Breath Hold Training, Bilateral vs. Unilateral, & High vs. Low Intensity Conditioning For MMA w/ James Ramsey (SSOF Podcast Ep. 17)

James Ramsey2:43

I trained since I was five. I got down to Florida and then I met up with—I was actually in the early MMA days down in Florida. So Bobby Hughes, he's on my friends list. He's a current Hapsamora third-degree black belt, which was ironic because that's like one of my favorite instructors. I got his DVDs. He's teaching for him now.

So it was me, him, and the late James Dorson. This was like 1996. We started training together when Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu started to get popular. Yeah, we had a lot of crazy stories from those early MMA days, because back in those days it was style versus style. And Bob Hughes, who was—I think at the time he was already like a six-degree black belt in Okinawan karate—he was like, "Listen, James, you don't just train one style. Don't just be a grappler. Be a striker." I already was that.

So actually, Bob Hughes down in Florida was the original MMA guy. I think he was the first guy that I knew that was cross-training. So that's a mean experience to have, just the beginning of the UFC taking off.

And then I moved up to Michigan, Bay City, Michigan. And I think it was like 2003, 2004, somewhere—you get old like me, everything starts to blend. And I ended up at former IBF World Boxing Champion Murray Sutherland's gym. I walked in the door there, started talking to him, talked to some other people there. We opened up an MMA gym.

Unfortunately, the strength and—I mean, the technique, the striking, the grappling was great. We had former United States Olympic Training Center Greco coach Steve Goss, who wrestled for two bronze medals, so we had some really high-level guys to train with. But unfortunately, the strength and conditioning was terrible. We were doing CrossFit, like intense CrossFit.

The whole mentality was like, "Oh yeah, train—" the mentality was like, "Train till you puke. Our warm-up is your workout." And we ended up ruining some people's careers. Like one of my Bellator fighters, his knee blew out. His knee gave out in the first round. And he won his first Bellator fight. His second Bellator fight, his knee came apart in the first round. Overtraining—the volume was insane. We would do like the WODs, the workouts.

And then that's why I decided on a master's in exercise physiology. My undergrad degree was criminology. I had very little science.

James de Lacey5:43

It's a big jump.

James Ramsey5:43

Yeah. I accidentally got admitted, and then I finished my master's with a 4.0, and that's how I got into a PhD in Canada. But yeah, I think a problem with a lot of coaches—this mentality is, "Train till you puke, train till you puke." And they stop training like two or three days before a fight. They don't do a taper or deload or anything like that.

And I can't remember what coach said it—it's like, and this expression really stuck with me: you want to stimulate, you don't want to obliterate. And I think that's why I created the group. I was on Facebook. I was reading all these posts—these people like, "Oh yeah, I'm jogging six to eight miles a day, and then I'm doing my CrossFit midday, then all this other stuff, and eating pizza and drinking beers." I was like, "Oh God, I got to create a Facebook group." And here we are.

James de Lacey6:44

Yeah, yeah. If anyone's interested in diving more into the old CrossFit MMA debate, if you just search "CrossFit for MMA" on Google, you'll find my article breaking that down. But I want to start with some of your research on the bilateral versus unilateral debate. Obviously, for anyone listening, bilateral essentially two legs, unilateral one leg exercises—so like your back squat versus your Bulgarian split squats. Do you want to maybe dive into some of that?

James Ramsey7:12

Yeah, that's—it's funny because after CrossFit, I started listening to Michael Boyle, and he's like, "Only unilateral squat, only unilateral squat. Everyone's stronger with one leg at a time compared to two. Never back squat, never squat." I was like, okay. So that was my research for my master's degree. I did all the coursework, and then I wanted—I did a thesis that way I can get into a PhD program.

And so I had 30 participants. It was 15 Division I athletes and it was 15 recreationally trained. My supervisor hasn't published it yet, but there's been a lot going on with COVID and everything like that. So we did the leg press exercise because it was a lot easier. So two legs at a time versus one leg at a time. And we also added the dumbbell shoulder press, one arm at a time and two, that way we had an upper body and a lower body.

And I was expecting, "Oh yeah, everyone's going to be stronger with one limb at a time." And looking back, I wish I created a survey—like I should have asked them how do you train? Do you train with one limb at a time or two? So on and so forth. But I didn't do any of that. And I was expecting everyone's stronger with one leg at a time, and that wasn't the case at all.

And I only—and I asked everybody one question: "Do you squat with one leg at a time?" They're like, no. And yeah, no one—I think one person displayed a bilateral deficit. Everyone else displayed a bilateral facilitation, the opposite. And I was blown away.

And at the time I was still training fighters, so I kind of—I had 10 of them, and I did my own little experiment. Okay, we're going to do some bilateral training, do performance testing, do a washout period, and then do unilateral and stuff like that. And thankfully, at the same time, they started—others started doing research with high-level athletes showing that if you train with one limb at a time, you're stronger that way. If you train with two, you're stronger that way. And also there's that—I haven't kept up with the literature because, you—

I got to read so much for my own material that with change of direction, squatting bilaterally, they improve their change of direction much greater compared to the unilateral group. So I think you need both, you need bilateral and you need unilateral, but this whole notion of only train with one limb at a time, I don't know any elite coaches that are doing that.

James de Lacey9:57

Yeah, it's a bit reductionist. But when you mention just athletes are maybe strong unilateral and bilateral, you mean they're able to handle more than 50% of their bilateral load on one leg, or we talking absolute load?

James Ramsey10:30

It's kind of like when we were doing pilot testing, one of my participants at EMU was a former division one football player and he with one leg at a time, full range of motion, he had some back issues, and I think he with one leg at a time, he got, yeah, it was the one participant, he got 750 and he got 750. So it added up to 1500 pounds, so he displayed deficit, but with both legs at a time he could only like press a thousand pounds. So there was a big difference.

Yeah, but there was a hockey player, a high-level hockey player, and it was the complete opposite. I can't remember what the totals were, but yeah. I have read that the magnitude of the bilateral deficit is greater for the lower body compared to the upper body. Why? I don't think anyone knows and I haven't really followed the research on that.

James de Lacey11:34

Gotcha. So with a combat athlete, how where would you see bilateral unilateral exercise fitting within, say, a preparation for a fight, for example? Off camp to end camp, do you think there's like a ratio that needs to be done or transitioning from one to the other, or is it just like, hey, we just trained both all way through?

James Ramsey12:00

I'd like to see some studies on that, but I think I kind of like the Cal Dietz approach. You start off bilateral, have them train bilaterally, and then you peak them unilaterally. I do that with, I would do that for the lower body and the upper body.

There's no research, no one's done any studies, but it would definitely be interesting to see what the data is, or maybe it's better to use a combination of the two. Unfortunately the literature is lacking on that.

James de Lacey12:27

Yeah, for sure. And it's difficult as well, as you mentioned. You talked about doing your survey, potentially doing a survey way. And how they usually train with a lot of these studies, often the training intervention, such a novel stimulus that of course you're going to see gains because it's so different to how they're already training. So there's always a trade-off.

James Ramsey12:27

Oh, that's why. Oh, I learned from my first study. So we're doing some with trap bar deadlift, lower body exercise, looking with the Cosmed breath by breath, looking at VO2, VCO2, ventilation, the end-tidal O2, so end-tidal partial pressures, and with the near-infrared spectroscopy that tells us the muscle saturation, desaturation. So there's all these different measures, take all day to explain.

But for the participants, we are doing a detailed training history, like how do you train? And it's like, looking back, hindsight always 20/20, I should have done a survey, but I was so, it's important not to get locked into a mentality this is the way, this is the way, this is the way. I thought, oh yeah, everyone's stronger with one leg at a time because Michael Boyle said so.

James de Lacey13:30

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I actually wanted to dive a little bit into your PhD stuff, so you mentioned about the breath hold training at the beginning. And I know your PhD was in oxygen kinetics. You want to maybe explain what that actually is and then maybe dive into some of the breath hold stuff?

I think most people's maybe exposure to it is maybe through seeing like Wim Hof, even maybe like even some of the UFC countdown, like Israel Adesanya you see doing stuff in the pool. I was just at the UFC PI last week and they have their underwater treadmill that they also use for breath hold training, so it seems to be a little more mainstream now.

James Ramsey13:58

Ah, I didn't even, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, it's funny because people always ask me about, oh yeah, what about this guy that wrote a book? And Breath, I don't know, I haven't read it and I'm not buying it.

So people confuse VO2 max and VO2 kinetics. They think it's the same thing. So VO2 max is the maximal capacity, I'm just going to use layman terms, for your body to deliver and utilize oxygen. In contrast, VO2 kinetics, it's the dynamic VO2 response to the onset and offset of exercise.

So if I draw a little curve, like I should have pulled up a figure, you can pull up a figure. So there's a little, so highly trained endurance athletes, right, their VO2 will shoot up. Okay? Yeah. In contrast, recreationally, the curve is much more flatter.

And we describe it with a number called the time constant, which it's the time it takes to get to 63% of the amplitude or the height. Now, so for a recreationally trained person, their VO2 kinetics will be 25 seconds and they'll reach steady state in about two to three minutes, right?

In contrast, if you look at some of these world-class endurance athletes, their VO2 kinetics is only 10 seconds and they can reach steady state in about 30 seconds rather than two to three minutes. So I mean, if you want a technical definition, a really good one I saw, it's the rate of adjustment of O2 delivery and utilization within the microvasculature during the transition from rest to exercise.

But it's just, it's how quickly things turn on. So it's the dynamic VO2 response to the onset of exercise and the dynamic VO2 response at the offset of exercise. So that's the difference.

Now why breath hold training? Well, as I alluded to earlier, anytime the body is stressed, you think back to Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome, whenever there's a stress the body responds and there's an adaptation.

I think I posted about this in the group. A lot of people are like, why do you want to do high-intensity stuff? It doesn't even have to be breath hold training, why high intensity as opposed to long slow distance runs? And Jamnick 2020, if you look up the publication, there's a reference in there that talks about what I just mentioned.

And that it looks like mitochondrial biogenesis, right? So the more mitochondria content you have within the muscle, the more aerobic you are, greater to extract and utilize that oxygen to produce energy. So it looks like lactate from anaerobic glycolysis is the main signal to generate, increases the mitochondrial content.

And of course, other things such as carbonic acid during high intensity, CO2 will combine with water, form carbonic acid. We'll leave it at that, I'll spare all the biochemistry. But research found if you inhibit those carbonic acids, you won't, you'll get very little mitochondrial content. So it's all these stresses occurring during high intensity.

It's like ventilation. It's like the amount of CO2 that you, moderate intensity exercise, to clear one liter of CO2 that's being produced in your body, it takes like 20 liters of oxygen to clear that. The principal reason why you're huffing and puffing is to blow off that CO2 because we got to keep that blood pH on the arterial, 7.45, and the venous is 7.35. We want to keep that homeostatic levels.

But during high intensity, it can take like 29 liters of ventilation to clear one liter of CO2. So it's what it all comes down to. If you're stressing the body, there's that signal, body is like, oh crap, we got to adapt.

James de Lacey19:09

Okay, that makes sense. So let's maybe dive into maybe some of the application then as well. So how would you do breath hold training and what are you trying to get out of it? So you mentioned you're trying to stress the body. Is the response you're trying to get that faster VO2 kinetic, essentially that graph to be steeper?

James Ramsey19:09

Well, we want to increase mitochondrial content as much as possible. I mean, I believe, God, the VO2 maxes of MMA fighters, I've only looked at one publication, they're like 55 the last time I checked.

James de Lacey19:40

I mean, UFC released one, I can't remember off the top. They did it by weight class, so it ranged from like 40-something up to like high 50s or those 60s, I think.

James Ramsey19:40

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, VO2 or aerobic is important for the recovery. So an MMA fight, it's not constant. So you run and you throw a combination and you recover. You're regenerating PCR.

There's, I believe those Cramer, I can't remember the research off the top of my head, but I mean, back going back to like 2007, they found that those, and it was during resistance training, those with higher VO2s, they recovered, they had a better recovery in between sets.

Well, same thing with those little burst of explosive activities. That's what we're regenerating the PCR.

James de Lacey20:45

So how are you using breath hold training to do that then? Do you have a specific protocol you use?

James Ramsey20:45

Calas had a really good one with the contralateral dumbbells, and I really like that study. Actually, I sent you that video of me doing breath hold sprints. That was from a study in 2018 where they had elite level rugby players.

James de Lacey21:17

That was the Aussie team, wasn't it? I remember they had mouth tape on at one point when they were doing Junes and they had the mouth tape on. I don't know if it was just Australia that did it, but it made it way into the rugby world for sure.

James Ramsey21:17

Yeah, I mean, these were high-level athletes. These weren't general population. So they had two groups: they had breath hold and those that did regular sprints. And repeat sprint ability was significantly greater for those that did breath hold compared to those that didn't do breath hold.

But then again, does—I mean, obviously this is going to work great for field-based athletes such as rugby players, soccer players, football players, so on and so forth. I'm not quite sure where it should fit. Does this correlate? Is this going to help MMA fighters? I kind of view it as general prep instead of specific prep. That's probably where I would throw it in because we don't know.

I mean, obviously you don't want to do breath hold while you're hitting the bag training. But where to plug it in into the periodization program, my best guess right now would be general prep to boost that aerobic base as much as possible. And then once you get to specific prep, whatever you want to call the phase, as you're getting ready for competition, just focus more on sparring.

It's just questions that need to be answered. I mean, obviously it worked for world-class rugby players.

James de Lacey22:48

Actually, how's the UFC doing it, where they plug it?

James Ramsey22:48

I'm not too sure. I just know they have the underwater treadmill, so they must do it underwater. I don't know if they do it with exercise or not.

James de Lacey23:14

Do you want to—maybe if there's a fighter, amateur fighter listening to this—do you want to give an example of exactly how you would implement breath hold, for example, what kind of conditioning and then how long to hold?

James Ramsey23:14

But back to that UFC with the underwater, I think I know why they're doing it underwater. Do you know what the water temperature was?

James de Lacey23:14

I don't know that one.

James Ramsey23:14

Because the diving response—all right, so the diving response is just a fancy term for all the physiological adjustments that occur while you're breath holding, redistribution of blood flow so on and so forth. But I know it's more pronounced with facial immersion, like if you have someone in a lab and you stick their face in a bucket of cold water. So it's more pronounced. So that's pretty interesting.

But how amateur fighters would do it—I mean, myself, I've used it quite a bit—is the Calas version. You just get a light dumbbell, 25-pound dumbbell, do a reverse lunge with a press. And then every third set, I believe it is, you try to hold your breath as long as possible. You could probably get a pulse oximeter too to see if your saturation is decreasing, but you don't need anything fancy.

Just some dumbbells. The circuits: 20 seconds on, 15 seconds off. A press, a lunge, a one-legged deadlift, a row, while holding your breath as long as possible during the set every third set, I believe, is the protocol. You don't need anything fancy.

But as of right now, in my mind, I think it's best in the general preparation phase. And as you get closer to the fight, I think you want to focus more on sparring, so on and so forth. But there's so many questions that haven't been answered yet.

James de Lacey25:18

So if anyone's interested in that circuit, if you just search contralateral dumbbell circuit on Google, you should find it. It's free from Calas on there. He's got a whole circuit laid out with all those exercises. So essentially, every third set then you're holding your breath, and the idea is that by holding your breath you're going to increase the intensity of the exercise. And therefore you're going to increase creation of new mitochondria and develop that aerobic energy system. Is that right?

James Ramsey25:18

Yeah, increasing lactate. Actually, it's interesting: the higher your lactate, I mean, lactate is an important stimulus for testosterone, which we all know. And growth hormone also. I remember from my doctoral comprehensive exams in 2020, it's interesting: testosterone is more important for males while growth hormone is more important for female athletes.

James de Lacey25:45

Interesting. And what—in what sense, or what context is that?

James Ramsey25:45

For hypertrophy. That's from Kramer 2005. He's got a really nice—actually, I should post that in the group tomorrow.

There's so many—there's that paper with the hormones and stuff, how many sets of squats you need to elicit a hormonal response. It's after the fourth set the testosterone—I mean, it's a pretty...

James de Lacey26:22

Right. Yeah, I've got his Research Gate on my phone, so I want to look through that. Because I know recently as well, the acute hormonal response doesn't lead to long-term gains. Like the acute hormonal response from training is whatever. So I wanted to kind of go back and have a look through and just kind of see what they were coming up with there, then kind of look at it now.

So it's interesting kind of how it's progressed—how a lot of training used to be focused around that acute hormonal response. Like, oh, doing this is what's going to increase your testosterone straight after, so it must lead to bigger gains. But not so sure now.

James Ramsey27:16

Yeah. It's not what I specialize in. It's just you always hear—yeah, with the testosterone replacement therapy, you know, the old Vitor Belfort, remember those days on TRT? Nothing—the scariest animal on this planet was Vitor Belfort on TRT.

James de Lacey27:16

Well, he's back home for sure. You saw him in his last boxing match.

James Ramsey27:16

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He couldn't beat water, I'll tell you that.

James de Lacey27:16

No, for sure. I wanted to dive more into the, I guess, the idea of this high intensity or lactate to essentially create new mitochondria. So couple episodes ago I had Tim Kidd-Ring on. We dove into a little bit of the aerobic side of mitochondrial, I guess, biogenesis or creating new mitochondria. We talked a lot about low-intensity aerobic work as well.

So do you see low-intensity aerobic training fitting within this kind of paradigm of training? So I know you mentioned obviously high intensity being important for increasing lactate. Is that necessary? Do you always need to do that? Do you think you can almost omit low-intensity aerobic work?

James Ramsey28:25

No, you can't train at high intensities all the time. That's why I like the breath hold training early in a general preparation phase. It's not—you are increasing the lactate, but it's not really high intensity.

But how and where that fits in—of course you got to take time off from training too. It's like after a fight camp, take a week, take a week off, go for a walk. Just go for long walks. But everyone recovers differently. It's like taper and deload. There's a lot of individual variability because most people adapt, their tolerance for stress. Some people may need more sets than others.

But I think another problem is people confuse—that's why I created the group—people confuse training for performance with bodybuilding. It's like bodybuilding—we're not doing legs, push, pull, 10 sets of 10. We're not doing German volume. It's stimulate, not obliterate. And training for hypertrophy—I mean, hypertrophy lays the foundation for the development of strength, and strength lays the foundation for the development of power. But you're not trying to get them biceps huge doing a bunch of curls.

James de Lacey30:04

No, exactly. I mean, I harp on that a lot in terms of people doing pure bodybuilding or power building or powerlifting programs. Yeah, there's some principles that carry over for certain set-rep protocols or certain protocols you do. But if you run a pure powerlifting program, you're going to be absolutely [expletive] when it comes to your technical training. And why do they call it powerlifting? Weightlifting should be powerlifting, technically.

James Ramsey30:32

Yeah, I mean, there's that—it's like power is force times velocity. There's that explosive thing. It's like when I one-rep max on my barbell, it's not—there's no velocity. It's like the perfect example is a power clean.

The contraction. And I think—yeah, I mean, you need a hypertrophy phase, you may or may not. There's so many things to consider with designing a training program. I mean, is it linear? Is it nonlinear? Is it daily undulating periodization? I think DUP is best for people that they don't know when they have a fight coming. I remember reading that in some of the publications and recommend it. It's like, yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, if you have—if someone has a fight camp three months out, supposedly you can design a really good, the ideal—we're doing this, we're doing this, assuming there's no injuries and so on and so forth.

James de Lacey31:34

Overtraining.

James Ramsey31:34

Yeah, I mean, I think there's always going to be overtraining in MMA because that's how it works, but you're just trying to minimize that as much as possible.

James de Lacey32:01

Yeah, you got so many things you need to cover. Obviously, your grappling, or your various grappling, because you've obviously got jiu-jitsu on the ground, you got wrestling against the fence, you got wrestling, you got clinch, and then you've got every other striking around that, and then blending it all together. So obviously it's finding that balance for people.

James Ramsey32:01

Yeah, within that—I mean, I think through drilling, through drilling you're getting plenty of moderate—they're getting a ton of moderate intensity work. That's why I push the high intensity. But how much? What's the ideal? How much high intensity? I mean, do they need more than two sessions a week if they're sparring and they're grappling hard?

But back to what we were doing, it's like—actually, the only YouTube video I have with myself doing something is 40—it's 47 tire flips in 5 minutes. I had 300 lb tire, I flipped it like 47 times in like 5 minutes. That's what I would do before I would wrestle. It's like we would do all this like stupid stuff.

It's like, I go back in time and I think about how we used to train. All right, we're going to do 100 squats, 100 barbell squats. We're going to do 100 pull-ups, then we're going to go flip a tire. And we ruined—we ruined a few careers. A lack of knowledge is dangerous.

James de Lacey33:27

Well, still happening now, so it's not exclusive to just you and your group.

James Ramsey33:27

I know. I'm on Facebook all the time and I'm like reading stuff. It's like, should I say something? Should I not say something? At least a good thing, we got—we got Andrew Usher in the group. He's doing research on the physiology with all those world champion boxers. And like Dr. Tremblay, I get him on the podcast thing.

James de Lacey33:27

Yeah, gotta get him.

James Ramsey33:27

And Dr. Tremblay—like he says, I got seven world champions at my gym and we stopped the road work, we started doing high intensity, and every one of them, their sports performance improved.

James de Lacey33:53

Yeah, that's interesting. I wanted to get your take on that. So for—this is for me—sure, if you enjoy some running, do it. But I think there's other ways of doing that, that low intensity work, that could be—depending on your boxing load, for example, you could be doing shadowboxing, etc. etc.

But I'm not so sure I'm sold on fully removing the low intensity aspect. Now, I don't know what the rest of the training program looks like, so I can't make—to say, "Oh, blah blah blah." So I want to know, what's your take on that? So would you then completely—I mean, I asked this before—does that mean you would completely remove all low intensity work, leave the low intensity work to the boxing training, and only stuff moves to high intensity stuff?

James Ramsey34:46

I mean, you're going to get plenty of low intensity training. Like, how I—like the warm up was pummeling. We did a lot of pummeling warm up. Obviously you don't go at it—you got to warm up before you start training hard. But like, that five minutes of low intensity, or whatever the duration is you're getting—I'd rather do it with pummeling or so.

I'm biased on the pummeling thing because we had a guy, a Greco guy, wrestle for—two bronze medals. If you're going to do low intensity, at least in my mind, why go running when you can refine your pummeling? That's just an example. Or maybe some shadowboxing, light, easy shadowboxing, sprawl or whatever, specific to that combat sport. There's so many answers.

But it was interesting, I remember I posted that study in the group. And it was like, for low intensity or moderate intensity training, instead of doing 30 minutes of continuous cycling, they had participants—one minute on, one minute off, one minute on, one minute off. So they got that 30 minutes of work. The workout took 60 minutes rather than 30 minutes, but their AMPK, or the signaling to increase mitochondrial content, was significantly greater in that intermittent group. Why no one has studies on that as of yet, I have no idea. I'd like to see that, like I say, there. That we need answers.

James de Lacey36:28

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you could ask a million questions of that study. What were they doing beforehand in terms of training? Was that a new stimulus? What would you do after a cycle of that? Because you can't just do one minute on, one minute off for 60 minutes, and then what do you do the following weeks to progress? You go to 90 minutes of it?

James Ramsey36:52

Yeah, it's like, is that the optimal? Is one minute on, minute off, the optimal? I mean, it's an interesting—it demonstrates intermittent versus continuous exercise. So it's an interesting thought, actually. That's what my PhD supervisor did for his thesis at the University of Toronto, was continuous versus intermittent exercise. I'll post about that, interesting.

James de Lacey36:52

Yeah, for sure. Do you have a quick breakdown of that, of any of the findings?

James Ramsey37:24

He replicated a study from—it was like from the 1960s, where they did 10 minute—uh, 10 seconds on, 5 seconds off. And I'll just jump to the third study, for the sake of time, because it was a training study. He found significant greater adaptations with the 10 seconds on, 5 seconds off, compared to the continuous at high intensity. That was pretty interesting. Interesting.

James de Lacey37:24

Well, what—then what about if you're doing high intensity work? Obviously it depends how high intensity and how much of you're doing. Obviously when you're getting towards a lot of anaerobic lactic energy system input, you're almost diminishing a lot of the aerobic adaptations there. It's almost like that trade-off, right? It's like a seesaw you're trying to balance.

So then how would you then balance—how would you then balance, I guess, doing that high intensity work? I guess you wouldn't want to completely get rid of the some of the low intensity steady state stuff, or maybe the interval stuff.

James Ramsey38:29

I mean, you need both, different training days. I remember like the one coach that comes to mind was Calo, talking about have them do these different intensities on different days. But what's the optimal method? I don't know. But it all comes down to the individual, it all comes down to the individual athletes.

You have them athletes that have explosive power that gas out real easy, and you have those guys that could go run eight miles and not—and barely break a sweat—who don't have power. I mean, everything has to be tailored to the individual athlete. That's why you have to do performance testing early on.

But like what it comes down to is, it's like for MMA, it's your ability to produce repeated explosive power movement. That power endurance. But what's the optimal, optimal way to improve that?

James de Lacey39:37

Yeah, I mean, if anyone wants a quick stat from the UFC themselves, 77% of fights are finished in the 8 to 14 second high intensity exercise window. So essentially, you need to be able to produce a lot of power and repeat it, because that's where most of the fights are finished.

James Ramsey39:37

Yeah, it's like if you don't have power—I mean, people—I mean, it's like I remember people arguing in the group. I didn't expect the group to get to 14,000. It's like when I created I thought it'd just be a couple hundred people, we'd be talking, I do this, I do that.

But I remember early on people were like, "Well, look at the Diaz brothers. Look at the Diaz brothers, they do—" oh, and it's like—yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you can't—if you want to be a triathlete, train that. If you want to be able—but that's going to diminish your repeated, your explosive, your ability to produce repeated explosive contraction.

James de Lacey40:46

Yeah. You need to remember as well that their real volume—like their game is just volume work, right? They'll pepper you with a couple hundred punches and you're like—

James Ramsey40:46

I know, but then again, I don't think they've been doing so great the last couple times I saw.

James de Lacey41:14

I just wanted to dive back a little bit into the oxygen kinetic stuff. You mentioned well-trained athletes have that steep curve and they reach that steady state in around 30 seconds, untrained like 2-3 minutes. What's the benefit of being able to reach that steady state sooner versus someone who doesn't?

James Ramsey41:14

The benefit is less reliance on the anaerobic sources early on that you have to replenish. Actually, a real interesting thing that I want to look at after I graduate is priming exercise, because in lab we had a legendary researcher who retired, Dr. qual. They did some priming exercise where they did high intensity exercise, then they rest a period, and then they did moderate intensity exercise to improve performance. It worked for old people, older participants compared to younger.

That's another issue that needs to be addressed in MMA. What's the optimal warmup, priming the body? All these studies, the previous priming exercise studies, at least all the ones I've seen, have been on older participants and recreationally trained, and obviously that's not really applicable to high level athletes.

James de Lacey42:29

There's quite a few in rugby and team sports and things, so I've done a huge deep dive. I've done a couple, I've done a course on it for Science for Sport and things. So are you talking about going like almost like a post activation potentiation where you're doing like a warmup thing going straight into training?

James Ramsey43:00

No, they were looking at a day later. No, like six to ten minutes. It's kind of like Pat Smith. I got his wrestling DVDs. He was a four-time division one national champion at Oklahoma State. His brother went two gold medals. And he always talked about, and this stuck with me, I need to find that, I need to screen capture that video and share it to the group.

He's like, "I like to warm up really hard. I like to do a hard match, a two, three minute match 30 minutes before I do my first match, because I found that I did much better. Always you terrible on the first, and then once you wake the body up and stuff like that."

So, what's the optimal warmup for fighters? Should they warm up high? Should they warm up moderate intensity? That's another topic. Because I was watching that and then I was talking to a couple other guys who used to wrestle division one, and they were telling me the same thing. They're like, "Oh yeah, I had to warm up hard 15 minutes, 15-20 minutes before I stepped on to the mat." And that made all the difference in the world.

James de Lacey44:28

I think there's only one study that I've come across that looked at priming for endurance athletes. So most of the priming stuff's done on like power field sport athletes without looking at power coin Ben, whatever, and then seeing that primary effect maybe 6 to 33 or 6 to 48 hours later. Some of them use rewarmups, so they'll warm up and then they'll do like a rewarmup after a break to improve performance on the field.

But with an endurance, they used, I think it wasn't runners, they used leg extensions, I think it was leg extensions. But they did like a 45 second, was it isometric, they did some kind of endurance protocol on a leg extension to improve endurance performance for that race, which is interesting. I haven't seen anything on it since or any other research down that road, but it could be something interesting whether it makes its way into some kind of combat sports or some kind of warmup area.

James Ramsey45:23

That reminds me because I left Eastern Michigan University where I got my Master's Degree. Well, it was actually done in 2016, but I didn't get to defend my thesis till 2018, long story, long complicated story. But there was actually an individual who did a master's thesis on isometric exercise. They had him do some kind of isometric exercise and then they did sprints 10 minutes later, which you just reminded me about that because I got to go look up his thesis.

James de Lacey45:54

Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff even on nice isometrics as well and a lot of good stuff on that, on the whole priming and post activation potentiation. For anyone wondering what we're talking about, specifically it's like doing a high intensity or heavy loaded exercise first, and then in 3 to 10 minutes time you should see an improvement in power output or performance in whatever the activity is. And it's well researched area, but it's some of the context is lacking in certain areas, as we mentioned with combat sports and warming up and things like that.

What I find quite interesting is primers, an example professional rugby, have become like a mainstay. Like everyone does it. Either if you play Saturday, you'll either do a power primer Friday night or you'll do one Saturday morning of game day. Now I was wondering, like, if sports like MMA, we have a 24-36 hour weigh-in, we've got more time. If that would make its way into combat sports, would you do some kind of like power primer 12 to 24 hours out from a fight to see?

James Ramsey46:23

One point to bring up there, but obviously you got a weight cut to deal with too.

Yas par in the group, he says that he has his boxers do a plyometric warmup like 24 hours before the fight. So, because there's a lot of anecdotal evidence, I mean it's not that strong, but it does provide ideas for research. But there was a ton of anecdotal evidence with coaches with plyometrics the day before. And then I did come across a study where they found that plyometrics primed 24 to 48 hours.

And I know Yasar is using a low volume, high intensity, full body plyometric warmup for his fighters. But there's so many questions that need to be answered. That's why after I graduate, and if I open up my own lab, I want to look at priming exercise, the high intensity, try different modalities of how to optimally warm up for fighters and do some sort of performance test. Because obviously you don't want to do experiments like, "Okay, you got to fight, we're going to do a little experiment." That wouldn't be a good idea.

James de Lacey48:20

Now you carry on. So I was going to say one area of research I've thought about would be interesting, especially within MMA or even other combat sports. Obviously GPS and things are essentially a mainstay within sports, rugby and things, you're tracking movement on the field. Could even some kind of indoor like accelerometer or GPS, for example, MMA sparring, and then collecting that kind of data and seeing the actual needs analysis of MMA in terms of like movement, actions within a round, things like that.

And you could potentially base almost worst case scenario trainings off of it, get an idea of what like an average sparring session at least looks like to give some data back to the coach.

I just think that would be interesting. I don't know anyone who's doing anything like that yet, if that's even feasible within a lot of clubs and things, but yeah.

James Ramsey49:26

Andrew was doing some research with his world champion boxers with the accelerometers and stuff like that. The problem is when they would throw a feint, a feint, it counts. So that's, maybe some, I mean technology, it's like velocity based training. I really like that idea with the velocity based training. But what's better, velocity based training or rate of perceived exertion with determining what kind of load to use and so on and so forth? I kind of like velocity based training better myself because it's more objective.

Other than rating perceived exertion, because an MMA fighter's 8 might be someone else's 10. That's the whole problem, well not the whole problem, but one of the major obstacles with professional fighters is overtraining, because they're so used to misery, miserable training condition. The fight itself can be misery, so they want to replicate that in training. Be like, "If I do this, it's going to help this." But unfortunately, it's not quite how it works. You need to train around either side of what you're doing in there to bring it all together.

James de Lacey50:32

Yeah, it's like trying to determine what's the optimal when, where? There's so many questions that need to be answered.

James Ramsey50:59

But that's interesting to know that I'm not the only one looking at breath hold physiology, that the UFC's doing it with underwater treadmills. I had no idea.

James de Lacey50:59

I'll link you up and see, and you can see what they're up to and share what you're doing too. So I'm sure valuable for both of you.

James Ramsey50:59

Yeah, definitely. Because, same area but, you know.

Trying to recruit participants for underwater tread mode would be kind of hard. Getting around ethics, we're just drowning them, it's okay.

James de Lacey51:26

It's interesting because when you look at the older studies, they did that study where they told participants they're giving them anabolic steroids, those like the 1960s, '70s, but they weren't.

James Ramsey51:26

That study I haven't, no.

James de Lacey51:26

Okay, it's like the early 1970s. They told the participants they had them do a baseline training and then they randomly selected people. I'll post it in the group tomorrow and they're like, okay, well we're going to give you anabolic steroids, and instead of their strength increasing like this, it really increased. There were so many things that went on in early days of research. That's why we have the IRB. It's like trying to get an underwater treadmill, I don't think that would fly well if you're in the old Soviet era. You could do what you want.

James Ramsey52:28

Oh yeah, like the CRISPR DNA, they're doing it. Oh yeah, for sure, especially through like China and stuff. They're doing some gene doping now. Oh yeah, that stuff's going on. It's like that Russian, that 97 kg freestyle wrestler that nobody can beat. It's like, yeah, let's take a look at his genetic profile, see what's going on with that.

James de Lacey52:28

I mean, doping, for maybe the layman or just the general fan of sport, it's almost hard for someone to comprehend how much doping is actually going on in all sports at the highest level. Like we see, obviously because my wife competes in elite level weightlifting, obviously weightlifting, along with track and field, has a huge history of doping. And you just get to a point where you can almost see the signs of someone doping, in terms of someone lifting similar weights to other people that have been popped before.

You see the traps in the shoulders separation, you see that little turtle gut, these little things that you see. You're like, it's just people are just better and better at hiding it than ever.

James Ramsey53:28

It's like the whole breath hold, I'll post the study tomorrow in the group. I got to remind me, I'm getting old and senile. One research group found that, I believe, what they called it low ventilation, low pulmonary ventil. So they would exhale and then they would hold their breath, and they found that it worked out to about an elevation of 2,500 meters.

I got to, I remember reading that because I'm not doing blood work looking at the EPO hormone, stuff like that. Those that know about EPO hormone, just Google TJ Dillashaw EPO. I mean, it's, I thought that was, yeah.

James de Lacey54:42

I'm just going to say, if anyone's interested in the doping in the UFC, if you just go to the USADA website and go into the sanction section, you will be gobsmacked at the number of fighters that have been popped recently and high level fighters that you don't even know about. It's because obviously you only fight once or twice a year. When you take a six-month ban, it's just your training camp between fights anyway.

James Ramsey54:42

It's vacation. Oh, I know. It's like I've been around the block, I've been around boxing and kickboxing, MMA since 1993. And yeah, it's a lot more prevalent than what people think.

James de Lacey55:08

Definitely. Even though they say, well, I think the UFC since they ownership kind of lacks some of the testing rules. But Jon, when he got popped for the cocaine, the ratio of his testosterone to epitestosterone, it's like one of my professors when I was working at my masters, I told him about it, he started laughing. He's like, yeah, yeah, that's perfectly normal.

No good. Well, I think we covered a lot of the stuff, especially with your PhD as well. If there's anything you want to add to the conversation, you can feel free to do so. But if not, where can people find you to kind of follow what you're up to?

James Ramsey55:43

My Facebook group, Sports Performance Education for Combat Athletes. So maybe I'll link that up in the description.

James de Lacey56:13

All right, sounds good. Perfect. All good. Well, thanks for coming on, James. I really appreciate it.

James Ramsey56:13

Thank you for having me.