Israel Adesanya's Sports Scientist Tells All w/ Bill Smart (SSOF Ep 124)

James de Lacey1:55

They had a special biomechanics room with 3D cameras for biomechanics stuff, force plates, all that stuff. And then the gym itself was, it must have been 10 plus racks but multiple rows of them and each rack had its own platform, dedicated bumper plates, barbells, kettlebells, so every rack was its own station. And it was just, it was a huge facility, I was like, holy [expletive] man. The money they pour into college sports here in these gyms is just unbelievable.

Bill Smart3:20

It blows me away when you look at what we work with. Our Cambridge gym is pretty small. It's very small, very cramped, because we just got so much space to work with. It's not even, it's such a different world.

But what I will say is there's probably not, what I had noticed anyways, massive facilities, a lot of money around different things, still not a lot of very specialist equipment which we probably, I suppose maybe we put a bit more stock in here. We have Gold Mine, who a branch for HPSNZ, that pretty much they, whoever makes Batman's gadgets is pretty much what Gold Mine is in New Zealand. But maybe some of this stuff is a bit hidden away, but yeah, interesting.

James de Lacey3:47

I think you just got a lot of the meathead mentality around the coaches, so it's just squat, deadlift, power clean, bench, just put those numbers up and that's all that really matters for the sports. And that's how they're ingrained. Completely different culture.

Andrew says in the chat that your volume is a little low. I don't know if you can turn your mic volume up at all.

Bill Smart4:16

Oh yeah, let me see if I can. Because I'm using my headphones currently. Well, at least I think my headphones are on. Let me just go to settings, or maybe not.

James de Lacey4:16

I'm going to keep all that beginning stuff in the podcast and I'll just cut this little bit out and then we'll continue on trying to figure out how to, if not, add another mic. See if I can change it in the back end afterwards.

Bill Smart4:41

Well, do you want me to try to hook up a mic, another one? I got one.

James de Lacey4:41

You got one? I always like to have Plan B's and C's to everything in life. So got this.

Bill Smart4:41

You're more organized than me.

James de Lacey4:41

I don't know, but I'll take it, I'll take it. Will you be able to change, I don't know if you'll be able to change the mic during the recording. Double check, if you can't, I got you, I got you.

Bill Smart4:41

Hilarious. It's changed the microphone to my speakers but not the microphone. Might unplug that.

James de Lacey5:09

That's all right. You can hear me?

Bill Smart5:09

Yep. I've unplugged it.

James de Lacey5:09

Fine, I'll bring this a bit closer. Yeah, let's do it. Let's continue on anyways.

Let's do the official welcome to the Sweet Science of Fighting podcast. We have, we can say, our first royalty guest on the podcast because your name was mentioned on The Joe Rogan podcast recently by Israel Adesanya. I don't know if you listened to that. So we can say we're the first royal member on here. Welcome, Bill.

Bill Smart5:42

Thank you. I definitely don't think I deserve that, but I appreciate it.

James de Lacey5:42

Hey, we're going to build it up. So well, let's just dive straight into it. So what are you currently doing? You're obviously working with High Performance Sport New Zealand back home there. And I think you mentioned Cambridge there, you're in that branch. But want to dive through who you're currently working with and then we can go into some of the stuff around City Kickboxing and the things you're doing with boxing and MMA.

Bill Smart6:08

Yeah, cool. So yeah, I work with High Performance Sport. And as well as that I've essentially, what I'd say, done the work with, doing the work with City Kickboxing. Also work with boxing in New Zealand.

Pretty much with my HPSNZ work, it's been a little bit of a mix. I primarily work in cycling disciplines. Over the years I've worked between cycling and rowing. And my biggest, or I suppose the groups that I'm with currently, are the national BMX group as well as the development cycling groups, as well as helping with para-cycling and sprint.

James de Lacey6:59

Perfect. Let's go, let's go straight into the MMA stuff here. So I'm just going to recall on, I've watched a couple of Israel's vlogs where you guys are doing a bunch of testing. And let's start there. So let's start with what tests you're doing with these guys, what you're looking for from these tests, and then how it influences your programming or maybe what the prescription you're giving to them, because I think they all have their own S&C as well.

Bill Smart6:59

Yeah. For the most part, for the most part. I guess to give a bit of perspective around it, what we've started when it comes to some of the testing protocols is, it's been, I guess it's based around the idea that we have these physical requirements that we, or KPIs that we want to see from the athletes, but we also have athletes with very differing physiological profiles.

So I think when you take that and then you look at the variability and the vast requirements of MMA, essentially the goal has been to try to optimize some of these areas of physicality without overspending in terms of resources from a training standpoint, if that makes sense.

So essentially what that looked like is, I guess, training monitoring as well as the testing protocols. The testing protocols, we look at force-velocity profiles. We do that in two different ways. We use a jump profile and a specialist power bike that we have at HPSNZ which is called Optimal Cadence, which is pretty exciting to me.

We also look at an energy system profile breakdown. And the way that is, I suppose we look at that from an aerobic, glycolytic, ATP-PCR standpoint, but the way that we look at that is essentially, instead of just looking at those energy systems individualized, it's sort of just keeping the perspective around all the systems during each test regardless of what the system is, if that makes sense.

And then on top of that there's a little bit of strength. So we'll do an isometric mid thigh pull, body strength, and then some upper body tests around essentially rotational power as well as punch power. There's going to be a lot of quotation marks around thing. I hate terminology.

James de Lacey9:10

Perfect. Perfect. All right, let's go into this. Let's start with this optimal.

Cadence bike that you have there. So how does that differ from a normal air bike, spin bike, or anything like that?

Bill Smart9:42

Yeah, I find it quite exciting. So essentially what we're looking at is you've got a power bike, it's got a big flywheel in it. It's very heavy to start. Essentially athletes have to exert all force to get it moving, and then once it's running the flywheel gets very quick. So then essentially what it's measuring is, you're measuring your power to get up to say peak power, but then off the back end of peak power, as velocity increases, it's measuring the athlete's ability to still apply power or force at high speeds.

So you essentially get this really nice force velocity profile across the spectrum at very high wattages, which I think is quite unique. It's a test that we've used, we use it a lot in power lifting, we use it in cycling, they use it a lot in athletics. And there's other data points we can get off that in terms of, you know, where does the, there's one research paper that looks at an optimal cadence, or quotation marks, and then how that potentially relates to fiber type. So being able to somewhat loosely profile what fiber type composition one athlete might have compared to another.

James de Lacey10:38

Awesome. I saw, was Angus Ross involved in that testing? I think he was in something.

Bill Smart10:38

Yeah, he's one of my primary mentors and I've definitely felt very fortunate to be able to sit beside him over the last several years.

James de Lacey11:08

His talk at the 2010 or 2011 Sprints Conference is what spurred my Master's research on, he when he talked about the overshoot phenomenon, that's what I ended up doing my Master's research on because of that and published that within rugby league. So yeah, I'm a big fan too.

Bill Smart11:08

Oh, he's amazing, and honestly I think him and his concepts have really shaped a lot of my philosophies around training and optimal cadence being one of them. And I think just perspective around how we utilize and apply S&C and essentially what our role is, because I think that gets lost a lot. Exactly what we're talking about the US system, that's possibly the case.

James de Lacey11:39

Yeah, it's very isolated. Do you want to go into some of those, I guess, some of those philosophies that Angus has passed down to you that you have found useful within your strength conditioning?

Bill Smart12:06

Yeah. So I think the overshoots are a really good one, and I think what shapes a lot of what Angus does is how to optimize muscle fiber type. And it's a hard one, it's an interesting one for MMA because of the requirements of the sport, and it's still something I'm working through.

But if you're looking at training someone who's say a shot putter, someone who's instantaneous peak power singular effort, potentially one of the worst things you could do for them is just general strength training or general hypertrophy training in terms of what that does from a muscle fiber perspective. I guess probably another example, when we talk about overshooting, essentially removing a stimulus in order to have that increase in type 2X fibers. That's something that I think was played around with a little bit in cycling prior to the last Paris Olympics.

It was something that was somewhat experimented with in terms of changing the volume, and I don't want to put words in people's mouths because this wasn't me that ran this, so apologies if I have. But I found that very interesting from a peaking and tapering into sporting events, and we can run over some of the other concepts as well.

James de Lacey13:33

For sure. I did a video on that, if anyone's interested, on overshoot phenomenon on the channel. It's somewhere back there. But yeah, it's interesting because as you mentioned, when you're just generally strength training, you get that shift to that type 2A muscle fiber which is still quick, but more fatigue resistant, not as quick as that type 2X.

But then that's a positive adaptation likely for MMA. So do you want to overshoot that much? Which is, it's interesting because I was coming to the conclusion I on my video that I ended up doing, and I was like I think it gives more the idea that you can, we, you can do less than you think in those final weeks and still make progress.

Just based on the data from my paper that was [expletive] 10 years old now. But basically we saw, we went from three or four strength training sessions a week to one, super low volume, super high intensity. All the conditioning and field stuff stayed the same, and then we saw huge improvements in peak max force and then jump heights to different loads.

And it's almost pretty much like a taper in a sense. And the qualities that you improve on the other end might be dictated by what you did beforehand, but still interesting, right? If you're doing a lot of, say, training going into the final weeks of your fight camp, you can really back off that strength training and still do everything else you need to do, but you now have more energy to recover, more energy for technical training, et cetera. It's something interesting that hasn't, I don't think, made it really into combat sports.

Bill Smart14:58

100%. And there's some really cool accounts that Angus has talked about where there's been athletes who, they've been sick, or I remember there was one that had COVID and they haven't been able to train for months, they hadn't been able to train properly for months, so the dose has been so low. Then they've come back, they've hit PBs in competitions, numbers that they just never were able to touch before.

And there's accounts of that being the case, and of course a lot of the times this has happened by accident for a lot of these athletes, it's just been based on the circumstances they've been dealt with, which is hilarious.

And then they go back into normal training and they've never touched those numbers again. And I find that fascinating. And I think such a good point around MMA is that Combat Sports are so technically, tactically demanding that you do have to be careful where you spend your resources. And I think that when you have, I agree, I think the concept itself is fantastic, and I think it comes down to looking at things like what are the decay rates around different variables and then how can we manipulate those.

James de Lacey16:17

That's another interesting one too, around decay rates. Because if we look at the residual training effects put forward by Issurin, and you try to find the original sources, there are none. There's one in German in 1960-something that just says the residual training effects but then doesn't cite anything either. And then when you look at the research on detraining rates of VO2 Max and other endurance things, you see drops in performance in two to 14 days, whereas the residual training effects, aerobic endurance, you can hold for 30 days. It's like, can you?

Bill Smart16:49

Totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah, it's pretty nuts. Yeah, it's a pretty interesting one. I think for me I try to go into things with the mindset of questioning everything, because I do think that as an industry I think that we probably haven't hit the nail on the head when it comes to combat sports.

In which case, yeah, it's, when it comes to a lot of the testing and monitoring that we've been doing, a lot of that for me is trying to understand truth a little bit more. And I think really that's the goal of testing, is truth. Because I think that we can misinterpret data, but the data itself, provided that it's collected well, is probably one of the closest things to truth that we have.

James de Lacey17:46

And we will continue on that training, the monitoring and testing as well. We'll just finish off this section with the stuff you've covered from, or stuff you've inherited from Angus Ross. But quickly, Andre says old Italian paper from the 30s discussed it. All right Andrew, send us that paper then. But carry on with what you got going with what you've inherited down from Angus Ross.

Bill Smart18:12

Yeah, another one of the big concepts that Angus has been talking about for a while is the role of myofascia as a contributor to performance. And it's something that I've spent a lot of time pondering on as well, in terms of when you look at how we utilize elastic qualities, how that ties into efficiency, how that ties into then conditioning and fitness. I find it quite fascinating.

And I know that Angus is, I know that there's not a lot of hard evidence in the area, but there's definitely a lot of anecdotal evidence. And from someone like him who's been doing, essentially working at such a high level for the last 25 years, that's, yeah, it's definitely been something that's made me think twice. One of the things I've looked at from a combat sports standpoint is, when you look at, I guess probably the thais are a good...

Example and you look at how the Thais move and when it comes to fighting, when it comes to bag work, they're very whippy, they're very fluid. And then when you contrast that to MMA, different physiological requirements, but I think that there's something to that in terms of being able to maintain some of those qualities and then how that ties into efficiency.

James de Lacey19:12

Yeah, that fascia is interesting. I haven't done a deep enough dive into fascia. I just started the other day so very green on the topic. But obviously it can be, I guess could say taken too far with certain training cults that have really jumped on fascia as the only thing that matters, all we're doing is training fascia in isolation however that works.

But in your thinking then around this, around this fascia, are you specifically trying to alter training to potentially quote unquote train fascia over other qualities? Is that something that's even possible?

Bill Smart19:46

Well, I think that it's one of those things that, like you say, there's definitely—I think everyone gets stuck into buckets when it comes to things like S&C and performance. Like I'm a strength guy, I'm a mobility guy. And I think there's always good things around the continuum.

I think that for me, some of the fascial elements complement a lot of what we do anyways from an S&C standpoint. It's not something that I would put as a priority over something like strength. People need to be strong. How you're strong is important as well, and I think that probably doesn't get looked into deep enough, but it's definitely something that we do spend a bit of additional time on.

James de Lacey20:47

Yeah, perfect. We've got a comment here, hope I'm going to say your name right, Danian Toia. He says "Bill, you made it bro" with a heart. So shout out Danian. Got a fan listening to the pod, that's awesome.

And let's jump back into the testing as well. So we've covered some of the athlete profile, which is interesting stuff there, how you're doing that. We'll cover into how it influences programming maybe after we've gone through a few of the different tests, and then we can kind of bring it all back and wrap it all up.

So you mentioned that the biomotor is one of the profiles you mentioned. Energy system breakdown, which is interesting how you're doing it, because traditionally I think we have, I guess mainly from the UFC PI with how they're doing it, is they've kind of isolated the tests. So they have say an ATP-PCr test and then an anaerobic glycolysis 30-second test and then an aerobic test.

And that's how they test energy systems, where it sounds like you're integrating it all together with, I guess, a more logical framework of how energy systems work during exercise. So you want to just dive into kind of what you're doing there and what you're looking at?

Bill Smart21:33

Yeah, so for the most part we've tried to mirror the UFC PI testing, primarily with the goal of having reference points for different fighters. So we essentially have the data points for athletes of different weight classes. But I think probably in this is where some of the content that you've had on your show has been fantastic, and where definitely Andrew's viewpoints have been amazing in terms of helping shape my thinking around some of that.

James de Lacey21:59

Yep, it's changed mine completely. So I think a lot—I get emails and messages all the time. So shout out.

Bill Smart21:59

Yeah, seriously, it's fantastic. And I think that's where—because we started implementing the NES probably over the last few months, and it's really been a process of sort of figuring out how things look, how that process looks.

But the tests are—there's a 6-second bike sprint which the athlete will do three times. We look at peak power, time to peak power, as well as essentially heart rate trend over that.

The next one is a 60-second assault bike test, so glycolytic capacity test. We do that with the NES, so essentially we look at power at—I look at peak power, power at 0 to 30 seconds, power 31 to 60 seconds, and then we also look at the heart rate trend as a part of that. And the goal is to start bringing in some VO2 information into that as well.

Because I think—actually we'll go to the next and we'll come back to this. The next one we'll be looking at is VO2 max, which is—which we're currently looking at shifting because I'm not necessarily sure that it's been practical or that I'm seeing what I need to see from that. All this, everything is a sliding scale at the moment. Again, like we were talking about before, I still don't necessarily think that we are seeing what we need to see, and that's sort of a part of the journey at the moment is to try to optimize that a little bit more.

James de Lacey24:04

Is that you're not seeing out of the VO2 max test that you wish you were?

Bill Smart24:04

Well, I think that for me the VO2 has been difficult because we don't always have—like I think for me when it comes to a VO2, the VO2 max itself, the number isn't very helpful. So it doesn't really show us anything, and that's something that has definitely been apparent when it comes to the testing.

I do think thresholds—threshold one probably not so much, threshold two is something that probably has a little bit more weight. But I think that the primary work on with that has been that the strength comes I think in the frequency and the timing when it comes to a lot of those tests.

So I think that for me, I don't necessarily care about the number in isolation, but I do care about how the needle shifts. Because I want to know—the goal of testing, and I think this is one of the primary differences when it comes to how people think about testing, is that for me testing isn't about testing and then retesting and being better. I think, you know, we turn testing into this ego thing that athlete needs to feel better about themselves, coach needs to feel better about themselves.

But to me, testing just gives me an understanding of how the physiology is changing, in which case is there a shift in the direction that I want? And if it isn't, then well, how do we make things better? Because if I didn't have that, it's very hard to inform changes in training and be accurate with it. So I think when we look at these testing profiles, one of the big goals is to make sure that we're seeing shifts we would like to. And if we're not, that's when we go back, ask questions, and try to make things a little bit better.

James de Lacey25:24

Gotcha. And then you also mentioned you have various strength tests. I think you mentioned isometric mid-thigh pull and some upper body strength test. Maybe just run through what you're trying to get from those, and then we can maybe run through how all of this kind of influences programming, and I'm assuming how you relay that to coaches as well.

Bill Smart25:50

Yes, so we have a jump profile that we do. We look at—we look at counter-movement jump, squat jump, bodyweight. We do look at the eccentric utilization ratio. I'm not 100% sure it means much at the moment, but I'm still keeping an eye on it.

James de Lacey26:18

Explain that, what the eccentric utilization ratio is, just for the listeners.

Bill Smart26:18

Yes, so essentially what we're looking at is the difference between counter-movement jump and squat jump. So squat jump would be holding at the bottom of the jump, pausing, where essentially you dissipate the additional energy that you gather from the counter-movement. So you get more—it's more active, it's more muscle driven. Whereas your counter-movement jump has more elastic qualities as a result, which contributes to the jump. So essentially we're trying to tease those out.

The concept of some athletes being more muscular driven versus athletes being more elastic driven is something that I do look at and I'm interested in. And essentially I'm interested in if that changes. Because I guess one of my current hypotheses is that as an athlete goes through a fight camp in MMA, potentially we start to lose some of those qualities because of the nature of the training and the grind of the training. Have I seen that so far? Yes and no. I don't want to—I wouldn't bet on it at current, but it's something that I'm keeping an eye on.

James de Lacey27:16

Is that something that you would potentially say, hey, maybe a little more reactive work, like say for just for example like plyometric work, might be beneficial for someone to kind of keep at slightly moderate, say, volumes within their training camp just because there could be that potential?

Bill Smart27:16

Yeah, 100%. That's exactly it. So potentially it changes from a programming standpoint what some of those plyometrics look like. Maybe we do more reactive based work, or potentially it highlights if this is a quality that we want to maintain—say I'm a striking athlete—potentially that is actually quite important to have that contribution through power M elements. In which case, do you change some of the training itself in terms of the sport specific, or is plyometrics in terms of supplementation enough? So it's always a question.

I look at S&C as we're...

Almost in technical tactical sports we're almost a supplement company. We're essentially just trying to supplement what you don't get in sport, in which case a lot of the testing is trying to identify if this is something that needs to be injected somewhere and supplemented somewhere.

James de Lacey28:47

Interesting. Okay, and we've got the jump profiling there. Is that the only jump profiling you're doing? You have more jump profiling?

Bill Smart28:47

So we do 20 and 40% body weight as well.

James de Lacey28:47

Is that for the force velocity profile or is that just...

Bill Smart29:19

Yes, so we look at that as a part of the force velocity profile as well as the OC. And essentially what's been very helpful is we've got quite a lot of internal data currently, in which case we can sort of, we've got the ability to look at what are the averages and then where the people sit. And potentially they could inform some of the training targets when it comes to power, whether or not people need more loaded power, unloaded power. It just gives us a little bit more context.

James de Lacey29:46

Gotcha. And then you've got the, I guess your max strength test of is B pool, some upper body tests. Do you want to maybe run through those briefly and then we'll go into how this all kind of comes together?

Bill Smart29:46

So isometric deadlift pool as the primary lower body test. So essentially we've played around with a couple different upper body tests. We've used a land mine punch as a test. It's probably one of the ones that I don't love at the moment. I've got some interesting, I have an interesting observation around that I'll share soon.

James de Lacey30:14

Go, let's start there, we'll start.

Bill Smart30:14

Do it now. So what I found interesting is when you look at, when you look at the data points that maybe been put out by the UFC or whoever it is, you're essentially getting averages of everybody. You don't, what I really care about is well what are the people who perform well test like? What's the difference between top 10 versus the entire roster? Because if the people who are lower ranked are the ones putting out better numbers, that probably tells a story that is not what we're getting by looking at those data sets.

So essentially one of the interesting findings that we've had is that there's almost a, well there's a correlation almost between land mine punch being poor and athletes who are bigger punchers in terms of power punches, which is quite funny. But you know what does link up really well to that is they jump well and they generally put out decent power on the OC. So lower body power is, in the research would also suggest this, more of it serent for punch power and effective punch power.

When you look at the land mine punch, my thoughts around it is that potentially from a biomechanical perspective, people who do well on land mine punch often maybe don't produce as much power from a lower body standpoint. So it makes me wonder in terms of methods of punching and how you apply force, if the difference between the two profiles highlight something.

What I will say though is we do a Kaiser rotational, we do a rotational power test on the Kaiser. And that's been a lot better for differentiating bigger punchers. And I guess when I talk about bigger punchers, generally what we're looking at is feedback from coaches, athletes, as well as what happens in fights, which is the big one, to be like who's the person who puts people down in fights.

So the rotational test seems to be pretty good, the lower body power tests are pretty good, land mine test not so good. So I'm not sure, yeah I'm not sure we're going to keep it in to be honest.

James de Lacey32:35

Interesting, interesting. And you mentioned OC rig, what are you talking about OC rig?

Bill Smart32:35

Oh, so that's the power bike. So that's the Cadence R.

James de Lacey32:35

Gotcha. Okay, you just got some fancy, fancy jargon acronyms going in there for it.

Bill Smart32:35

Perfect. All right, we do, sorry, we do a drop jump, we have done a drop jump, shifting to a pogo for RSI as well.

James de Lacey32:35

Perfect. So that's a lot, it's a lot of data to get together. So then how are you piecing it together? You're creating a profile for the athlete, are you sticking them in buckets and then just being like okay you probably need more of this and this? And I guess how are you using the information to influence programming? Because as you mentioned, testing is not just about testing before and after, it's actually using the data.

Bill Smart33:02

Yeah, somewhat. I think we, because we've got the normative data for one of those tests from the UFC, so that somewhat indicates or somewhat informs some of the big rocks. Like essentially if you look at a UFC average, a lot of the times that is something that we're trying to reach.

Otherwise, when we're looking at more force velocity breakdowns or some of the breakdowns and some of the energy system stuff, essentially we're just looking at red flags. So the red flags become the target areas. If you have more of a balanced profile, then it just becomes looking at, it becomes a question really, like if you want to which facet you want to put your eggs in, if you want to try to maximize what you do well, or if you want to try to top up things that are maybe less advantageous. And often it's a bit of both, but really that comes down to the coach and what the coach wants.

James de Lacey33:53

How receptive are coaches to this information that you give them?

Bill Smart33:53

That's a great question. Eugene's very good. Eugene's a smart man and I've been quite impressed with his, he's a very thoughtful person and the way that he takes in information has been very impressive. And it has, we have been able to make a lot of the changes that we'd want to as a result of that.

In general, combat coaches aren't always the easiest to communicate with. You may have experienced the same thing. Essentially my transition into this side of things for combat sport was, I probably, I started with combat sports in maybe, probably end 2016, I started doing a little bit of working combat sports, and then sort of moving through 2017, 2018.

The big observation was that the sports were just missing a lot from a system perspective. There were no real systems in place. And if you're operating as an S&C, it just made me feel like well what's the point? If you don't have the big rocks in place, I just kind of feel like this is a waste of time.

And that sort of led into more system work I guess, and looking at things like training structures and how things are pieced together. And I suppose landing itself more into a sport science role. But it's interesting because it seems to be the case at lower levels, but even at higher levels it's still the case a lot of the time, which I think is...

James de Lacey35:46

Say that for any sport. There's some dog, I mean combat sports I think is probably one of the worst, but there is some dog [expletive] stuff that goes on at the high level.

Bill Smart35:46

But I think combat sports, when you look at the history of combat sports, or at least in New Zealand, when you look at the history of all sports, you have a lot of these sports, it started with nothing. The coach essentially was the S&C, the coach was a physio, the coach was a nutritionist. And then as they found a bit of success, as money came in, all of a sudden teams expanded, processes essentially leveled up as a result of funding.

So for me, when I came into combat sports, I was essentially a part of two of the most complete programs in New Zealand, like rowing and cycling. And both sports are in the same building, everyone is in the same office, the athletes train in that building, they train both sport, their sport-specific work as well as their S&C in the same building. And honestly, that I think to me is massive.

And you look at combat sports and especially MMA, everything's so separated. There's no real communication between all the moving parts, and it's just like you can't have a system that does well without that. And that's been the biggest thing that I've noticed as the work on for combat sports as a whole is, we don't have systems in place that maximizes communication between all the moving parts and aligns them to a single direction.

James de Lacey37:04

Fully agree. I mean think of any sports teams, right? Everyone's together in one place, train together all the time. If, I mean I think what, American Top Team maybe in America, they have S&C in their building and things. I don't know how much they collaborate with coaches and stuff.

But it's something that I may potentially go down that road, I don't know. It's difficult because you obviously have people coming into camp, out of camps. People, a few fighters, and maybe a fight's coming up in a couple of weeks, others in six weeks, others don't have one coming up, and you're juggling all of that. But I mean I guess in team sports you're kind of all working towards the same game.

Every week, which makes that a little easier. But who knows, maybe eventually it will get to that. I think it probably needs to be the money in it as well for it to get there because Fighters don't get paid very well unless you're at the top of the top.

Bill Smart37:58

100%. It's a very hard one, but I think that I think just having good systems in place somewhat allows you to manage a lot of those additional variables.

James de Lacey38:25

No, for sure. Okay, so you have all that data and you're relaying that to the coaches as well. Are you doing any S&C for these Fighters, or do they all have their own S&Cs that you have to relay that information to?

Bill Smart38:25

Yeah, for the most part. So currently I'm working with Izzy and everyone else for the most part, a little bit with Carlos as well. For the most part everyone's got the S&Cs that they work with. So the primary goal for me is just to help inform where athletes need topping up and what we—the reason that is so important is, we touched on it a little bit before, there's so many variables that are important in MMA.

Being such a technical sport, sport-specific load is massive and needs to be prioritized. So we only have a really small window of what we can influence. And if you spend it trying to influence things that athletes are already good at, that might not be the best use of that time. In some cases it might be, depending on what way you want to go with someone, but I think having, being more informed around those processes means that you get more for the time input. And I think being efficient is very important.

And as we talked a bit about before, the—what's changed my views a little bit is, you see a lot of good athletes, very good athletes who have been extremely successful who maybe don't have the best processes for S&C, maybe don't have the best physical qualities. So then, you got to look at that and you have to—I think there's just perspective in that is that in terms of what we can influence might be different to say what I would target in say cycling or rowing. In a sport like cycling it is all about horsepower.

You can't win if you're slow. And even though you can and it happens all the time. So yeah, I think that we are somewhat limited to what we can influence. There's the other side of the coin is that how much can we take away by doing too much, by doing the wrong things, and how does that influence the whole process?

So it does go back to that full system approach of, the S&C is one cog within the system and we've got to make sure that that is appropriate for the person, for the system they're in, and for the timing.

James de Lacey40:51

Yeah, that's a good point you make there. I often do breakdown videos of just covering Fighters training that's on YouTube and stuff and I always get heaps of hate comments on it too. But it's always the same thing I'm always saying, it's if you're the best at your sport, I'm not going to say it does not matter, but it very likely does not matter what you're doing outside of the sport.

A lot of these guys are successful regardless of what they're doing in strength and conditioning because they're just so damn good at boxing, MMA, etc., that they're better skillfully than anyone else. You can look at so many examples of top elite athletes and what they do. LeBron James is one everyone shits on the way he squats, right?

I'm sure you've seen those videos many years ago that went round of him squatting. Best basketball player. You look at Usain Bolt eating chicken nuggets for the 100 meter, like he's the best there. Maradona [expletive] on coke, drinking all night and [expletive], and he's one of the best soccer players.

There's so many of this going on. It happens in every sport, and the elite athletes are always elite athletes because they are far better at that sport than anyone else. And it's all technical, tactical.

Bill Smart42:03

I think on top of that, there's a—and I'm not really qualified to talk about this and I will disclaim that—but from a psychological standpoint, someone like Maradona who's doing coke and doing whatever, he probably shows up to play and he's able to switch on straight away. I think there's almost, I think there's a relationship almost between athletes who are maybe a little bit loose in terms of what they do and then how they were able to show up versus the athletes who are overly aware and overly sensitive of things and then maybe how that relates to performance anxiety.

James de Lacey42:28

Why so many of them have screws loose too. He's got a [expletive] screw loose and one of the best.

Bill Smart42:28

Well, I'm not going to say they're all like that, but I'm saying there seems to be a characteristic among some of the top guys.

James de Lacey42:55

And I mean, you'd be silly to not think that that psychological component isn't also a factor of—I mean, it's obviously a factor of performance, but even a factor of fitness, conditioning would be certainly, not to think that. And they say winning mindset, can never underestimate it. It's true, very true.

Yeah, I will say as well, at least fully anecdotally, no evidence whatsoever, I think elite athletes are just able to learn faster, pick things up faster and implement them faster. And they're able to recover faster, I don't know.

Bill Smart43:28

So my wife, she's an elite level weightlifter. She was seven at the world at one point, and she's just stupid strong but she's able to—stupid high pain tolerance, recover super fast from things. And she's just able to pick things up really quickly. And it's just, you see it with some of the guys, they can do that and it's just potentially something like that is the difference in that top level sport.

James de Lacey43:59

Completely agree. Yeah, oh, interesting discussion anyway. And we come back to training, which is actually something that in our warehouse instead of bullshitting about stuff.

A lot of this, I guess a lot of the City Kickboxer guys you could say come from similar stylistic backgrounds. A lot of them mainly kickboxers and strikers. Do you find that a lot of them have similarish profiles because of that, or do you still find that there's large differences between them?

Bill Smart44:32

There's always large differences. I think the probably something that's good perspective around the testing that we've done is that you have athletes that have essentially have similar backgrounds, they were part of the same training system, yet the way that they display their physical attributes is so different.

And I think that to me highlights how important having a targeted approach for each athlete becomes. And it's a hard one because there is caveat to that in terms of how you implement change between athlete to athlete while maintaining a training environment which is also hugely important. But it definitely highlights to me that it is, everyone is quite different regardless of, everyone's born different, and it's something that I think it's impossible to maximize things like conditioning or physical qualities without taking it into account.

I was thinking about it recently actually. There's not many sports at a professional level that you see athletes unable to meet the requirements from a physical standpoint, which is kind of funny, right? It almost never happens. But you don't see a guy playing football and then stopping because he's tired, but you don't see them boxing either. You may see it quite frequently. So it probably highlights that one, it's complex, it's very complex, but we can do better.

James de Lacey45:39

Andrew's asking a question in the chat. He's saying, "Curious about your thoughts on aging MMA fighters, difference in physiological needs, etc., testing process, etc."

Bill Smart46:06

100%. Definitely is an interesting one. I think when it comes to aging athletes, in the testing I probably can't—I probably don't have the information to be able to break down how those profiles change currently. What I do know, definitely, is that, and this is probably more common sense, the recovery, recoverability does change, in which case the way that you target training has to change as well.

I think that probably one of the issues that I see quite frequently is that—and actually I can give you, I can give you an account I know that they—so for Volkanovski, they recently, probably maybe in the last couple fights, changed Volk's fight camp quite substantially to essentially allow more rest.

Because they found that as you get a little bit older, your ability to tolerate training load isn't the same. So then it becomes, well, we can either maintain the higher training load, compromise quality, and then potentially adaptation as a result of that, or we can try to seek to manipulate training load a little bit to then help maximize adaptation.

So I know for them, they were training seven days a week. They dropped off one day, so they gave a rest day. They dropped off, they made one of—

The days during the week a half day, so essentially there was structured recovery during the week, structured recovery at the end of the week.

James de Lacey47:36

Is that a normal schedule for a lot of fighters? Seven days a week with pretty much all double days?

Bill Smart47:36

It's more normal than you'd think. It's more normal than you'd think.

James de Lacey47:36

What's your thoughts on that?

Bill Smart47:36

Well, I think there's... I think that, well, essentially City Kickboxing was running seven days a week for multiple sessions a day and they were extremely successful on it. So I think that to me from a sports scientist perspective it sounds mad, when you see that you're like, okay, maybe it isn't as crazy as I thought. It's definitely still not optimal and that's something that has changed.

But I think when you go back to the technical tactical demands of the sport, more time in the sport, more time on task, I think that is important. And I think that efficiency from a conditioning standpoint, efficiency and economy is something that's very hard to measure but is probably one of the largest aspects of conditioning. And you get that through time on task and good time on task.

So I definitely... I don't agree with it but it does happen. But my perspective is that you need time in the sport to be to do well.

James de Lacey48:32

Andrew's also asking, does testing become less important, I'm assuming referring to aging MMA fighters possibly?

Bill Smart49:05

I think that's a... the jury's out on that one to be honest. I'm not sure on that one. I think for me the my thought process is I want to get a good gauge of how variables are shifting, but my thought process is as those trends start to emerge more, some of that testing will start to shift down if that makes sense.

For instance, we at High Performance Sport New Zealand, I've got a pretty awesome office of people. I'm one of the least experienced people in my office. I've got guys like Angus Ross and Andrew Kane who have been doing this for 20, 30 years at... they've done four or five Olympic cycles. And a lot of them don't test at all. Everything's just done through training, just monitoring training.

So they monitor training with, not its... lift velocities, lifts within the strength and conditioning realm, and that becomes their testing and their way of monitoring, which I imagine is something that will start to shift towards.

But you definitely see that some of those elastic qualities downshift as athletes get older. When you look at, I guess, when you look at all fibrous connected tissue, you do see that the fluid matrix that exists in does start to diminish as you get older. So that's one thing that is quite a large factor for me, but that can be through training, that can be improved. Those are two of the bigger ones that stand out.

James de Lacey50:34

Perfect.

Bill Smart50:34

And of course maximum velocity as well is one that's hard to maintain as you get older.

James de Lacey50:34

You mentioned as well around training monitoring a few times, and I think you mentioned as well you guys do some form of training monitoring. So what are you monitoring or how are you monitoring as well? Because obviously you're not there with them all the time, so are you monitoring the actual technical tactical training, strength and conditioning, how's that all work?

Bill Smart51:00

Yeah, it's still a developing process for a lot of them and that's sort of where my attention is now. It's a hard one because you want to... essentially I have so much time and it's not necessarily something that's built into the program but it should be if that makes sense.

So things like heart rates, heart rate recovery, is things that have been a part of that. From a strength and conditioning perspective I like to track essentially what they're doing over time. So this is one of the Angus Ross methods as well, is basically everything's measured that we do in the gym. Whether or not if you're lifting there's a gym aware on it, if you're jumping you're on a jump plate. Maybe you're doing broad jumps, there's a tape measure.

I don't want to say everything because there's a lot of really good things that don't quite fall into those categories, but if you can measure it we probably do, in which case we can see those trends over time.

But the real magic to it is, and this is probably where I sit more, is if you look at a squat as a big lift and it's we're on bar and you look at that as a PB and you get a bit of buy into that athlete squats a bit more, they feel good. You see a lot in combat sports it doesn't cover necessarily the... do you want to be just strong or do you want to be strong and powerful?

Then all of a sudden the velocity metrics become more targetable. So now there's weight, now we might look at velocity at a specific weight, in which case there's a couple things there. Maybe look at jumps, in which case... I think I remember Angus talking about for Emil Meek, he had 27 metrics that they tracked. And it was not as much about the tracking of it for him, it was there's 27 cards that he can pull out for motivation.

So when you get closer to comp, when you get closer to competition, you start playing up with these variables and athletes are smashing PBs left and right. They just feel [expletive] awesome, and all of a sudden they start walking a little bit taller and they carry that, part of that mental side of things into competition. But also you're getting better at everything, you're getting better.

So I very much like that. It's hard to do when you're not there though.

James de Lacey53:09

Yeah, for sure. I remember I think Dan Baker talked about what he used to do many years ago with the Brisbane Broncos. I think every week they would do a jump squat with 60 kilos on the bar with some kind of linear position transducer or whatever on it, and just measure bar velocity from that. Because if that's going up then technically in theory you're getting stronger anyway. So that would be one thing he would monitor week to week.

So I mean for anyone at home who wants to maybe monitor their own things, you could do something as simple as a jump every week and just track it.

Perfect. I think that's everything. I mean there's probably more, I could easily go down here, but we can do a part two.

Bill Smart53:54

No, just... just Andrew saying that he... he was saying that the monitoring matches his approach versus straight up testing. So they're moving away from testing first week, mid camp, etc., to weekly monitored data remotely.

I think for me what I want to... I just want to get a really good understanding of as we move through a fight camp and even pre-fight camp, what's happening. And then once I understand the trend of what's happening, potentially then that starts to shift things. But I'm not quite happy that I have one. I want to tweak more things, I want to see what they result in. But that would be my long-term thought process.

Apologies I haven't been in touch by the way, Andrew. I definitely am intending to. There was a... honestly such a great conversation that we had the other week and I'm very excited to start to implement some of that into the system as well.

James de Lacey54:48

Perfect then. Yeah, we'll probably end up doing a part two on those. I'll maybe fill some more questions from the listeners and stuff offline, and maybe we'll do a part two. Because I mean we touched on testing and pretty much just testing and there was heaps of good stuff in there. So we'll try to tee up a part two.

But for people who want to follow you Bill, where can they do that?

Bill Smart55:10

So probably best way, Instagram, Smarter Performance. I'm not a massive social media guy, especially at current, but you can follow me there. I might start posting some more stuff at some stage. But yeah, I mean I'm just a guy that likes combat sports and likes to solve problems, and I've got ADHD so there's a lot of problems to try to be solved on a very regular basis.

James de Lacey55:10

Perfect. Yeah, I'll link that up in the description too for all the podcast listeners who are listening to it not live as well, so you can check it out. Smarter Performance on Instagram.

And Bill, I appreciate you coming on man and sharing everything. We'll tee up a part two. I'll see if I can grab some questions and we'll...

Bill Smart55:43

Sounds good. No, I appreciate that, cheers James. Yeah, I was saying before, definitely a big fan of the podcast. It makes my... because I drive Auckland a little bit, makes my drives a lot more productive. So yeah, I appreciate the work that you do.

James de Lacey56:06

No, it's awesome having podcast listeners on the podcast too, because at least I know someone's listening to it.

Bill Smart56:06

Oh, perfect.