current manufacturer and we just figured out a way that we could box it up so it’s not welded together. And then we figured out a way to put different handles on there. So that’s one of the things they are going to be rolled out pretty soon is like Dee handles and prowler handles which are kind of hard to explain, but I’ll have to just make a video or two about them. And then of course we start making the hammers and that was really it. The thing with that is, when you’re using those light hammers, if you’re a strong guy, then you’re at the very bottom of the force velocity curve. And I was like, we could make them a little heavier and kind of work our way up to the current here. And more than that too is also, if you’re 115 pound woman, why are you swinging the same size sledge hammer as a 220 pound man? So we put some different weights on them. I made a cylindrical head that just makes sense per slamming a damn hammer. Not the worst thing in the world, but just annoying. And then the last thing I did was I just made it a handle that was a little bit safer where we put a ball on the end. So when your hands do get slippery, it doesn’t slide out and end up. I mean, I have had the Home Depot Hammers, slid out of my hand before and swing across the gym and if someone was standing across by me, I mean that could be a huge liability. So we’ll just put a ball on the end, pretty simple little thing and it just protect from that. And at some point, I haven’t rolled it out yet, but I’ll put a little wrist strap on there so you can just strap it to your arm or something. So just another safeguard in case it happens to fly off. But that’s just a work in progress. And then the one that I’m working on right now is going be probably released in the next month or so, which is going to be like a walking belt squat. So you’re basic to belt squat machine except seven. Imagine a lot of people would hook up like a bar to a landmine and then do a belt squat with that, right? This is just a bar with wheels instead of a landmine and like you could drag in front of you or behind you and you can walk with it. And then we’re going to load the plates on top so that you could do a full depth to squat. So it’ll basically do anything that a belt squat machine will do, but instead of a three or $4,000 machine, which certainly has its purpose and its place, it’s just be a probably three or $400 a piece of equipment that you could fit in your garage or your living room or whatever you want.

Matt Brown [00:45:13]:Yeah. I mean, trying to do that for 10 years now that I’ve been married, it’s not made a lot of progress on that yet. I was just saying you don’t have a few more projects that we’re working on with that whole business is really just a hobby for me. I don’t really make a lot of money on it. I haven’t lost any money, so that’s the impressive part. But I’m not getting rich on it. I just do it for a hobby because I like making cool stuff and I like to and to be honest, I mean, I think the stuff that I make is freaking the most useful stuff I’ve ever used. So it’s like, I don’t know why. I don’t know why haven’t got rich off of it, but it just is what it is, I’m not really marketed as much as I should.

Matt Brown [00:46:48]:Will tell you what, that’s the hard part. I figured that out pretty quickly though putting that plan into action as a son of a bitch. And I get why businesses fail. Because, I mean, I don’t know how many times I was like, why am I even doing this? Like I built one for myself. Like, I don’t need to keep putting this out there. That was my only thing is I just want them for myself. And it just got I said just one thing led to another, but I’m happy now as I said I haven’t lost money and it’s a cool thing. The people that have used them and bought them, I get tons, great feedback all the time. Everybody loves the shit out of him. So it makes me happy when people are getting use out of something I build.

Matt Brown [00:48:12]:Instagram, Twitter, Facebook on Instagram and Twitter. It’s at IMD immortal. Facebook is the immortal Matt Brown. And then I have my Gym page was opened up just recently, a mortal martial arts center. I think we have an Instagram, the mortal martial arts center also. And the equipment is in mortal combat equipment, on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.

Matt Brown [00:48:57]: My pleasure. Thank you so much, sir. It’s great talking to you.

Episode #87 with UFC Veteran “The Immortal” Matt Brown

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with UFC Veteran “The Immortal” Matt Brown:

5 Physical Challenges to Test Your Limits