The Strenuous Life Podcast with Stephan Kesting

Loved this interview with Reilly Bodycomb. Reilly is a Russian sambo and leglock expert who has competed in a TON of different rulesets including BJJ, no gi submission grappling, MMA, Sambo, and wrestling. He shared stories about competing all over the world, and shared some major insights about how the rules you compete under totally influence the development of a sport.  My favourite part was wh...

This is a fun episode: instead of me doing the interviewing the tables get turned and I get grilled by Cody from the Codyjitsu podcast.  We covered tons of stuff including my martial arts background, how I got my black belt, my favourite moves and techniques, specific strategies to train around injuries, the role of competition in training, and much more.  Follow Cody on Instagram:  @AmericanGrapp...

One of the very worst things is to be trapped on the bottom with all your opponent's weight on top of you and be unable to breathe.  This is usually followed by exhaustion, panic and surrender. But it doesn't need to be like this – there are several approaches to breathing in BJJ that can make sure air gets into your lungs, oxygen into your blood, and keep you in the game, even when you're being c...

How to deal with the super-frustrating but ultimately inevitable physical setbacks, limitations and injuries when you're doing a contact sport.  Hint: it will ALWAYS be two steps forward, one step back; the trick is how you deal with it to stay motivated and not get discouraged.  I speak from the heart AND from experience here!  Please remember to subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your c...

I really enjoyed talking to Lieutenant Kevin Dillon (ret) who served for 25 years as a police officer, SWAT team member, and detective commander before moving on to become a full time trainer for police departments. In this episode we talk about his closest calls on the street, how police departments train their officers to fight, degrees of force and escalation in combatives, how to talk somebody...

Chewy (aka Nick Albin) is well known for the BJJ advice he gives on his prolific Youtube Chewjitsu channel, so I was thrilled to have him on the podcast.   It's a great chat and we cover a ton of material, including how he got his nickname, his journey from wrestling to MMA to jiu-jitsu, gi vs no gi training, preventing injuries in training, why he decided to leave tech and go full time in jiu-jit...

Getting tired when you're rolling sucks.  And it's even worse when you're competing; you can't breathe, you go into survival mode, your plans goes out the window and life starts sucking. In this episode I share my number one tip for beating this exhaustion and performing up to your potential in competition. Let me know what you think of these tips and mini-rant podcast episodes. You can find me at...

To get better fast in any sport you have to be able to train hard, which means minimising injuries and maximising your recovery.  In this episode I give you some of my best tips to accomplish both of these goals.  If you found this information useful then please share the podcast with ONE other person who might also benefit from hearing it.   Thank you so much , Stephan Kesting www.grapplearts.com...

In this rant I go off about so-called 'technique collectors', which are martial artists who memorise 35 different variations of a technique but are unable to execute ANY of those variations against a real opponent giving even a little bit of resistance.  Then I go through the 5 step formula for taking any technique and making it functional. This 5 step formula is broken down for you in more detail...

Should you pull guard in BJJ competition or fight doggedly for the takedown.  You'll get some answers to this perennial question in my  conversation about pulling guard with BJJ black belt Rob Biernacki.

Loved talking to jiu-jitsu pioneer Carlos Machado about  all things BJJ.  His love for the art and experience in the sport comes through at every second.  I hope you get as much out of this interview as I did! Some of the highlights include 01:07 - Carlos on growing up in Jiu-Jitsu family 05:52 - BJJ comes into the mainstream 08:41 - Training with Rolls Gracie 11:07 - Style of the Machado game 13:...

You wouldn't think that something like stretching before a workout could be controversial, but it is. Some evidence and experts suggest that you should only do it  after  your workout, whereas most traditions say that you should do it  before.   Who's right and what should you do?  In this episode I break it down for you (hint, it really, really depends on the sport you do)!

The other day I almost tore a partner's ACL off the bone, which would have required him to have surgery and many months of rehabilitation. What happened exactly? I was more experienced and a bit bigger than my training partner that day and we were doing some no gi sparring. Because of the experience discrepancy I was hyper-focusing on a couple of very specific positions, namely Ashi Garami and the...

Today's episode comes from a Q&A session I did on Instagram live ( @stephan_kesting ) and gave the answers to a ton of BJJ and training topics including... 05:00 - When I started training BJJ 06:56 - Is BJJ ever going to make it into the Olympics 08:04 - Advice for remote learners without access to a school 12:33 - Teaching seminars? 13:19 - Grappling and submissions when there's a weapon involved...

This is a great episode with a ton of relevant and useful tips for combat athletes!  Jason C. Brown shares a ton of information about kettlebell conditioning for jiu-jitsu and other martial arts including the details of kettlebell form, competitions, and designing conditioning programs for different people with different goals. We also riff on old-school jiu-jitsu techniques and why they still wor...

It started so well!  First Rob Biernacki and I discuss The Last Jedi and training with ADCC champion Yuri Simoes and World Champion Caio Terra. Then things went off the rails and we pissed off leftists, rightists, geeks, lesbians, Marxists, trickle-down economists, liberals, Trumpists, systema practitioners, academics, flat-earthers and everyone in between!

What would the boxer Vasyl Lomachenko do if he caught you macking on his girlfriend? Well, I don't think it would involve any elaborate footwork or strategies... It's fun to make things complicated in training, to use setups, fakes, and elaborate combinations to beat your training partners.  But when it comes to street self defense you should keep things really, really simple. For more of my self...

I think you'll really like this episode!  In it I talk with Alex Kask who is  a traditional Japanese Takeuchi-ryu Ju-Jutsu teacher but also no stranger to modern Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. We go deep into the techniques and history of traditional Japanese martial arts systems, including modern vs traditional training methods, the Japanese 'Warring States' period, historical challenge matches, the import...

I really enjoyed this chat with kiteboarder and extreme athlete Jack Rieder (in part because I'm dying to try kiteboarding myself).  Here's just a bit of what we talked about... 1:10 - What is kiteboarding? 6:47 - The disciplines of kiteboarding 13:57 - Other uses for kites 17:51 - Controlling the kite 21:28 - Injuries and risk 27:14 - Media and video process 30:36 - Training vs doing for high lev...

The Christmas binge is over and it's time to take control of your diet again!  In this short episode I give you my top five pieces of advice for cleaning up your diet and not sabotaging your training with crappy nutrition.

Matt Thornton is the founder of Straight Blast Gym, the organisation that produced Conor McGregor.  He's also a skeptic with many harsh words for traditional martial arts and traditional training methods.  Don't listen if you're easily offended!   00:51 - Matt's martial arts background 10:26 - The concept of "Aliveness" 20:41 - The "I" method of teaching and training martial arts 26:14 - John Kava...

Why training in the martial arts without including some form of grappling is stupid, and what are the key positions, techniques and transitions you need to learn first in order to get good as fast as possible.  If you already train then I hope this helps you, and if you don't train... well... I hope it's the kick in the butt that you need to get yourself onto the mat!

I really mean it: DON'T wait until New Year's Eve to start making the changes you know should happen! Waiting will only make things more difficult.  To prove my point I drag Genghis Khan, Julius Caeser, Georges S Patton, and Robb Stark from Game of Thrones into the argument. 

"When you retire, all you want those guys you worked with to say about you is: God, he was a good firefighter!" Loved sitting down with Battalion Chief of Training Ken Johnson (ret) to talk about recent breakthroughs in firefighting tactics, training probationaries, managing emergency scenes, the critical importance of your crew, the fun side of firefighting, whether someone should become a firefi...

Loved doing this massive Q&A!  What I did was take the time to more fully answer questions that I had first addressed in 140 characters on my first Twitter AMA (Ask Me Anything).  Follow me on Twitter where I'm @stephankesting so you can get in on the next Q&A session!  Here's what I talked about...    My cryotherapy experiment update - 01:13 The 3 most essential submissions (and why) - 07:09 Grap...