BJJ Strength & Conditioning Made Simple w/ Alex Sterner (SSOF Ep 185)

Alex Sterner2:57

Okay, yeah. So, did that year in commercial fitness back home, realized that I hated the commercial fitness one-on-one model.

James de Lacey3:04

We've all been there.

Alex Sterner3:04

Yeah, I mean, there's I could go on and on about the limitations there, but I think essentially it's a terrible use of the coach's time. It's a terrible use of the client's resources. It's just not all that sustainable.

And so, yeah, moved out here. Was working at like a sport performance facility. My thought was like, hey, within maybe within 5 or 10 years I could be working with some of those top guys. Actually, to bring it back to when I was in that kinesiology program, I remember in one of our sports admin classes, on one of the first days, they had us like introduce ourselves, talk about what we wanted to do within strength and conditioning or kinesiology like career-wise.

You got the people that are there before physical therapy. They're sort of talking about therapy. You had we had some guys that there was one guy that wanted to work as a strength coach in NASCAR. You had someone else who wanted to be in baseball. People wanted to do stuff in the private sector, Division I environments, professional sports, the whole gamut.

And when it got to me, I was like, I want to work with combat sport athletes, either MMA or jiu-jitsu. And there was no UFC Performance Institute at the time. There was nothing. We're talking this was 2013, 2012. And so, they had they're like, okay, so where do you go for that? And I'm like, well, you go somewhere where there's a lot of fighters.

I'm like, I kind of envisioned myself doing something in the private sector and getting into it. And because I do, I trained jiu-jitsu for a while even at that point in time, I was like, finding somewhere to ingrain myself into that culture and try to build a business around it.

It's funny because it was one of the less well-defined and more sounded kind of like a dreamer in the sense that it wasn't anything that had like a clear path and it was kind of like, okay, kid, like you'll figure it out. And to their credit, it was kind of a dreamer thing. I just went out there, made a series of decisions that wound up but that wound up being pretty fruitful.

I thought it would take years to start to work with some of the top guys. Within a couple months of being out here, JT Torres, who was a top black belt at Atos at the time, was just coming back from meniscus surgery. He reached out to me. We sat down. Man, and it just exploded from there.

JT is a natural leader. He's got a great attitude, mindset, approach to everything. One of the first things he did with me, this was prompted by him once we got started. He wanted to map out his ideal training week. So, he had all of his high effort training days with comp class, some of his lower effort like skill-building sessions built in there. And he wanted to be collaborative in terms of fitting in strength and conditioning when it was most appropriate.

I mean, incredible stuff. And that was again, even though I push a lot of my athletes to do that, especially nowadays, at that point in time, it was all that's how he wanted to structure it. It was a beautiful thing. And I worked with JT for like a year and a half until he went off and opened his own jiu-jitsu academy on the East Coast.

And yeah, from there it very quickly snowballed. He talked me up to the other guys in competition class. Started working with a ton of the top guys at Atos. Was training them in 2017, 2018 as an entire team. Sort of mimicking that Division I environment, having them come in all at the same time. We rented out a gym before I had my own space.

And it was incredible. The energy, the vibes were unmatched. It's another chance for everybody to team build a bit. And it was everyone was on the same page. As opposed to everyone, like you see in a lot of combat sports, everyone doing something a little different here, little different there. I mean, they're all hitting the same comp class. They're all trashed at the same time. They're all a bit more energized at the same time. It was great.

And from there in 2020, opened up my own spot here. Been here ever since. And now work not just with a single competition team. I mean, I've worked with top MMA athletes, a lot of top jiu-jitsu athletes in multiple affiliations. And yeah, really carved out that niche within combat sports.

James de Lacey7:16

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Love it. That's awesome. And we'll go straight into the nitty-gritty cuz you mentioned it now and we're just going to this podcast will be all over the place cuz that's how my brain works. So, you mentioned JT Torres and how he kind of how he wants to map out his week. Be kind of interesting maybe for the listeners.

I don't know if you still remember how that was structured or maybe just generally how that kind of how that kind of puzzle fit together. So, if someone's listening, they could be like, oh, maybe I could start to implement some of these principles into their own jiu-jitsu training.

Alex Sterner8:52

Yeah, so essentially, the thing that I was really pushing to him at the time was that if we're building these general qualities in the weight room, we want to be able to hit these sessions throughout the points of the week with the least amount of accumulated fatigue. Obviously, with people doing combat sports, particularly those that are competitive, it's kind of a fantasy land to have no fatigue whatsoever, right?

But at purposefully at the times where there was lower fatigue. And then the thing that I relayed to him that I would say I'm far, far better at now. I mean, that was over 10 years ago now. But I was like, "Look, we'll make an effort that you come to me when you have when you're at those lower points on average for fatigue, and it's up to me to make sure that I can give you the best benefit that I can without driving that fatigue up a ton." And, I've gotten way better at that, especially just through the sheer volume of people that I've worked with in the last 11 plus years.

But yeah, that was the goal. And I think that regardless of your experience level, whether this is somebody listening to it who is just a combat athlete themself and not really a strength coach or super experienced in the weight room, if you go into it with some of these objectives in mind, you can go so far, right? Like at the time, a lot of if I was sitting across from myself from 11 years ago, there's so much I could teach myself, but our objectives were sound.

And I think when you have those clear objectives in mind, you've got some KPIs that you can pay attention to, you're aware of your rate limiters at what you can do at any one point in time. Again, like will that be good enough? Absolutely. And I think it's a matter of getting it to that point of good enough and not hyper fixating on a ton of these small details, especially with combat sport athletes, right?

Even, let's say you and I were training partners for jiu jitsu or MMA or whatever. It's actually very common if any two rounds that you and I have are not all that the same. Of course, if we've got a massive difference in skill or size or something like that, then maybe they're always the same. One of us always steamrolls the other, but for the people who tend to be your quality training partners where there isn't a massive discrepancy, like one day maybe I pass your guard or something and I'm really not working all that hard from that point forward in the round, right?

You're kind of just surviving, avoiding the finish. I'm transitioning across dominant positions. Other times, maybe it's a war on the feet. There's a couple scrambles to start the round out, so we've already got our heart rates through the roof. What I'm getting at is the fact that if you try to micromanage every single detail, it can just get thrown out in an instant.

You go into a class, even let's say it's a lower volume day for comp class, so it's going to be high intent for those rounds, but you get matched up on one of those days where you're both feeling good. The round starts with a couple scrambles. It doesn't really get to that static of a position. What should have been like a lower stress day is actually crazy fatiguing.

So with that, there's obviously got to be some flexibility built in. And where I think that comes from is anchoring yourself with those sound principles or objectives. Whereas long as you're keeping those things in mind, there's actually plenty of wiggle room that is acceptable. And yeah, I think it's the combination of having those really sound things to keep you anchored, but also the flexibility to roll with the fact that it's not going to be super super predictable.

You've got somebody who is, let's say, a bodybuilder or if you're a strength coach working with a powerlifter or a strongman, how these guys are going to feel day-to-day, what you're doing as a strength coach is their primary stressor, right? So you're pretty damn aware of how they're going to feel at any one point in time because you're witnessing everything.

And if you let's say you have multiple people on the same program, they're all going to experience things pretty similarly. Obviously, there's some variation, but by and large, much more predictable. When you are a strength coach for I mean, for any other sport, but particularly within combat sports, it can just be so different day-to-day. So yeah, having that flexibility, but also being anchored very strongly by those objectives or principles or whatever you want to call them that you're operating between, I think is a very good way to go about it.

James de Lacey14:09

Objectives or principles? What would be some examples of those objectives or principles?

Alex Sterner14:09

Okay, cool. So we could start with the ones that I mentioned before, right? Wanting to make sure that you are coming in if you're going to be training those general qualities, which we can break it down to four. And we can break those down into lots of other subgroups for sure, right? And I'm sure you and I could nerd out about that, but for someone who's understanding is more surface level, we've got four primary general qualities that we are looking to develop in the weight room.

So the first one is force production or strength. The second one is rate of force production or power. The third one is going to be factors of endurance, whether that's energy system work or local muscular endurance. Endurance is the third one, and then the fourth is going to be range of motion or flexibility. And obviously, you can shuffle those priorities based on the individual or based on the sport, the task that you're training for, but those are by and large the four general qualities that you'll be looking to build in the weight room.

In general, if you are working on improving those four qualities in the weight room, you're going to expose that individual to a more potent stimulus or demand of whichever quality or multiple qualities you're focusing on at that point in time, a more potent stimulus than they would ever experience within their sport. You want to exceed the demands of the sport so you can actually build that quality.

Because of that, you want to make sure that fatigue is relatively low. If fatigue is too high, the likelihood that you can even reach the demands of the sport, let alone exceed it, let alone to do so safely, is just far less likely. So relatively low fatigue given your average across the week when you're hitting your sessions in the weight room. So that's one.

Another one would be limiting fatigue while you're going through those strength and conditioning sessions. So whether that is limiting total volume, whether that is modulating intensity when you have to. There's lots of those acute program variables that you can modify such that you're getting to a productive stimulus, but you're not just driving someone so far into the ground.

And that was kind of the discussion with JT where it was like, "Look, I want you to come to me when you're at lower level of fatigue, but that's going to require a bit of trust that I'm not going to drive you into the ground and make you complete [expletive] for your next sport session, right?" So yeah, one training in the weight room at relatively low levels of fatigue. Another anchor would be limiting fatigue from those sessions while also tracking objective metrics and making sure that you're moving them in the right direction.

Another one that I would say for combat sport athletes that is a tough sell sometimes. I'm sure that you have experienced this to some degree, but a major issue that I encountered a lot earlier on in my career. This is now something that I spearhead right off the bat, but I started to just notice this was a problem. You got people coming to you with limited resources, so it might be tough for them to pay you to work with you year round.

So when do they show up? They show up eight weeks out of their most important tournament of the year. And it's like, "Okay." I used to get messages that they're three or four weeks out. It can get even worse than that, right? But let's just even take the typical eight-week camp model, and then they're like, "All right, I'm going to hammer my strength and conditioning in my eight-week camp."

Well, if we look at if we look across the entire year, that is probably the greatest amount of fatigue that you accumulate within your sport in an eight-week span. And now we're just adding in a bunch of novel stimuli in the weight room. Like that is just a recipe for disaster.

So the thing that I talk about with my guys, another one of these principles or anchors that I have is when you do not have a huge fight or a very significant tournament lined up, that's my in-season with you. That's when we're actually going to push those general qualities a little bit further, a little bit harder because we can to achieve in a general sense, to achieve a little bit greater of a stimulus, we're going to accumulate a little more fatigue.

So for us to really push those qualities anywhere, I want to make sure that we don't have you grinding out super tough sessions. Potentially, some of these guys are hitting hard sessions multiple times a day through camp. That is just not the time that we're looking to add weight to your squat variation or to, my hands are kind of tied at that point, especially if we haven't laid a foundation.

So yeah, another one of those guiding principles is the fact that I love working with these guys through camp. I think that's great, but in an ideal world, I'm working with these guys year round. And our in-season in the weight room is when they don't immediately have something on the horizon. That's when we're going to really identify what things we're going to dial in and work on and push those numbers up.

And then when we get in camp and they've just got greater stressors to recover from from their sport, I dial things back. And there's going to be certain things that fall into maintenance, right? When I've got a guy that's eight weeks leading up to ADCC Worlds, I'm not looking to add weight to that dude's squat, especially if I work with him year round.

Quite frankly, as he's dropping weight and training more, if I can maintain the squat that he's set in his off season with lower volumes and everything else as his body weight is going like that is a huge huge win. And this can be something tough for a fighter that's listening to this recognizing, I get it. Motivation's high. You've paid your registration fee or if, you're in MMA, you've had somebody reach out to you or your manager, set the date for the fight.

Okay, motivation's high. You've got your light at the end of the tunnel. You're trying to really work hard. That's when you're maybe most motivated to work in the weight room. But I actually try to curtail that a bit and I want to have our higher efforts in the weight room when we don't have that lined up so we can maintain some of those variables. We have more to play with when you are in camp so that I'm not just adding even more fatigue onto this roaring bonfire of fatigue that we get when somebody has that stressor and they're just pounding themselves into the ground.

So that can be a tough ask. If you are a younger coach or if you are a combat sport athlete and that's how you approach things, I also understand that these guys sometimes get burnt out from their camps. So the last thing that they want to do is hit strength and conditioning in the month or two after one of their competitions.

So I also work with them where I'm like, look, I get if we're a bit burnt out. Maybe we don't do as many days per week but we've got relatively high volumes for the days per week we do get in here. I'm willing to work with these guys. But I really try to shift that mindset of like we're going to try to pull every lever in fight camp and then totally just go off the rails after that.

So that can be a bit of a hard bit but I also think, having my own place, establishing my own culture, that's kind of the expectation now and it's very valuable when you've got other people, people that have worked with you for years. They're sort of setting the bar for that and the newer or younger guys coming in can look up to that and just be like, oh damn, this is how they model it. I'm just going to sort of get in step with them.

So yeah, I'd say those are some of those bigger overarching principles or anchors for what we want to do. Now, the amount of acceptable answers for how you structure that is nearly infinite, right? We don't have to focus too much on what's optimal or micromanage every detail. If you are anchored by those principles, if you're following that as a general North Star, you're doing a lot of things right.

And sure, as coaches, we might want to argue about the perfect intervals to target this energy system and exactly how much all that stuff falls by the wayside and is far less important than really hitting those big rocks.

James de Lacey22:43

Yeah, the consistency aspect is literally the most important part. And as you mentioned, if people just coming in for a weight camp, you're screwing yourself already on top of that. But I have a question in the live chat for you. Mr. Paul Green, I don't know if you know Paul Green. He was on the pod, a fellow jiu-jitsu practitioner.

He said you covered it but I'm going to ask you anyway before I give you some follow-ups. But he's asking the thoughts on the 80/20 endurance principles for coaches. So, I'm assuming 80% low intensity, 20% high intensity for guys who are doing 15 to 20 hours per week on the mats.

Alex Sterner22:43

Yeah, so this is tough, right? I like to take a lot of this stuff based on an individual, on an individual basis. I don't think that's a bad guideline.

I think there's plenty of wiggle room within that. I think there's some people, whether it's an influence of genetics where they're going to already have solid output for certain variables anyways versus others that despite a hefty amount of mat time have pretty piss-poor VO2 max or whatever metric we want to look at for a specific energy system. So I think you can certainly do worse, right? I think that's a solid guideline.

But there's an obvious thing in the realm of even time constraints, right? I think there's a ton of talk about zone two. For my individuals who are full-time jiu-jitsu or combat sport athletes and time is not really a factor, I think some zone two work is a great way to get some of those aerobic adaptations while minimizing fatigue.

But you got to dump a lot of time into it. I think for somebody who is more like whether they're a master's athlete or they're competing to challenge themselves and have something to shoot for but they've got a nine-to-five, that can be really tough to adhere to. And as opposed to writing it off entirely because you can't hit those crazy constraints, something I got into it with somebody on one of my platforms recently where they were talking about, they're like, oh man, anything less than three days a week of conditioning is just maintenance.

And I'm like, really? You take someone who's doing no conditioning and you give them two relatively intense 10-ish minute interval sessions. That is an additional stimulus for that person that, given the right intensities, will actually move them in the right direction.

Now, is it going to be super noticeable super quick, right? We could talk about all of these other details for it. But yeah, not losing sight of the fact that you don't have to dump hours into conditioning work to move the needle in the right direction, especially if you're not doing a ton of that work off of the mats already. So I also like to keep that practical sense in there.

It's kind of when we're talking about ideal sets for hypertrophy or whatever. Like, bro, if you get, for a target muscle group, you get even three or four across the week, you get three or four relatively high effort sets, we are going to be moving in the right direction. Again, are we going to be moving super quickly? Is it going to be really noticeable really quick?

Probably not, but that awareness of minimum effective dose and what you can do with that is so powerful. So anytime we're adding something new, be aware of that minimum effective dose. Lean into that. Start there and add from there.

So yeah, again, I guess what I would say is you can do worse. If time's not a concern, have at it. If time is a concern, do not let the obvious time constraints of something like that guideline prevent you from doing something. Even a little bit of conditioning work can go a long way.

James de Lacey26:09

Yeah, those are great points and as you mentioned with the sets as well, good luck doing 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week while rolling six plus times a week. It's just there's no way.

Alex Sterner27:00

Right. Blow yourself up. And that's something that I'm aware of too. When I look at those principles or anchors, even if I've got a professional athlete, sometimes I think as a younger coach, I clung much more tightly to those things. I was like, oh man, I want to, you go from as a younger coach, you start to work with higher level athletes and you're like, oh my god, they're not restricted by a nine-to-five anymore. Yeah, you might also be unaware of how much they're running themselves into the ground.

The gentleman that you said that had that question is already talking about very high training volumes for the sport. So again, yes, we might not have those constraints of the nine-to-five. That person has probably filled that with a lot of really hard training anyways.

So yeah, just being aware that minimum effective dose is a thing. If we're not really advanced with whatever physical quality we're looking at and maybe we're not doing a ton of consistent work sort of as you mentioned as well, I'm not really looking to optimize with anybody. If they haven't been hitting that quality for at least a consistent year, well, I'm not looking at optimizing a damn thing. I'm looking at how do we hit that minimum effective dose? How do we make it where the next 12 months, every single month, you take a step forward with that variable however small that step might be.

Then after that 12 months, okay, my conditioning's not where I want it to be. I'm still hitting the training volumes on the mats that are necessary for skill development, etc. etc. Not racking up injuries.

I'm not feeling crazy fatigued. What more can we do? All right, cool. Let's check that out. So I think timing is also very important for when we start to really double down on a stimulus and try to maximize. I think nowadays, and I think your platform or my platform can totally be guilty of sometimes, as coaches, we want to talk about those specifics. We want to talk about what you can do to maximize it. But for that individual

we enjoy. For sure, dude. I love reading about that stuff. I love trying that stuff. Even myself with my own training, sometimes I fly too close to the sun. I'm like, oh man, I'm psyched about something for a period of time. I'm really crushing it and then I'm like, okay, that's too much. Cool. Dial it back.

But I think I've also got a pretty advanced training age myself. So I kind of know what I can get away with when I do fly too close to the sun. Because I'm also already doing minimum effective dose and have for a long time. So upping that training volume is less of a big deal for me than someone who has not consistently stuck with it for a while, jumps up to what's optimal or maximal and then they're just burning the candle at both ends.

James de Lacey29:43

Yeah, I think Paul here corrected me. He's talking about on the mat 80/20. So he says he's got a coach on board at the moment and even said to him, "You're grappling that much. I want to manage on the mat fatigue." I don't know if—

Alex Sterner29:43

Okay, I think you got that? I'm going to jump in. I think he might be talking about that breakdown that I did for one of my athletes, Marlon, a month or two ago when he won ADCC trials.

James de Lacey30:11

Okay, yeah, go into it.

Alex Sterner30:11

Yeah, in that I was talking about how Marlon only does 20% to 30% of his total training at competition pace. He's really, really good at being disciplined and going in with an objective of skill building, which I think is huge. I actually love this subject because a lot of people, a lot of us fall in love with something like jiu-jitsu because you get into it and you're able to just get those hard rounds every day.

James de Lacey30:40

Yeah. Yeah, that's the way, man.

Alex Sterner30:40

And it's tough, right? Because yeah, you look at other sports, other combat sports, something like MMA or boxing. Obviously, you can't do full contact 100% sparring multiple days a week 'cause your brain matter's going to be coming out of your nose in a matter—

James de Lacey31:02

Or even any sport, rugby. We never—We had one contact a week. Maybe two and then it'll be two for game days as well. So you'd have two contact days a week in season.

Alex Sterner31:02

Right, which already is like that is a load management strategy, obviously, for your brain, but it also applies to the rest of your body. Unfortunately, well, fortunately and unfortunately. Fortunately for your brain, that's not the case in jiu-jitsu. Unfortunately for the rest of your body, you don't have this hard break for load management and a lot of times that's how these guys get these mismanaged minor injuries that become far more major than they need to be, etcetera, etcetera.

So yeah, I think if you're talking about the 20/80 there for like 20% of his mat time is at competition pace and 80% is much more skill building, which is going to be more productive for your coordination, tactics, techniques, that sort of thing. And at the same time far easier on your body. Love that strategy. Absolutely love it and you can tinker it from there, right?

If you find that you need a little more like 30% or maybe you need to go lower than 20% 'cause your total mat time is actually quite high, all of those things are valid. Again, some of that flexibility within that framework, but the anchor there is the fact that the majority of your mat time is probably going to be best spent skill building as opposed to having rounds that are happening at the pace of like the final for worlds, right?

So yeah, in general, significant majority of that mat time being skill building, super valuable. For anyone who is a lower, newer to the sport, that can be it can be really tough because—

James de Lacey32:49

Yeah, it's almost impossible for them.

Alex Sterner32:49

Yeah, yeah. However, I do think exposing people to that idea as soon as possible is really big. And then, yes, of course, they're going to have limitations. They're going to be like, "Man, it's really tough for me to do that." But planting the seed for that idea early, I think it's crucial for longevity in sport.

James de Lacey32:49

I'm going to give you two scenarios. For someone who's maybe only training two, three times a week, would they still apply this principle? And the second scenario, maybe I don't know if this even happens anywhere, but someone's training six plus times a week, but maybe their classes are heavily live or sparring based. How could they potentially implement this?

Alex Sterner32:49

Okay, I'm going to jump on that second scenario first if that's cool.

Well, I initially was exposed to the skill building approach to live rounds by Keenan, who was a training partner of mine at Atos in those early years. And he was very vocal about how he'd be working on something and that would be his goal for that given live session.

So he's still going. He's not trying to do something separate from the main class, but he goes in that day he's like, "All right, today I'm working on collar and sleeve." So during all of his live rounds, he's pulling guard, he's going to collar and sleeve, and early on maybe that means you're getting passed early, but you're identifying at what points you're getting passed, you're starting to—that can then direct your film study or your questions to other people who maybe are more proficient at that.

But yeah, I actually think a lot of that skill building will happen in a more live or open context. And I think that that applies whether you're doing something that's more the traditional learning setting with drilling and things like that or the CLA approach, which is also gaining a lot of steam.

So yeah, I think that that actually applies a ton and that's where you're actually going to see the most value of it because you're taking something—if you're taking an hour of live training, that is maybe the most condensed stressor that you're encountering. So if you're able to take that hour of live training and tell yourself for that day, maybe that's a night class, the next morning you're hitting your strength work, that night class you are skill building exclusively.

Whatever that thing is that you're workshopping, you're working on just that, it is going to decrease the physiological stress placed on you while also building a lot of the coordination, a lot of the stuff mentally.

It's going to be a very good mental training session with the added benefit of being far less fatiguing. So yeah, I actually I love that. Now, for someone who's only training two or three days a week, man, again, because I think so much of the sport hinges on your ability to build those skills, the relative percentage split might be different, but even if you're training once a week, if you take that one training session and you go in deliberately and say, "Hey, I'm going to do everything today to keep getting to this position and get additional reps here and try to workshop this and really see what types of reactions, what types of counters I'm experiencing when I do this," I just refuse to see that as a poorly spent day.

Quite frankly, there are plenty of scenarios where if someone's training once a week and they just go in for hard rounds, while that might, the primal baboon brain side of us might really like that, how much better have we actually gotten there anyways? I mean, quite frankly, that person has very limited mat time as it is. So being able to do that in a very measured, calculated, very deliberate format is like a superpower. You're maximizing your time.

So I think it's huge for fatigue management for people who have a ton of mat time, but I also think it's an accelerator for somebody who has far less mat time and wants to just get as good as they can within whatever time frame they have. I think it's huge. I think it's extremely beneficial and to what degree you want to use that is absolutely up to you.

Someone wanted to split some of that class where they go, "Okay, these two guys are around my weight and skill level. So for them I'm going to have my comp focused rounds and then for everybody else that I go against who is maybe either lighter or heavier or less skilled than me or whatever, you're doing stuff that is much more deliberate and is that skill building type of approach." I mean, that can work, too.

I do think when you split a session like that, it can be kind of tough to not blur those lines, right? You start to really feel yourself a little bit. You feel that baboon brain coming out and you want to just keep going. It's a lot easier to say, "Hey, this whole session is going to be—" You put that, you put that ego at an appropriate level.

I'm a huge fan of like not hating on the word ego, whether it's for jiu-jitsu or lifting. Like, [expletive] ego lifting's incredible, right? Having an ego while you're training is important. Like, how are we actually going to audit what we're doing? How are we going to be aware of what we should be doing there and improve on that? Like, no ego is just kind of like flat, right? I think this hate on the ego is—It's like the pendulum swings a little bit too far.

We need that ego. I think it's very healthy. It's what, it's what keeps you in there wanting to improve. It's a very important thing and we want to sort of foster that. We just don't want to let it become completely unchecked to where if you go with somebody who is less skilled than you, you tell yourself, "Oh, this guy can't pass me." Like, bro, what the guy pass.

Something that I do have some clients that sometimes struggle with that. And so I ask them with a certain training partner that they that they can't have eat them. I'm like, "Okay, with Mark, he can't beat you. Cool. What was your round like with Mark a week and a half ago?" "Oh, I beat him." Okay, cool. What what happened? "I don't remember." Yeah, neither does Mark, dude. Like, so drop that element of it.

Something that I think is huge is with certain guys, let's say they're one of those, "Oh, I don't pull guard." And this is just a jiu-jitsu guy, right? And sure, maybe that does end up being your competition identity. Maybe you get really good at passing and you actually have an entire thing off that.

But let's say you say that, but you also have a really bad guard. If you took a month and every single class, every single round, you just pulled guard. Even if that doesn't end up being your A game, what can that do for your guard development from a technical and tactical standpoint for the 10 years that come after it?

It's so valuable. So that is a perfect example. Someone's like, "Oh, I never pull guard." I'm like, "Cool. Pull guard every single round of every single class for one month." No one's going to remember that where they all of a sudden—you're going to have a retainable skill after that that is going to last. It's going to stay with you far longer than your memory of what happened in those rounds. So that's where I think keeping that ego in check and not letting it run your entire decision-making process is important.

James de Lacey40:01

Very nice. I want to come back to some of the gym stuff as well. How do you decide what quality maybe you're prioritizing or focusing on for some of your fighters? And this could be maybe in the in-season period that you mentioned where they don't have a lot of competitions or probably primarily around there versus the in-camp.

Alex Sterner40:53

Yeah. We do the most fatiguing stuff in their "off-season" and we hit the—and we prioritize the less fatiguing stuff and sometimes some of those more transient qualities like endurance in camp. So generally, we're going to push our big strength numbers if we've got—a lot of people will see me posting stuff on spinal flexion, training those qualities. So I think movement optimists get straw manned a lot, right?

It's not that there's no risk to this. It's not that you can just approach it however you want. Like, I won't lie. A ton of my Jefferson curls, searcher deadlifts, things like that, I'm doing when those don't have fights scheduled. If I want somebody to progress their Jefferson curl, not just in weight, but also in total range of motion, get into those deeper ranges for spinal flexion.

They're getting stacked in class and stuff like that, too. So really just hammering the spine. Like, there's a finite amount of stress that any joint or region of the body can handle at any one point in time. So a lot of those things that can be quite fatiguing, I will do in that off-season. So whether that's force production or range of motion, those are the two that I think, especially with jujitsu athletes, will tend to induce the greatest amount of fatigue that can compound with heavy training volumes and present issues.

So those two very heavily in the off-season, "off-season," and then endurance and power are going to be ones that I do a lot more in-season. Tend to be able to do them in a far less fatiguing context. If you look at something like power, if we—let's just look at, let's say, a productive session for push press versus military press, right? Force production versus something more impulse or rate of force production.

That push press, we've got to hit higher velocities. So in general, you're not going to get anywhere near momentary concentric failure, which is very fatiguing, right? So something like a push press, I may opt to do even though we're going to obviously get some—it's impossible to just target one of those things. You're going to get some of those tertiary benefits, but something in-season, I may opt for a little bit more of a push press, and something in the off-season, I may opt for a bit more of a military press.

Very simplistic answer, but decisions like that are going to guide my programming in versus off-season. Also, total number of working sets. I tend with combat athletes to pretty much never go over four sets in the absence of anything like a density set or anything like that, right? If we're doing straight sets—

James de Lacey43:56

Same as you. Yeah, and even four sets is kind of rare.

Alex Sterner44:01

That's like the highest. Yeah, and that'll generally, if I'm doing four sets, it's probably going to be like top set with back-offs type deal, right? But yeah, that stuff, more off-season work. In-season, there's plenty of scenarios where I'm dropping down to two. I think two is great. It's enough for us to get a very productive stimulus, and even if you go really hard on two sets of an exercise, it's going to be tough to be crazy fatigued from that.

So yeah, I would say as a general sense, that's about how I structure that. And then the other thing that I do is I never—I'm a big fan of concurrent training. I love getting people—it's funny. You got a lot of people talking about concurrent training, whether that's like hybrid athlete style training, whether that's more GPP stuff like Angus Bradley, things like that. And then you've got like the classic periodization schemes, right? And these can be quite far from one another on this spectrum.

What I will say that I don't know if it's talked about enough or if I'm just not hearing it talked of enough, I do think there's an incredible amount of value in the buy-in, right? We're doing this phase for this purpose. You get your client or your athlete psyched about that thing. I do take a very concurrent approach year-round. However, I shift up our focus a bit, and even though we're still hitting that minimum effective dose for those other variables, I want to get them psyched and bought in about the one thing that we're doing, right?

If we're doing something in camp and I'm—right now, I've got a ton of my gi athletes—we're in the—a bunch of my guys are competing right now at Pans. Right now, we're doing a ton of conditioning and cardio work, right? And I'm even giving some of them where I know it's their rate limiter, I'm giving them a little bit more to do.

Some of those guys will run privates on my mat. I don't charge them a mat fee, but I'll be like, "All right, you're hitting some cardio after that private." And it'll just be a short interval, something that's not crazy fatiguing, but we're sort of microdosing a little bit of that stuff.

And for the individuals that I know need that, getting a little an additional exposure of that throughout the week is super valuable. And them knowing like, "Hey, this block, I'm trying to turn you guys into cardio machines." Now, it's not just a cardio program, but our exposures, our total stressors, and how far we're pushing that variable is certainly turned up.

So I think you can take some of the psychological benefits of getting someone bought in on like, "Hey, this is the goal that we're going for right now." I think that's super underrated. If you just go straight concurrent year-round, and you're like, "Yeah, we're kind of doing minimum effective dose or a little more of everything," buy-in is such a superpower. Like, if I can—and I even view it like this. When I write somebody a program, we've got like the initial sale of them deciding to work with me, right? Cool.

We've also got—and I don't think enough coaches, especially the way that things are talked about today. And I've even tried to create content on this. I don't think it's a sexy topic, but holy [expletive] dude. I think that if you can get someone psyched about something, when someone comes in, if they're just doing something because they're told to versus the approach that they take when they're bought in on that thing, there is an ocean of difference between those two examples.

And I think there's lots of ways we can do that. Even the way that I'm doing mostly concurrent training, but I'll communicate it in a way that seems a bit more specialized. It's funny. I even saw there was a discussion on strength and conditioning for jujitsu on Reddit a couple months ago that I saw, and someone was actually [expletive] on my programming saying like, "Oh, you don't specialize stuff for jujitsu. You just need to train these general qualities." And I didn't even chime in because I'm like, "Bro, that's what I do, but that's them hearing—

James de Lacey48:15

It is, but everyone's got an opinion.

Alex Sterner48:15

I didn't take it personally, but I think what that was was them hearing the way that I try to get people amped about whatever month of programming that we're on. And if it's a conditioning month, I've still got your strength work in there. I'm not going to let those variables fall a bit, right? But I do want to get people really amped up and bought in on like, "Okay, this month, my—I got my horse blinders on. Yeah, I'm doing my strength work, but I'm focused on my conditioning right now."

And I think the buy-in with that objective, them being aware—also simplify that [expletive]. I'm not going to be like, "Oh, this month we're focusing far more on our aerobic base so that next month we're going to be doing far more glycolytic stuff, and the aerobic base is going to allow for a greater work rate during—" [expletive] all of that. We're doing a conditioning month this month, and then we're going to do a more advanced conditioning month next month. Tell them the bare minimum they need to. Hey, you're focused on this detail, and let's run with it. Let's see how far we can take that.

I think that that's something that's not talked about or stressed enough. I think that if somebody's listening and they've got their own program, as opposed to focusing on what's optimal, ideal, if you like an exercise or a modality or a specific set of intervals—it could be any of these little individual tools—if you like it, find a way to structure your training around that [expletive]. And don't just do the stuff you like, but involve as much of it as you can into a well-rounded plan. Because if you're psyched to do the thing, you're going to execute at a higher level.

And you and I could go back and forth about how we might train for this variable differently than this one. I could structure the most beautifully designed program with, whether it's RPEs or percentages or whatever, but if the person goes through it half-assed, it is going to lackluster results. So I think the communication of those things, and again, the way that we can do that is nearly infinite. But if you can communicate it in a way that gets even a little buy-in, you sell them on an exercise.

Dude, like zerchers, some people love them, some hate them. If I've got a zercher on there and someone doesn't like it, let's say I'm training a team, and they don't like it, I don't think twice. It's not a part of my identity. It's like hammer to a carpenter, right?

He's like, "Man, I [expletive] hate zerchers." Cool. "What squat do you like instead?" Dude, "I love front squats." Awesome, you're front squatting. That's it. That's the end.

Like, that person's now going to be more bought in. They're going to attack that front squat in a way that is way different if they're distracted by the discomfort of the bar on their forearms. Cool. Get it out of there. Do the thing that you like a little bit more, and let's focus on how you execute that.

What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to set an environment that one has the multi-variable stimulus that's necessary for success, but that's just our foundation. Where we go from there is how the person executes, and I can't do it for them. So I got to sell them on it.

I got to make them really believe in this process. If they don't understand why they're doing something, I've got to fill in those blanks for them. It's not a matter of me being a dictator and just being like, "Oh, just do it cuz I said so." Like, let's talk it.

And I really think that's like a dying element in today's day and age where everything is just getting so hyper-optimized and everything else. Like, get someone psyched to train, have those guiding principles and everything else. You've got an ocean of gray area between those things. Wherever you end up in that ocean is not important as long as you're following those principles, and the person who's doing it is in some way excited or at least enthusiastic to do it. So yeah, I know I kind of went off on a tangent there, but I think that's important.

James de Lacey52:01

It's funny you mentioned about being married to exercises. I saw your Instagram profile the other day. I think it was I don't know what it was called, but it was like the lunge guy. And it was just everything about lunges. And I was like, "Bro, how can you brand yourself an exercise like the lunge?" Where do you go from there? Like, what do you do?

Yeah, I mean, would there be again, like if we look at a technician in another context, is there a carpenter that's like the saw guy? Like, would he really be the best craftsman? Like, hell no, right?

Alex Sterner52:33

So yeah, I think I mean, for example, anyone who is familiar with my stuff, or if they go and browse through my page, they might think I'm like the zercher guy. A, for my own training, that is an exercise that gets me psyched to train. Love them, right?

I also think on some level, from a coaching perspective, they're so easy to coach for a front-loaded squat variation, there's just so much wiggle room where someone can figure it out. I think the elbows, that discomfort provides like dummy-proof load management. I love it. But what I would say, like if you look at all my programs, it's not my most frequently programmed squat variation. It's a high bar back squat. And out of all the squat variations, that's the one that I do the least.

I'm really just trying to identify tools for the job, and I'm plugging and playing things in as they make sense. But my page is also a bit of a reflection of me, sue me, but I like that variation for myself. So if you're seeing a video of me squatting, I'm probably either doing front squats or zercher squats. I just like them, and that allows me to get the best results.

So I just try to emulate that with my clients, right? I'm not trying to have them be shitty versions of me. I'm trying to find that stuff that really makes them tick, and leaning into that to get to that desired result.

James de Lacey53:24

Nice. Yeah, don't sue me though, cuz I'm already being sued.

With that strength and power phase, how like that military press to push press example, do you ever play around with range of motion in that, say you're going for like full squat to quarter squat? Is that anything that you kind of like to do?

Alex Sterner54:03

Yeah, we do stuff with like block pulls, things like floor press, board press. Yeah, I love playing with all those details. I think yeah, like even with squats, I do a lot of like pin or Anderson squats. I love to have people like this month with my online

James de Lacey54:33

My favorite.

Alex Sterner54:33

Yeah, bro. Oh, it's great. And like, man, you do like a zercher Anderson squat, like a zercher pin squat, and you just tell someone, "Yeah, we're starting a little bit above parallel." Just horse heft and heave, just massive loads, right? Get that going.

So like right now, I love it. This month of my online programming is a conditioning focus month, and one of the primary strength things one day is an EMOM of hitting doubles with that zercher pin squat. And like, I'm like, "Guys, go heavy with that." And we're getting some good stuff there, right?

Like, total density within that is beautiful. In a 10- or 12-minute EMOM, you're getting 20 to 24 reps in there. It's going to be at a pretty damn heavy load. And because we're limiting range of motion there, you're not going to accumulate as much fatigue as you might expect given the weight on the bar and everything else.

I love playing with those variables, and I don't think it's one thing or the other. I did this a while ago, and it landed the way I wanted it to. I showed one of my clients doing a really deep squat, and I was like, "On average, range of motion is a very important detail for jiu-jitsu athletes."

So then why would we ever do this? And it was another one of my jiu-jitsu athletes doing a box squat. And of course, you got a bunch they're like, "I would never do a box squat with a jiu-jitsu athlete." And I'm like, "That's such a shame, dude. Such a shame." I mean, you look at some of those other benefits there, right? We're removing the stretch reflex and forcing somebody to really generate force from that static position.

Super valuable, right? Also, if you're doing something that is a bit more of a squat-focused program, your secondary squat as a box squat is going to be a bit less fatiguing, allow for greater exposures to something with some crossover that's just not as fatiguing as your primary squat day. You can go nice and heavy. There's just so many reasons that you can still do that.

So yeah, I think there's a time and a place for all that stuff. There's a time and a place to squat super deep. There's a time and a place to elevate your heels and get deeper than you would normally, especially if your rate limiter is maybe that ankle mobility. And then there's also a time and a place to hit like a freaking zercher Anderson squat and just load up more weight on the bar than you've ever had there before.

James de Lacey56:59

It's great. Yeah, that's easily one of the most fun exercises, just benching off pins. Oh, my favorite, bench off the pins with a fat bar, head, chest, all that stuff. That's like 5-4-3-2-1, the goat set rep scheme for pin work. It's just like hit that on everything.

That's always the funnest. Yeah, man. Before we finish up, we're almost there. Well, I think it would be quite interesting to run through just a general strength training template that someone could use. Maybe kind of like a template that you generally use maybe for I don't know. Obviously, there's different phases and whatnot, but just the general idea of how someone could put it together.

Alex Sterner57:18

Cool. I'm working on a post on this right now. All right.

And I'm going to sort of structure it the way that I have outlined in my notebook here. So all right. I'm going to start coming from you're not doing any strength training. So how do we just get to a passing grade for covering your bases and doing something?

I love for a full body day, if we're taking a bit of a minimalist approach here, lower, upper, upper, lower for your four most. And then we're going to break them up to diversify that a bit. Let's go knee dominant, upper body pull, upper body push, hip dominant, right?

So that could look like something along the lines of you got a squat, you got let's say a vertical press, so like that military press or that push press. If you maybe want a little bit of power in there, that's cool.

Horizontal pull, cable row, keep it nice and simple. And then a hip dominant. You could either go with some general hinge. If you want to really diversify things between the two lowers, if this one's bilateral, make this one unilateral. So let's take a single leg RDL.

That is a great full body session. If you want a passing grade, if you want to go from nothing to something, do two or three sets of each of those exercises, you cover the vast majority of your muscle groups, get some great stuff in there. Passing grade. Is that an A? Hell no, but it's a passing grade.

Okay, we want to go up from there. Let's actually add a couple plyos before that first lower body lift. I think plyos are great to get you to a state of optimal readiness.

They're also just a great thing to train in and of themselves, and their effect on rates of lower body injuries in sport are phenomenal. So, great return on investment there. Pick two plyos, we could get super advanced on that, or we can even add in some med ball work. If you want to maybe get some rotation, great.

Then at the end of that session, I will pick either accessory work, one to two accessory exercises, or a conditioning circuit. So, plyos, three to four of those strength movements, sometimes I'll take off the second upper body, or sorry, second lower body, because I'm getting some additional stuff from plyos maybe. So, let's go two plyos, squat, push, pull, and then either two accessory exercises, could be some arm work if you want to do that, could be some neck stuff, could be grip work, could be you can hit some calves.

I love to pair up calves and hamstrings. I love doing here we've got a great setup for calf raises right into some Nordics, right? That can be whatever you feel you need to do. Sometimes that accessory work will be more core, quote unquote oriented, whether that we're focusing on rotation, flexion, maybe it's some Jefferson curl stuff that's not super heavy, it's not in a strength context, right? We're just really pausing at the bottom, focusing on that range of motion.

So, you could do two accessory exercises, or 10-ish minutes worth of higher intensity, usually glycolytic if we're doing it at the end of a session, conditioning work. If you do any combination of that, two plyos, three to four strength movements, either two accessories or conditioning, man, you're checking so many boxes.

We're getting minimum effective dose on almost every, if not every general variable in that session. That is an A.

And then of course, based on how many days per week, another thing that I'm really big on, and this is another thing that I don't think is talked about enough, for my athletes, I push pretty damn high frequencies for their strength and conditioning with way lower volumes. Yes, it's true that you only need to do two days per week, but even that template I gave you, if I slash out a ton of those exercises, and sort of morph that one day into two days, and instead of having somebody in here two days a week, I have them in here four days a week with shorter sessions, less fatiguing, less overlap, just get them in 45 minutes, get them out, and do that four days a week, way way better on average.

We've also got more contact points where potentially they come in with lower fatigue levels, and we can really crank on some of this stuff. That's good. By having more points throughout the week, you've got a greater probability of those landing on a good day. That's awesome. Because if you only got two, and then they come in and one of those days they're flat as hell, we're going to have a rough session. You got a lot of volume in there.

So, another thing that I like to do is that given that format that I gave you, take half of that, throw it to another day, and double the number of days you can get in there. Obviously, if you work a 9:00 to 5:00 or something like that, that can be tough. I have the benefit of literally just living in a gym, so that's easy for me.

I personally train strength, my strength and conditioning is six days a week, but I'm doing two to three exercises per session, that's it. High intensities, move on.

So, yeah, a lot of wiggle room there, but that general format allows you to have a pretty solid full body session, to hit multiple variables, all of which will transfer to your sports. Yeah, and that's the template that I use with the hundreds of jiu-jitsu athletes that I train.

James de Lacey1:02:37

Perfect. This is a perfect way to end this podcast, Alex. Where can people find you, keep up with what you're doing?

Alex Sterner1:02:37

Cool. On Instagram, you've got my personal page, which is alex.sterner, and Electrum Performance, which is the name of my gym and business, and then on YouTube, also Electrum Performance.

James de Lacey1:02:37

Perfect. I'll link all this up in the description, too, for anyone who wants to check it out.

I appreciate you coming on, Alex.

Alex Sterner1:03:30

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. It was a blast.