While some of those adjustments are physical and process-oriented, like trading more practices and time in the gym for fewer sessions with greater focus, Rodriguez has also been committing a great deal of attention to the way he thinks about how his training camps are structured.
“Roufusport is a smaller team — it’s only me, Sergio Pettis, and one other teammate that are in the big shows right now — so we have a lot of up-and-coming professionals,” begins Rodriguez, who has trained at the respected Milwaukee outpost for the entirety of his career. “Something I’ve been really adjusting to is this quote I really like that says, ‘The grass is greener wherever you water it.’
MORE UFC FIGHT NIGHT: Fight By Fight Preview | Fighters On The Rise | Main Event Spotlight
“Sometimes you have people go to different gyms, and cross-training is good, in my personal opinion, but some people take it like it’s life or death; that’s what they need. They get to a point where they think their gym is too small, so they start traveling to new gyms, working with new people.
“My coach Duke Roufus was a kickboxing world champion, and he was telling me they had a small team coming up — it was four or five of them; him, his brother, and his dad — but the quality of the training was amazing, and that’s how he got really, really good,” he adds. “Look at how the world-class boxers train: they don’t have ‘team practices,’ they have specific training partners.
