Man In Your Corner

Shaun Tucker
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Breathing performance for fighters. Why you gas out in round two, why the nerves take your legs, and how to get your heart rate down between rounds. Shaun Tucker is a health scientist and breathing performance trainer in Melbourne. His first MMA fight lasted sixteen seconds. The video of it has been watched more than 2.8 million times. He knows what it costs to walk in under pressure, and what it takes to walk back in after losing in front of everyone. Short daily episodes on nasal breathing, CO2 tolerance, the adrenaline dump, recovery between sessions, and the work he does with young fighters who lose themselves under the lights. You're not switched on too much. You're switched on too hard. If it can be measured, it can be changed. For coaches and gyms: private breathing performance workshops inside Australian fight gyms. Ninety minutes with your squad, measured at the start and measured again at the end. shauntucker.com.au

  1. 4h ago

    Missing Weight Isn't The Worst Part Of A Bad Cut | Ep 247

    Missing weight is the part everyone argues about. It is not the part that costs you the fight. A bad cut does its real damage the next night, when a fighter walks out with a nervous system that is fried, dry and depleted - and nobody in the arena can see it. This one starts from a weigh-in miss on a UFC card and goes straight past the fine. The fine is visible. What is not visible is a body that spent the final 24 hours in survival, a brain that never got a full night's rest, and a system that was already anticipating the fight before the cage door shut. Shaun's argument is that the window people worry about is too small. It is not the 24 hours before the fight. It is the whole fight week. Sometimes the body holds onto weight even when the plan was followed exactly - not because the athlete slacked off, but because the body would not let them follow it. That is when anxiety, uncertainty and adrenaline stack up, and a fighter arrives in survival before anything has even started. And this is professional fighting. There are contracts, an audience, referees, rules, and the whole thing streamed around the world. Performance is the job. The only way to get there is to be prepared and to actually recover. If a fine lands, the fine lands. What's done is done - be here now and give it your best. The practical half is a borrowed idea from strength training: deload for supercompensation. Drop the load a week or two out so the body can rebound above baseline, instead of grinding right up to the scale and hoping. Get that right and you enter the cage present, focused, composed and in control, rather than reacting on impulse with your attention so narrow you cannot see the opening when it comes. What you'll take away: - Why the fine is the cheapest part of missing weight - What a hard cut leaves behind in the 24 hours before the walkout - Why almost no fighter sleeps properly the night before - Why the whole fight week matters more than the last day - How anxiety and adrenaline put you in survival before the door closes - Deload and supercompensation - and when to start it Message the word SCORE. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:39 Missing weight isn't the worst part 01:27 Calm the nervous system, or fight below 02:31 It's the whole fight week, not 24 hours 03:31 This is professional fighting 04:15 Cop a fine? What's done is done 04:58 Deload and supercompensation 05:40 Present and composed, not reactionary 06:32 Message the word SCORE

    Missing Weight Isn't The Worst Part Of A Bad Cut | Ep 247

  2. 1d ago

    Fine On The Bags. Gassed The Second It Hits Back | Ep 246

    You can go ten rounds on the bags and feel fine. Put a person in front of you who can hit you back and the gas tank is gone in a round. That is not a fitness problem, and this episode is about why. A bag is a harmless object. It will not fight back. You might get a flicker of adrenaline off it, but it is nothing next to standing opposite someone who intends to knock your head off. Nothing replaces that, and the moment it happens your physiology changes - the adrenaline dump arrives. What most fighters do next is the real issue: they stop breathing. Not deliberately. They go into panic mode and the breath freezes. Hold it while you are moving, throwing, defending, drilling, and everything starts to feel heavy. The tank empties fast. MMA stacks it higher. Survival mode kicks in and you tense up, and it is not only hands coming at you - there are takedowns, there is grappling, there is someone getting a body lock and putting you on the floor. More threat, more tension, more held breath, less gas. There is one priority when that happens: get yourself back online. The way you do it is to extend your exhales. Get to nose breathing as quickly as you can, but the lever is the length of the exhale. If the exhale stays short and you keep pulling air in fast, through nose or mouth, the heart rate keeps climbing and you keep burning fuel you do not have. Between rounds is where it is won. Breathe intentionally, breathe consciously. In through the nose, out through the nose if you can - and if it has to come out of the mouth, that is fine, just make it long. Really long. The heart rate drops, you come back online, and the tank comes back up with it. It is not hard to understand. It is freaking hard to implement, which is why it takes practice: every spar, every round between rounds, every session. Over time you take fewer breaths per minute, you stay more rested, and you get something better than fitness - you get choice in how you fight. What you'll take away: - Why a bag and a person who can hit you are different physiological problems - What the adrenaline dump actually does to your breathing - Why panic makes you stop breathing, and what that costs you - Why MMA's extra threats make it worse - The one lever that brings you back online: the length of the exhale - What to do in the minute between rounds Message me the word SCORE. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:41 Fine on the bags, wrecked by a real opponent 01:29 The adrenaline dump, and what you do next 02:33 Get back online: extend the exhale 03:49 Between rounds, breathe intentionally 04:30 Simple to understand, freaking hard to do 05:25 Message me the word SCORE

  3. 2d ago

    Getting Blitzed Doesn't Mean You're Losing | Ep 245

    Sal Everett spent the opening ninety seconds of his Contender Series fight covered up under Ozzy Martin's blitz. He won by KO at 1:57 and left with a UFC contract. Getting blitzed doesn't mean you're losing. It means your nervous system just sat the first exam. This episode is about what that first window actually is, and it is not what most people coach. It has nothing to do with cardio and nothing to do with your gas tank. It is arousal management. Every fighter has their own level of arousal that lets them fight their best. Too nervous, too wired, and you can't perform. Not switched on enough and you get the same result. It is a fine line, and it is personal. What matters is what you do with it. If you don't manage that state, you act on impulse, and acting on impulse is how you walk into genuinely dangerous shots. Everett didn't react. He stayed composed under the blitz, and the opening he needed arrived. Get past that moment and two things happen: your thinking mind comes back online, and you start seeing the openings that were always there. Slow, controlled breathing is what gives you the choice - and if you need to be more switched on rather than less, breathing a little faster is a lever too. The point is having the choice at all. Research referenced in this episode: - Laborde et al., 2022 - Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews - meta-analysis of 223 studies: slow breathing raised vagally-mediated HRV during the practice, immediately after, and with training. General populations. - Laborde et al., 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology - sport students after five minutes of burpees: slow-paced breathing produced fewer errors on a Stroop impulse-control test, though not faster reaction times. - Balban et al., 2023 - Cell Reports Medicine - a 28-day trial, five minutes a day: long-exhale cyclic sighing improved mood and lowered resting breathing rate compared with mindfulness. This study found no change in HRV. Worth being straight about: none of these studies tested fighters in a live bout, and none of them tested a "first sixty seconds" window. That part is Shaun's coaching read, not a measured finding. Want help with your breathing, composure and control in your fights - for you or your squad? DM Shaun the word SCORE. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + the hook 00:21 Getting blitzed isn't losing - your nervous system sat the first exam 01:08 Every fighter has their own level of arousal 02:06 Everett covered up, stayed composed, KO at 1:57 02:39 The research: Laborde 2022, Laborde 2019, Balban 2023 03:11 Get past the impulse and your thinking comes back 04:15 Faster or slower - which way do you need to go? 05:29 Having the choice is the point

  4. 3d ago

    The First Tangle Decides More Fights Than The First Punch | Ep. 244

    The first tangle decides more fights than the first punch. Calm wins the scramble. Here is why. Whoever grabs hold first is at the advantage, and not because of the grip. The moment it happens the other man's heart rate spikes and his adrenaline spikes, and from that point you are in control of his gas tank. Shaun uses this weekend's UFC middleweight main event to show it. Christian Leroy Duncan has previously shown an early tendency to grapple, which could work in his favour over the distance against Brendan Allen. This is explicitly not a prediction - he says so twice - but it is a clean example of the mechanism. Because if you get taken down and you do not take control of your breathing, the arms get heavy, the legs get heavy and the tank wears short very quickly. What happens naturally is the opposite of what helps: breathing rate climbs, because that is survival. Slow and controlled breathing does the reverse. It raises HRV - heart rate variability. Where HRV has been tested, the more adaptive athlete makes fewer errors, sees more opportunities open up and probably wins more points. And this showed up in Stroop tasks: Laborde et al. in 2019 found that when breath was out of control, simple tasks got harder, and the more slow and controlled the breathing, the better the execution. The honest part, in his own words: in combat sports this has not really been tested. It is not a predictor and it has not been researched enough to say that this is the thing. He frames it as an opportunity, not a guarantee. What you can do about it is concrete. Take control of the engine, because the engine is what burns the fuel. Everyone has a limited gas tank - but if your engine is burning through it because you are breathing rapidly under pressure, that bill arrives later in the rounds. What you'll take away: - Why whoever grabs hold first controls the other man's gas tank - What happens to arms and legs when breathing goes uncontrolled after a takedown - What slow, controlled breathing does to HRV, and what that buys you - The Laborde 2019 Stroop finding, and exactly how far it does and does not stretch - Why the engine, not the tank, is the thing to train There is a simple breath hold test that shows how fight-ready and competition-ready you are, and how well you tolerate the buildup when heart rate and adrenaline climb. Message the word SCORE and Shaun will send it over. Breath hold work is done seated, never in or near water, and never alone. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:46 Why the first tangle decides it 01:52 Heart rate up, adrenaline up - and if you don't control it 02:29 Slow breathing raises HRV 03:25 Taken down? You still control the breath 04:10 But this is not a predictor 05:02 The breath hold test

  5. 4d ago

    The Scariest Man In The Cage Isn't The Knockout Artist | Ep 243

    The scariest man in the cage isn't the knockout artist. It's the one still breathing easy in round four. This one is half fight preview, half engine lesson. Allen and Duncan headline at middleweight this weekend. Duncan brings ten knockout wins. Allen made Reinier de Ridder quit, not with one shot, but by refusing to stop breathing easy. Power can end a fight in seconds. Attrition wins it over twenty-five minutes, and you cannot fake that. The knockout is nice. It is also rare. So what actually builds the engine? Breath-hold work, and Shaun makes the honest case for it rather than the sales one. Emil Zatopek trained breath-holds constantly, holding from one marker to the next. He took 5,000m gold in London in 1948, then in Helsinki in 1952 won the 5,000m, the 10,000m, and a marathon he had never run before. Gold in all three. The modern evidence is real but narrower than people claim. A 2022 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Physiology found apnoea training raised peak blood lactate by 1.89 mmol/L against normal-breathing controls, with no significant change in VO2max. In elite judo athletes, four weeks of maximal end-expiratory breath-hold sprints improved power in the second half of a repeat-sprint test and lowered the fatigue index. Hypoventilation work has improved repeat-sprint ability in rugby players and lactate response in swimmers. And the part most people would leave out: it has not been tested in MMA. The evidence is for the engine, not a guarantee in the cage. SAFETY, and this is not optional. Do breath-hold work SEATED. Never in or near water. Never alone. High risk, high reward - learn it from someone trained in it. What you'll take away: - Why the fighter still breathing easy in round four is the dangerous one - Power versus attrition over a twenty-five minute fight - What Zatopek was actually doing, and why it still holds up - What the research supports, in human trials, and what it does not - Why the honest answer is "engine", not "guaranteed wins" - How to do breath-hold work without putting yourself in danger Message the word SCORE for the corner breath test card - it tells Shaun how fight-ready you are and how you handle pressure. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:21 The scariest man in the cage 00:49 Allen vs Duncan - the fight preview 01:33 Power ends it. Attrition wins it. 02:22 What the studies actually show 03:25 Breath-hold safety - seated, never near water 04:46 The honest limit - not tested in MMA 05:49 Message SCORE for the corner breath test

  6. 5d ago

    If I Had 90 Minutes With Your Academy, I'd Start Here | Ep. 242

    If I had 90 minutes with your academy, this is exactly where I'd start. Not with drills. With two measurements. First, everyone's resting pulse. A resting heart rate tells me what is actually going on in that room before anybody says a word - who is stressed and anxious, and who is genuinely resting. Second, a very simple breath hold test. It shows how well you tolerate carbon dioxide building up in your blood, and that matters because the more of that build-up you can handle, the better you are in training, in recovery, and honestly in most things. Is it 100% accurate? No - and I'll say that plainly. It is one more real reading to put alongside everything else I can see. Do it seated - never in or near water. Then the part nobody expects: being calm is not a disadvantage. If a dog is about to bite your face off, the calm version of you has a choice. The panicked version just defaults to whatever comes up first. Same with a snake in front of you - swing at it, or stop moving and let it pass. There is no right or wrong, but there is a way that keeps you out of danger. That matters in a fight because the man in the opposite corner is probably as prepared as you are. If you are emotionally reactive you are more likely to lose, and luck does not always sway your way. What breaks the tie is choice - the ability to see what is actually going on. In survival mode your vision sharpens and narrows, and you start seeing red. You miss that his hands have been up the whole time and his body is wide open. It is not about the knockout. It is about lasting the three rounds and taking the points as the openings appear. Muscle memory means nothing if you never see the opening. So the last thing I would do is train the breath, unlock whatever is keeping you stuck, and then retest both - the resting pulse and the breath hold. What you'll take away: - Why the first thing to measure is a resting pulse, not a drill - What a breath hold test actually tells you about CO2 tolerance - Why calm gives you choice instead of making you soft - The dog and the snake: two ways to read a threat - Why adrenaline narrows your vision and you start seeing red - Why endurance and seeing openings beat hunting the knockout Want me in your academy? Reach out and let's talk. Message the word SCORE for the breath hold test - it tells you how fight-ready you are, and I'll give you pointers on improving your number. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:47 First: take everyone's resting pulse 01:42 What the breath hold actually measures 02:16 You get out of life what you tolerate 03:39 The snake: swing at it, or let it pass 04:22 Choice is what wins the game 05:26 Survival mode narrows your vision 06:17 Win on points, not the knockout 07:08 Then train the breath - and retest both 08:00 The breath hold test - message SCORE

  7. 6d ago

    Cold Hands Before You Walk Out? It Isn't The Temperature | Ep. 241

    Your hands go cold in the changeroom and everyone blames the room. It isn't the room. What has actually happened is a fight-or-flight response. The adrenaline dumps in, and your body starts triaging: it keeps the things that keep you alive online and shuts down what it decides it doesn't need right now. The blood vessels constrict, and blood out to the hands and fingers stops being a priority. Heart and lungs come first. Cold hands are the receipt. It's worth saying that the same response doesn't look the same in everyone. Fight, flight and freeze are one condition with three outputs, and which one you get isn't settled by how experienced you are - experienced fighters freeze too. So the fix isn't a heater and it isn't shaking your hands out. It's settling the system before you walk out, because once survival has kicked in and your field of vision has already narrowed, staying composed when the bell goes is much harder work. There's a tension in that, and Shaun names it: nobody wants to walk out flat. But the fighter who is fully on and also fully off - relaxed, composed, and still able to put intention behind every single move - is the one more likely to win. Not certain to. More likely. That's the whole argument. If composure swings it from 49 to 51, you take it, because 51 beats 49. The game is who wins the most points across the rounds, not who lands the knockout. And the lever is unglamorous. Extend your exhales. When the adrenaline dump hits, your heart rate spikes and you start pulling in more air more often - which tells your system that the survival response is real and keeps it running. Breathing less, with a longer exhale, lets the heart rate come down. The survival mechanisms don't disappear. You're just the one in control of them. What you'll take away: - Why cold hands before a walkout are vasoconstriction, not temperature - What your body shuts down first when the adrenaline dumps in - Why fight, flight and freeze are one response with three outputs - Why "fully on" and "fully off" are not opposites - Why a small swing in composure is worth having - Why breathing MORE under pressure keeps the survival response switched on Message the word SCORE for the breath hold test - do it seated, never in or near water, and send your number back for pointers. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:35 Cold hands right before the walkout 01:54 Vasoconstriction - the vessels narrow 02:38 So it isn't the room, it's your breathing 03:51 Fifty-one beats forty-nine 04:15 Extend the exhale, drop the heart rate 05:32 The breath hold test - message SCORE

  8. Oct 5

    Your Weight Cut Doesn't Cost You Strength. It Costs You Calm | Ep. 240

    Dehydration in a weight cut does not cost you strength. It costs you the ability to calm down. That is the whole argument, and it matters more than it sounds, because the thing you lose is the thing that decides whether you can think in there. The fluid has to come from somewhere. You pull it from plasma, from the cells, from your glycogen stores. Raw power output is not really the casualty - that comes back fairly quickly. What lingers is your nervous system: the ability to calm down, hold composure, and keep the thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, switched on. And it does not matter how conditioned you are or how many times you have done it. It still has an effect. Heart rate rises. Breathing rate rises. You are in survival before anything has even happened, which is the same state the adrenaline dump puts you in - except you have arrived there early, on your own, by choice. That is why the other guy who made weight easily walks in at a real advantage. Not because he is stronger. Because he can still settle. There is a visual cost too. In a sympathetic, fight-or-flight state your visual field narrows - so the openings you would normally see simply do not appear. None of this is an argument against cutting. What needs to be done needs to be done. It is an argument for planning it: get organised, give yourself a longer runway, and cut less. The less you have to pull before weigh-in, the better you perform. The research in this episode: - Young et al. (2019), Scientific Reports - not drinking in heat, to only 0.55-0.59% body-mass loss, raised heart rate and lowered HRV (SDNN and RMSSD). Reduced HRV helped explain the rise in anxiety. - Macartney et al. (2020), Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise - 90 minutes of exercise in heat with no fluid replacement (~3.4% body-mass loss) blunted cardiac vagal modulation more than when fluid was replaced. - Nascimento-Carvalho et al. (2018), Revista Brasileira de Medicina do Esporte - combat athletes measured 14 days before and 1 day before weigh-in after rapid weight loss showed raised resting heart rate and raised LF sympathetic power. - Porto et al. (2023), Nutrients - meta-analysis: hydration produced higher post-exercise HRV (SMD 0.48, 95% CI 0.30-0.67) and held exercise heart rate about 6 bpm lower. Worth saying plainly: human HRV data in combat athletes after rapid weight loss is still limited and varies with the size of the cut, the heat, and rehydration timing. Shaun says as much in the episode - these studies are not all combat-sport specific. They point the same direction rather than settling it. What you'll take away: - Why a cut costs composure before it costs power - Where the fluid is actually pulled from, and what that leaves short - Why conditioning does not exempt you from the effect - What a sympathetic state does to your visual field, and the openings you miss - Why planning the cut beats being tough about it Message the word SCORE for the breath hold test - do it seated, never in or near water, and send your number back for pointers. Chapters 00:00 Cold open + intro 00:25 It doesn't cost you strength 01:14 What you actually lose 01:50 Where the fluid gets pulled from 02:35 Why your heart rate climbs 03:20 What it does to you mentally 04:56 Plan the cut properly 05:16 What the research actually shows 06:16 The breath hold test - message SCORE

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About

Breathing performance for fighters. Why you gas out in round two, why the nerves take your legs, and how to get your heart rate down between rounds. Shaun Tucker is a health scientist and breathing performance trainer in Melbourne. His first MMA fight lasted sixteen seconds. The video of it has been watched more than 2.8 million times. He knows what it costs to walk in under pressure, and what it takes to walk back in after losing in front of everyone. Short daily episodes on nasal breathing, CO2 tolerance, the adrenaline dump, recovery between sessions, and the work he does with young fighters who lose themselves under the lights. You're not switched on too much. You're switched on too hard. If it can be measured, it can be changed. For coaches and gyms: private breathing performance workshops inside Australian fight gyms. Ninety minutes with your squad, measured at the start and measured again at the end. shauntucker.com.au

Information

  • Creator
    Shaun Tucker
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    252
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Shaun Tucker