Altitude Training For Combat Athletes & Red Zone Conditioning w/ Dr. Alan Ruddock (SSOF Ep 86) @BoxingScience

Dr. Alan Ruddock3:28

So Danny finished up his master's project and we said, "You know what, we should look to do this more formally." So we went, "Great idea! What should we call this?" And we're like, "Well, we're doing boxing and it's science, so let's call it Boxing Science." So we registered pretty much there and then the domain name boxingscience.co.uk and then set about building an awful website.

It was just awful. We didn't know what we were doing. We got this random template and then tried to teach ourselves that we knew how to use HTML code and plugins. We had an awful website for probably four years, but it allowed us to integrate YouTube, integrate Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, writing blog articles, doing a little bit of video and filming.

And it was a couple of years until we released our first product, which was something that we called Train Like a Champion. And now we're on the fourth version of Train Like a Champion. And we have a better website. We paid some people to design the website for us and get that all up and running and looking nice. And that was probably 2018, just before the pandemic.

We're also training boxers and athletes. And I got pretty lucky, actually. I got thrown into the deep end at a high level. 2012, Eddie Hearn, boxing promoter, got in touch with us. We've got this kid from Sheffield. We think he's going to be world champion, but he got beat up pretty badly in his last fight. Can you prepare well? Can you help him train? So we're like, "Know about not much at all, but we'll learn quickly." And we did.

And within two years he had become world champion. That was Kell Brook. But Danny worked from the ground. He was visiting boxing gyms, delivering programs in boxing gyms, working with amateur boxers, and we built up the online side as we built the physical side.

And now we've been involved in over 20 world title fights now. World champions, Commonwealth champions, European, British, English, across the whole range of weight categories. Flyweight all the way to heavyweight, and male and female boxers as well.

We've tested hundreds of boxers. We've got a testing facility, and we'll go to amateur gyms or boxers will come to us for testing. And we've got hundreds on the database now. We're really lucky that we're working with some top-tier. Really lucky that people think that our products and services are worthwhile paying for. And the business is doing well. We have our own high-performance gym in Sheffield.

So yeah, fully kitted out in there. So we've actually got a—we've just done a recent renovation. So we've now got things that you think about when, when you first start in sports science. Right, need to make sure that I know how to do this exercise. It might turn into R&D, and now I need to know how to do Excel. So we kind of got a bit past that, and we were thinking, "Right, what do we need to think about when we set up a gym?" Because we don't want lighting that's going to strobe. We want natural lighting and we don't want that strobe effect.

So we think about lighting next. So that was the initial opening. And the next phase we're thinking, "Right, okay, what else do we need within the gym? We need somewhere for a full-scale operation now." How do you get to this point when you're a physiology, strength and conditioning coach thinking about these elements? But it's all part and parcel, isn't it? Delivering programs and creating educational resources.

So in the gym now we've got a performance nutritionist with their own office. We've got a podcast studio, consultancy room, sauna, ice bath.

James de Lacey7:57

So yeah, really proud.

I hope you're enjoying the chat so far. Before we get back to that, I just want to let you know that Sweet Science of Fighting is more than just a podcast. We have a full training app with strength and conditioning programs for strikers, grapplers, and MMA athletes, so you don't have to think about what you're doing and you're getting access to the latest scientific methods to improve combat sports performance.

We have programs specifically for judo, for jiu-jitsu, for wrestling, MMA, boxing. Muay Thai is coming soon. All these things are going to be in the training app. We also have a private community where some of the coaches that have been on the podcast are in there to help you with any training questions and any performance questions you have. For example, Andrew Asser and Casper Dewhit.

We also have some online courses within the training app. They cover strength and conditioning, mental skills, and weight cutting. And finally, we now have Ryan Voss in the community, a second-degree jiu-jitsu black belt who is there to break down any of your grappling matches that you want to see in a second eye. He's currently breaking down videos on a separate Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel, and he will break down your video within the community.

So if you have a match or a roll that you just recorded, you can upload that in there and Ryan will break that down for you. So what are you waiting for? Jump down the description. You can check out the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. Otherwise, enjoy the podcast.

But I wanted to start on the altitude training side, because Dr. Chris Kirk—he's been on the podcast before, anyone listening can go back and listen to that after this—but he mentioned you'd be a good guy to talk to around altitude training and that you've used it extensively with boxers. But for the audience now, do you maybe provide just some scientific underpinning on altitude training? Why would you even bother training at altitude or using some kind of altitude within your training or within your camps?

Dr. Alan Ruddock10:26

I think it's probably worth having a little bit of a history lesson to start with. So round about 100 years ago, explorers were looking at big, tall mountains and going, "You know what, I fancy going up there. I fancy going up Everest." I fancy going up that one in the Himalayas. So they set off up the mountain, and they'd be like, "You know, this is really, really hard. Why is this really, really hard? And this guy over here, this Sherpa guy, finding it really, really easy to get up here."

So even in the early 1900s, 1910, 1920, explorers and scientists and some medical doctors were aware of the effect of altitude on the human body. But at that time, sports science wasn't even a discipline. 1920s, we're talking here about the time of A.V. Hill in Manchester creating his own Douglas bags and using himself as a participant, testing his oxygen uptake. We're talking about Krogh over in Scandinavia setting up muscle physiology. So really, really early...

Days, and it wasn't necessarily on the agenda for them. Fast forward to the Mexico City Olympics. Now Mexico City's at around about 2,000— I don't know what that doesn't— either they're working metric, so apologies, you have to just convert it. So it's around about 2,000 meters.

And in the endurance events, what was clearly notable was that the athletes that were living at altitude and from high altitude areas, so Highlanders, were outperforming Lowlanders. So a classic event in the endurance is where you have Jim Ryun, who's an American middle distance runner, run against the Kenyan athletes. Kipchoge Keino was the Kenyan athlete that absolutely dominated the middle distance, about 1,500 meters I think he was, at the Olympic Games.

And so you had now the US Olympic Committee, you had the Brits, all going, how are these guys outperforming our guys? Especially Jim Ryun, that was the shock, probably favorite for the gold.

And so at that time, the Scandinavians were starting to formalize their research into sport science, and they were able to make pretty accurate assessments of physiological responses. So they were looking at this, what we need to look at the differences between these individuals, and we need to look at the effects of altitude.

So there were studies done in the U.S. where individuals, small samples, were taken up to altitude, and their physiological responses were observed. And what we know now is that physiological responses are impaired at altitude, which for us now that's pretty obvious.

So then it became the question of, right, so if there's something impairing, how can our athletes who don't live at altitude get better? If we go to altitude and we spend some time there, can we get adaptations that will enable our athletes to perform if they have to perform at altitude again? So there was some early research done in that area, and that kind of research continued up until probably the 2000s, early 2000s, kind of observational research.

Now what the thinking was, is that if we spend time at altitude, can our athletes perform better at altitude, or can they come back down to sea level and perform better after they've been at altitude? And there were multiple investigations there as the effect of, well, what adaptations does it cause?

Now, what we need to make, first of all, is the distinction between the pressure of oxygen at altitude and the O2 concentration at altitude. So you'll often hear people say, "Oh yeah, the air is thin," or "Oxygen is lower." It's not. The oxygen percentage is the same at altitude as it is at sea level. The thing that differs is the pressure, the pressure of the gases that is exerting pressure on us as humans that enables oxygen to get from the air into our muscle cells for us to ultimately use it to generate energy.

Now, so altitude, pressure is a lot less. Now that means the ability for us to use oxygen to create energy is also less. So what we need our bodies to do is to help to carry more oxygen so that we can get more oxygen into the cells so we can use it to produce energy.

So at altitude, our body, specifically our kidneys and some chemoreceptors as well, they're sensing arterial oxygen, so they're sensing how much oxygen we've got in our body. The kidneys will then detect low oxygen, and that will then stimulate a range of cascading cellular actions that ultimately releases more EPO. So that's erythropoietin. So I'm sure yourself and listeners will know about EPO.

So EPO is a natural hormone. That hormone is then released into the bloodstream. Its target site is the bone marrow. And at that target site at the bone marrow, what happens then is that there is an increase in red blood cell production. With that red blood cell production, there's an increase in hemoglobin, which is the oxygen-carrying part of the blood.

So when an athlete comes down from altitude and performs at sea level, the idea is that because they've got a higher hemoglobin mass, they've then got a higher oxygen-carrying capacity, and they've got more potential to create energy, which then can be used, mechanical work, then be used to run faster, cycle harder, row faster with more power. That's the theory behind altitude training, some of the cellular mechanistic responses to living.

James de Lacey18:16

Perfect. I've got a bunch of questions down here to dive into as well on altitude training. First one is actual strategies. So typically, I think most people, or at least the theory most people are told, is live high, train low. Obviously, that's not always feasible. Is that something then that, if perfect world, that would be the perfect way to do altitude training?

Dr. Alan Ruddock18:16

Yeah, yeah. Live high, train low is a perfect way. Now, that type of training, that model of altitude training, has come from the scientific literature.

Now, the— I don't want to say the scientific literature is poor, but it's really, really difficult to do altitude studies. So if we think about some of the logistics that we've got to put in place to undertake an altitude training study— so most institutions around the world are at sea level. So first of all, we've got to find a location that is altitude. For me in Sheffield, we're sea level. And there's nowhere in Britain that we can go to to get high enough to stimulate some of the adaptation.

James de Lacey19:33

How high would you need to be in terms of that living?

Dr. Alan Ruddock19:33

2,000. Yeah, about 2,000, yeah. You start to see impairments in performance between 1,000 to 1,500 meters. It's a very individual-related, so someone could find 1,000 meters difficult, find 1,500 meters pretty difficult.

So first of all, we've got to find somewhere to do that. Then we've got to find a sample to take over, so sample of the population, and we've got to take them out to do altitude training for how long? Well, probably as a minimum— certainly this is what we thought early on— three weeks. Now, the financial implications, the resource implications of doing that and taking a sample out and living at altitude is a lot of resource, a lot of money, a lot of logistics. And that's just a single-group design.

Ideally, we want to do a parallel-group design, so we'd have to take— have to do something with another group at a lower level as a control group. So it's really, really difficult to do altitude training just from a logistical perspective. And then we need to think about, well, what are the key variables we want to assess? Easy things like performance, oxygen uptake, other cardiorespiratory variables. The main thing we want, the main variable we want to track, is hemoglobin mass. And there are not many institutions that can assess hemoglobin mass because it requires specialist personnel, specialist equipment. So it's really, really difficult.

So those original live high, train low models— yes, they are valid, but they have been derived from single studies. And those single studies have also muddied the water a little bit because some athletes, some individuals, adapt and perform better at sea level, and some don't. And so this concept of responders, non-responders came about as well, perhaps came about without that assessment of hemoglobin mass or being as controlled as it could be.

Now, what we know now is that elite athletes won't just live high and then train low for one time within a season. They'll do it multiple times over multiple years. So it requires a lot of planning and a lot of resource to be able to do that, and they have access to assessments of hemoglobin mass and will be tracking everything. You've got to think about other considerations around there as well: training load, how you're tapering for altitude, how you're manipulating training load at altitude, nutrition, illness— all those factors as well that play a role in the success of an altitude training camp.

So yes, live high, train low is kind of what science has deemed the optimal, but there are so many factors in between that can play a role in the success of an altitude.

James de Lacey23:17

Yeah. I think it was— I think the Welsh rugby team actually does that. They did it for, I know not for the World Cup just gone, but the previous World Cup I know for sure they did that. I don't know if they did for the last World Cup, but they also— I think it was research, I think, came out of the Welsh rugby camp around they were doing Wingate bike sprints in an altitude chamber. And I know you mentioned you have an altitude chamber, so maybe this might be a little more practical for the listeners.

Maybe they have access to one, maybe not, but it'll be interesting to go down that road anyway of, okay, so living high and then training at sea level— cool, that might be optimal, but it's not practical. But training in an altitude chamber might actually be practical for some people. Do be going into some details of why train in an altitude chamber, what you're trying to get out of it, and then how that would fit, I guess, within a training regime.

Dr. Alan Ruddock23:34

Yeah. So there's an important distinction that we have to make here, and there's actually two practical tools that we can consider when we want to do something like altitude training. So the distinction that I made regarding altitude training and the pressure that is different at altitude is something that we need to consider when we're undertaking altitude training at sea level.

So at sea level, the atmospheric pressure is the same when we

Go in an altitude tent or an altitude chamber, normal barometric, you call it? Yeah, so it's the same. And the only thing that we're manipulating when an athlete is in a chamber or in a tent is the oxygen concentration within that environment. So that is how we're simulating altitude. So we call it simulation of altitude rather than altitude training. That is a real key differentiator.

So what happens when you're in an environment and you've got a low oxygen concentration? Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? You're not going to be able to drive O2 into the muscle at the required amount, especially if you're doing some high intensity work as well.

So there are altitude chambers, there are altitude tents, there are two types of altitude mask. So one type is where you can actively feed in hypoxic air. So hypoxic air is air with a reduced O2 content in there. And so there's the direct method. And then there's what you've probably seen a lot of in a lot of athletes' shoes, and that these are these altitude masks.

Now the altitude masks do manipulate oxygen content, but it's unregulated. The main thing that altitude masks are manipulating is the flow of air. So a reduced flow of air restricts the amount of O2 that can get into the body, and then you can eventually use it to create energy. But it can be used as a tool just like anything can be used as a tool. We just need to know when and how to use it.

So it becomes a bit more of for me an inspiratory muscle trainer because it's harder to get that volume of air that you're requiring, especially if you're doing high intensity interval training. So it becomes a bit more like an inspiratory muscle trainer than it does an altitude system. It can actually probably get a little bit dangerous because of the carbon dioxide buildup within the mask as well, which is poisonous, and those masks, if you're not careful, can impair training quality. So there's some considerations you have to make when you're using them.

In terms of the tent, at Boxing Science we don't use our altitude tent for the reasons that you would go to altitude to train. So we're not using an altitude tent to simulate altitude and stimulate adaptations in hemoglobin mass, red blood cell production. That's not what we're using it for. We use it as part of a deload, or an increase, sorry, an increase in training load as an athlete is returning back to camp.

The reason why we do that is because O2 concentration in the tent is low, which means that an athlete can either run as hard or cycle as hard in the tent. But because that O2 content is low, we still get a good cardiorespiratory demand and we're still stimulating cardiorespiratory adaptations. But we're not getting that mechanical demand associated with a similar type of cardiovascular demand if we were to do it in a normoxic environment. So 20.9% normal gym, air-conditioned environment.

So we'll strategically use the altitude tent as either a return to training or as a method of conditioning if an athlete's got an injury or as a planned deload.

James de Lacey28:26

Gotcha. And then I think it was from that same Welsh paper that I was talking about before. I haven't read it in a long time, but potentially because of the increased training load as well in an altitude simulated altitude tent or chamber, you could use it almost as like a short peaking method potentially. So if you're doing a couple times a week sprint like bike sprints in there or whatever it is, because the training load's so much higher, you could potentially see greater gains that way. Or is the fact that it's reducing outputs potentially so greatly that it's probably not worth doing?

Dr. Alan Ruddock29:01

Yeah, it depends, doesn't it? I know French would be doing the same as well. So they all do repeat sprints in hypoxia. And it depends upon what you're after. Whatever training method you're using, you should have a good understanding of what adaptation you're trying to induce.

So it could be used as a peaking or preparatory method from a more psychophysiological perspective. Because if you know that training session is simulating the time-motion demands of the activity, so repeat sprints in rugby, so a phase of play that's really intense, but the oxygen content within the environment is low, increasing the perception of the demand of the exercise, then it feels it's a more pressurized environment. And it's more psychophysiological because then you can say to an athlete, 'Look, you produce this power output under this oxygen concentration.

So when the going gets tough and you might be in the 78th minute and you've got to repeat phases of play multiple times and put in multiple efforts, then you know you can do it because you've done it in this simulated environment.' So that's one way of thinking about it.

In terms of adaptations, if I'm doing repeated sprint training, this is just my training philosophy, if I'm doing repeated sprint training, I want my mechanical demand, so the power that I'm producing on a Watt bike, to be as high as possible. And I don't want things impairing my ability to produce high power outputs repeatedly. So I will consider the training that we do before the training phase to optimize repeat sprint ability so we can maintain those high mechanical demands. And I'll be looking at ways to tweak the recovery interval to make sure that I've got high force production, high power production within that session.

But that's just my approach. Everyone's got different approaches, haven't they, and different reasons. And it's often really difficult to understand the rationale for a training session. It's easy to look at it on social media, YouTube, wherever, and go, 'Oh yeah, they're doing that.' Yeah, they're doing that. All that looks good. But okay, but why are they doing it? It might look good, but why are they doing it? So getting that rationale and reasoning behind training programs is really important, but it's really difficult to get.

James de Lacey31:57

Obviously, you mentioned around the simulated altitude, you're not doing it for these altitude-specific altitude adaptations around oxygen delivery, but if you're training in an altitude simulated altitude say a few times a week, is that going to eventually potentially give you that? Or is there just not enough time in there?

Dr. Alan Ruddock32:25

No, it's not enough time to do it. So what happens if you're thinking about how those adaptations are induced? We've got that response from the kidneys that downregulates enzyme production, that almost makes a mark in some transcription factors that then upregulates the production of EPO. And then EPO has to circulate through the cardiovascular system till it gets to its target site. Then it has to work on the bone marrow. And these are large physiological effects that have to take place over a long period of time.

So we're talking minimum three weeks if you are a responder. And if you're not, which some of the top guys in this field are saying that there are no responders and non-responders, they address well-planned training camps. But even that three-week minimum really to stimulate that altitude, that's living high 14, 16 hours a day and then dropping down to train. So it's just not enough.

Plus, off the top of my head, I don't think there are any scientific studies that have investigated hemoglobin mass changes as a result of simulated altitude. What I do know, though, James, is that there has been a study published recently looking at the cross-adaptation of heat training and hemoglobin mass production. So there is some emerging evidence that there are potentially some crossovers from training in the heat and acclimatizing to heat or acclimating to heat and potential physiological adaptations that are beneficial for altitude.

James de Lacey34:10

Interesting. Okay. And I also wanted to dive into some practical ideas around if, say, a fighter's training at sea level, but they have to go compete at altitude. So, for example, Denver, Colorado, most of Denver is at altitude and things like that. And I remember I was working with rugby, here we would have to travel to Denver and play at altitude, which was always a pain. But are there some strategies that someone can undertake? So they don't have access to any kind of altitude training equipment. What can they do in terms of training and in terms of travel?

Dr. Alan Ruddock35:25

We have a comment here as well, saying from Andrew, a user, saying he's completed a study on heat and hemoglobin. All right, Andrew, you've got to send that through at some point.

James de Lacey35:25

But do you want to go into that question about the travel and the training for someone who's training at sea level and then going to potentially compete at altitude?

Dr. Alan Ruddock35:25

Yeah, I'll catch up with Andrew. He's got loads of interesting stuff, definitely Andrew.

Yeah, so first of all, it's going to be really challenging. So if you do not have access to an altitude tent or altitude chamber, then what we need to be looking at is probably some muscle buffer training. So that is probably going to be the most physiologically limiting scenario or physiological response to altitude. And that pH will drop, the intracellular environment becomes more acidic, and that will make the cell's job harder either to produce or

Or maintain neuromuscular stimulus, so you can maintain high power output, high forces, or just for glycolytic flux and just getting glycogen broken down and getting it through those energetic pathways so it can be passed through the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. Muscle buffer training works in a way that you create almost mops that will come in and will mop away those metabolites that make the cells more acidic. So we're talking here about inorganic phosphate, we're talking about hydrogen ions, and these are the components that will make exercise, especially high intensity exercise at altitude, really difficult.

So I would be looking at muscle buffer training. Boxing Science would do this a few ways. We're lucky enough to have a lactate analyzer, and so we can program training to elicit a mild to moderate acidosis. So we're using lactate as a marker of acidosis.

James de Lacey37:20

So we know it's not the bad guy. We know it's not causing the acidosis, but people need to make sure they listen to that little part again, that lactate is not the bad guy.

Dr. Alan Ruddock37:20

Lactate is a really good guy, but it continues to get a bad name. But yeah, so we're just using lactate as a marker of acidosis, just because of its relationship with hydrogen ions and the cellular environment.

And we're looking to undertake interval training so that our athletes are experiencing a blood lactate concentration of between 10 and 12 millimoles per liter for anywhere between 15 and 25 minutes. And that can take various different forms. So we can do a two-minute interval with a three-minute break, or we can do something even higher intensity, so we can do a 12-second sprint with a 48-second recovery interval and just repeat that a minute, every minute, for between 15 and 25 repetitions.

That's a really tough session, but muscle buffer training would be my go-to if I had an athlete that wasn't able to train at altitude and there wasn't any way in which we could simulate altitude.

James de Lacey39:21

Yeah, it's tricky. And there's also supplementation. What particular with supplementation?

Dr. Alan Ruddock39:21

Beta-alanine. Avoid sodium bicarbonate as much as you can. Potentially you can microdose it, that might help. The creams that you can get, have you seen the cream?

James de Lacey39:21

Don't think I have.

Dr. Alan Ruddock39:21

Sodium bicarbonate. So you get sodium bicarbonate integrated within the cream and then you rub the cream on muscles. Again, evidence is emerging and the delivery pathways are still unclear and whether or not it exerts a true ergogenic effect is still out on that. But again, it's something to consider.

And the other thing, James, something that we've done is just throw everything at the athlete. If you're a sport scientist—if you're an athlete you're not going to be able to do this because it's not going to work—but if you're a scientist or a coach, use the placebo effect to your great advantage. So throw everything at them.

I've done this before when I had a fighter that's got a fight in four weeks and he needs to get ready. There was no real concerns over making weight, it was over fitness. So we threw everything at this guy. We were wearing lab coats to make him feel like he was getting something that was super scientific. We were taking as much blood samples as we could—lactate—we were giving maximum encouragement all the way through, we were logging everything, we were typing away on laptops, entering information, sticking charts in front. We were in an altitude tent and all this stuff.

Apart from the training that we're doing, which was sprint training—basically apart from that, none of this stuff had any real effect. We were just creating the environment and the illusion that this training was more effective than regular training. And so using that placebo effect to advantage. I think placebo gets a pretty bad name as well, but mainly we can use it to our advantage.

There's a great paper called "Lies" in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, and it's effectively using the placebo effect to your advantage and trying to do everything we can to maximize the belief system of the athlete to give them as much confidence as possible.

Because when you're four weeks out from a fight—we were wearing lab coats, but usually I would wear my metaphorical lab coat at the start of camp, so 12 weeks out if not further. And we'll be looking, right, okay, what adaptations are we getting from this particular training session? How can we optimize adaptations and look at it from a real scientific perspective? And then as you progress through camp, my lab coat comes off. Four weeks out and closer, I'm wearing a metaphorical coach's baseball cap.

I'm not really interested too much about adaptations. I'm interested about how can I make my athlete feel great? How can I make them feel like the past six to eight weeks of work are now translating into sparring and benefiting their performance? What can I do? What can I say to them? How can I—it's almost amateur psychology. So I'm a physiologist, I know nothing about psychology, but you've got to be able to understand your athlete, find out what gives them confidence, and that coach's cap comes on and the lab coat comes off.

James de Lacey43:26

I love it. I love it. And around the travel aspect as well, I've heard many different things, like you should travel as close as possible so you don't get hit by altitude, or you should travel five, seven days out to adapt to altitude as an example. What's your take on travel for that?

Dr. Alan Ruddock44:01

Well, I'm definitely in the preparation camp for anything. So I think you've got to look at risk versus reward here. And if you've got, if you're an athlete and you don't know how you're going to react to altitude, then you're going to want to try and program some time in to spend at altitude and just get as used to it as you can.

Probably it's going to be more psychological than physiological. There will be some acute adjustments, so there will be some changes to plasma volume, things like that. So staying on top of hydration, staying on top of nutrition, looking after your immune system—all those kinds of things are really important, like all travel. No matter what you do, it's stressful.

But if you know how you respond, then you could do a smash and grab and get in there. But it's so individualized, and I don't think even from the scientific literature we are not very confident about what type of altitude training we should use, whether we adapt in three weeks, whether we need multiple camps. And unfortunately we are more than likely going to have to rely on secondhand accounts from athletes that have the time, have the resource, have the logistics, have the support to be able to really understand altitude training.

Or someone's going to have to come along with a big bag of money and go, I want to do the best altitude training study that has ever taken place so we can learn about it.

So yes, it's difficult with altitude training because of the individual response.

James de Lacey45:43

And we'll send a message out to Elon Musk to fund that study. He's got enough coin to put in. I'll jump a little bit into—you mentioned obviously you have a whole host of testing data from your boxers. It'd be interesting, I think at least maybe practically for the audience too, around maybe just some norms that you typically boxers to hit or be at regarding strength, power, conditioning and things like that, maybe for your amateurs and professionals, just so people can maybe just get a general idea of what physical capacities typically look like.

Dr. Alan Ruddock46:16

Yeah, absolutely. I'll try to take you through our testing battery and try to tell you what the benchmarks are. So we usually start off with an assessment of movement capability. So we've tried a lot of functional movement screens over the years, but we've basically boiled it down to an overhead squat and a single leg squat onto a bench. And boxers have pretty much got similar movement dysfunctions, so we can just identify those as soon as you can.

Then scoring based on a five-point scale—you can do this, you can't do that, this is tight, this is overactive, that kind of stuff. And then we have assessment of jumps. So we'll do countermovement jump, we'll do squat jump, and we'll look at the difference between those two jumps, so in effect, eccentric utilization ratio.

Boxers are not very good eccentrically, so their squat jump would be very similar to their countermovement jump, which shows that they need to work on some eccentric capabilities. And then we'll do a reactive strength index test as well, just to look at that relationship between ground contact time and jump height. That's what we'll do there.

Next, we've just started looking at—we haven't even really got a good name for this yet—but we have a dynamometer that we attach to a rack or cable machine. And we're looking at here isometric rotational strength, isometric rotational force production.

James de Lacey48:08

You need to add "Boxing Science" to the name, just to get some brand on there.

Dr. Alan Ruddock48:08

Yeah. We had a master's student last year and he was looking at the relationship between these values, these metrics, and lead and rear hand punch throw velocities. Talk about in time, and there seems to be a pretty good relationship between that. So we have found good relationships between jump height and punch velocities, and also we're now...

Finding stronger associations between these rotational isometric capabilities and punch velocity, punch throw velocity. Specific, so we have that test as well. So we'll do a loaded profile. So start off with, depends on what weight they are, we'll start off with a bar attached to a gym aware, so linear position transducer attached to the gym aware to the end of the bar, and then perform landmine punch throw.

So get the bar, bar landmine attachment, get the gym aware on, and then put throw in right side, left side, both back hand stance. And then depending upon the athlete, we will load it up in a certain way. So we'll go 20 kilos, 25 kilos, 30 kilos, heavy weights will be 40 kilos. And then we'll look at the change in velocity and plot L and use these regression, have a look at the slopes of that relationship.

And again, we don't use the test in isolation, so all the tests that I've mentioned up to this point are all used in, yes, there are benchmarks for each one, but they're all used in aggregation.

So they're all used to give an indication of what type of athlete we've got here. So if jumps or eccentric capability is not as good as it could be, how does that relate to a landmine punch throw velocity at light load, at a heavy load? If we can, we also do a trap bar load velocity profile as well. So it's quite extensive, the amount of testing that we do. Not finished yet.

We may also do some core hold assessments. So we'll do prone, supine, and then both sides for lateral. And these are just iso holds. These, the other tests have a good descriptive and prescriptive role within the training program. Core holds not so, just, well done threshold there, there's no limitation there. It's an endurance test. So sometimes we'll do that, sometimes we will, depends on what we're doing and how we can do it or where we are. It might even be at the gym, might be boxing.

Then after that, we'll move on to the exercise tests. So we nearly always do a lactate profile assessment. So that's where we'll do nearly always on the treadmill. So we'll do three minutes running at a particular intensity, particular speed, one minute or 30 seconds rest, and then we'll increase that intensity. And then we'll keep sampling blood lactate until we find an exponential rise in that concentration, at which point we'll stop that assessment part of that test. We've also got heart rate, RPE and cardio variables as well, so oxygen for example, look at energy expenditure as well.

And then we'll do a 30-15 intermittent running test on the treadmill as well. The reason why we do that test on the treadmill is because when we tried to do intermittent running tests as they are traditionally intended, which is on a field or on a court whereby you run shuttles and turn, boxers are, and that becomes a limiter in their performance. We're not actually getting a true reflection of their capabilities to perform at a high intensity intermittently. And so which reduces the validity. And we've also found we just get horrible reliability from those assessments as well.

So things like the yo-yo, probably got a coefficient of variation of about 10%, something like that. A little bit high, like 12, 14% when before. So not very reliable, which means it just decreases the confidence in our interpretation of benchmarking or any adaptations that are occurring. So we decided to come with a treadmill version of that test.

So the most basic version starts at 8 km an hour, run that for 30 seconds, hold on to the side of the treadmill, jump across the belt, 15 seconds, and then jump back on for another 30 seconds. Half a kilometer, so that just goes faster and faster and faster and faster by half a kilometer per each level. The gym record is 25 km an hour. Very good.

Generally we'll see decent level, decent standard boxers hitting 23 kilometers per hour. And what we've seen is there is some discriminant validity between different standards as well. So the better standard boxers, so the world champion boxers compared to those boxers that are just starting out, will have much higher 30-15 score. So talking 23 and a half, 24 versus 21, 22.

And then we've just started taking, well the nutritionist will do skinfolds, and we'll do resting metabolic rate assessment as well. So we get a pretty decent overview of body composition, body mass, where they're on target, and also we're now starting to try and integrate insights of resting metabolic rate into nutritional...

James de Lacey55:43

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If didn't, that 30-15 on the treadmill was actually easy for anyone to use. So if anyone's listening, 8 km per hour, run that for 30 seconds, jump off to the side, 15 seconds rest, and just increase half a kilometer speed every single time until you fall off the back anymore. So if you've got a heart, which places having, or have someone, have someone with you at all times, make sure you consult medical. Yeah, no liability here, you can't come to us on this podcast.

But that's awesome. I think that one's probably the most practical for most people listening in terms of practicality for some of the other jump stuff and things. That might be, a lot of people might not be able to interpret that data or collect it. Is there any kind of strength power assessments you would give someone who doesn't have that kind of technical setup or technical knowledge?

Dr. Alan Ruddock57:43

Yeah, so for example, jump assessments have some pretty good apps about. So I mean, you don't need them. So you can do what it's called a sergeant jump against the wall. So put a chalk, put a chalk on your fingertip, stick your hand in the air, mark it on the wall, do a squat jump kind of movement, jump, look at the difference between the two points, and that will give you indication of your jump height.

Or you can use the, it's called My Jump 2, that's a legit, actually they have a, I think they have it all bundled. I think it's all bundled together. It's called something labs. Anyway, that's pretty good. And that's been validated a few times in scientific literature. That's a good way of getting an indication of reactive strength index, countermovement jump, squat jump, and things like that.

In terms of strength, things that we do, trap bar deadlift, we very rarely, there's some that takes quite a few sessions and few camps for most boxers to learn how to squat, low load squat. We find trap bar deadlift is pretty good for that. But yeah, if you're lifting one and a half times body mass in trap bar deadlift, perfect. Perfect.

James de Lacey59:21

Have you got a little bit of time left, Alan, just to go over one last topic?

Dr. Alan Ruddock59:21

Yeah, perfect.

James de Lacey59:21

I want to quickly dive into, I guess, your conditioning philosophy as well. I think Red Zone training is what you've coined your conditioning stuff there. Maybe dive into a little bit of, I guess, what that actually encompasses and what that actually means within conditioning training?

Dr. Alan Ruddock59:54

Yeah, it's a big yeah. So we define the, the red zone, actually let me start with, let me start with training. Second, with training zones. There are tens, probably hundreds of different ways in which you can create training zones. And my watch will force me into a seven zone model on the bike, five zone model when I'm running. And then the scientific literature, there we have more of a three zone model, which is demarcated by some physiological thresholds. So where there are observable changes in physiology, where we mark training.

So quite simply, we have a zone one which is easy, like recovery runs. And then we have a zone two, which where you might at the upper end do a tempo type run, that's the kind of zone that feels good. It's not too hard, it's not too easy. And then you've got a zone three, which is where you would say this is the start of interval training, which is fine.

But for most people, their zone three would occur around about 85% of either heart rate max or oxygen uptake. But what we would like to see is the red zone, which we define as 90% of heart rate. So we've got red zone, which is 90% of heart rate, so you can estimate.

Thinking practically, you can estimate heart rate max and there are various different methods from which you can do that, but the best way is to try and test it and get an understanding of what it actually is. And then just take 90% of that, whatever that is, that would be red zone.

You also use RPE a lot, so we use rating of perceived exertion and we'll use a scale from 0 to 10. It's got a catchy name, it's called the Foster's Modified Category Ratio 10 scale. But on there it will just give a rating of how intense exercise is, so we're looking for athletes to be hitting eight, nine on that scale, which is maximum.

So that's what we define as the Red Zone and we'll use that metric of 90% heart rate max and above in our high-intensity interval training session. Now I'm going to go back to the scientific literature again and say that the definitions of different types of interval training is very, very loose. So nobody has come along and has said this is the definition for this training, this is the definition for another type of training, this is the definition for that type.

Now this gets confusing when this information enters the public domain, especially when you've got multiple training models as well. So high-intensity interval training, the 90% heart rate max, and that is the primary metric of interest for us when we're doing high-intensity interval training.

So for those listeners in the UK, there's a guy called Dr. Michael Mosley. A few years ago he made a few series for the BBC and was talking about the benefits of high-intensity interval training. And it was just basically just, yeah, that's not high-intensity interval training. That's definitely not what it is, but people have now taken this term of HIT and bastardized it and it's become a fit class.

We need what we need is clear definitions because we're scientists and definitions form the basis for that understanding. Now for me there are two types of high-intensity: there are short and there are long. So long would be a continuous interval, probably between four and eight, I've even done 16 minutes before, but generally between four and eight minutes would be considered a long interval.

And those intervals can be repeated four, six, even up to eight times within a session. And what we're looking for there is the amount of time spent within that. And ultimately what we're looking for here is the stress on the cardiovascular system, principally at the heart, and we're looking to maximize or optimize stroke volume response.

Which will then over time initiate cardiovascular adaptations in terms of central adaptations. So the muscle of the heart, how hard it beats, the size of its chambers, how much blood it can pump out, but also capillarization as well.

And short interval training, intervals like 15 on, 15 off, and repeating multiple, multiple times. 30 on, 30 off, repeated multiple times. And they can be done in sets of 8, 10, 12, or all in a single set of 20 repetitions. And these are done at around about the speed at which VO2 max occurs. Again, you're looking for the same metric: how much time you're spending at 90%? What we're looking for is a minimum around about, okay.

That's high-intensity interval training, which forms just one component of our conditioning system. The other components are, I'm sure he's still listening, sprint interval training, which I know he's a big fan of, and various different forms of sprint interval training.

So we would do 30 seconds, and this sounds like it's absolutely nothing, explain. 30 seconds max effort, three minutes recovery, four to six times.

James de Lacey1:06:40

Yeah, I know. People listen, they go what? And then you do one of them, you go, I'm going to do another one? Seriously.

Dr. Alan Ruddock1:06:40

So we get athletes that end up in the end up in a position, they just want to go to sleep, in that position. These have to be done max effort out, because if you do not get that almost draining of the battery, if you do not initiate a highly acidic cellular environment as a result of that, it needs to be really, really tough.

So then we move on the continuum into speed endurance training. So in speed endurance training, a really underutilized method and a really under-researched method as well. There's only a handful of decent papers and they've all come from Jens Bangsbo in Scandinavia as well. Two types: speed endurance maintenance and speed endurance production.

In production, you're looking to increase to a speed or power that is relatively high but still submaximal, and then repeat that. And then maintenance, intensity a little bit less, able to repeat that over and over and over again.

And then we move into muscle buffer training. And here I've already mentioned that type of trainer. So we're looking to induce moderate acidosis and various different sessions that we can do for that. Two interval, almost repeated sprints, but the primary metric is for that I realize is lactate. Access to lactate analyzer, and so you can use RPE for that as well. So if RPE is seven or eight on that category ratio 10 scale, probably in the right zone.

And those sessions start off really easy, easy, but then by the 10th or 12th rep, if you're doing 30 seconds on, I've done up to 30 minutes before and that was horrific. So that's pretty much high-intensity interval training continuum. And what we do and when we do it will be individual specific, camp specific, all the other.

The last training method that I need to mention: as we move into a taper phase, we might do more TABATA. So 20 on, 10 off, short intervals, and just try and replicate some round demands. And we can, depending on who our boxers are fighting, we can. Those are mainly, as I said before, those are mainly to give almost game speed, right? Almost game speed kind of training, you could say.

But for us, and for the boxers, interval training, high-intensity interval training, is a safe way to push them to their absolute limits. So they get confidence from sparring, but if they go flat out and full capacity in sparring, they're going to get sparred out and they're going to probably get injured.

So even in sparring they've got to be respectful of how they use their energy and respectful for any tactical or technical considerations that their coach is asking them to make. So they can't always push their limits, but they want to know where their limit is because they're just kind of animals that do, and they're great to work with because of that. So interval training just provides that safe environment for them.

James de Lacey1:10:45

Nice. Last question before we go: obviously zone two or low-intensity conditioning, I think it's still very prevalent and talked about a lot in terms of general health and conditioning. Does that, or where, or where doesn't that fit within your training? And why or why not?

Dr. Alan Ruddock1:11:15

It doesn't fit all too much. The only time it comes in is in recovery sessions. We know what that zone is, we have a pretty good idea of what energy is expended in those kind of intensities and those sessions. And so it only comes in when we need to do recovery.

And the reason being is because if we think about the movement dysfunctions our athletes have, the time that they spend boxing, and then consider their physical dominances in terms of, are they anterior dominant, internally rotated? And then we think about how many punches they throw every single session and every single week. We have to think about those mechanical demands and whether or not we want to keep putting athletes in those kind of stressful positions.

Now if we're saying, yeah, go off and do a tempo run, go do a five-mile run, they're going to run it like they're boxing. It'll be like a Rocky montage going, and they'll probably still be externally rotating at the feet. Definitely won't be using glutes, the adductors are going to get tight. And as a result of that, then we start getting tight calves.

And so we don't want to keep putting them in those stressful positions. And also we want to reduce targeted adaptations as well. And if we're doing a mix of different things or we're doing types of training that we know that adaptations take longer to induce and we're not being optimal with our time.

Most of the time we've got 10 or 12 weeks. An athlete can't waste time. They're coming towards a baseline and we need to improve their physical conditioning as effectively, as optimally as possible.

And, yeah, tempo-style zone two training for a track athlete? Absolutely fine, because they're probably going to be competing at that intensity at some point or it will contribute to their training system. We just don't have time to do it.

And from a mechanical perspective, it's also pretty risky. So most of the time we're just playing off that risk versus reward. Are we going to see some injuries as a result of this? Are we going to spike training load if we do this? Is it optimal? Can we measure it? What adaptations are we getting from it? Lots of different considerations.

James de Lacey1:14:23

Yeah, I like that take too, and it's a good way just to get an idea into your conditioning philosophy. And I guess for everyone else listening as well, they can kind of get a big picture. But I think we'll end this one, hey? Alan, where can people find you and follow you and keep in touch with what you're doing?

Dr. Alan Ruddock1:14:23

On Instagram, ruddock_boxingscience. No wait, ruddock. I'll find it, I'll put the description too so everyone can click on it.

James de Lacey1:14:23

Yeah, and then the Boxing Science Instagram.

Dr. Alan Ruddock1:14:56

Page is just Boxing Science, and Danny's very active on Instagram, Dan Wilson Boxing Science, and then the YouTube page as well, Boxing Science. And then Twitter, which is something like my Instagram handle, my it, box time.

And then if people are interested in the research that we've done, there's two ways in which you can get the research papers. One is through Research Gate, so if you just search for my name on Research Gate they're all on there. The other is through, probably more difficult to find on Google, but all our papers have to have a version that is open access, so the university has a repository of that, of the accepted version of articles. So everything that I've done is on there along with things like the blog articles or the podcast.

James de Lacey1:15:38

Awesome. I'll link it all down in the description for anyone who's interested to check those out. But thanks for coming, Alan. Appreciate it.