Athletic Testing Without Expensive Equipment To Influence Your Program w/ Cas de Wit (SSOF Ep 69)

Cas de Wit0:01

So if you are a developing athlete or you're maybe 12 till 15 years old, obviously you need to get strong because you need to fight people that are strong. You need to physically get up to their level. So obviously skill development is important. Also, you need to simply just get strong.

If at a certain point you are talented and you work hard, you get to a certain level. Then the differences in styles and your skill set will obviously make you a good Judo player or more struggling. Physicality at that point is still a huge part, but often it needs to fit your style. So with Judo being so complex, I can't simply say getting stronger is always great, because if it takes you a heck of a lot of time to get stronger, you might as well be better off just training Judo more, working on techniques that suit you better.

So the difficulty with sport science for chaotic sports like Judo is that you always need to put it into context. So if you are fighting boys in your weight class and they are definitely much, much stronger than you and have more muscle, definitely lift. And if you can still progress easily strength-wise, lift. If you are as strong as your peers but you are still progressing, please continue on lifting. But if you're starting to struggle, find something else, some low-hanging fruit that you can still progress at to get better.

So in that regard, it's not much different from martial arts. You build on your strengths and you build on your weaknesses to build up your level. So that being said, with the strength testing I do at the Elite Performance Center we have at Papendal, we have our benchmarks and we have an idea of where strong people score or less conditioned people score. But still, we need to put it in the context of this athlete.

So if you are known for quickness and you are very tall and lanky, it's going to be obvious that your squat numbers are not going to be brilliant. So please get strong enough and use your leg and work on that. So anything I say or a test that comes up in this podcast, please think about how it fits your style and your development.

James de Lacey5:03

Nice. Do you want to maybe share some of those? Are you able to share any of those strength standards that you have, just general standards that people can maybe look to shoot for?

Cas de Wit5:03

Well, I've looked them up in preparation for the podcast, so I don't really have those of my athletes because I don't really test them that much. But in order to answer your question, actually if you Google "strength," the first thing that comes up is actually your article and it has a lot of strength standards in there that you took from literature.

The other thing you can do is Google search Judo strength Germany, and the first thing that will pop up is a Reddit thread with the German national team strength standards. That's also free.

Then if you really want to get into it, then I have a really strong recommendation to check out Alec McDonald's work. I should have said, well, actually if you can get a hold of him, he's a great podcast guest to get because he worked with Team GB Judo. And I've looked at his work. He wrote about basically designing a Judo program and the S&C part, and I used a lot of what he wrote. And it's from Alec McDonald.

And he has in his e-book, which is pretty cheap, all kinds of benchmarks: rowing, strength, even 30 second test, all kind of data you want. I believe it's even free, but please check that out.

James de Lacey6:07

Oh nice, perfect. I'll link it to you so you can put it in the description.

Cas de Wit6:07

Yeah, yeah, that would be perfect, and then people can check that out.

James de Lacey6:43

Yeah, those sound like some great resources. So let's dive into a little bit of these tests, of things that you've come up with as simple, easy ways that people can test themselves to know where they need to go and be able to make use of the data. Because obviously a lot of people fall into the trap of doing all these tests, getting these numbers, but the numbers don't really mean anything.

There's no way to use these numbers to influence their training. It's kind of just there, and then they do the test and that's it. So you want to maybe dive into some of these tests that you've got?

Cas de Wit7:09

So I think I'll just start off by explaining what kind of test we do at the training center. Not really anything groundbreaking, really.

So we got an upper body endurance test, which is a Wingate. Normally it's done on a bike, but we have like an arm crank. That from research proves to be a pretty valid test to assess upper body endurance. And also if you are a competitive athlete, people tend to score better on those tests, also meaning higher peak power output, but also having much more capacity.

I don't think it means that if you train all the time on the upper body arm crank that you will be a world champion, but I do think that it means that people that are pretty decent at Judo at a competitive level, they will need this capacity. So we kind of keep this in check. Also, when people have an upper extremity injury, we will try to build up their pre-injury scores in this test so we know that they're at least not lagging far behind from where they started. So that is something you can test for the upper body. In a minute I'll say what you can do at home.

We've got jump tests using these jump mats or force transducers, this fancy stuff. We measure height and impulse and that kind of stuff. And the only thing that we then also do is a strength test. So we do an isometric deadlift, so isometric mid-thigh pull. We do this test because we found that always strength testing the athletes is quite cumbersome to their training programs.

So imagine if you have to do a 3RM on squat, bench, deadlift, and something else. That's going to take a lot of energy away from you. So we'd rather just take this info from the sessions and know that we have an underestimation of their max capacities, and then do their strength test, which is pretty safe to do if you do it correctly and is very much standardizable.

Now, what can you do at home? It looks something similar. So for upper body endurance it becomes a bit difficult, but what I suggest is that you first off, you have your gym number. So your bench or your dumbbell bench, you write that down. You know what that is. You probably know it from the top of your head anyways.

Then you put on a metronome or you put it on one or two seconds, I would suggest two, and you start doing push-ups and you don't miss

A beat. Now if you get to 30, that's a full minute. If you get to 60, that's two full minutes. Just write down the score, see if you can improve. I don't have any Benchmark data on that, but I do know that in Alec McDonald's handbook there is Benchmark data on that. So that's interesting if you want to know that kind of stuff. That's nice if you don't have that Benchmark. Just write down your own score, start training endurance, and then retest a few weeks later and you'll know if you beat yourself. That's basically all that matters anyway.

James de Lacey10:34

Do you think there's value in even doing a certain, say bench press, say 60 kilos, having a standard weight and doing that for reps or something like that? Is there value in doing something like that if maybe they didn't want to do a push-up test for time or didn't have a metronome or whatever?

Cas de Wit10:34

Good question, actually. In the past when we didn't have those arm cranks, we have people experiment with Gym Aware, which is like a velocity transducer on the barbell, and then have 10 seconds or 20 seconds all out of benching. The problem you run into is that you have to work around the deceleration of the bar, so it becomes quite a strange looking rep, quick, and it's also not really safe. So at that point you got to ask yourself, what am I really measuring and what am I going to do with this data.

So I think you can train doing fast bench press and really bumping it up, because first off it's fun, and secondly it is something that's trainable. But if you're really decently strong and you do Judo, I'm pretty sure that your endurance is already there.

James de Lacey11:30

So that, the push-up test is probably a better option. What about if someone was going to do, say, just max reps push-ups? Is that something else that could be used, or is the metronome style giving you a better Cadence through the, for the endurance measurement?

Cas de Wit11:30

You can definitely do max rep push-ups, but the thing that I would suggest is to either video yourself on the quality of your reps, or have someone else judge it. Because the hips will drop, you will try and start to cheat, and once you start cheating there's no knowing where cheating is and strict form ends. So just do it properly and take that as a baseline.

James de Lacey11:58

Nice. No, perfect. So so that's the upper body, upper body endurance. What else have you got on that list for things athletes can do at home? So for upper body endurance, for any of the other ones you got going there?

Cas de Wit12:29

Oh, sorry. For the any the other ones, well, let's say explosivity for the lower limbs. Normally, like, we use jump mats, and for at-homers that's not going to help if you're at home or don't have great facility. Now what you could do is box jumping high, but I would kind of advise against that because it's dangerous if you want to do it for max height. It's fun, but it's dangerous.

So what I do is practice broad jumping, which is vertical jumping but then in a diagonal way. So you just frog hop as far as you can. Get a bit of chalk, draw a line, get your tape measure out and see if you can jump three meters, which would be excellent. So there's a lot of actual data on broad jump testing, so you compare yourself against a variety of athletes. I don't have it from the top of my head, but it's a very valid test. And otherwise, explosivity-wise, it becomes quite difficult.

James de Lacey13:29

You could do the same with the vertical jump, right? Hold chalk in your hand and like mark a wall as you jump, or if you video yourself against a wall with a pattern on it you could do the same thing.

So there's a couple of easy tests you could do just at as lower body power, essentially. Jump as far as you can or jump as high as you can.

Cas de Wit13:29

Exactly, perfect.

James de Lacey13:29

And then what else do you got there for some more tests?

Cas de Wit13:59

Well, strength-wise, I just said that we don't really strength test our athletes that much because of logistical and practical problems. Obviously sometimes you do want to know what your strength level is, so often in the off season, which in Judo is very short, but if time allows it, we'll have them hit a 3RM. Or it happens that in an everyday max, which is a kind of unhyped casual 3RM, they actually feel really good and hit a new PR. So that's good enough for me.

If you want to know your strength numbers and compare those to benchmarks, then just go for 3RM I would say, which means that you're going to try and deadlift, squat, bench, or bench pull for three good solid reps. Why three RM? Because if you miss the third you still got two good ones, and this sounds maybe ridiculously easy, but be assured that if you give boys the task of benching a 3RM, most of them will only be able to do one rep.

James de Lacey15:05

Before getting back to the podcast, I want to let you know there's a link down in the description for the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground Community. You can get all the help you need for your Combat Sports training. You get every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program, online course, and you get access to a range of coaches within the private Discord community. So go check that out and back to the podcast.

I think we've all seen that. Oh my gosh, you're standing around, say, take a [expletive] weight off the bat. What the hell are you doing? You can't jump from 100 kilos to 140 or whatever it is when you only can do 120. Any data you can get without, like, you don't want to have a fail and then no data, so 3RM is the way to go.

Any particular, so you mentioned a few of the lifts there, are there particular lifts you would say, okay, these are the ones you should test, and there's ones that you just wouldn't bother?

Cas de Wit16:04

To be honest, like, I would just pick what's available to you. Otherwise you're going to choose something that you're not going to be able to stick to. So if you have a trap bar at home, please use that one. I think it's a safe option for athletes. If you don't, just do the deadlift if you're used to them. Bench, weighted pull-up, bench pull, just the big usual barbell lifts.

James de Lacey16:27

Nice. And regarding strength testing for someone who's looking to maybe do this at home, would they do all of these exercises in one session, in one day, or would you recommend spreading it out?

Cas de Wit16:27

I would go about it just like you would do a training session. So I think you could test all of it in one session, but you have to factor in that you get fatigued. So ideally, if you have two sessions to measure it, I would go about testing the one you find most important ones, or is heaviest first. So go for a squat 3RM, and then maybe for a pull-up 3RM. That's already two important ones that you knock out of the park.

Then do some other work that's important that week, maybe there's some conditioning or some core. And then two days later go for stuff you still want to test. So then do bench or a deadlift. So then you got four good numbers in two sessions, and that would at least give you a measurement to track progress off.

James de Lacey17:28

For upper body endurance, would you also include, say, that pull-up with the metronome?

I can imagine this brutal, going 2 seconds, so 2 seconds up or two seconds, one second up, one second down?

Cas de Wit17:28

No, I think the thing is that you put the metronome on to do a proper push-up. So the thing is that you don't need to pace yourself down and up, you just need to be done by the next beat. If you can pull yourself up in one second with decent form, fine. But at some point you're going to be able to struggle so much and you won't be able to complete a rep in two seconds anyway, and that is a good point to stop. Because at that point it will just look like amateur trying Crossfit. It's not pretty to watch.

James de Lacey18:25

Fair enough. Okay, so people people got to do some of these tests. They're doing some of the upper body endurance tests, they've got the lower body power, and they've got the full body strength testing. So they get the start data. Now what do they do with it to influence their training so they can look to improve these numbers?

Cas de Wit18:25

Well, I think first off you already got a good idea if you're doing your Judo or your fight sports. Some stuff you want to improve, and you know you have an idea of what lifts you are lacking at or could be better at. It's good if you have a look at that Benchmark data I suggested, either Alec McDonald's Benchmark data, or have a Google search and look at Reddit or your page. You could compare to that.

Better would be just to compare against your peers if they do the same kind of lifts. That would be great, to see if it makes any sense to you. So if you are struggling to control people on the mat and you feel that your lower body numbers, the squat and the deadlift, are really lacking compared to your peers or to your club or to the people that you train with, then just emphasize those in your training program. You now know where your, well, 90, 95% number is. Work on that, and then after a...

Week or eight, nine, ten, repeat the testing. Anything that you for yourself decide is important and you actually train, it will improve if you rest and eat adequately. So they have this saying, what gets measured matters, and that's in your own process that is what is also true.

James de Lacey19:50

Perfect. I also want to add on to this, I mean we'll continue down the topic too, but around conditioning tests that people can do, are there any simple ones that you have there that they can tack on to this strength, power, and endurance testing?

Cas de Wit20:20

I'm going to lead into this, but so from literature you often see a test that's called the Judo Specific Fitness Test. It's popular in literature and you can also find in YouTube, and it's basically doing the same throw, a shoulder throw, over and over again with two opponents. So you then shuffle back and forth and you do this at a certain heart rate pace, so it's basically like a step test.

Now you can do this at a club if you have your opponents, and it's of course kind of feels sport specific because it incorporates a throw, but it's nothing like judo. It's doing a judo throw over and over and over again. So I could do it, so it's not a skill test in any way. So I feel that even though it's with a gi and it's field sport specific, you don't need to make it that difficult.

If you got your sessions and you feel like you're not able to recover within between rounds, you're not doing any endurance training, for example, please keep it simple. So if you got a rower to your, if you got a rower and you can use it, please use the rower. Then for example use a 2,000 meter Concept2 row test or any other brand, but make sure you have, you know what kind of brand rower you have.

Row over 2,000 meters. Look up on YouTube how you should do it. Don't go all out from the start, but it will take you around seven, eight minutes. Well, seven or eight minutes is still a bit anaerobic, but it's a very gold standard test for aerobic endurance testing. So if it takes you eight minutes to complete 2,000 meters and you're 25-year-old guy, then it's pretty clear that either your own technique is really poor or you're not so well conditioned.

So you can look up where you score quite easily, again, in the benchmarks I just referenced or go to the Concept2 website and put in your score there. And you can actually calculate what kind of percentile you are, and also you can estimate quite accurately your VO2 max from that score because they got a giant pool of data correlating those scores.

One caveat though is you need to have pretty decent rowing technique. So if you absolutely do not know how to row, it's going to be difficult.

James de Lacey23:07

Yeah, you'll be all up a body like you see at the gyms a lot of the time.

Cas de Wit23:07

But that goes for anything. If you can't do something with acceptable technique, then obviously you can't use it. So another thing, if you don't like rowing or you can't row or you don't have a rower, you could do a 12 minute run test if you can run. So if you're used to running, do it. If you're not used to running at all, don't do it. Please don't do it.

It's just 12 minute test, run for distance. The scores are very easily to compare online. It's a military test. It's called a Cooper test, I believe. And then again you can actually calculate your VO2 max from that. I would say it's less accurate, but you could obviously, if you try running, you do more endurance sessions, you run more for sessions, then you will improve. And the idea is that if you run more distance, row quicker, that your underpinning physical quality improves, which is your aerobic conditioning.

James de Lacey24:04

Do you use any of these tests with your guys, or do you use different conditioning tests?

Cas de Wit24:04

We used to, but we actually used the Cooper test and we had heavyweights running around, but that was like 2016, '17. Obviously that's not a great idea for everyone. But yeah, we have the 2K test, we still do.

Funnily enough, it's good that you mention it, we only do it like once a year. So we know, test to see if we improve a lot on it because we have the athletes that train a lot and they do four technicals a week and they have four and/or sessions a week, and they go on training camps and they're away a lot. So we use that test to see if they don't regress too much.

So they've got, maybe some of them got a weekend assignment to do some steady state conditioning, just some at a pace where they can still have a conversation at. So they still do some endurance work and know how to row, but then maybe every year or so then we retest that 2K. And if it's in the vicinity of their old scores, we can safely assume that they didn't regress too much in aerobic fitness.

James de Lacey25:03

Nice. Do you have any baseline or maybe average numbers off the top of your head what your guys are hitting on that test?

Cas de Wit25:33

I would say that for the guys that are middleweights, about 81, 73, 81, 90, you should be definitely looking at under seven, under seven minutes on a rower. So that would be anywhere from 6:45 to seven, and that would, I would say that's a pretty decent score. If you're above seven minutes, that's either a technical problem with rowing or pacing, but you should be able to do that.

James de Lacey25:33

Do you know what that breaks down to as a split by 500 meter?

Cas de Wit26:10

Yeah. Seven minute breaks down to 1:45 per 500 meters.

James de Lacey26:10

Yeah, that's pretty quick. Yeah, and you have to do it for seven minutes, so yeah, that's damn quick. Okay, so you're going to be quite fit to get through that. So those are a couple of tests that can be easily used to assess endurance. So what can someone do with that information as well once they've got it?

Cas de Wit26:42

Well, if you got this data, you did this rowing test and you feel good about the test, you didn't blow up too early or you've done a pretty good test, then obviously you can use this data and then store it away, see if you can prove later. The worst thing to do would be to see what your rowing pace is. So we just calculated the seven minute rowing pace for 2K is 1:45, so you could try to do trainings with that pace.

So if you then do, for example, 1:40 pace for two minutes, then one minute of easy row, repeat that for ten rounds, then it's only logical that you'll be able to sustain a higher pace for a longer time. If you really want to get into how to do this stuff, there's something called maximal aerobic speed, and it basically comes down to this. Oh, here I go again with the basically. It comes down to this, so you take the distance you covered and you divide it by the amount of seconds it took.

So in the case of the rowing, it's like 2,000 divided by 720, and it will often come back to a score of around 4 meters per second. So now we know this, that your maximal aerobic speed that you just tested in this test is 4 meters per second, let's say. Now if you want to get it up to five, you need to train around a little bit up or 4 meters per second or a little bit under. You just need to accumulate volume and get a bit quicker.

So you now know that this is your 100% aerobic speed. So you could now do long intervals, say two or three minutes at 90% of this 4 meters per second, which would then say 3.6 meters per second, which would be around 1:55 pace, something around that. Or do more short intervals and go quicker than that. So you row, for example, 1:40 for 30 to 45 seconds, have a bit of a coffee, and then start doing it again.

You can do all kinds of workouts with this maximal aerobic speed principle. I'm sure you have an article on it, but you can use this on every modality: running, assault biking. Yes, you can do this on assault bike as well. It's horrible, but yes, you can do this. It's basically conditioning made simple for strength coaches, and if you use it for the goal that's intended for, which is endurance training or, well yeah, not too short interval aerobic conditioning, then it's a perfect tool to use.

James de Lacey29:17

Yeah, if anyone searches, I think it's Rowing for BJJ, I think I spell all that out in that article regarding. But there's also another good resource. If you search Dan Baker MAS, I think you should, I should come up with his PDF as well. He details a lot of it for field sports.

I think one thing I don't know if you've come across it as well, like for example, if you're typically for running they prescribe 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off for the maximum aerobic speed. But when you're rowing and stuff, it seems maybe going 30 seconds or, for conditioning at least, going 30 seconds tends to work a little better. Because when you're doing 15 seconds, it's so, you're almost sprinting for that whole 15. I don't know if you work on the 15 second or maybe longer intervals.

Cas de Wit29:41

Yeah, to be true, I think this 15/15 interval is designed for intermittent sports.

So if you'd be looking at Judo or BJJ, maybe BJJ is already longer intervals of work, but if you're looking at Judo, yeah, I would say it's intervals, right? It's around, Judo actually comes down to about 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest. So it's actually almost like a Tabata, but the thing is you make it more complicated by doing this.

So the thing about testing is you want to have a valid test that tests the physical quality you're trying to train. So if you want to work on aerobic conditioning, test it like that. So I think that the running test they do for field-based sports is that, it is interval-wise or 15-5 or different intervals, because it's more sport specific.

By using this for Judo, I would stay away from that because you're just mocking up the what you're actually doing and make it more difficult.

James de Lacey31:13

So for the actual intervals that you're doing though, are you doing those, because obviously for example you're rowing at 90% or 110% of your MAS. You're doing your long intervals, you mentioned you're doing 2 to 3 minutes, and then your short intervals, how are you structuring those intervals?

Cas de Wit31:13

Short intervals can be higher MAS. With rowing I would be careful to program too high percentages because you got this flywheel that doesn't really, it's got an exponential curve to it. So 120% MAS on a row is damn near impossible.

James de Lacey31:45

It feels like sprinting, man. Like I remember doing 100%, 100% MAS feels like sprinting.

Cas de Wit31:45

So if you want to do shorter intervals, you can bump up, for example, sprinting speed to up to 120, 140. If you do it on a row, you can do up to 115, 120, but keep it very, very short and put in your recovery like you're at like 70% MAS, something as really chill.

Then again, you're trying to improve aerobic conditioning, so I wouldn't use your max aerobic speed score to then use it for very, very short intervals. We're not trying to improve repeat sprint ability here. We're not trying to improve 30 second intervals.

So if you want to do that, please use a different test. So what you could do is, next to your 2K row score, also do a 30 second all-out test on the C2. And please warm up appropriately before doing that, because otherwise it will, it will cost you your score and also be very terrible. It's already terrible, but it will hurt you at the end more.

If you got a decent MAS score and you got a really high power output, because that, the Concept2 also gives you the average watts after 30 seconds, and you know that you are very, very strong, very powerful, but your aerobic conditioning might be lacking. And I think for many judokas that come from clubs and do a lot of judo and strength training, this is often the case that they are very anaerobic types and they are really strong, but they have less than great aerobic capacity.

So that's not terrible per se, especially if you win every match within two minutes. That's not a problem. But if that, you have to do five matches on a day and judo is going on for seven minutes and it's a horrible day and everything takes very long, then at some point you'll be absolutely knackered and you don't have the aerobic conditioning baseline to recover from it.

So if you know you are this person, please put in one to two hours of steady state aerobic work per week and it will help you greatly.

James de Lacey33:46

Nice. So then how would, how would someone fit, so they've done these tests, how are you looking to fit this around judo? I mean, a lot of these people listening to this won't be on the professional schedule that you guys are on with doing eight, eight sessions a week plus strength and conditioning.

So maybe they're looking at three, four, maybe even five judo sessions a week. Where can they fit some of these, I guess, conditioning sessions and strength sessions in? Is there a simple way to maybe condense it so it's not so much time? Because obviously people work full time as well, so being able to fit these in is just another training session away from home. So is there a way maybe they can do it on the mats after training, before training, anything like that?

Cas de Wit34:13

Well, the simple way would be to buy the program. No, no, to answer the question, I understand people are pressed for time and obviously you want to spend your time doing judo. You got to go to school, you got to go to work, I understand.

So I would, instead of making it very complicated, I would think about it like this: so if you go do a training, are you able to repeat it quickly without a loss of quality? So if you do a heavy squat session and you go away for 15 minutes and come back, can you do the session again? Well, if you've done the session properly, probably not.

To me this means the session is heavy, you need some recovery to do this. So to plan this straight before judo is probably not the smartest thing to do. Be really fresh for judo. Strength training after judo can be a better idea because judo is more important than strength. But then please do know that your strength will be a bit impaired. You can still do it.

Now what I would stay away from is I wouldn't do, for example, the steady state conditioning or the maximum aerobic speed training before judo. So will take away the energy you need for judo. If you've done your judo session, you still have a bit of energy left and you don't have to go home, that would be a great time to maybe put in a little bit of maybe 20 minutes of easy cooling down, cycling or rowing.

Otherwise, try to space your sessions away from your judo. That way you will be fresh for your judo, you can adapt from your judo, and the S&C sessions are secondary to your judo anyway, so please place them away.

Anything that's most fatiguing, you want to do maximum aerobic speed intervals and you notice that always takes it out of you, then put it somewhere in your week where the other stuff is not so affected by it. So if that means like Sunday afternoon, put it there. If that means before work, then go to work and then after work still have a great judo session, put it there.

James de Lacey36:46

Nice. And then I also want to want to finish this podcast too on, on I guess the idea of low volume strength training. Obviously we talked a lot about there about fatigue using other exercise that negatively impacts your judo.

So when you're talking sets and reps, what are you, I guess, what are you typically prescribing to your athletes so they're not leaving the gym so sore and beat up that the judo training is affected on the same day or even the next day? And obviously there might be some times in the year that might happen depending on what's going on, but majority of the time you're looking to incrementally develop strength and size without having that negative effect on your judo. So do you, I guess, some of the specifics around that?

Cas de Wit37:18

To zoom out, if you want to work on your strength, for example, you've got to accept that at some point it will make you less fresh than if you wouldn't do any strength training at all. So it's going to have an impact anyway, nothing is really truly free.

But if you want to do two or three strength sessions per week and it's spaced away a bit from judo sessions, and you don't want it to interfere too much with your judo, I would stay away from what I would call junk volume. So junk volume is the volume of work you do that does fatigue you but is probably not helping you.

So what is junk volume? Anything that you can't probably recover from is junk volume. So if you do 10 times 10 German volume training, then from literature we know that those last five sets are utterly [expletive]. They will actually cost you your gains and it's really, really fatiguing.

So probably no one is that stupid to do that kind of stuff while doing judo, but think about it like this: if you do four proper sets of squats, four times five, and already the last set is already a bit difficult to complete, that is enough. Don't push it much, much more. Don't do a drop set until you lost 20% of your work or about that.

So if you want to get stronger, if you do a set of five in squats and your goal is to get stronger because you only squat about 60 kilos, you want to get 200, right? You got to build some fatigue because the fatigue and the volume builds the adaptation, but you got to be able to recover from it.

So don't do a lot of sets and also maybe stick to lower reps. Because if you want to do four sets of 15, for example, the first five reps are going to be really easy for you. If you can squat 60, you're going to be able to do that with like 40 kilos or something. It's going to be really easy. The next five are going to be moderately difficult and the last five will be horrible.

So what you now have done is that you've got a huge spectrum of velocities where you lift up, and your body will respond to it. Especially if you're not that strong, you will get stronger. But as I was just saying about the junk volume, what is it that you're actually trying to train now? Because it's a lot.

So why would you just do less velocity loss, so less reps, and do that little bit with more quality? So instead...

Of doing 15 just do five or six and then do four or five sets and then go home. And then two days later do it again with a little bit more weight. And if you keep that up for years, you'll beat anyone.

This is the whole idea after clusters. And clusters for the people that don't know is where you normally would do four reps in succession if it's heavy, say 85% your deadlift is 100 kilos and you would be able doing 85 kilos for four reps, then it can be a bit difficult maybe if you don't have a great day. So what you then do is you get it up two times, rest for 10, 15 seconds, maybe 20, usually about 15 seconds, then pick it back up again.

So what this does is you basically make it two mini sets. You have a little bit more rest to recovery, and now you're less neared at the end of it. And you still have done a good amount of volume with good quality. So this is the trick to get stronger without killing yourself.

James de Lacey41:03

A lot of, in fact I think every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program uses cluster sets in them for that exact reason. And then if anyone's interested into more on cluster sets as well, the episode with Greg Nuckols that we did, it was a little while ago now, I'll link it in the end of the episode.

You can watch that one too and he dives a lot about, I mean, he's kind of pioneered the research on cluster sets. He's pretty much the author on every single cluster set paper there is. So he's always still experimenting as well with it all, and there's so many different ways to use it. It's a very interesting topic.

Cas de Wit41:26

So what I always say is that sometimes people already know stuff from a different field and they fail to apply it to strength training. So I think cluster sets in weightlifting, you want to do a clean or a snatch, you're not going to be able to do 10 of them in a row, not if it's like 70 or 80% of your max. It's going to look horrible. Why? Because the speed is going to be too low at some point.

And if you do this with back squats, it's suddenly a technique. It's suddenly something fancy. It's the exact same principle. You don't want to get too slow, otherwise you're not training what you want to train.

And I understand that sometimes you just want to train and grind a little bit. I had one athlete actually tell me, "Look, I understand that this is S&C and this is a good thing to do, to know to do S&C wise, but every time you make me do clusters it feels like I'm giving up when it starts to hurt." It's kind of true, but there's merit to it. So please be wise about your strength training and even wiser about your judo.

James de Lacey42:47

Is bar speed something that you look to instill for all exercises, trying to move the bar as quick as possible, post squat, deadlift, bench, whatever it is?

Cas de Wit42:47

That's a really good question. So bar speed, we don't measure it because it's impractical in sessions where multiple athletes are. But that's not really what you asked. You said is it important.

James de Lacey42:47

If someone's listening to this, should they try and move the bar as quick as possible for every rep? Because obviously we talked about quality and about maybe reducing the reps of those big sets. Is that something you would recommend someone to do?

Cas de Wit43:17

Yeah. So that's a good thing to, if you're doing clusters, that doesn't give you an excuse to just chill a bit. No, every rep you do has to be at maximal intent. So this also why you don't do cluster with 60 kilo and bench, because you will throw it out of your hand. So we do clusters with heavier weights.

So the premise is, and that kind of goes for all big compound lifts, if it's heavy enough to do safely and your technique is on point and you have these two prerequisites, then you should lift as fast as you can. Always. So you always need this intent. Why? Because you create the highest amount of force that way. And that is what you're actually trying, sorry, power that way. And that is what you actually need on the mats. You need power, not force. You don't have eight seconds to throw someone. You have 200 milliseconds.

Also, if you, for example, decide to lift lazily, they called lazy lifting, and you just put the pressure on the bar just so it lifts and then you just kind of half-ass it up, well congratulations because you then made yourself more tired. We also did it with submaximal intent, which will not help you get much stronger. It might get you a bit more muscular, but concentrically speaking it will not help.

So you can slow down on the eccentric, on the way down or the easy part of the lift, but don't do it on concentric when it's time to really go, because that will give you the best results.

James de Lacey44:47

And you would recommend that obviously even if it wasn't a cluster set, for example you're doing sets of five, you're trying to move all five reps?

Cas de Wit45:13

If you do a set 80, 85% of your 100 kilo back squat and you lift, for someone that squats 100 kilo, doing 85 for two reps is not terrible. But still, if you're going up, please floor it. Do it as fast as you can. Because first off, you'll get more gains from it. You get stronger and more explosive, which is the goal anyway. And secondly, if you keep that bar speed up, you'll be less fatigued for the next reps.

So really, if you do anything in the gym and you can do it safely, please do it properly.

James de Lacey45:46

I think people get caught up from maybe a bodybuilding mentality or learning lifting like a bodybuilder where you're trying to feel the muscle and you're slowing the reps down to feel whatever muscles work during these lifts. But it's not about feeling any muscles. It doesn't matter. It's just about trying to move it as quick as possible.

No, perfect. I think that's everything I had for you today, Cas. But if anyone wants to find you, follow you, see what you're doing with the Dutch Judo Olympic team, where can they do that?

Cas de Wit46:12

Well, I've got my program on your site obviously, but I've also got an Instagram which I'm trying to make, put more content on. So recently I posted a little video of a heavyweight of mine doing rehab and that was well received. I'm going to keep doing that. It's findable, my Instagram. That's Cas.deWit. So it's C.A.S.D.E.W.I.T on Instagram. I think you can link it probably.

James de Lacey46:47

Yep. Otherwise I'll put my other details in the description, I think.

Cas de Wit46:47

Perfect.

James de Lacey46:47

Everything will be down there, including a link to Cas's program as well, his judo program in there. So but thanks for coming, Cas. I appreciate you sharing everything there.

Cas de Wit46:47

Well, thank you for having me. I was a bit afraid that I have nothing to speak about, but that's always, you always find something to elaborate about. So I'm happy to be a guest again and thanks for the invite.

James de Lacey47:16

Now we'll be bringing you on after the Olympics as well to chat everything there too.

Cas de Wit47:16

Yeah, stay tuned because after the Olympics we're going to go deep, deep into the Dutch Judo Olympic team preparation, everything they've done, everything they're doing differently to other teams around the world. So that'll—