#1417 - Kevin Ross

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Two, one. Kevin Ross, bringer of gifts.

Kevin Ross (0:05)

What's up, man? How you doing?

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Good to see you, brother. Thank you very much for that bag.

Kevin Ross (0:08)

Oh, you're very welcome.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

It's very cool. People, I'll let you know, Kevin brought a giant heavy bag filled with sand that has to weigh north of 200 pounds.

Kevin Ross (0:19)

I think it's about 250 Yeah, it was a lot of fun getting that in my car by myself.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Is that your preferred method for conditioning your shins?

Kevin Ross (0:28)

For sure, for sure. The thing with shin conditioning, a lot of people do, they smack themselves in the shin with bottles and kind of stupid things like that. But you're not really creating what you need to, which is overall conditioning, overall strengthening of the bone.

All you're really doing is deadening little spots in your nerves, but that's the worst thing you can do without strengthening your bones. You're deadening the nerves but not strengthening the bone overall. And if you're not doing that, you're going to think your bones a lot stronger than it is, but it can't handle the impact. So with a sandbag, you're covering much more surface area and applying it in a realistic situation where you're able to throw kicks repeatedly at this thing. And what you really want to do is do it to a degree that it's causing a certain amount of pain, but you're able to do this daily with repetition because that's how you continually develop, just like getting stronger at anything.

It doesn't happen overnight. You got to just do this every day, just at the end of your session, knock out a few kicks, and then again tomorrow and again the next day. And you slowly and steadily are able to go harder and harder and develop the strength and conditioning in your shins.

Joe Rogan (1:48)

So the idea is that you're making these little tiny micro fractures, right?

Kevin Ross (1:51)

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, like I said, you want to be able to cover a good surface area, so you're hitting it all kind of at once, as opposed to like little spots, which is what happens when you just whack it with a bat or something like that.

Joe Rogan (2:06)

My experience with whacking it with a bat is everybody kind of quits.

You're like, hey, I'm going to condition my shins, and then they just go, what the fuck am I doing? And they stop doing it.

Kevin Ross (2:14)

Well, the thing too with when you're able to kick like that is you can kind of slowly build up. You start a little bit lightly and develop a little bit stronger, and you kind of create a little bit of a crease. And as you get going, your brain can kind of wrap itself around it a little bit better. And then you start going harder and harder. And by the end of your five, 10-minute session, you're putting some serious weight into that, and you're not noticing it as much.

Joe Rogan (2:42)

Yeah, we were talking about your knee, that you had a fracture in your knee that you didn't realize you had.

Yeah, it's weird. The thing that disturbs me maybe the most in kickboxing, and so I've only seen it a few times, is when someone checks a kick and their leg snaps in half. Like Tyrone Spong when he fought Gokan Saki, or Anderson Silva when he fought Chris Weidman, same thing. That snap of when the shin gives out, can you prevent that from doing this?

Kevin Ross (3:11)

Obviously, it's one of those just freak things that happens.

You know, clearly with those guys, you can have the most conditioned shins in the world, but you catch them the wrong way at the wrong time. It can happen, and it's rare, but it does happen, and it doesn't really matter how long you've been doing this, how strong your shins are. Sometimes things just break.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

I always wonder how many guys have little breaks, and they don't know about it, too.

Kevin Ross (3:36)

Probably a lot.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

Yeah, they said that's what happened with Anderson.

That Anderson threw a kick, and he broke it before that. Like he felt something was wrong, and then when he threw that second kick, and it snapped in half, that's why it did that.

Kevin Ross (3:50)

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Joe Rogan (3:52)

Well, Weidman was checking it perfect. He was checking it right at the top of his knee.

Kevin Ross (3:56)