Words With A MAD Coach

 
 
With UFC 332 headed to Salt Lake City and Natalia Silva taking on Chung Wong, I started asking a simple question: Why Salt Lake City?
This will be the UFC's fifth trip to the city, dating all the way back to Yair Rodriguez vs. Alex Caceres in 2016. After a six-year absence, the UFC returned in 2022 with Usman vs. Edwards 2—and since then, Salt Lake City has become home to numbered UFC events featuring fights like Poirier vs. Gaethje 2 and Pereira vs. Rountree.
That tells me something.
The UFC doesn't just look for new markets. It returns to markets that work. This is a business, and when a city demonstrates that it will show up, buy tickets and support major events, there's a reason to keep going back.
But UFC 332 has me interested for another reason: disruption.
This card may not jump off the page with championship contenders from top to bottom, but sometimes that's exactly where the fun begins. Give me the prospect nobody expects to lose. Give me the newcomer nobody knows. Give me the veteran everybody has counted out. Give me the fight where 98% of the audience thinks they already know what's going to happen—and then completely disrupt the story.
Because uncertainty creates intrigue.
Gable Steveson getting knocked out doesn't necessarily hurt the next show—it can make you wonder what could happen next. A short-notice fighter suddenly exploding onto the scene creates somebody new to watch. An unknown fighter upsetting the prospect everybody expected to win gives us another story.
I don't want guarantees. I want disruption.

Getting back to the fundamental good aspects of the combat sports industry

 
Stop chasing perfection. Start measuring your preparation.
 
Coach Ses reflects on the relationship between creativity, preparation, personal accountability, and the standards we establish for ourselves.
Why do fighters confuse losing with performing poorly? How do we measure the quality of our work? And what does it really mean to take responsibility when circumstances are beyond our control?
Today's MAD Storm explores mental literacy, the importance of being a fan of your own craft, and the ability to question your own thoughts before responding to the world around you.
Responsibility begins with understanding yourself.

The MAD Coach, Coach Ses, breaks down UFC 331, a card that may be remembered less for the names attached to it and more for the moments that disrupted expectations. From Joshua Van defending his flyweight championship against Alexandre Pantoja to several fights that suddenly changed direction, UFC 331 gives us a chance to talk about why disruption isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes the unexpected moment is exactly what pushes a fighter, a division, or even the sport forward.
Then we continue our discussion on correcting mistakes in training. Once you've identified the mistake and begun correcting the movement, the next step is developing the physical attributes that support that correction.
That's where specificity matters.
Strength, endurance, speed, balance, coordination, and mobility shouldn't exist separately from what you're actually trying to accomplish. It's not simply about lifting weights, running, or swimming. It's about understanding how you lift, how you run, and how you swim—and whether those physical adaptations actually support the movement you're trying to improve.

In this episode of MAD Storm, we continue the process of turning mistakes into functional training. Instead of obsessing over what an opponent does well, we turn the camera back on ourselves. Don't just say, “He has a great leg kick.” Ask, “How often am I getting leg kicked?” Don't just admire someone's jab. Measure how often you're getting hit by it and determine why.
This is where film study, training, and measurement come together. Film identifies the mistake. Training introduces the correction. New film shows whether the behavior actually changed.

Making a mistake is one thing. Understanding why it happened is another. But eventually, you have to train the correction.
In this episode of MAD Storm, Coach Sess moves from analyzing the mistake to building new behavior through training.
Using a knockout as the example, we reverse-engineer the failure. The KO was the consequence—but what happened before it? What actions were under the fighter's control? What did the opponent contribute? Was the technique executed properly? And once we've identified the problem, how do we actually train something better?
That's where set drills and live drills come into play.

The mistake already happened. You can't go backward, erase it, or pretend it didn't happen. The only question that matters now is: What are you going to learn from it?
In this MAD Storm, I'm breaking down a five-step process for turning mistakes into actual improvement. Having knowledge isn't enough. Watching film isn't enough. Understanding what you should have done isn't enough. If the experience doesn't change what you do next, you haven't truly leveled up.
We begin with Part A: Understand What Happened.
I'm using a fighter's knockout loss as the example because a KO represents one of the harshest mistakes in combat sports. There may be no opportunity to recover, adjust, or correct the problem during the fight. The referee stops it, you're unconscious, or the contest simply ends. There is no follow-up.
That's important because learning begins with accepting exactly what happened—not what you intended to happen.
 
https://youtu.be/g0V2xXzIxB4?si=5gdI7YY7tccP9shc

One of the biggest challenges on my mind right now is how to coach fighters when distance truly keeps us apart. Some of the athletes I work with are at least an hour away, and while we've made two or three training sessions a week work, I'm questioning whether that's enough for someone seriously pursuing high-level competition. Instead of allowing distance to become an excuse, I'm challenging myself to solve the problem from both extremes: What would I do if I could work with the fighter every day—and what would I do if I could never physically meet with them at all? Somewhere between those two answers may be a better system for remote coaching.

Taking a look at this weekend's lineup of Combat Sports

Taking a look at the Ultimate Battle Grounds Card 
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