Chinese Olympic Wrestling Strength & Conditioning Secrets w/ Morgan Flaherty (SSOF Ep 181)

Morgan Flaherty2:21

And on the international circuit, we've got the most important tournament of the year is the World Championships, which is typically in October, September, October. This year it's different. Actually, it's in November, the end of October and November because we have the Asian Games shortly after. And so our season is planned around the Asian Championships, the Asian Championships, the World Championships, and the Asian Games. And so those are the big fundamental differences in terms of how the periodization is oriented around the major competitions.

But one thing that's really different about international versus collegiate is in collegiate, they have matches almost every month. They'll either have a tournament or they'll have dual meets and they're usually condensed. November is when the season will officially start and then they'll have dual meets throughout the year leading up to the NCAAs where they'll have the Big 10s which is about two weeks before and then they'll have the NCAAs and there's a few tournaments that are in the mix, but generally it's mostly dual meets and a few tournaments.

And some of the college wrestlers will be going to international tournaments if they're interested in having a freestyle career as well. So it's common for guys to mix it up. For example, Kyle Snyder was doing this at the time when he was training at the Olympic Center. And so this is right before he went to Ohio State. He was going out and doing these international tournaments. And then also at the same time because he just won his Olympic medal when he was 18 or so 19. And so then he was going into college at that time.

So the fact that they have these matches that are interspersed throughout the training year, this changes a lot of how the training year is planned when it comes to how they're trying to peak for different tournaments and how they're trying to develop their training plan.

James de Lacey5:47

I was going to say for you then how does that influence maybe your programming at a macro level whereas you mentioned collegiate I mean I think some of them almost wrestle every week as well potentially depending. So how does that then change maybe how you macro view programming in that setting versus what you have now where I'm assuming they still have some matches but it's mainly just centered around the big one, two or three competitions a year?

Morgan Flaherty6:19

I mean, the biggest component of all this, the biggest training consideration for all this is the weight because these wrestlers, they have to get down to weight multiple times, maybe a month. And as you know, that's taking energy away from your system, which is going to be taken away from adaptation.

And so when you have when you have these tournaments and you have these competitions and you got to bring yourself down to weight, that's a big stress on the organism. And so when you have these competitions, managing your weight and managing your training load is super important because it allows you, you want to make sure that you have enough in the tank to make it through the entire season before breaking down.

James de Lacey6:19

Does that mean I guess in season for a collegiate wrestler, you're just having to manage the minimum amount of volume as possible just to kind of keep everything ticking over and getting through. Whereas in your current setting, you have a little more room to move to kind of push maybe push some of the physical qualities a little harder.

Morgan Flaherty7:26

For sure. Definitely. I mean, there's two big differences. One of them is that in the college there's an off season and so during that off season the collegiate athletes can take the time to really build their physical qualities, whether it's put on their muscle, whether it's build their maximum strength and do all these things.

And then in season they're really trying to manage that volume and that intensity to make sure that they're able to maintain those qualities through the year. And it's possible for athletes to improve and to gain strength and power and speed and all those things.

And it's possible too. It's just a lot different where in international circuit the competitions are much fewer and far between. And so we can also have a much more dedicated training phases, where we have the first half of the year leading up to the continental championships and the second half of the year leading up to the World Championships. And this allows for solid periodization throughout the course of the year.

James de Lacey8:39

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So, how do you typically like to, I guess periodize? I mean, that's a nice six month almost block. You get to kind of really dial in there. So, how does that generally look? And we can dive into more detail as we kind of go through it.

Morgan Flaherty9:48

So I mean the first thing is that with the periodization, you got to look at the tournament, where is it, when is it going to be, and how much time do you have to get there? And so working back from there, you want to build, you want to have your three phases. Your general physical prep, your specific physical prep, and your pre-competition prep. And those are your three main big blocks.

And within those the secret sauce is within how you lead them to each other and allow them to kind of allow them to create momentum into your competition. And this is I think the art form of really coaching.

And so in the general physical preparation, there's a lot, there are some wrestling texts, there are some wrestling strength books and things like this that say you can, you should focus on building maximum strength during this time. You should focus on building your base in this way. And during this time, this is when I like to just build up the foundation of the athlete and how much work capacity can we create at this moment.

And so this work capacity is going to enable for an athlete to kind of feed into the rest of the year while having a good base that'll enable them to continue training hard. And so this general physical prep is really enabling you to build that base to lead into the heavier training that's coming into the phases to come.

And it's a dance because during this period, you have to figure out what are the other things that you want to do with wrestling and your conditioning. And a lot of those adaptations are conflicting and they interfere. And while there is some evidence that shows that the interference effect is minimal, it's minimal but also the body will still partition its energy onto the qualities that it finds to be the most stressful and then the other ones won't reap the same benefit.

And so it's important to manage the training in such a way that there's an effective balance between what are the qualities you're going for, how are they laid out, and how are the athletes adapting to this training?

James de Lacey12:49

So what does this kind of base work consist of then? Is it just almost like a little more volume in the gym on your basic compound lifts and maybe some I guess lower intensity aerobic work for the conditioning? Is that what you're classing as your basic or are you doing something completely different?

Morgan Flaherty13:06

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of—I mean you're trying to body build but without actually doing the methods of bodybuilding. Like you're trying to build as much muscle and you're trying to build as much tissue onto the organism at this time because over the course of the season they're going to lose some of that.

And so I mean it's gone—there's been some studies that have been shown that have as an athlete goes starts the season and then goes towards the end of the season their hormones start to take a decline and their lean body mass will actually decline in conjunction with these hormonal changes. And so it's important to lay a foundation of tissue that can carry the athlete through the season. And so this is one of the a priori goals during this time.

And I mean, most importantly is also determining what your strategy is for the whole year. I mean the general—I mean these phases, they can really differ depending on the strategy that you have for that year because of course you have your needs analysis which determines okay what are our athletes going to be doing this year, where do we need to work, and what are our strengths and our weaknesses during this time.

And that way we can actually prioritize and determine what are the things that need to be worked at this time so that way we're not pulling the horse to two different buckets of water. And this is what I was talking about in terms of the body will compete for resources for conflicting adaptations.

So this is where it gets important to find a way to either find ways to compound these adaptations or prevent them from interfering.

James de Lacey15:14

Nice. I've actually got some questions in the live chat here for you that will go well with some other questions. There's a live chat. People like to jump in and pick your brain on the stuff. There's some actually really good questions that will lead me into some other ones.

This one by shot by three BDU. How does an Olympic wrestler weekly schedule look and how many live wrestling sessions are they getting and how many S&C etc.?

Morgan Flaherty15:41

Wow. I can—if you want to specify a country I can tell you. This is one of the—I think I'm very lucky in this regard because I wrestled for Team USA for about 10 to 12 years and during this time got to wrestle on the international circuit and I wasted all my money living in other countries training with all the other nations and so I got to see how their schedules differed and also were the same. But I'll tell you how team USA was. I can't really disclose what China is doing, but I can tell you what team USA was doing.

So what we did is we had on Monday and Tuesday—Monday morning and Monday afternoon would—actually I should preface this by saying it changed in each phase. So during our general physical preparation phase, our specific physical preparation phase, our pre-competitive phase, and our competition phase, they always change. So this is something that's different.

Like for example, back in the US, we would have in our general prep phase, we would even have weeks of like four strength training sessions per week and then it would go into three and then two and then one and that was like—that would happen and then sometimes it was just 3-2-1 or 3-2-2 or 3-3 or 2-2-2 all year round. I've seen it all.

And but it generally was Monday morning, Monday afternoon wrestling, Tuesday morning wrestling, Tuesday afternoon strength training, Wednesday morning conditioning, Thursday morning wrestling, Thursday afternoon wrestling, Friday morning wrestling, Friday afternoon strength training, and Saturday morning we would run the mountain. In Colorado Springs, we had this thing called the Incline, which I think is, in my opinion, it's one of the greatest training tools ever.

It's like this old railroad track that would go up the mountain and it was a—

James de Lacey17:50

That's probably the Garden of the Gods.

Morgan Flaherty17:52

That's right. That's right.

James de Lacey17:54

Yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it.

Morgan Flaherty17:55

Yeah. And it's awesome because no matter how good of shape you are in, it's always hard. And so it's like—and it took me like—if you're in really good shape, you can do it in under 40 minutes. And if you're in like phenomenal shape, like if your VO2 max is like pushing over 55, then you can get under like—then you can get under 30 minutes. And so—or or even less.

I had my VO2 max measured at like 63 and I was—and I could like—and it took me 10 years to get under 30 minutes. It is just like it's a mental grind. It's just like—I don't I mean I don't even know how to explain, but I think it's like one of the best training tools mentally, physically. I mean, you're just like—in your lactate threshold the whole—I mean beyond your lactate threshold the whole time.

And the altitude gets higher. So you climb up 2,300 about 2,300 feet and you start at seven. You start at seven. So you're already at altitude and then you get higher. Yeah, it was one of my favorite things.

But anyways, I digress from his question. We would live wrestle pretty much in every practice. But the structure of those—the structure of that live wrestling would change. So for example Monday would be like positional training in the morning and then with like some sort of fancy system of managing time like a pyramid 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, three sets, something like this. And then the afternoon would just be like three minute goes, 30 seconds rest, three minute goes, 30 seconds rest for X number of goes.

And then on Friday we would do—actually we used to do this thing when I first got to Colorado Springs on Fridays we would have what's called a grind match. And then on Friday morning, Friday afternoon we would just have a 60-minute match. You would just grab somebody, they would press the timer and then you would just go for 60 minutes. And it was just all for mental—it was all for mental toughness. And it was cool. I mean it was challenging and I think it has its values but my philosophy about using time to modulate your energy systems has significantly changed.

But there really is something beautiful in using things like this to test your willpower and test your mind and meditate so to speak during these sort of things. So this is—that was generally Friday would be matches. Thursday and Monday were usually the hardest days and especially because you're starting to accumulate fatigue through the week and it's not like the conditioning was easy even though Wednesday morning was like—it was not—it was only half day.

They're like oh it's a recovery day. It's like, yeah, hardly. By the time you came in on Thursday morning, by the time you came on Thursday, you already felt like you were dead. And it was just like 10 years always tired. Always tired. I—there was never a time where I feel like I was getting ahead of the—where I really feel like I was getting ahead of the fatigue that was coming on. And so what—now would you change how that training is structured?

I would have just ate more.

I would have just—I mean this—the training I think a lot of the times we get caught up in these little details about when is the best time to train, what is the best order of training, and how do we optimize how we do our training. And our body is so adept at adapting that it will adapt to whatever you throw at it.

Now you have to be careful because if you are throwing the wrong things at it, it will adapt in the wrong ways. But generally speaking, unless you're quite negligent, you'll be moving in the right direction so long as you're pushing your cardio or or you're pushing the correct qualities that you're trying to go for.

The biggest thing I see people that are guilty of is they're doing something and they're thinking it's going to have a training effect, but it really doesn't have the intended training effect.

James de Lacey22:30

What would be some examples of that?

Morgan Flaherty23:04

For example like—let me let me think of something. Okay. Like for example, when people try to grab—like do a wrestling move that's like weighted in some way and they're like, "Okay, I'm going to do like this move with a weight and like think that that's going to help me transfer into my—that's going to help me transfer into my wrestling."

James de Lacey23:41

I still win.

Morgan Flaherty23:43

Yeah, that's not really how it works. Our bodies are super keen in how we adapt specifically to specific outcomes, specific scenarios, the balance, the feel, the timing. You're on a wrestling mat, which is another thing. The person has a certain weight balance. This is another example, or even people are doing the punching with the weights.

I think even landmine training is kind of one of these things. I really like landmine training, but we talk about it like it's rotational training. And there is a rotational component to it, but it's really just more unilateral training, which the body does express its force through these diagonal patterns. But to think that it's doing this direct fascial pattern across your whole body is like, dude, our whole body is working the whole time. Muscles are co-contracting across the entire body all the way from your toe to the hand that's holding the weight.

It's more or less a full body exercise. And in order for one to really build rotational strength, it's got to be more or less focused on developing, it's got to be resisting force directly in a rotational component. But when we're doing the landmine stuff, it's actually more or less close to your center. I know exactly what system you're talking about and yes, I am with you.

James de Lacey24:15

I do not like that. I won't name the name, but yeah, I don't like people that way.

Morgan Flaherty25:53

I mean, I personally love landmine training. It's a staple in my stuff.

James de Lacey25:58

I do enjoy

Morgan Flaherty25:59

But there's a system of landmine training that has been created. Put it that way. Yeah, it's, I mean, there is no one exercise that covers it all. And because our body doesn't care, our body is just a sequence of muscles working together to oppose and create force.

So when you weight train your muscles, or when you're strength training, you're essentially training those muscles to create force, and the movement pattern is more or less the skill of it. But you're developing a skill and then you're developing capacity, and there is a synergy between the two which is important. The sum is greater than the parts, but ultimately when we're strength training, we're focusing on trying to build this capacity.

And then when we go onto the wrestling mat, then the athlete has this capacity and now it's their responsibility to train in a way that they utilize this capacity in their wrestling. And this is actually, I think what kind of initially piqued my interest about what your posts were about, because you were using a lot of physics in order to talk about what should we be focusing on. And I love this sort of stuff.

I read a book in 2013 called Fight Physics or Fight Stats. It was at my friend Brian Carowway's house. And this book was all about the statistics of UFC fights and how you could essentially play Moneyball with the fight. God, what's the word I'm looking for? Sorry, I'm still a little, I'm 3 hours of sleep for two weeks.

James de Lacey28:16

Like outcomes?

Morgan Flaherty28:18

No, taking the statistics of, okay, if you land this many punches, if you take this many hits, what is the probability of you winning? And it was talking about these statistics, but then on the end it kind of went into, then so this piqued my interest. I was like, I wonder how much of this all is really mathematical. I would wish that all of this was really mathematical.

And so then this helped me, I started looking into it a little bit more. And then there's another book, when I get back to the U.S. I'll send you a picture of it, but it's essentially called Fight Physics, or The Physics of Fighting, where he's talking about, why is it that a spinning back kick is harder than a front kick? It's talking about the angular momentum of a kick is higher as the foot is further away from the body.

And then just like a figure skater, just like a gymnast, when they open their arms, they slow down. They bring their arms in, they speed up. It was talking about all of these sort of things. And so I was trying to use this to really think about what is transferring in our training. How, and what am I missing here?

James de Lacey28:27

If

Morgan Flaherty29:37

If strength, as we like to look at it, is force times mass, force is mass and acceleration, then how do we train these components to give the desired effect? And in a sense, all three of those components are individually trainable. Force is the capacity of a muscle. The mass is the size of the organism, and the acceleration is the rate of change for your speed.

And so I started to think about these things and how does this relate to our transfer, and why is it that some people have this wrestling strength but other people don't. And I think a lot of it has to do with this situation where people, when they're wrestling, they know how to use their force against something in a way to get it to move, or they know how to use their body to create force, which is the mass component of the situation.

If you've ever wrestled with, there's a famous wrestler named Dan Gable. He was really, I was fortunate enough to meet him in Iowa and learn a couple things from him. And one of the things that he really, what was evident about how he wrestled, is that he would put his whole weight into his hand.

And so his hand, his grip, his arm might be strong, but that's not what you felt. What you felt was his whole body. And so this is wrestling strength. And how does it transfer? So when we're in the weight room, essentially, we're trying to build this capacity to create no leakages in the system so that way that energy can transfer from our feet to our hands.

James de Lacey30:55

That's a good answer too. And I've actually had questions pour in for you. So, you're obviously a superstar here. And what's nice is they're, I've got some educated followers. Put it that way. So there's some really cool questions. A lot of them, some of them are actually ones that I already had for you. So I'm going to run through these.

Morgan Flaherty31:53

So I'm down. Let's go.

James de Lacey31:55

Yeah. Let's go. Christian says, "What do the Chinese use for developing rate of force development? And how important is peak force versus rate of force development?" So I can't tell you what we do in China, but I can tell you how do you develop peak force and how do you develop rate of force development, or which one, or is one more important than the other to you at all? Does it depend on the athlete, or I don't know, maybe the style?

Morgan Flaherty32:21

Okay. Yes, this is really important. So this comes down to strategy. So, Christian, I'm sorry to take kind of a backhanded answer, but nothing is ever black and white, especially in wrestling, because this is my schtick of wrestling. Wrestling is a game of rock paper scissors.

You've got your quick athletes, you've got your conditioned athletes, and you got your strong athletes. And it's a game of rock paper scissors because essentially the fast guy, if he can move more quickly than the strong guy, then the strength is ineffective. The strong guy can neutralize the quick guy, he's not effective. And the conditioned guy, if he can outlast the other two, he's also more effective. And so there's never a total advantage, because also if you can get people to wrestle your match, then this is essentially how you tactically win a match.

So I use a lot of idioms and stuff. I'm really big on communications, and I have a whole system based on how you actually communicate your strategy to your coaches and your athletes. So that way you can be aligned on a specific system. I call it the snap, because of, well, you know, wrestling snaps. But having your strategy is super important because there is no best way to win. There's only the best way for you to win.

And so whether it's peak force or rate of force development, the first thing is you got to make sure is that you don't have any holes in how you're going to lose. Because it's one thing to have your strengths, because your strengths is how you're going to win. But your weaknesses is how you're going to lose. And so if you don't have these covered, then you're going to be exposed, and before you even have the opportunity to win, you're going to lose.

And so rate of force development, essentially, most athletic actions happen within 200 to 300 milliseconds. So rate of force development needs to occur within this window of time. And what's tricky about wrestling is that there's actually kind of an asterisk there, because what you're doing is you're essentially trying to time people. And you're trying to use your leverages and your movements and your fakes to essentially shorten that window or deceive them.

So that way you can actually have a shorter window so that way they can't even react to the move, because you're already one step ahead or two steps ahead or three steps ahead. And so this is one of those situations. For example, Jordan Burroughs, he hits his fakes. He's faking, he's faking, he's faking, he's faking. And the athlete will, he will fake, the athlete will get on their heels, and then he'll shoot.

And so the athlete is now responding to two different things. So that's 200 milliseconds. That's 400 milliseconds. Jordan Burroughs hit his double leg in 250 milliseconds or 300 milliseconds. That 100 milliseconds difference is all it takes to score. And so that rate of force development is important because of the strategy. How do you score your points, or what is your technical capacity, and what are the moves that you use?

If you hit your two-on-ones and you're doing your two-on-one attacks, and you're mostly holding a tie, then rate of force development isn't as important until you hit your throw. But then at that point, timing and weight balance are still important. This is judo. And your balance.

Now peak force, this is essentially when you hit your move, how much of that energy carries to or through your opponent, which is kind of what you were posting about the other day where you were talking about angular, where you're talking about momentum and impulse.

You essentially have an athlete. Your mass is going to stay constant, their mass is going to stay constant, but you have the opportunity to take your mass, hit it at a speed and carry it through the and use your force to carry it through them. And so, but that amount of force needs to change. So the capacity for you to create enough force is enough to change their momentum, which is the impulse.

And so you need to create enough force quickly enough, which is the rate of force development, in order to get them off their balance or to change their center of gravity or execute your attack, whatever. So this is the scientific answer to that question.

What I would like to say generally speaking is that rate of force development and power and force strength are both extremely important and they feed into each other. Your strength is what helps you build your power and your power is a function of your strength. And so you really want to build up your strength so that way you have the capacity to express your power. But you have to train your power separately so that way you can express your strength.

And if you're just working on your strength also, this is not really great to do indefinitely because your body is going to adapt to that type of muscle action, the speed of movement, the exercises that you're doing. And this is when, this is how injuries occur is that when you're doing one type of training for way too long and then your body just adapts and normalizes to that type of training without enough variation to redistribute the stress.

So this is important. Rate of force development is, can the body even protect itself? And rate of force development, can the body protect itself quick enough? This is also another component when it comes to ACL tears and stuff is that a lot of the times people will have an ACL tear and then they will get back to playing and they'll be all good to go.

And then they'll do a jump on a force plate and they'll notice that the ACL leg can actually not produce its force within 250, 300 milliseconds. And we were just talking about if all actions happen within 250, 300 milliseconds and this whole leg is back, is behind, well then the body is moving and the leg stays behind here. So what happens? Retearing ACL.

And so this is why people that tear those tend to retear them because their rate of force development doesn't catch up to this. Generally speaking, strength is king. But rate of force development allows you to use your strength in a way to execute your techniques. Does that answer your question?

James de Lacey39:36

Yeah, that answer. I've got two follow-ups for you and they're two separate ones, but I'm going to throw them both at you and I'll come back to it if we forget one.

One is around rate of force. So, you could say that kind of 250 to 300 milliseconds is almost late stage rate of force. And then obviously you have early stage like 50 to 100 milliseconds, which would be more of your quick response. I guess plyos and jumps and whatnot.

Do you have, do you specifically, how would I frame this? Is early stage rate of force development something that you do focus on, even though it is I guess more contextual, let's just say, to say sprinting as an example? We have these really short ground contacts. And then my second question, which is kind of not related but kind of is. So we'll come back to it.

You mentioned obviously the different I guess types of wrestlers that you put together, like punishing ones, fast ones or strong ones. Do you categorize your wrestlers in that way and then they I guess maybe programmed separately or slightly differently based on their characteristics?

Morgan Flaherty40:39

Yes, the answer to that question is yes, definitely have to individualize training. Because people, I mean, so there's three, there was three things. I forgot the second one. The first one was, did I forget all three of them?

James de Lacey40:39

Almost. Early versus late stage rate of force development and using quick response plyometrics versus longer ground contact jumps or Olympic weightlifting derivatives.

Morgan Flaherty41:04

Okay. I love Olympic weightlifting derivatives. They're super applicable for wrestling. Just the speed to get under the bar is important. The ability to catch the bar is important. The ability to develop force into it. If you're a Greco-Roman wrestler, you're training all of the applicable muscles for your lifts.

In freestyle, it's not as much. But you can turn it into a split clean or something like that. And then you have a little bit more of a direct carryover, but I have seen Olympic weightlifting carry over into power development. So, it's doing what I need it to do for the athletes in terms of keeping them loaded, doing an exercise that they're familiar with and helping them develop the qualities that I need.

Plyometrics is kind of interesting. Plyometrics are super important in the training just to train, like you said, early stage rate of force development. I have some funny thoughts about this that I have to, that I am looking to investigate at another period of my career, but essentially that I wonder if those don't even exist on a wrestling mat because the mat will actually—

James de Lacey42:26

That's kind of why I asked the question as well because it's like where it may be more contextual, something like sprinting versus wrestling. But yeah, carry on.

Morgan Flaherty42:26

Yeah, the wrestling mat kind of acts like a tendon because you store energy. Athletes trained to use the mat as part of their body. So it's almost like that's part of their tendon and they have to learn how to use that. And so I would be curious to know how is the actual wrestling mat—I got to plug this guy in really quick—how is the wrestling mat?

How does a wrestling mat affect the development of that force with respect to the—there we go. How's a wrestling mat affect, it's going to affect the timing of that development and how is the energy going to be reexpressed or re, or either, or how is it just going to change with respect to using the wrestling mat? Is that, is it going to prevent the utilization of more force? Is it going to facilitate the utilization of more force?

I mean, you see gymnasts launch themselves on those pads and they're certainly creating a lot of force, but I don't think it's the same amount like when they're sprinting. And I've noticed this in wrestlers who run on the mat versus—

James de Lacey44:06

Oh, you're still there. I think where you moved, your internet.

Yeah, I got you back now.

Sorry. It just cut out for a second.

Morgan Flaherty44:18

We back. Can you hear me?

James de Lacey44:19

I think you're back now. I think where you moved, the internet isn't as good where you moved.

Morgan Flaherty44:25

Yeah. Welcome to China. The internet in these rooms is the bane of my existence. It's so suboptimal. At certain times of day, everybody's on their phones and stuff and it's working now. We got your back.

Yeah, everybody's waking up at this point. So we'll see how it goes.

The early rate of force development is just important because it's a skill and you need to develop your skills and make sure that—

James de Lacey45:03

Let me throw you another question then from Christian here because actually no, let me let me jump to fee music because it was on the same lines as what I was asking you before around, do you recommend any particular weightlifting derivatives for combat athletes? Power cleans, push presses, etc.? Or do you think full lifts are worth it to the benefits?

Morgan Flaherty45:22

A power clean is just so, a power clean is super, super useful. It's not very high skill level and it has all, it focuses on the things that you need for wrestling. But a full clean is better because a full clean allows you to catch under the bar quickly and practicing that acceleration of level change is super important.

And so this is what I really, so this is what I really like in the full clean is that you're practicing your acceleration of your level change. Same thing with the snatch. The snatch is the same way in that sense. And I really also like how the snatch opens up your chest and opens up your shoulders and strengthens your ribs.

Which is really important for wrestling because as you know, gut wrenches, the whole point of those is to kind of crank on your ribs. And so to have some exercise that can build some muscle mass around your ribs is helpful to help your body just kind of withstand the rigors of that technique.

James de Lacey46:37

Nice. Yeah, I didn't even think about the kind of, that transition of getting under the bar with the full lifts. That's—

Morgan Flaherty46:43

Hell yeah. Super.

James de Lacey46:45

Yeah. Another question here from Christian. What grip exercises do you like and how important is grip training?

Morgan Flaherty46:45

I personally think grip training is very important. However, I have been very challenged in this because I know an Olympic champion, a wrestler in the US who had one of the lowest grip trainings or grip scores on the dynamometer.

And he was an Olympic champion. And ever since I saw this, I realized that it was not as important as I maybe thought. And so I just removed my biases. But then we circle back around to what we were talking about earlier is what are our strategies to win? Like he wasn't a wrestler that held on to two-on-ones, that held on to wrists, that used his grip to win.

But if you're an athlete who depends on your wrist ties, your arm ties, then it's going to be super important for you in that sense.

Another wrestler, Alexander Alexan, from Armenia, he's Olympic silver medalist or two-time Olympic silver medalist, like five time world champion or something like this. I don't know exactly how many world championships he has, but he's like a five, six time European champion. His grip strength is insane. He's like it's like 80, 90 kilos or something like that. And so it's super important in this sense.

And one of the things that's really interesting about grip training is that it's extremely specific to the training that you do. So for example, if you climb a rope, it's not going to make your squeezing strength better. If you do your pinch strength, it's not going to make your climbing strength better. If you do your lumbar coal extension, it's not going to improve your pinching.

And so you can kind of go down a rabbit hole of grip training because just within your hands, you have a whole bunch of movements. You got your older radi deviation, your flexion, extension, deviation, your rotation open, close. This is also a different muscle than this one, which is different than this one.

And so you have— and then even with your thumb too, you have this, you have this and this. They're all different. They're all different. There's all individual muscles for everything and they don't carry over.

Charles Polyquin told me that you really should just do one set of each of them just as hard as you can and then that should be, that'll be enough because otherwise you'll spend too much time training any one quality which might not even be that important. So, it's better to kind of—this is one of the situations where it's better to put your eggs in all the baskets and just raise them up slowly over time as opposed to just trying to hammer one of them unless it's really weak and you know that dang, I can't do my gut wrench because I keep losing hold of something or I can't hold this two-on-one or I can't hold this lock because I'm losing a hold there. And that's a unique situation which is also just about your strategy.

James de Lacey50:24

It's funny. I just did a solo podcast last week and I said the exact same thing as you just said. That none of the grips—I mentioned all the grips you mentioned. I said none of the grips transfer to other grips. And I was like, you can spend all your time doing the Captains of Crush grippers and you just won't see it make much of a difference with anything else.

I'm going to throw you another question here from one that I had on my list that's just been asked here which I think is really good one. What's the difference that you've seen between high-level wrestlers and Olympians?

Morgan Flaherty50:38

A will to win is super important. There's just—I have a lot of answers here. So I'm trying to figure out how to go about this and share this in a way that is more interesting. Let's see. I'm going to get down on the floor like a teenage girl.

Okay, the details are super important in their training, in their preparation and how they handle their lives. They really—professionalism is extremely important in how they hold themselves, how they carry their job, how they carry their purpose. And this allows them to have the resolve they need to compete with the resolve they need to win.

And because they have their details dialed in, they don't make mistakes where people are commonly making mistakes because all these little things they add up. And so if your nutrition is off, if your sleep is off, if your training schedule is off, it's like all these—even if they're a little bit, just a little bit, all of those little things, those details add up to when you get to the competitions and have to perform.

And so this is one of the big things and that carries into the preparation too. When they're doing a move are they focusing on the details that they need to be focusing on in that move or are they just going through the motions? Are they training with a specific purpose with the intention of getting better in specific planned ways? That's extremely important.

So I would say number one is the big thing is a strategy to win and the willpower and means to get there. I'll tell you about what my SNAP system is. You have your strategy, that's your S. So do you have a strategy to win? N is the narrative—what are you telling yourself in order to ensure that you are going to win, that you are going to impose the strategy? How are you going to impose this strategy?

A is your actions—what are the things that you're going to do in order to ensure that you're executing this strategy? And then P is your plan. How do you plan those actions? So with your SNAP system, you have the ability to ensure that you are finding a way to win.

You have a way to win. You have the mental map of how that's going to look. You have your action and your plan. And so the big difference between high level athletes and Olympians in this sense and even the champion—and this even goes even higher for the champions and the second place third place—is these details.

Because when you start—because everybody is training hard. Everybody is training hard. Even the people that aren't professional wrestlers, they're training hard. But the difference is that these athletes are training hard and correctly and they're doing the things that are consistently helping them get better in the way that needs to—in the way that they need to get better. And so this is what I would say is the biggest difference between the Olympians and the high level athletes.

James de Lacey55:26

Are there any physical qualities that you have seen maybe separate these two groups?

Morgan Flaherty55:33

I have seen some freak athletes for sure. There are some freak athletes that just have exquisite qualities. But at the end of the day it's not so much that they have the one quality that helps them win. It's more so like I was talking about earlier, do they have holes in their game?

Like for example, we look at somebody like Hamid Surion who is—there was a research study on him about what were his physical qualities. And you look at his physical qualities and he had a V2 max of 55. He had one and a 1.8 times body weight back squat, a 1.3 times body weight bench press. But you can see his definite advantage was he could do 50 pull-ups.

So, you could see, okay, this dude's got—he's strong enough to hold his own. He's got cardio good enough to ensure that he's not going to gas out, but his muscle endurance is his weapon. And so this is where I'm talking about where the strategy was there where maybe he didn't even know this, but that was definitely his thing.

And when you watched him wrestle, he was always pulling on the head, pulling on the body, pulling on the head, pulling on the body, pulling on the head, pulling on the body, and then boom, he would get his high dive and then that's how he would score his points. And then he would hit his gut wrenches to follow from there.

And those are all dependent upon having the strength in the arms and or the lack of fatigue in the arms to be able to hit these consecutive moves over the course of a Greco match. And he was a two-time Olympic champion, five-time world champion. So, you can't say that it's not—that he wasn't good enough.

But generally speaking, the physical qualities of these Olympians, these athletes, they all meet a certain minimum standard. And they meet certain minimum standards across these to ensure that they don't have holes in their game and then their strategy to win is based upon something else. And that's all relative to the person. And this is where we talk about the individualization of the training. Where is it important to ensure that people are creating a strategy to win?

James de Lacey58:16

Nice. And I have another question here, but I'm going to come to one of mine here around the actual wrestling practices themselves. How much input or say do you have into helping plan these practices? And are there changes or modifications that—

You like to make? Because you mentioned obviously you talked about kind of like playing with time in terms of being able to change intensity and things within training. So yeah, are there things that you're doing or liking to implement within wrestling practice to maybe get some of the adaptations or target some of the qualities that you like or want? And do you have any maybe particular examples of drills, games, or anything like that that maybe will kind of showcase that?

Morgan Flaherty58:53

Of course. Yeah. I mean back in the US when we would have our strength or when we have our wrestling practices, we would have our warm-ups which included drills of, which included like physical qualities and exercises as part of the warm-up. So like for example, we would do our like running, our gymnastics and all of those things to start and then from there we would get into like we would do our sprints, our jumps and other like acrobatic exercises.

And I always thought that we could maybe implement even more acrobatics and plyometric drills into these, but it depends on how long you want to be in the wrestling room and train for that long. And then when we would finish our wrestling practice, like it was really important for athletes to stay after and do pull-ups.

Like we would do either 100 pull-ups a day or climb the rope a few times. And so we would do this to finish our practice. And so everyone had their individual little stick on how they would finish their practice. But during that time following the practice was that opportunity to address those individual things that you needed in addition to your training. And so I mean especially at the high school and college we would have like a little bit of conditioning to finish the practice, whether it was like some exercises or drills or something like this.

But at the international level once we finished our live wrestling we would stretch and finish and then practice was over, then you had your opportunity to do your individual training once practice had finished.

James de Lacey1:00:40

Do you have any input or say into the actual live wrestling itself, maybe certain days you're manipulating the time constraint or some kind of constraint within that?

Morgan Flaherty1:00:50

Yeah. So like for example in the general physical preparation phase, you're having a little bit more of an, you're trying to have a little bit longer goes because at this time you're trying to focus a little bit more on aerobic qualities. And so this is like one of the components where you would change, you would manipulate the duration of your wrestling goes to ensure that you're training in the energy systems that you're working for.

James de Lacey1:01:19

Perfect. Yeah. And I've got one more for you from the chat. And hopefully I'm not running into the time that you have, but this one is on what muscles are more important for a wrestler versus a typical bodybuilder? Do more useful muscles, I'm assuming like muscles that are used often with wrestling, retain more mass when cutting?

Morgan Flaherty1:01:32

Do more muscles retain more mass during cutting? I would say the neck is the most important muscle for wrestlers. You don't want to die, so you want to make sure your neck is pretty strong. Wrestling can be really dangerous if you don't have strong enough necks. And so, having a strong neck is important. Also, if you get pinned, you lose. So, if you have the strength in your neck, you can prevent yourself from losing outright. So I would say the neck is that muscle.

James de Lacey1:02:20

Do you find muscles that are used often retain more mass when cutting? I'm assuming that means like back, biceps, neck, etc.

Morgan Flaherty1:02:30

That's a really interesting question. I mean, your body will atrophy if you don't train the muscles. So, that question essentially is like what are the muscles you're skipping when you have your cut? Those are the ones you're going to lose. And or what modality are you using to cut your weight? Are you on the bike or are you running? Are you doing this?

Because you could potentially be losing muscle in those areas that you're using to cut your weight. Because those, you're at a calorie deficit, you don't have energy, and now you're asking your body to burn calories. It's going to pull it from the muscle that you're working. So that's one of the things that you could lose muscle in those areas.

For example, if you're running, you might lose them in your calves or your legs or something like that versus you do something more like an aerodyne. Maybe it's I mean maybe it's your whole body, but I think it's going to be a little bit more distributed, so to speak. Or even just, yeah or maybe it just takes it from your body fat just because there's a little bit more of an even distribution. I don't know. It's something I don't know.

James de Lacey1:03:51

Nice. Final question that just came in on that topic of neck. How to train the neck effectively for wrestling?

Morgan Flaherty1:03:59

Training the neck is a double-edged sword. You have to do some of those bridging exercises on the mat, weighted, unweighted, whatever. It's kind of like a necessary evil. It's not really good for you. It's not good for you, but it's good for your wrestling. And so, you got to do that.

And then, of course, like you can look on my Instagram, there's like somewhere in the depths there's like my neck-up routine. I have like a little lying neck-up routine which is like 100, like baby don't hurt me. I do like 100 this way, 100 this way, 100 this way, 100 this way, or excuse me, not 100, I'm sorry, 20. And it leads up to 100. So, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, 20 this way, and then 20 bridges. And I'll do that, and it's about 100.

And I'll do that. And I used to do that every other day for a long time. And that helped me with, I mean that gets all the anterior muscles of the neck and it's unweighted and it burns like a [expletive]. So it's like a good unweighted routine that I like to do like before practice, after practice or whatever. And then of course like you can just get the plate and do your plate extensions, your plates to the side, your weighted stuff. And that's like one of my favorite.

You only need to do a few sets of that every week. You got to be careful. You got to load slowly. Try not to push it too hard too quickly because if you load it too hard too quickly, you could get a stiff neck and that's a pain in the ass. Or pain in the neck. So, you want to make sure that you're improving at a slowly, slow but steady pace and try not to overdo it.

James de Lacey1:06:03

Back in the day when, this must mean my early 20s and stuff, obviously hardcore to lifting was big listening to like Jim Wendler and stuff. I used to have a neck harness next to my bed and I used to use it at night before going, like crazy.

Morgan Flaherty1:06:17

Would you wake up with a stiff neck all the time?

James de Lacey1:06:20

No, I wouldn't do that. I was like progressively doing it, but it was all good. Do like neck harness off my bed and stuff just, man. We do crazy when we're younger.

Morgan Flaherty1:06:33

That's cool.

James de Lacey1:06:34

But perfect. Morgan, where can people see your Instagram, see that neck stuff, and keep up with what you're doing?

Morgan Flaherty1:06:40

I'm on Moo Training on Instagram. You can shoot me messages, shoot me questions on Instagram. I have been, I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to be posting on Instagram. I kind of have to keep what I'm doing here kind of under some sort of surveillance and so I can talk to you and I can do all those sort of things and I'm figuring out what's, how I can give back to the wrestling community in a new kind of way.

But find me on Moo Training. I got a YouTube channel with a bunch of old exercises on there, too.

James de Lacey1:07:18

I think we've all got one of those.

Morgan Flaherty1:07:20

Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of funny. And you learn how to do a Bulgarian bag spin and all those good exercises there. And yeah, Moo Training on Instagram, Mogot Training on Twitter and YouTube. And of course just hit me up and it was a pleasure to be here, James. Thanks for having me.

James de Lacey1:07:45

No, I appreciate you coming on all sick and flew out and everything and I'll link up all your stuff down in the description, too, so everyone can make sure that check you out and shoot your message and whatever, but I appreciate you coming on.

Morgan Flaherty1:07:58

Yeah, thank you. I'm glad you had a live group of people that were involved here. That's pretty cool. It makes me feel nice.

James de Lacey1:08:05

Appreciate you guys for tuning in and asking questions. And if you're listening to this podcast, make sure you check the YouTube channel regularly because there will be live streams up for these podcasts. But cheers for coming on, Morgan.

Morgan Flaherty1:08:15

Thank you. See you later.