How To Use Block Periodization For Fighters w/ Jeff Lee (SSOF Ep 113)

Jeff Lee0:47

And it was awesome. Met one of my best friends up there. He was my assistant there for a year. It was the most fun year I've ever had up to that point at least.

And I went to Southeast Missouri State after that for three years. I was the director there. I made the move to Southeast because my wife got into dental school at University of Louisville and it's like, well, it's a long way from Buffalo to Louisville. Missouri is something that we can definitely make work.

And that in 2011, I kind of walked away. I turned my papers in 10 days before I left. I had a baby born in Louisville 10 days after that, so wow, it was purely a family decision to get out of things.

But I've always loved strength and conditioning. It's one of those things where when you're in it you're in the hour and you're like, "Oh man, I can't wait to get out, I can't wait to get out." And the second I was out I was just miserable. It was the one thing that I found that I loved more than anything else. And it took me several years to find something else.

But during that path of that several years, met back up with a good friend, Johnny Buck, who runs Rogue Combat Club down in Nashville, North Carolina. And he was getting out of Bellator and he wanted to start making some runs at jiu-jitsu in terms of world championships and whatnot. So I got him ready for his first one. It was a purple belt for him under Gracie. He won that thing pretty easily, but I trained him through that entire process.

I also picked up his top guy in the gym, started training him for free. That guy just skyrocketed. Picked up Matt Scaff who works down at 10th Planet Huntsville. Picked him up for a little while, got him ready for ADCC's.

And then I kind of realized, "You know, I'm getting pretty good at this online thing, just start making a business." I had a pattern at that point. It was easy to go off of. I had a nice system of check-ins and checkouts and and it just, dude, was awesome.

It kind of brought me to today. I've got a guy, Deuce Carter, he's over at Muay Thai Worlds right now. He's getting ready to tear them up. Nice. I've got a PGF guy who's just filthy. He just told me the other day, he's like, "You know, if we had started probably three months sooner, I think I could have made some serious damage at PGF because I'm just blown away right now what I was doing before."

But basically it's concentrated loading. It's the balance between power and capacity of the system and that's what makes everything work. But strength and conditioning is the coolest thing in my mind.

And I think a lot of people, once you get into physical culture and you start to learn about lifting weights and you start to learn what levers to pull, dude, so many doors open in your life that you never even knew that you had.

James de Lacey5:12

So yeah, it's funny you mentioned about you're in it in the hours. We must have talked on this podcast with various guests about, I mean everyone has similar experiences. You're like you get sick of all the politics, the pay, the hours, but the thing that keeps you there is when you're with a team, you're working with the same people towards the same goal every year and you're on the field.

When I was working with the New Zealand women's rugby league team, being on the field with 46,000 fans, where if we were standing next to each other and you're trying, you can't hear you yelling at each other, you can't hear because it's so damn loud. And when you win that, it's like nothing beats it. When you win championships and stuff, and then after that then you're like, "Oh yeah, this all the other that goes on."

But once you're online obviously you can start to do your own thing and with family, yeah, it makes more sense than traveling around and being in different camps. So I feel you on that for sure.

Jeff Lee6:08

As a head guy, my prerequisites going into that was I will not travel, period. And I told them that. It's like, "Look, I got family, I got family in another state. I'm here for these teams that are here."

One of my biggest regrets was, you know, Southeast Missouri football, we went from being 2-9 the previous season, that was in 2009, and in 2010 we were 9-2 and we went to playoffs.

And the funny thing was we go up into Carbondale, Illinois, play Southern Illinois University and they're supposed to thrash us. They open up a new stadium. They're ready to go. We went up there and we beat them. We got a police escort taking our guys home and half the guys are like, "Oh, are we in trouble? What do we do wrong?" Like, guys, you won a game. That's a big game.

And that right there to springboard them. So it's amazing what you could see in terms of their confidence, because you know as a coach what they're physically capable of. Sometimes for them it need, they need a win to flip that switch inside their heads to be like, "Oh crap, they're not just bullshitting me. It's not just something he wants to say. It's not some little tagline."

It's all inside of you and it's all in here. All we got to do is just bring it out of them. We gotta bring the dog out of them.

James de Lacey7:20

And your strength conditioning philosophy, I'd love to dive into it. You mentioned about balancing the power capacity. I believe block periodization underpins a lot of your training models, so I'm going to leave it to you to kind of go into maybe, well, we can just start with the strength training side, just so we don't go too all over the place and we can get the conditioning afterwards.

But let's just start with, say, in the gym, strength training side. How does your philosophy look for that for combat sports?

Jeff Lee7:44

I am not married to anything. I'll use machines if they have machines. I use kettlebells if they got kettlebells. It's bodyweight, you know. I'm not married to anything because it's all means to the eventual goal.

But if you ask me what my preference is, my preference is we're going to bench, we're going to squat.

We're going to deadlift, and most days of the week we do a circuit or two, whether the circuits for actual development of the aerobic system or if it's just for recovery. Those are two different edges of the same sword. But if you're trying to really push the threshold of the aerobic system, heart rates are high and it's not as comfortable as a recovery session.

But most of my guys, they bench, squat, or deadlift every week. Some variation of it. I don't care if it's a trap bar, I don't care if it's sumo, I don't care if it's modified sumo, I don't care if it's a rack pull. But you just have to get stronger because a lot of the guys just are not strong enough.

A lot of them have motors on them, but even that, you got to train the motor in such a way to where they know how to flip it on, flip it off, know how to gear up and gear down. And that's probably the hardest part for a lot of them, because a lot of guys just come in and all they know is effort, especially if you get collegiate wrestlers and they move into sports. All they know is go hard.

And so at that point you need to teach them. And I go off of a modified system—I'm getting into the energy system part here—but I go off of a modified gear system through Shift Adapt. I don't know if you've ever heard Shift Adapt.

James de Lacey9:18

I think so.

Jeff Lee9:40

But they have a five-gear system. Gear one is we're talking right now, it's comfortable, it's nasal breathing. Gear two to three is ratcheting it up a little bit with the intensity. Four is nasal in, mouth out. And five is survival breathing.

I've cut it all down to we're four gears, and I rarely touch gear four, which is survival breathing. So gear one is we're comfortable, usually we're 100 beats per minute or under in terms of heart rate. Gear two is still nasal in, nasal out, but it's more forced. And then gear three is nasal in, mouth out.

And we use that to show them when you need to push, that's the one you want to push. Because you don't want to have your mouth open and get knocked out, but at the same time, if you need to bring your heart rate down between rounds, that's the fastest way to do it.

So yeah, that's part of it. And then once I've got guys into that gear system, everything just takes off. It's pretty crazy to see. And it usually takes them four or five weeks, and they're like, "I can't breathe through my nose. I've got a deviated septum." All right, well this is what you do. You got to force it even harder because, and when you do that, you find out their recovery is a lot better, their sleep is better and whatnot.

But I don't know if I answered your question fully there, but...

James de Lacey10:58

I got more questions, so we'll just keep going through them and we'll get down those conditioning routes since you went there. So with this gear system and the conditioning, so how are you structuring that in a week?

Jeff Lee10:58

Almost every week will have some form of steady state cardio. And you told me you've talked to Mark Moffitt before, and he goes over that pretty extensively. And just the adaptations of the heart and being able to provide elasticity of the left ventricles, so you don't have to work as hard. So that's in there for one day, also facilitates recovery.

And it kind of just bounces between some things, depending on what block we're in. If we're in an aerobic block, we're going to do a longer interval day, we're going to do a shorter interval day, but it's all forced through gear two.

As we get into alactic power or alactic capacity, aerobic blocks are anywhere from four to twelve weeks, just depends on where they're at in terms of—just actually we do some baseline testing. I want to know what your twelve-minute run time is. I want to know what your heart rate recovery is between that and the next two minutes out. This kind of tells me a lot.

And I also do 300-yard shuttles with them, because I want to know how fast they can come down. And if it doesn't come down very fast, then I know it's going to be a longer aerobic block.

And that's your kind of base building. And the block system itself, building strength and building aerobic ability go hand in hand. So we can get super strong during that period, build a good level of base conditioning, and then our—well, now we're into alactic power, alactic capacity.

Which the difference between that is just your rest periods. Alactic power—I don't know if you're familiar with, I don't know how to say his last name, but Mladen Jovanovic?

Okay. So he's one of those guys where I read, he was saying that alactic power training is kind of useless in terms of combat sports or even field sports. I don't think that merely because I don't think people know how to concentrate their effort for those rounds hard enough.

So you teach the effort first through power, give them full recovery, then you get into capacity, which is probably another two weeks later. And that capacity block can go anywhere from four to six weeks, just depends. We just gradually work up the rest period—I'm sorry, work up our work periods, bring down our rest periods.

And usually we'll end up with something like twelve seconds of pop and it's twenty seconds rest, and it's two series of five sets of that. And by that point, they're ready to rock.

James de Lacey13:11

So with your block model then, so you're going—say this base building phase, you're doing, I guess, longer efforts and lower intensity efforts. When you go into your—say we'll just call it a power phase, just to make it easier—are you then dropping, you don't do anything that you've done previously in that original phase? And the power phase is just a power? Or is some of that, say, lower level aerobic work still being done during that power phase?

Jeff Lee13:39

We still keep some aerobic work in there for the residual aspect. Some of it might be hill sprints. It just really just depends on what the guy's makeup is, what they're—and what they're good at.

But some guys, I know the recovery is so—we have to have something in there to bring down intensity. Because weights are still high. Weights are still creeping during this time. Our poundages are going up, up, up, up, up. Our jump volume starting to go up, up, up, up, up. It all kind of layers on top of each other.

And if they're not able to recover, then we had a problem. So it's kind of a—I've got a really good system where they tell me exactly what they are and I see videos every week. And if things don't look better, it's dude, we're knocking this down a bit. They just have to know it. They have to understand it.

James de Lacey14:33

And then with the strength training, from the articles you have, is it triphasic inspired? Or what you got?

Jeff Lee14:56

We will do some triphasic work. Yeah, it's usually way down the road. Maybe explain that just for the listeners.

James de Lacey14:56

So you triphasic work.

Jeff Lee14:56

There's two models. There's a strength model, there's a power model. The strength model is 80% and above in terms of intensity. Your power model is somewhere between 60 and 80%. 80—the top percentage will always be your middle day. So your highest volume is the third day. Your lowest—your medium volume is the first day. Your heaviest volume is day two, but that's not under the triphasic model. That's just go out and just hit weights. That's how I use it.

So anyway, you go through an—isometric period, which is going to be a two- to three-second pause. No, no, excuse me, eccentric period goes first. I wrote an article on this in 2011, because we had six guys, fourth- and fifth-year guys, and our squats went up sixty pounds in six weeks. It was stupid.

I had guys squatting over 500 pounds at that point. I had one that was a buck eighty, and he just exploded during that time. But anyway, six seconds on the eccentric over the first two weeks. Then you're going to have a two- to three-second pause for isometrics at the bottom of every lift, weeks three and four.

And then it's kind of a ballistic drop and pop is how I—that's how I've used the last two weeks of that model. And it's dude, it's awesome. We might use box squats, we might use some different things as well, weight releasers too, just depends on what I got available.

But it's so cool. Just to see guys' performance just flip like that. I've used it for several combat guys, and it's amazing how fast and how strong they can get during that period. And that completely changes the layout for a lot of them.

It's like strength is the one thing that you cannot outdo. If you and I are the same technical proficiency in what we're doing and I'm stronger than you are, I've got an edge against you. And I know it too. So it's a psychological thing as well.

For these guys, we've used some triphasic stuff. A lot of times it's just basic step loading, just keep moving, keeping up, moving up. It's all right, 5 to 10 pounds in the lower body stuff. We might increase by two and a half to 5 pounds on the upper body stuff, but little bitty changes go a long way over a lifetime.

And it's these guys, that's all they've got. They've got a limited span in their particular sport, but hell, you got 90-year-old guys doing jiu-jitsu. You got the rest of your life. You can get your face beat up for a few years, but you got the rest of your life. So let's use this training and just really build a base.

James de Lacey17:43

So how does that look, or that progression look, say through your base cycle and then into your power cycle?

Jeff Lee17:43

Yeah, it really just depends. I will set up RPEs to begin, no matter what block we're in. I'll tell them, I want you to leave three or four reps in the tank week one, no matter what. And they don't really know what that means yet. So that's where the art of coaching comes in. You're like, well, now I can start to remove your weights. And by week six or seven, we're moving some pretty good poundages.

And a lot of times I like to use kind of a conjugate rotation of things. We will back squat, or most guys I'll start with a goblet squat just because I want to shore up some things, mix some technical things. So there we'll go from that to a box squat, and from a box squat to a back squat, and from a back squat to maybe a Zercher squat. It depends on what it is that I see on them that's a weak link.

Lower back is weak? All right, we're at Zercher squat for a little while. You're slow out of the hole? We're in a box squat. I mean, a lot of things depend on that. And you look at what their jumps look like as well. The jumps will start off with basic box jumps, and we're going to get into some things where maybe up-downs and death jumping. So things like that will come along later on as the intensity ratchets up.

But I try not to make our conditioning negatively impact the strength work, if that makes any sense. I don't want to do kettlebell squat jumps with you for 12 sets of it and use that as my alactic capacity work and then say, "All right, well, now you're going to go jump a 48-inch box." It doesn't make any sense.

So that might end up being in there at some point during the week, but we work with what we have and we try to reduce the amount of stress overall. It's basic load-dose model, because you give them just enough to make a move, and we go on from there.

James de Lacey19:44

And then through the power cycle, it's a similar approach, just trying to—

Jeff Lee19:44

Yep, same way, same way, same way. So the only thing that differs in that cycle is you're maybe adding more jumps, throws, etc. during that?

James de Lacey19:44

It can be, it can be. But if we're talking about conditioning, conditioning builds everything. Conditioning is our base.

Jeff Lee20:10

If we're talking about alactic system, that's that short-term burst, that's creatine phosphate system, all right. So that's the basis. I want to get my conditioning done first on that. So I like bike, I like bike sprints, I like those ski ergs, I like something that involves a lot of musculature but it's not going to zap you for the strength work. We will—does that kind of make sense? Everything is—

James de Lacey20:10

So you're using that as your power, as your power base movements?

Gotcha. And then you obviously carry on with your strength-based movements through that cycle?

Jeff Lee20:38

Maybe just give an example of a general how a general program would look in each block. I think it would be good for the listeners, even myself, just kind of visualize how it looks, how it's set up.

James de Lacey20:38

So are you familiar with the tier system?

Jeff Lee20:38

Yeah, somewhat.

James de Lacey20:38

Okay, so it's a three-day model. Each day has its own influence. So like a total body day would be your deadlift day, or if you're an Olympic guy, it would be your main clean day. So you're going to do a total body movement, then you're going to do an upper body and a lower body.

I like to do a lot of circuited-type work. I enjoy that because we just get a lot more done. So we're going to do supersets, we'll do some tri-sets, we'll do a lot of stuff to get a lot of work done. But say day—it's going to be a trap bar deadlift. We'll work up to a heavy set of five. You'll pair that up with a pull-up each time, and we'll work our pull-up volume up during that time as well.

Then we'll do some kind of horizontal press. It might be—it's not going to be our main movement press. It's going to be something that builds that. So maybe a two-board press or a three-board or rack lockout, something fun like that. And we'll do some heavy rowing on top of that, then some single-leg work. That'll pretty much put a wrap on it aside from some core work.

Your day two is—I always think that's my bench day. So my main bench movement, all right, let's just call it a two-grip bench, so it's thumbs-width out from the groove. We're going to get a heavy set of five again. Pair that up with a heavy row, barbell row. Then we'll do maybe a front squat or a Zercher squat, something that's going to help build the first day, but help build our actual main movement for lower body.

And then we'll do a total body movement again. Might be a good morning, might be a seated good morning. I don't really care. It's just something that's going to build a weak link that the athlete has.

And then day three would be—it's always big squat Friday, man. That's the day they gotta live for. And with a lot of my combat guys, I found that using a double kettlebell front squat is something that's huge for them. Because it's like, if I had known what I know now about kettlebells when I was in the college scene, we would have had actual standards set for what you need to do. Like, I think most linemen could probably double kettlebell front squat a pair of 125s, and that would be pretty freaking awesome. That would be the standard, and we would work towards the standard.

Jeff Lee23:02

Do you have any for combat athletes?

James de Lacey23:02

Not that heavy. But I really don't have a standard on it, just because a lot of these guys don't have the available equipment. So we can only go so heavy, but whatever you got, man, we're working towards multiple reps, sets of 10 at the thing that you have. And then I ask them to go out and buy more.

But I guess, say, with our main lower body day, that's a preferred one because you get so much bang for the buck out of it. But other than that, we back squat, we can front squat. It's really whatever I see within them that's a weakness we need to cure from a physical side, and we'll work from there. Because that's what a lot of it is based around: your strength training should maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses at all times. This should be the only thing you're looking to do.

And I think a lot of times people get wrapped up in this sports-specific training aspect of it. Weights are general, and they will always be general in terms of the development of an athlete, unless you're an Olympic weightlifter, unless you're a track and field thrower, unless you're a bodybuilder. Your weights are general preparation for your body.

Jeff Lee23:57

And that's something I think a lot of people get skewed—

James de Lacey24:28

Your conditioning, when you see what's on Instagram.

Jeff Lee24:28

Yeah, it's so—come on. A lot of the stuff I see is just, no, no, no, no, no. You're majoring the minors here. Just get them stronger, get them more capable, and then the conditioning aspect will take care of itself.

And from a conditioning aspect, I'll say this part right now: the last four weeks, I want to pull out a lot of the stuff that we do on equipment and allow the mats to kind of take over. I'll give parameters, but I want the mat work to kind of take precedent, because now we're able to pull back even more. And that's part of the peaking phase—is just being able to, the more I can push you at first and the more I can start to pull back towards the end, the better they peak.

My philosophy as a football strength coach was always, I told these guys, and they thought I was nuts, I said, "Guys, if you're not pissing blood by August, we have a problem." And of course, I was full of it, but it's like, this is going to be hell, because I know once we pull back in August and we don't touch weights for a month, everything's gonna go straight up. And it's kind of had that same philosophy with these guys. And over the—

James de Lacey25:51

How much are you pulling back the strength training then during that peaking phase?

Jeff Lee25:51

Let's talk about Deuce who's fighting ADCC Worlds. We went from a three-day model and at four weeks out we pulled him down to two. And the two went from a 45-minute session to 30 minutes.

So we would just go in. His last three weeks was just like this: it was no conditioning on top of anything. It was do your jump work, we would do a contrast style with the jump work, like single-leg box jumps, go hit a heavy trap bar deadlift, do an up-down up on a box—that's a set. We would do four to five sets, work up to a heavy single, and then after that was just band pull-aparts and some rows and a couple sets of push-ups.

So comparing that, that's not a whole lot, but right now dude made weight yesterday, he's ready to roll.

James de Lacey26:46

I like that. And you mentioned a lot how you do a lot of step loading. It sounds like you mainly work up just to one heavy set of one to five on most lifts—that's your main working sets?

Jeff Lee26:46

Yep, yep, only. And I've always used that. My boss when I was at Yale taught me that. He's like, the only thing you need to watch is that last set. But he didn't mean that, but it's like that's the money maker and you want to make sure that they hit that. And then it's either we stay, we're plus five, or we're plus ten. That's how you start things for the next week, and it's a model that has never failed me.

James de Lacey27:11

And you're pushing that last set close-ish to failure?

Jeff Lee27:11

We're about RPE nine, nine and a half. With Deuce, I pushed him a little too hard two weeks out. He missed a 315 trap bar deadlift for a single, so I was like, okay, we probably should have pulled back, kept at 300. But the two weeks before that, he hit 345 just ripping it—this dude weighs 135 pounds. So he's strong.

James de Lacey27:33

So I'm assuming there's a lot of auto-regulation as well then, right? Because obviously you mentioned one week is 345, next week he didn't pull 315. So you're watching bar speed and how they are and things like that too?

Jeff Lee28:00

I don't have a metric on it, I don't have a speed on it, but the eye test tells you. I mean, you can eye it. When you're watching enough people, you see that bar, you know how many more they got. I saw that 300 and I'm like, all right, you've got 315 easy. He's like, "No, man."

I think a lot of it was the stress building up to it. And there's some other things that inside of our heads we don't think about, but inside their heads, like, "Oh, I gotta travel, I gotta pack, I gotta do this, my girlfriend about that." And James Smith always talked about that—The Thinker from the old Elite FTS days. He's got the Governing Dynamics of Coaching, is probably one of the best coaching strength and conditioning books.

James de Lacey28:46

Don't have that one. I've got a lot of his stuff though.

Jeff Lee28:46

You're going to get that one. That one's legit. Can I tell you a funny story about him?

So I had a GA that I pulled from Pitt, and he was under James mostly, but he was under Buddy also. And Buddy calls me right back up and gives me a reference on him. Buddy was awesome to talk to, just straightforward.

James left me a three-minute voicemail that ended up getting cut off. He's talking about this book, "Oh, sorry it took me so long. I've got this book I'm writing with Randy Couture," and he's going on and on and finally cuts him off. And I show—I tell this my athletic trainer, I was like, "Listen to this thing." And then a week later, the book got pulled because Randy Couture is like, "I don't train like this," which is sad.

But James is one of the smartest dudes I've ever spoken to. It's unreal.

James de Lacey29:40

Well, he's hard to listen to because he talks so heady up here and you're like, "Damn, man, get to the point." But his books, his books are legit. I really enjoy his philosophy of training on there. It's awesome.

He's got one, This Preparation for Special Operations, like SEAL training.

Jeff Lee30:06

I haven't got that one.

James de Lacey30:06

It's very good because it mostly talks about how you build up running volume and how you build up calisthenic volume. And it's a case study of one of his guys. It's pretty cool. Interesting.

Jeff Lee30:06

Okay, I'm going to have to look for that one too.

James de Lacey30:06

For anyone listening who's maybe in the coaching space or whatever, definitely check out James Smith's book. He's got quite a few. Power Sprint Training was one of the other ones that I've got that I enjoyed the most, especially in rugby and things. That was solid.

But James, you also, he was mentioning that you use the Zercher squat as an indicator exercise for an Olympic silver medalist. Is that correct?

Jeff Lee30:31

Yeah. So when I was at the U.S. OTC, we were led by a coach named Ivon Iloff. And Ivon was out of Bulgaria—believe he's the head national coach right now for Greco for the U.S., I believe. But Ivon took some guys and he made some freaks.

There used to be an old USOTC video that you could find, was a training clip of them. YouTube for some reason doesn't have it anymore, but tons of jumps, heavy lifts. I mean, these guys were ridiculously strong. There was a guy named Spencer Mango who I saw—he competed I believe 133, 137, something somewhere in there. Zercher squat at 365 for a single. This is strong. And these guys could—it was one of the indicator exercises he looked at.

Ivon was true what we know in the States now as Kate true conjugate, not Westside conjugate, not any of these other bastardizations. I have my own version of bastardized conjugate, but...

James de Lacey31:33

Maybe just explain the differences there.

Jeff Lee31:33

So there's a sequencing system. You're going to train exclusively for—you compound skills on top of each other. So with him, they would have a general conditioning phase, they would have a maximal strength phase, and then they would have a speed power phase. Speed power always led into competitions for them, like major competitions. So during that time, they would back off weights entirely. And when you ask them about it, "Well, they throw each other all the time. What's more powerful than that?" Valid point.

But the strength work, these guys were ridiculously strong. Like I said, that's one of their indicator exercises for them was Zercher squat. And it also was a two-minute rope climb off your butt, arms only. There was another one. And he had VO2 max, I believe, was in there too. And there might have been another. So don't quote me all entirely on this because it's been a lot of beers between now and 2003.

But the funny thing about the speed power one, he got this band system in to try out. It was—he designed it, had this guy bring it in, prototyped it for him. I went up and I trained with him that day. And this thing was—it was like 500 pounds of tension on this bar's on your back. And he's screaming at me, and I'm just looking.

I'm at the bottom of this squat, I just look at him, I'm like, "Ivon, now is not the time." But he's like, "But you know how it feels though? If this is what a match feels like?" It's like, "This is very valid." Those are things that really stuck with me.

But, as you said, Zercher squat is something I've used with combat guys, I've used them with every athlete that I've ever had because it shores up core weaknesses so quickly. But if you talk about a Greco guy, it makes perfect sense. You have to throw somebody—you're kind of in that position already with the Zercher. So wouldn't—why wouldn't you get as strong as you could in that position?

James de Lacey33:32

That's your piece on that.

Jeff Lee33:32

But I've got a guy, I'll post a video on my Instagram here in a little bit, but he sent me a video yesterday of him box squat—box Zercher box squatting 315 for a single. And it's a speedy single—I'm sorry, a triple, three reps. He's a buck 60. So it's nasty. I'm going to put it up today, and if you get a chance to take a look at it, I think you would enjoy.

But it's speed. It's after some jumps as well. Very strong collegiate wrestler. He's my ADCC guy. But gotcha, very, very strong.

James de Lacey34:24

Is there a certain standard you're typically looking for with a Zercher squat?

Jeff Lee34:24

Nope, no. You just try to get as strong as possible. Yeah, every movement you just try to get as strong as possible.

Get as strong as you can, just try to maximize what you got. Rotate movements, come back to it later. This is where we were before, let's try to beat it. Got a system of records is pretty good because we know where things are or where we left things the last time.

James de Lacey34:48

Okay, so it's kind of like I'm understanding, kind of like the old Lou, Louis Simmons had the board. You know, big board and all these guys at different weight classes did this on this lift. It's kind of the same thing. It's like this is what you did before, let's beat it.

Jeff Lee35:14

And you never start them off where they ended. You start them off where you, maybe 90% of that, and then three weeks down the road they crush it and they're like, "Hey, look at what you did the last time. Here's that last video. Take a look at this." And they're like, "Holy..."

James de Lacey35:14

So you're doing like three week... Obviously, like Westside conjugate, they changed exercises almost every week, but you're doing almost, say, every three weeks you're, say, building up that loading, maybe a little longer?

Jeff Lee35:35

I will milk it till I think we've milked it enough.

James de Lacey35:35

Okay, just you're obviously just working up to the heavy one to five in all those weeks or whatever it is. And then once you think, "Okay, that's enough," then you move to a new exercise with the same pattern, then another new one, then you might come back to it. And those two exercises hopefully build enough strength to improve that other one.

Jeff Lee36:01

So everything is about, like I said before, minimizing weaknesses. And the system works. I mean, you can look at these guys in the various positions they're in from different lifts, and you can see how the improvements happen. It's crazy. Like a Zercher squat will improve your back squat. I don't care what anybody says. When you have improved lower back and front side strength, it's going to only go up because the legs aren't going to get weaker from doing them.

If anything else, you've become more stable by Zercher squatting or by even by front squatting. You could front squat your ass off for eight weeks and then go back to a back squat, and I guarantee you within three weeks you'll crush that previous back squat.

James de Lacey36:30

So I'm going to do some Zercher squats later this week, I think. I'm inspired. Does your, not overall philosophy, but does your exercise selection or maybe how you train differ at all between, say, wrestlers and maybe more striking-based athletes?

Jeff Lee36:55

That's a good question. I think that's... I'd like to say yes, but also there's a no to it. A lot of it really just depends on where they're at. If you're weak in comparison to body weight, then things need to improve. And nothing improves things faster than just getting stronger.

You ever work with collegiate basketball players or like 20-year-old basketball players?

James de Lacey37:34

Not basketball, no.

Jeff Lee37:34

Okay. Like, a lot of these guys come in with 46, 48-inch verticals, one, two-step approach to it. And then you realize they've never touched a weight in their entire life. What have they done a lot of? Well, they've done a lot of jumping. That's very clear. So what is going to improve that the fastest is improving the thing that they're the worst at.

So they're really great at force generation, but they're really bad at straining through weights and actually moving something that's somewhat heavy. So once you kind of bring an equilibrium to that, the power of their jumps are going to go up regardless, but they're also going to be a lot more durable. So I kind of look at strikers kind of the same way as grapplers in that way, in that you need to improve the thing that you're worst at first.

Because again, with my pgf guy, he came to me pretty strong. Like, the guy could bench 240. He's Zercher squatted 275 on a video he'd sent me prior to us working together. But I look at him and, like, "Your back is weak." I told him from the start, "You're backside weak." He didn't really understand what that meant, but it's like your entire back half. You've never trained your hamstrings, your glutes, all these things. But you're a wrestler, so everything is forward all the time.

And now the guy did a set of 10 with pull-ups yesterday, sent me a video, hit nine reps with 15 pounds added. He couldn't do nine reps when we started with anything. So it's like, as you begin to improve your weaknesses, everything else goes up. And I think that that's an approach I'm not sure a lot of people take. And maybe they do, and maybe I'm just naive to this because I don't talk to a lot of coaches anymore.

I read a lot of stuff, don't get me wrong, but I don't really talk to a lot of guys that are in the trenches and are doing this and really trying to move the needle with their guys.

James de Lacey39:31

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of social media coaches for sure that maybe haven't got the experience or anything behind them and, you know, have the big followings already. And yeah, kind of... their business.

Jeff Lee39:58

Yeah. I'm okay with that, but don't expect to make lemonade from a bucket of apples and tell me that it tastes the same.

James de Lacey39:58

No, exactly, exactly. And got one more question for you. You talked about training residuals before. For anyone listening, that's just essentially how long a quality can essentially last from not training it. So you mentioned how you kind of bring some of that lower-intensity stimulus across to your power cycle because of that. I guess, how else are you using that information within your training?

Jeff Lee40:33

I use that old chart from Issurin out of the block periodization book. And with aerobic work, we need to tap it at least once a month when we're out of it, but we never really go that long. Before competition, yeah, I'm going to cut it out for a week, the week before, except for maybe a walk. And I don't look at that as training. I look at that as being a human and being mobile.

But other than that, like, I try to make sure that we hit something heavy if we're in a power block where weights are lower. Going and hit something heavy two or three weeks down the road, just make sure it's still there, and then we can go back to what we're doing. But a lot of things still follow that basic step-loading model where maybe the power work might come from a more intense jump or just going back and hitting something that you know you can hit.

Like a depth jump into a broad jump. All right, we'll do that and go out and hit as far as you can. One rep. One rep's all we need, because they're still getting power work on the mats. They're still getting in the ring. All these things are still present. Because in the sport, the sport is always fast. If it's not, you are up a creek. Like, if you're not explosive and you're not on, then we have a problem, more from a technical side on your aspect, because you're being hesitant. You're going to get yourself hurt.

But from a strength work, you know, again, applying it maybe two, three weeks out, make sure we hit a single, maybe a double, make sure we still got it. But other than that, like, the aerobic work is the one that I think is probably the most important. Joel Jamieson has talked about this a lot, is the aerobic system being the most underdeveloped and probably the most bastardized of all, because they want to show you these pictures of marathoners while ignoring pictures of Ben Johnson, who did aerobic work twice a week for going on a decade with Charlie Francis.

But they want to ignore that. But it's, "Oh, the skinny marathoner." Like, no, no, it all comes down to application of it. And we can go out and we can hit 10 hill sprints. That's a residual tap. You could go out and do high-intensity continuous tension, which is, you know, the real slow work on the bike where the intensity is cranked up. Like, dude, that'll tap a reserve. Like, there's all sorts of things that you can do to make sure that the quality maintains itself.

To answer your question fully, I use residuals. They're always in there at some point. But just depends on where we're at and what phase we're in to give you a concrete answer to how I've used it in the last week. Can't really do it because some residual's always in there for something now.

James de Lacey43:15

Yeah, and some things obviously carry over to other things when they're done that too. So there... Yeah, it's... I guess you're always training all the different qualities. And I love the low-volume approach too. I think most fighters, if they're trying to train themselves, probably go far too high volume.

Especially when most of the readily available information is kind of like bodybuilding-esque style training. So a lot of people come in doing, you know, sets of eight-plus reps all the time, hard circuits, just blasting themselves in the gym, but not actually training strength.

Jeff Lee43:43

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, and there are different types of strength. I listen to a lot of bodybuilding podcasts. I enjoy the...

Personalities more than anything, but Dusty Hanshaw is one of the guys. He was an IFBB bodybuilder, Pro and whatnot. But he talks about being strong at every range. It could be one to three, could be six to eight, could be 10 to 15, it could be 30. You should be fully capable of all things at all times.

Now, am I going to train you in all these different volumes and all these different ranges all the time? No, because that would be counterintuitive, probably not productive. But you need to be strong across all ranges, I think, because you just don't know what you're going to encounter.

Mark McLain uses oxidative work quite a bit. In the base building aspect of strength training for us, oxidative work is almost always in there for upper body and lower body because it just brings our curve up so fast on the aerobic end that it would be silly of me not to try it, especially with a guy that I know has a match coming up and I know it's longer in duration. It's a 10-minute match, 10-minute round, or could be an unlimited match.

My guy Johnny Buck, he was in a catch wrestling worlds. He was in a 44-minute match. That's brutal. But he was prepared. If he wasn't prepared, he couldn't have gone 44 minutes. But oxidative work was a huge part of that.

James de Lacey45:40

Oxidative work, you're talking like tempo, East Con two, two down?

Jeff Lee45:40

Two down, two up. No walkout. Do that. And for push-ups it works great. Inverted rows, it works great. Bench press, it works great. Squats, it works exceptionally well because it hits so many things.

And high-intensity continuous tension is another one that gets overlooked too, because it's super hard. It's just brutal. But if you get yourself on a VersaClimber and you do that for 10 minutes at a set, you're gonna be in shape because it hits everything. There's nothing that is left untouched.

James de Lacey46:12

I used that on the bike often with teams that I work with. We would actually do it on a Monday. We play the match Saturday and we'll do it on the Monday as part of the lower level conditioning. But for some reason, legs felt awesome afterwards. We just do two sets of 10 minutes and their legs would feel amazing after a hard match. So it was like the perfect thing to do as a recovery slash conditioning element done.

It's off-feet, you're not getting any impact.

Jeff Lee46:35

I was always told it was a mitochondrial regeneration thing, especially after a lactic day, and to me it makes sense.

James de Lacey46:35

It was nice. I think the players liked it and it's something people can definitely use in their training. I think that's everything I had for you there, Jeff. Plug where people can find you and follow you and keep up with what you're doing.

Jeff Lee46:58

We're at Monstrosus on Instagram. Monstrosus.

James de Lacey46:58

Spell it for the description too.

Jeff Lee46:58

M-O-N-S-T-R-O-U-S-I-T-O-U-S. Monstrosus. Okay, I is out. Now that word came from my first assistant. He'd come in every day. He'd be like, "Lee, we going to get monstrosities today or what?" So that was my tribute to him. He passed away two years ago.

He had lymphoma. This is my tribute to him, is to name the business after him, because he's one of those standup dudes. And I don't think I would know half the stuff I know if he hadn't come along. He linked me up with Dave Tate, Elite FTS, and Jim Wendler. I would never have known half the stuff I know if Keith hadn't come along, because he would train with Vincent Dizenzo's group up in New Haven when he was in school up there.

So he knew all these guys. And it's like, man, he just showed me this one day and my mind is like, the third eye in your head opens. Like, oh crap, there's so much more out there. There's so much more out there. And it's not all... during those days it was T-Nation, it was where you went. It had some good stuff, don't get me wrong, and had some great stuff. But Elite has been pretty awesome.

I've been fortunate to have a couple articles that I've written published there too, so it's been pretty cool.

James de Lacey48:26

Nice. I actually published one eight years ago now on Elite.

Jeff Lee48:26

I actually just got an Elite FTS safety squat bar, got the yoke bar.

James de Lacey48:26

That's epic. I love that.

Jeff Lee48:26

It is built. It's built for life. All their stuff is.

James de Lacey48:49

Exactly. Now, perfect, Jeff. I appreciate you coming on. I'll link up everything in the description for people to follow, and yeah, cheers for the chat.

Jeff Lee48:49

Man, I really appreciate this opportunity, man. Great talking to you. Great looking up. Cheers.