Fighting with a bulging disc?

[Gerry Seymour]

Great job gatekeeping the martial arts away from people who aren't at peak physical health. All of that can be trained alongside martial arts. In fact, for myself and for many students, we didn't have the motivation to go to the gym and work on that stuff until we started martial arts and saw what we could improve by getting into better shape.

I think he meant "this comes before you can consider competition".