JRE MMA Show #60 with Forrest Griffin, Clint Wattenberg & Dr. Duncan French

Joe Rogan (0:00)

From Wild Big.

My buddy from Australia gave me those in that head.

It's an Asian water buffalo. It's an invasive species. Are we live? Yes, we are. Oh, it worked. Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, the UFC Performance Institute boys. What's up? Duncan, Forrest Griffin. Hey, Forrest Griffin. Good to see you.

Forrest Griffin (0:20)

We've already talked over each other, so we've already blown it.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

No, we've got it. We've got it nailed.

Well, I'm really glad you guys are here because I was blown away when I went to visit the, you know, you hear the Performance Institute and you go, well, what is this going to be like? And you go, they're like, oh my God, they thought of everything. It's like the ultimate state of the art facility for training, for recovery, for nutrition. It's fucking amazing. I mean, I'm so happy that-

Forrest Griffin (0:44)

We're posting a link to that shit right there.

Joe Rogan (0:46)

Say it. Dude, I mean, it's amazing. When we went on a tour and checked that place out, I think it was a, De La Grasse was with me?

Forrest Griffin (0:52)

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

We were like, holy shit.

Like, you imagine? You have access to this fucking place? Like, you guys have really created something special. It's very interesting. And I don't know much about other sports, but I know this never really existed in combat sports before.

Something like this that's, I mean, you guys have athletes from all sorts of different walks of life come through there. When I was there, there was many, many top level fighters that were training out of there. It's really, really interesting.

Duncan French (1:16)

Yeah, cool. Well, we appreciate the kind words, obviously. I mean, ultimately, yeah, the vision of the UFC was to build a performance institute that was truly a world class high performance center that had everything that fighters would need.

But not only are we trying to align ourselves as the leaders in mixed martial arts, but certainly leaders in human high performance.

Joe Rogan (1:36)

Yeah, Duncan, tell people what you do there. Explain.

Duncan French (1:39)

Yeah, so my role is the vice president of performance. I essentially direct the philosophy of how we're going to interact with the fighters, how we're going to support the fighters and obviously manage our world class staff that we're working within the performance facility.

Joe Rogan (1:55)

And Clint, you came from a background in amateur wrestling and tell everybody what your job is over there.

Clint Wattenberg (2:02)

Yep, so I'm the director of performance nutrition.

So anything related to feeding of athletes is essentially managed by myself and our ever expanding team.

So it can be as broad as working with athletes for their general training plan, integrating within the other performance services, as well as feeding athletes on the ground, integrating within our kitchen at the Performance Institute, supporting athletes as they prepare for fight week, weight descents, etc. And then supporting athletes on fight week and preparing at that even at the last moment of fight day to fuel up and to be really well fueled for their performance.

My background is, like you said, in amateur wrestling, I wrestled and coached at Cornell University, graduated in 03, was on the US national team with a number of actually current fighters right now. So Cormier, Daniel Cormier, and a number of other athletes, Chris Weidman and some others. And I used to train together. And then I went back to school and got on my credentialing to be a registered dietitian. And so that's kind of led me through developing a program at Cornell to the UFC with a pretty unique combination of the nutrition, the dietetics, and then obviously the experience in college and in combat sports and weight cutting.

Joe Rogan (3:14)

Yeah. And in my opinion, the most grueling combat sport, I mean, I think wrestling, it's just, we talked about on the last podcast, it's just, it's a crazy way for a kid to learn hard work and to learn real competition and the actual physical struggle of getting to wrestling practice and strength and conditioning grills.

Most kids that are coming up in high school and in college, they don't really work that hard in any other sport. I mean, it's a crazy sport.

Forrest Griffin (3:37)

I remember in high school, like walking into the wrestling room and it's a bunch of gross dudes, like in a sweaty hot room, and then it was like basketball was right next to it. I walked next to the basketball, there's like dudes in tent tops and some like cheerleaders. I'm like, I know what I'm doing.