The Strenuous Life Podcast with Stephan Kesting

From war-torn Africa to climbing remote peaks in Greenland with Alex Honnold, Matt Pycroft has built a very impressive career working as a journalist and filmmaker.  In our conversation he goes into detail how he gradually acquired the skills to achieve his goals and the lessons he's learned working with extreme athletes in inhospitable settings all over the globe. Follow Matt on Instagram @mattpycroft and check out his latest film, Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold, on Disney, Amazon, and National Geographic.

The traditional class structure of doing a warmup, learning a couple of new techniques, and followed by sparring is NOT an efficient way to learn jiu-jitsu.  We can do much better if we use insights from research on coaching and learning. Today's guest is Cal MacDonald, a BJJ black belt and  competitor who has dedicated himself to developing his teaching and coaching skills to the highest possible level.   Cal is a longtime blackbelt under Rob Biernacki at Island Top Team. Rob and his team are at the cutting edge of teaching and training methodologies that make people amazingly good incredibly fast. Cal coached full time at Island Top Team for five years and is also a fierce competitor, having won Gold at NAGA, Pacific Northwest Open, and many other tournaments. He has travelled to top academies for Worlds and ADCC camps, training with top athletes like Yuri Simões, Mason Fowler, and Caio Terra, so he knows what works at the highest levels. His proudest accomplishments are the successes of his students, and he has spent thousands of hours coaching and cornering competitors as they fight their way to the podium. Cal stays abreast of advances in sports science and cognitive science, and blended that with experience and experimentation to create the BJJ Foundations program - more info about that at https://www.grapplearts.com/foundations Good luck with your training, Stephan Kesting

In this episode I talk BJJ longevity, weight training, home gyms and training methods with BJJ old-timer Mike Mahaffey. I think there are a TON of valuable takehome lessons here for anyone who trains jiu-jitsu, and ESPECIALLY the over-40 crowd!  Also check out BJJ Foundations, the brand new Grapplearts instructional that gives you the best jiu-jitsu technique and training method curriculum I've ever seen at https://www.grapplearts.com/foundations Cheers, Stephan Kesting

Did you know that the England had many different wrestling systems including Cornish, Lancashire, Devonshire, Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling and catchwrestling? In this conversation Oz Austwick and I go into the history of these arts including the influence of Japanese Judo and Jiu-Jitsu on English Wrestling... the great Billy Robinson and his influence on Kazushi Sakuraba... Satoro Sayama and the birth of Shootwrestling... American vs British catchwrestling... the blending of jiu-jitsu with catchwrestling... leglocks and traditional BJJ... and much more. Follow Oz Austwick here: https://www.youtube.com/@EnglishMartialArts Subscribe to The Strenuous Life Podcast on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK-c9Vxqx-I  

Rob Biernacki and his competition team are on a tear. Rob recently took gold in masters middleweight the Canadian ADCC Open, silver at the California ADCC Open, and gold in black belt M4 at the IBJJF No Gi Worlds. In this episode we talk about designing an effective training camp, dividing your conditioning and skills training, detaching emotionally from the outcome of the competition, why sharktanking and competition-style rolls are overused, 80/20 analyses of different rule sets, training athletes to think strategically while in matches, the central role of games and drills in his competition training, and strategies that work in ADCC that will lose you the match in IBJJF Check out his latest instructional, BJJ GAMES, at https://www.grapplearts.com/bjj-games.  It features 25 different games and drills Rob uses at his school to get his students ready for competition.

In episode 393 of The Strenuous Life Podcast I talk to Oz Austwick, who has extensively studied armed and unarmed combat systems in Europe. Topics we cover include the origins of boxing in England, historical training and conditioning methods, reconstructing and testing techniques shown in swordfighting manuals, fighting with live blades, the role of wrestling in real swordfighting, and much more.  I think you'll really like this one! Oz Austwick runs the English Martial Arts channel on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/englishmartialarts and publishes at https://www.patreon.com/englishmartialarts

Today I pick the brain of the amazing Jost Kobusch is a German mountaineer who spent two seasons on Everest trying to ascend the legendarily difficult West Ridge route and the Hornbein Couloir alone. And did I mention that he wasn't using supplemental oxygen and attempting this in the middle of the brutal Himalayan winter?  We covered a TON of interesting topics, including Why do things the hardest way? His closest call in the mountains The dangers of the Khumbu Icefall Getting hit by an avalanche at Everest Base Camp His preferred diet for performance at high altitude Training for high altitude Dealing with injuries And more I hope you enjoy this!  Share it with a friend if you do! Stephan Kesting P.S. In 2015 Jost was about to climb Everest when an earthquake triggered an avalanche that destroyed Everest Base Camp.  Here's the footage he filmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JC_wIWUC2U P.P.S. At age 21 Jost became the youngest person to solo Ama Dablam, a 6812 meter mountain in the Himalayas.  Here's a documentary about that climb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVG9U8UoT2I P.P.P.S. Follow Jost on Instagram @Jostkobusch or get coached by him at JostKobusch.com

Today I'm joined by Steve Kwan, the host and creator of the wildly popular BJJ Mental Models podcast.  We discuss the most important mental models in the art and how they can improve your ability to perform on the mat! Check out https://www.bjjmentalmodels.com/ for Steve's podcast and https://www.grapplearts.com/rollingbacktakes for my newest BJJ instructional. And, as always, please send today's episode to someone you think would benefit from it. Thanks, Stephan Kesting

With eyewitness testimony in the US Congress and purported alien bodies being wheeled into the Mexican Congress, it looks like we're in another UFO craze right now.  It was great to have science writer and sceptical investigator Mick West on the podcast to make sense of this evidence and evaluate what the odds are that aliens truly walk among us.     Check out Mick's current research at metabunk.org, it's my first stop for anything UFO-related.   Check out the video of this conversation on the Strenuous Life Podcast channel on Youtube.   And finally, please share this episode with a friend who might be interested - that's how this podcast grows!   May the force be with you, Stephan Kesting

I caught up with world record holder James Pieratt shortly after he completed a 500-mile, self-supported mountain run along the Pacific Crest Trail.  But James isn't just an ultrarunner - he's also a serious weightlifter who also trains in jiu-jitsu. In this interview we went deep into how to balance strength, endurance, and skill training, the role of prehabilitation and rehabilitation, the effect of hard training on life expectancy, and what drives someone to these extremes.  Check out James' training programs at wildhuntconditioning.myshopify.com or follow him on instagram @wildhuntconditioning.   If you know someone who'd be inspired by this episode please send it to them! Stephan