David Goggins is an extreme endurance athlete, known for his never-give-up mentality and superhuman feats of toughness. However, those things don’t necessarily translate to results in the octagon, as Tony Ferguson found out after recruiting him to be a part of his team.
‘El Cucuy’ was looking to get out of a long slump of losses. So he decided to switch things up and brought Goggins on as his strength and conditioning coach.
However, his extreme training methods only made the former interim lightweight champion throw up, as weeks later, he succumbed to a loss against Paddy Pimblett at UFC 296.
Despite this, Jon Jones and Israel Adesanya have followed in his footsteps and trained alongside the retired Navy SEAL. But according to Khabib Nurmagomedov’s coach Javier Mendez, they’re doing themselves more harm than good.
In an episode of the Javier and Mo Show on YouTube, the AKA head coach spoke about it, saying, “Goggins is extreme, that’s extreme, okay. That’s easy to point out, any good coach will tell you that’s stupid.”
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Emphasizing the need to protect one’s body before a fight, Mendez explained, “You cannot do that type of training if you’re gonna do an MMA sport, because you will break. Your body will break down… And it won’t perform at its highest peak potential.”
There’s a reason why MMA fighters don’t do any hard training or sparring the week leading up to their fight. It minimises the risk of injuries, and it also helps to ensure that the athlete doesn’t peak too early or too late ahead of the fight.
Mendez did credit Goggins, saying his kind of training is perfect for endurance sports and to build a strong mentality, but when it comes to MMA, there are just no benefits from it.
But Israel Adesanya does not seem to agree with either the fans or Mendez. The former UFC champ addressed all the criticism he received in a different video.
Adesanya backs Goggins extreme methods
After ‘The Last Stylebender’ posted Goggins’ workout on his YouTube channel, he attracted a lot of criticism for it.
It was mainly from concerned fans who were trying to remind him that this is not the way to come out of his 3-fight losing skid and that he should learn from what happened to Ferguson.
However, Adesanya’s plan to work out with Goggins was not to improve his cardio, which has never been a problem for him. All he was trying to do was find a different mentality, and hit the reset button in his mind as he looks to get back to winning ways.
So when he uploaded a video of himself reacting to the training on YouTube, he had this to say – “People just don’t understand, people who don’t f*cking train even, ‘Oh Goggins did,’ It’s like bro, I’m training with him just to get to a certain place and just understand where the mind can take you.”
He continued, “So please, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut the f*ck up, respectfully and disrespectfully.” Adesanya claims he got what he came for, and he has tapped into a different mentality thanks to that workout with Goggins.
He also revealed that it was one of the first workouts he had ever puked since his fight against Alex Pereira in New York. So it was a good experience for him to push himself over the edge. Fans will be waiting early to see if the change in mindset pays off in his next fight.
