Clearing The Conditioning Confusion + Q&A w/ James de Lacey (SSOF Ep 81)

James de Lacey0:00

Typically high carbohydrate, lower fat, high protein. That's your goal. You can go for the gold standard: 3 grams of carbohydrates per day per kilo of body weight, 2 grams of protein per day per kilo of body weight, and then 1 gram of fat per kilo of body weight per day. And that is a simple way to get about it.

Another way you can do it is the way I like to do it. You can estimate your maintenance calories. There's lots of calculators online you can do that with, or you can go your body weight in pounds, times that by around 15. That's somewhat your maintenance calories.

Drop off 200, 300 calories as the start of your deficit, and that can be your calories to start with. You can just weigh yourself daily just to make sure your weight is not creeping up.

And then what you're going to do, you're going to set your protein to 1 gram per pound of body weight, or 0.8. You can be within that range. 0.8 grams per pound of protein of body weight is kind of the ceiling of maximizing the production of new muscle.

So you can sit there. If you like to eat more protein, you like meat and you just really like eating protein, you can afford it, etc., yeah, you can go up to 1 gram. There's no real difference in terms of gains, but it's just nice to be able to have that little extra wiggle room for yourself, especially if you like protein or you eat higher protein carbohydrate sources as well. That can stack up your protein too.

So you set your 1 gram, then I like to set my fat. I've found I perform best on 25% of my total calories coming from fat. So that means you take your total calories, for example, if you, a crude example, if you have 3,000 calories in your diet, then you take 25% of that, 750 calories. You divide that by 9. That's the grams of fat that you take in.

Now your fat can range, 20 to 30%. All of those are good for general hormonal function. You can go high fat if you want. I think it's more important that your fat is a little lower because you need the carbohydrates to perform, especially with an MMA.

So the rest of the calories come from carbohydrates. Ends up being like, I think if you do the ratios, it's like 25, 30% protein, 25% fat, and then ends up being what, 45 or 50% carbohydrates in that diet. And that'll sit you up well, and you can just do that for whatever your calorie count is. Hopefully that answers that question.

If you have any more, more specific, make sure you throw it in the chat. I've got another question here from Jerry. That man, how can I improve my grappling? Well, that's technical, so I will not be giving too much answer there. But going to class and learning there.

There's actually, if you go search Sweet Science of Fighting Instructional, there's a new Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel. And myself and Brian Furlow, a second degree black belt, he is my coach out here at Valente Jiu-Jitsu in Austin, we've been doing a bunch of instructionals there and they're completely free, so make sure you check that out as well.

Another way you can record your matches, rolls, fights, etc. If you're actually part of the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground, you can upload those into the Discord, and Ryan will actually go through and break them down for you. So if you're having troubles in certain areas, he can help you with that.

But other than that, it's typically setting, having a goal or intention when you're going to class, for not just trying to do the same thing over and over again or playing to your strength. Starting bad positions, for example, myself, I feel much more comfortable with my top game, so whenever I roll in class I always start seated or on my back or something like that, so I'm always starting from positions that I generally am worse at versus being on top.

So those things are general things to do.

But I will take you, let me turn this thing back on. So I'm going to get to the topic of today on conditioning. If anyone has any more questions, throw them in the chat, because I'm more than happy to answer them, but I want to talk about conditioning.

And it's always something that seems to be confusing for a lot of people. Yes, I understand there's a lot of varying, I guess you could say, philosophies around it, but I think a lot of them are all grounded in a very similar concept. So I'm going to run through that.

So before diving into conditioning, it's important to understand intensity and volume. And when we're talking conditioning, intensity is typically, generally done by heart rate, so how high your heart rate is is typically an intensity measure. And then volume is how much you're doing.

So when we're talking intensity, intensity is the adaptation you're after. So depending on the intensity you work at is the adaptations you're going to predominantly look to target.

So typically on a scale of low to high intensity, low intensity typically targets more central or heart adaptations. And then higher intensities typically target more muscular or peripheral adaptations. You might have heard these terms before, central and peripheral.

And along that spectrum, you tend to get more peripheral with a higher intensity and more central with the lower. So keep that in your mind.

And then with volume, think of volume as how much of that adaptation you're going to get. So if I only do, 30 to 60 minutes of low intensity conditioning per week, I'm probably not going to get much of the central adaptations, versus if I'm doing 2, 3, 4 hours, just as an example.

Now, obviously there is a limit to how much you can do based on time, the training, your combat sports training.

So that's why we're going to dive into a little bit of this, because it can be a little confusing, because a lot of the conditioning modalities and things come from endurance sports. Just like with strength training, a lot of the strength training modalities come from strength sports.

And unfortunately, the crossover between these pure strength sports and pure endurance sports to combat sports that are more mixed modality with more technical nuances you have to do doesn't quite fit, or doesn't fit that well. However, there are some concepts that do work well.

So I think what's interesting, I'm going to start with a brand new paper that was actually just published recently, and it's called Peripheral Limitations for Performance, Muscle Capillarization. And I think this dives, I think this dives well into understanding that you can't just do low intensity work, you can't just do high intensity work. You need a mix.

I think we know inherently, common sense, that you need a mix of low to high intensity conditioning modalities. It's just knowing what, when, and where, which I'll dive into as well. And obviously there's going to be individual as well, so I'm going to run through some of those things too.

But this new paper is quite good, and I like how they have gone out about saying, we don't really know, which kind of sucks for us, but we're going to dive, so.

Muscle capillaries. So capillaries, think of them as little blood vessels within the muscle. They help deliver the oxygen to the muscle so the muscle can use those oxygen to create energy within the mitochondria, which is kind of like our energy powerhouse within the muscle. So one of the peripheral adaptations that we are after, other than creating more mitochondria, is creating more capillaries because we want more blood flow going to the muscle so that blood flow can carry oxygen to that muscle. Obviously the more capillaries, the more oxygen being delivered to the muscle.

So typically we see high intensity training. So think of your sprint intervals, doing hard sprints, 10 to 40 seconds, whatever it is, on whatever piece of equipment you're doing. Could even be hard bag rounds, whatever it is, and then you're resting X amount of time. It could be, you know, a minute rest, could be longer, et cetera. And this has been considered the best way to develop peripheral adaptations, and you know it is. You are targeting peripheral adaptations.

Within capillaries though, we see that mechanical factors within the muscle are key for capillary growth, and these mechanical factors are maximized through high intensity conditioning, which is perfect. However, if we go through this paper, we see there's one key growth factor with capillaries, and that is called vascular endothelial growth factor, or we just call it VEGF to make it very simple. So VEGF, it's a key factor for developing or growing more capillaries within the muscle. However, during sprint interval training it is actually lowered. This growth factor is lowered.

And then if we look at the intervention studies within well-trained soccer players and well-trained endurance athletes, it actually led to a reduction in the creation of new capillaries. So what we're saying is basically the high intensity conditioning actually reduced peripheral adaptations within these cohorts, which is quite interesting. However, if we look at some of the other research, we see potentially better mitochondrial function and density within high intensity training. So you're kind of getting a trade-off there.

But what's really interesting, I think, from the study that I think applies mostly to you guys, to combat athletes, is elite endurance athletes have the highest capillary to muscle fiber ratio, and it's almost double of trained individuals and it's definitely double of sedentary and untrained individuals. So it seems that a long time, a lot of volume over a long period of time of low intensity training seems to slowly enhance capillary density within the muscle, meaning we can deliver more oxygen, which means, as low intensity conditioning may be a driver for that.

We know that low intensity conditioning is part of developing central adaptations within the heart. Obviously we have left ventricle eccentric hypertrophy, which is essentially just making your heart chamber bigger. The bigger the heart chamber, the more blood that can be pulled into the heart. The more blood that can potentially be pumped out of the heart each heartbeat, potentially delivering more blood and oxygen to the muscles. But the muscles need to be able to extract that oxygen, and obviously having a greater capillary density can help with that. And it seems low intensity endurance training may cover both of that, which is quite important.

Now obviously at some point the high intensity conditioning is important. I think the new paper from Andrew Usher on his Moxy monitor data showing that, in his cohort of professional boxers at least, the rectus femoris muscle down in the leg, the muscular recovery between rounds doesn't seem to match up with the central or with improved central function or function of the heart. The heart can keep pumping as much blood as it wants to the muscle, but the muscle can't use that oxygen to help recover. Doesn't matter.

So a lot of Andrew's research covers the high intensity side, and I think what's important to understand is a lot of these guys are professionals. They train a lot and they don't need to do as much low intensity work potentially, because one, they're boxing so often that kind of covers a lot of the low intensity work. Two, they probably have a relatively good training base from boxing from such a young age and all the way through, so they've kind of developed that lower intensity base as they've come into these different protocols.

So just bear that in mind: if you don't have a strong training background, it would be advisable to start more on the lower intensity side and you can build your way through.

That's kind of how I structure my polarized model if anyone's done or doing the Dominate the Mats, Rings, or Cage programs. It is a polarized model. You've got a high intensity and a lower intensity day, and it kind of merges as we get through, and I'll run through that in a little bit. But another thing to consider around the conditioning paradigm is muscle fiber type, and it's not often talked about too much just because it's so damn hard to measure.

If you want to measure it accurately, you muscle biopsy, et cetera, and doing that, you do not want to go get a muscle biopsy and get muscle cut out of you, et cetera. Just, yeah. Plus there, it can be expensive and you need accessibility to them, et cetera, et cetera.

I hope you're enjoying the chat so far. Before we get back to that, I just want to let you know that Sweet Science of Fighting is more than just a podcast. We have a full training app with strength and conditioning programs for strikers, grapplers, and MMA athletes, so you don't have to think about what you're doing and you're getting access to the latest scientific methods to improve combat sports performance. We have programs specifically for judo, for jiu-jitsu, for wrestling, MMA, boxing. Muay Thai is coming soon. All these things are going to be in the training app.

We have a private community where some of the coaches that have been on the podcast are in there to help you with any training questions and any performance questions you have. For example, Andrew Usher and Casper Dvorak. We also have some online courses within the training app. They cover strength, conditioning, mental skills, and weight cutting. And finally, we now have Ryan Voss in the community, a second degree jiu-jitsu black belt who is there to break down any of your grappling matches that you want seen to by a second eye.

He's currently breaking down videos on the Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel, and he will break down your video within the community. So if you have a match or a roll that you just recorded, you can upload that in there and Ryan will break that down for you. So what are you waiting for? Jump down the description, you can check out the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. Otherwise, enjoy the podcast.

With muscle fiber type, to be honest, you can kind of estimate it. So I've got, hopefully you guys can't hear that, I've got HOA blowing leaves outside just in a sec here, so it's getting a bit loud. But so with muscle fiber type, you can kind of get an idea. If you're very fast twitch-y, you can express a lot of speed and power, but you gas out really quickly, then you can potentially, okay, then you're potentially more fast twitch, if that makes sense.

But if you're maybe more on the, I think a good example if I was going to pick fighters, professional fighters that would fit these categories: Yoel Romero would be considered probably more fast twitch dominant in terms of MMA. Then you could even go, Tank Davis in boxing, Jordan Burroughs in wrestling. These guys will probably be considered more fast twitch dominant, potentially. I mean, these are just very small estimations.

Then we're looking more at the slow twitch side. You're probably looking more like Khabib Nurmagomedov. Nate Diaz definitely would be considered a more slow twitch dominant athlete. He's a volume fighter. So understanding maybe where you sit on that spectrum, most people are a mix. Most people are a mix, so you're okay. But if you're one of those genetic freaks on either side, you may want to take that into consideration.

There's some great research, actually, I think it came out this year through Eileen Livengood man, I'm butchering these names, PhD research. And she looked at muscle fiber type regarding recovery, and if you actually look at her research, she found that athletes who are predominantly slow twitch recover fast after the high intensity exercise, whereas fast twitch dominant fighters may take over five hours to recover.

So for example, if you are more on the fast twitch side and you're doing a lot of high intensity conditioning, maybe you're doing some sparring on top of that too, and you're not recovering between the conditioning sessions and the technical sessions that you're doing, you just dig yourself more and more into a hole throughout the week, eventually leading to a point where you're blowing yourself up. Whereas a more slow twitch dominant fighter can handle that. So that makes it a little better. Sorry, here comes the leaf blower. Hopefully you guys can't hear that.

But just bear that in mind: so if you're more on the slower twitch side, doing some high-intensity training is probably highly beneficial because you need to, one, develop these skills to really push the outputs. But you're not going to blow yourself up because you recover relatively quickly. Whereas if you're a fast twitch dominant fighter, you may want to err a little more on the low intensity side, one, so you can recover faster.

Sorry guys, the leaf blower is right here. I hope it's all good. And then with the fast twitch, you can, oh my gosh, you can do a little more low intensity stuff so you don't blow yourself up.

Before I jump into the polarized model stuff, I've got a couple of questions here on the chat, so just...

Found your podcast within last two weeks, listen to a few wakeout episodes. Two things I did not hear covered yet. Okay, let's see. Would creatine and rehydration strategy be beneficial or counterproductive, and water types for loading distilled? And I am not qualified to answer those questions, unfortunately. But I will give you some thoughts on the creatine stuff.

So creatine and rehydration strategy be beneficial or counter? So creatine has to accumulate for it to really have a rehydration or a muscle saturation benefit. That's the only issue. So if you weren't taking creatine and you suddenly start taking creatine after a weigh-in 24 hours before a fight, you're not going to see any effect there. So that's how creatine works, unfortunately. If it was a magic thing that would work straight away, that would be great, but it doesn't.

And you would not want to load it because you probably have some stomach discomfort if you started loading that much, plus you will not be able to load the amount you need to be able to have any effect. Then water types, I cannot give you an answer there. But typically from talking with many of the experts that we've covered, Jordan Sullivan, Danny Lenard, Peter Miller, and James Moran, who have been on the podcast, are great ones to listen to. They cover having electrolyte drinks after that, so you're basically increasing hydration through salt and water there. So different sports drinks, etc., can all help.

But seek the help of a professional person who does weigh cuts for a living and helps athletes do that, because I don't do that. That's not my area. So that's just some general thoughts on that. So don't take that and run with it. Definitely give those guys a message because they'll be able to help you.

Another question: conjugate method, how to use in martial arts? So it's important to define the conjugate method. Conjugate method is just a way, it's a way of bringing up multiple qualities at the same time. So conjugate method, just a fancy word for that.

When we're talking training for combat sports, everything is done conjugate. I don't know anyone that does a block style periodization. Block style is from a Russian sport scientist, Vladimir Issurin. It is geared more towards single discipline, I guess you could say, sports. For example, throwing the javelin or whatever, where it's kind of one quality that you're trying to improve. And for more advanced athletes that are looking to really nail down one quality, the problem with block obviously is if you're going from, for example, hypertrophy phase, then you go into a strength phase, then you go into a power phase.

By the time you're at the power phase, you've done no size training, you're potentially losing some muscle mass. If you're in your hypertrophy phase, you're losing your power stuff, and it just becomes impossible, especially for a fighter who might be fighting on short notice, etc.

So the conjugate method, you're essentially training all your qualities at once. So I like to think of it as a high-low training schedule. I like to think of it as a vertical integration within the training week. So let me break those down.

High-low is placing all your highest stress training qualities on one day and your low stress on another day. So I think if you search on the Sweet Science of Fighting, if you search on Sweet Science of Fighting website, or even in Google, I think I put it in what is conditioning training. If you search conditioning training Sweet Science of Fighting, I think on Google you'll probably find that, and I kind of categorize some of it. It might be an MMA training actually. If you search MMA training Sweet Science of Fighting, you'll find it.

Basically you put all your highest stress stuff on one day. So maybe you're hard drilling, some of your sparring, whatever it is. Then you're going to have maybe your lower body strength power weights or your full body strength power weights. It could be your hard sprint conditioning, we all go on that one day. And then your lower day will be low enough to facilitate recovery, but you're still developing certain qualities.

So it might be lower intensity conditioning, developing the aerobic base, quote unquote. And then you might do a lot of technical stuff, might be pad work, might be drilling certain things, but you're not getting the same intensity that you're getting on the high day.

And having this undulating pattern is a way you can train all the qualities throughout the week without blowing yourself up. The problem is people spend a lot of time in this middle ground, and they'll do Monday hard wrestling and hard bike sprints and some weights. Then Tuesday they go and they do hard weights, and then maybe they're doing some hard pad work, and I don't know, whatever else, bag work. And then Wednesday comes along, okay, it might be a little easier, whatever. Then Thursday comes along, they're back to hard everything. Friday hard sparring. Saturday another hard session.

The problem is you get this middle intensity, which typically is difficult to recover from. Not intense enough to give you the very high intensity adaptations that you need. Not easy enough to give you the low intensity adaptations you need. You kind of end up spinning your wheels throughout there. I mean, you can get obviously more conditioned, stronger in those ranges, but it can take its toll. So you kind of want to have the undulation.

Regarding vertical integration, integration from Charlie Francis, it's essentially training all the qualities within a day and week. So for example, instead of going to the gym and just doing heavy squats, heavy bench, and some hypertrophy work, you're only covering kind of maximum strength and muscle size within a session like that. Instead, you should ideally cover the qualities that you need throughout that. I like to go from fast to slow, typically.

So you're going to go from plyometric jumps and throws at the beginning of the session. You might go into some loaded ballistic movement, so it could be like an Olympic lift, could be some weighted jumps, whatever it is. I mean, that depends obviously on your training. You don't have to even have that in there. And then you move to your heavier strength training work, your heavy bench, squat, whatever that is. And you might do some accessory stuff at the end just for some general size training if you need it. And that covers you throughout the entire spectrum there of that training day.

One thing that I do like, or one philosophy I do like, is finish. The last thing your body does is what it remembers. And this something I got from Vern Gambetta, he's been on the podcast too. It's quite interesting. So if speed is very important to you, you could run that same fast to slow, but then finish with another fast exercise. The last thing you did was speed. That's a cool little concept that you can potentially use within your training as well. Hopefully that answered that. Let me know if there's something else.

I've got some more. Can I drop the names and again for the weigh-cut specialist? I can. Let me just chuck that in here. So for anyone listening, Jordan Sullivan, James Moran, Peter Miller, and Danny Lenard. And then if you want more pure nutrition, Eric Helms. He's a good friend, he crushes it on there.

Another one from Muhammad here. Is there a way to use the nutrition guide in conjunction with the Dominate the Cage program? Would ordering a meal prep service be the same? Yes, nutrition guide is just general. I covered that at the beginning of this stream, in this podcast. It's very basic. It's just basic nutrition. I wouldn't use it if you are a few weeks out from a fight. There are different ways to do that. That is not my area. Those names that I put in there are perfect to help you in that regard.

But yes, the nutrition program guide is basically how you can set up your macros and your calories so you can maintain, lose, or gain weight. Ordering a meal prep service, so the only, we actually talk about meal prep services in the episode with Peter Miller. There can be some issues because they are not very accurate in terms of the macronutrients they add on the label. So you can get some variation within that.

I've found personally that meal prep services don't have enough carbohydrates in them. They're typically high fat, moderate protein, and low carb, which is the opposite of what you want as a fighter. You want high carb, lower fat, and typically moderate to high protein in a meal. So just bear in mind if you're looking for a meal prep service, you need to find something, or you add your own carbohydrates to it if you don't want to cook. That's a way of doing it.

Because I found a lot of them are maybe like 20 to 30 grams of protein, then like 30 grams of carbs, then like 20 to 30 grams of fat. Which, you know, makes no sense for you, because if you had four meal prep services in a day, it's over 100 grams of fat and you'd feel very sluggish and hardly any carbs. So just bear that in mind with nutrition guide. But I'm going to come back to the conjugate polarized model of conditioning we're talking here. So this kind of plays into that conjugate as well, but with conditioning.

So we talked about high intensity training with mitochondrial adaptation, but it might not be good for capillary growth. Good for mitochondria, but we need the low intensity to potentially drive capillary new capillary growth to deliver more oxygen to the muscles. But and then obviously with fast twitch and slow twitch dominant fighters. Now when we talk about the polarized model and conditioning, I think if anyone's listening to the podcast a lot, pretty much everyone covers the same concept within their conditioning models. And that is touching on the very very high intensity stimulus, and then...

The very low intensity, the polarized meaning obviously you're either end, North and South Pole. North Pole being your high intensity, we can call it alactic conditioning, alactic power, and then we can call the bottom stuff aerobic capacity if you wanted to make it easy to understand. And there are a couple ways of doing this.

So your high intensity work, you're doing anywhere from 5 to 7 second efforts. It can be even up to 10 seconds, but 5 to 7 seconds tends to be quite good. You're going to go a little longer depending, like for example if you're hitting the bag, you probably want to go a little longer than 6 seconds. And these are maximum output, maximum sprints.

Best to do on a bike, best not to do while running. Hamstring injuries are and you are very susceptible to them as a fighter because you don't run, so don't sprint. But if you're going to do sprints as part of that, do them on an off-feet cardio piece of equipment.

Because it's such a short duration, it's hard to do it on things like rowers and ski ergs because the cycle time is longer versus being on, for example, a spin bike where it's very quick. So that typically tends to be best for a lot of your alactic work if you're doing it more specific style. Yeah, hitting the bag is good.

For grapplers it's a little more difficult, but it could be things like suplexes with a heavier dummy or throws like that or banded double leg shots. That can be another way to do it to be more quote-unquote specific in that regard. But I don't think you need to be that specific with these alactic power training just because you're basically reducing the output when you're doing that versus being on something that is more cardio-based.

So that's what you're doing and you're getting full recovery between each round, typically 2 to 3 minutes, even 90 seconds to some degree depending on how much you're doing. So that works too.

Then for your low intensity work, it could be low intensity steady state cardio, 30 to 90 minutes, even 60 minutes is all good. That's just going at nose breathing pace and you're just building volume there. You can also use a high intensity interval training approach because you can still maximize stroke volume doing that. So stroke volume meaning the amount of blood your heart is pumping.

For example, you can use I think it's like 85 to like 95%, or 80 to 95% of your max heart rate and you're doing anywhere from 2 to 8 minutes. And you're going through that and then you're having rest, 2 to 3 minutes rest between sets, etc. And that can be a low intensity modality. It's a little more intense than doing, for example, a long bike ride, run, whatever it is, but it's another good way of doing it. And it gives you that interval feeling that you will get potentially within the combat sport as well, so I kind of like those too.

Got another question here from Muhammad: Along with the workouts on the strike and grappling programs, how would you add in a class training schedule throughout the week? My gym does grappling and striking technique training throughout the week. So I actually broke this down, it's a YouTube video, How to Schedule Your BJJ Training I think it is on my channel. I broke down some of the undulation there based on if you're doing 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 day a week classes.

So I broke that down in there. It's honestly, it's completely dependent on your schedule, your class schedule, work, etc. There's so much to work around. Typically you're just trying to fit it in wherever you can. That is the most common scenario.

If you have unlimited time, then you're looking at what I mentioned before around a high-low training structure. Your hardest grappling, striking days would have your typically your hardest weight training days, and then your easier days will have your easier conditioning, weight training days, etc. And that's how you would schedule it throughout the week. Ideally you would make sure you have at least one day off.

It also depends, are you training to be competitive? Are you training to go pro, etc., etc.? These all play into account. If you're just a recreational competitor or just a recreational trainee, then yeah, you just need to do it whenever you can because you've probably got other things going on. If there's anything more specific you want to answer there, feel free to put those in the comments.

But that covers the polarized model for at least the beginning. Then as you get closer to a fight or after a certain, after a few months, you may look to start to increase some the intensity. Now the thing with sports like combat sports and even other mixed sports in general is you're getting a lot of the middle intensity from the combat sports or technical training itself.

So when you're doing harder rolls, harder sparring sessions, etc., that's giving you that middle intensity. However, at some point you are going to have to, I guess, reduce the rest of your hard sprint intervals. So you're doing say 5 to 7 seconds on the bike and then you're resting 2 minutes. At some point you want to bring that right down, maybe doing 10 seconds to 20 seconds hard sprints on the bike with, 10 to 40 seconds rest.

And that way you're developing the ability to repeat these power efforts. And the repeated high intensity efforts is massive within combat sports. We know at least within the UFC, 77% of fights are finished in the 8 to 14 second high intensity window of activity. And you need to be able to have, or the ability to output in 8 to 14 seconds high power outputs, and then be able to recover so you can do it again and again and again and again.

And this is where it comes down to, hey, you've developed this central and peripheral base through the low intensity work. And then your high intensity work is really nailing down the ability for the muscles to recover between high intensity efforts and rounds so you can repeat high intensity efforts over and over.

Now it's interesting because within repeat sprint ability research, so obviously within team sport, soccer, rugby, repeat sprint ability is huge because you repeat high intensity effort a lot of the time. And there'll be a lot, under depending how fast you are is important, but also how fit you are in terms of aerobic or lower intensity conditioning to help you recover between repeated sprint efforts.

But when you add in other things like contact, for example in rugby when you're having to make tackles, etc., within grappling when you have wrestling, all that kind of stuff, MMA, it changes the game completely. And the aerobic component isn't as strong as it is within repeat sprint. And this is where I think the distinction comes in with training when you're looking at combat sports.

Because you have to repeat these high intensity efforts, you need to do more than just the low intensity work. That means sprint intervals, one another one's high volume power training. If anyone's been doing the Striking 365, the Grappling 365 will have it soon within the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground, there is a high volume power training block and it's brutal. I've done it myself, it is so damn hard. I still got to get Alex Natera onto the podcast.

I'm just linking there the Underground in here, but it's brutal. You're literally doing maximal intent jumps loaded, typically around the load that you maximize power output. So I use 30% of my one rep max squat for a jump squat, and you're doing anywhere from like 90 to over 200 jumps within your sets. It's crazy.

So you're doing, for example, the first week you'll be doing a cluster of 5 plus 5 plus 5, and you're having 5 seconds rest between each block of five, and you're doing 4 to 6 sets of that, and you're doing about 2 minutes rest between those sets. And each block of five reps is maximal, you're trying to jump as high as possible. This is your repeat high intensity effort. You're trying to jump as high as possible and you're trying to maintain that jump height as long as possible throughout these sets.

And you're doing anywhere from 10 to 15 reps in a set and you have to maintain that power output. Now it's interesting within the research, we see not only do you improve the ability to maintain that power output, you actually improve your maximal power output simultaneously. It's like a cheat code to power training. So you're able to repeat high intensity efforts, but you are able to repeat them at higher power outputs, which is exactly what we want as combat athletes.

So yeah, if you're in any of the, if you're in the Underground, make sure you check out the high volume power training cycles within those 365 programs. They're awesome, they'll kick your ass, and plus it ends up being your conditioning modality. So those programs are only two days a week because that covers your strength training and your conditioning training together, so it makes it even easier.

And the sprint interval trainings that a lot of you probably heard of from Andrew Azar actually count. They are high volume power training exercises, it's just done on a bike. So it's very similar concept. Both of these things put together, the jump squat stuff, yeah I just love it. It's brutal, so give that a go definitely. If you guys have any more questions, throw them in there.

But hey guys, it's me again. I just want to let you know that I also have Sweet Science of Fighting rash guards and shorts so you can represent Sweet Science of Fighting on the mats and within competition. We have the classic, just like the shirt I'm wearing, rash guard, Sweet Science of Fighting.

On the front and we have the logos on the sleeves and then X Marsh on the back. We also have that in a shorts variation, same thing with the Sweet Science of Fighting writing on one leg and we have the logo on the other. But my personal favorite, this is my personal favorite, we have this in black and white and it is the Taniwha, protector guardian version of the Sweet Science of Fighting with the logo on the back. This is designed by a Maori designer back in New Zealand, so a bit of my heritage on this jersey.

It represents the acknowledgement of battle and war. It also represents strength and stability and also has the New Zealand silver fern. But even if you're not a Kiwi, this is an awesome design. It is a custom made design, you will not find it anywhere else. So check that, that'll also be down in the description with a discount code. But back to the podcast.

Some other stuff I've been playing around with: Blood Flow Restriction Training. If anyone listened to the last episode with Chris, oh man I'm butchering his name so bad. I'm not even going to say. But Chris on there with the Blood Flow Restriction Training, super interesting stuff. I was actually just doing some this morning.

If you, especially if you're an older combat athlete, older jiu-jitsu player, whatever it is, maybe you got some elbow, knee issues, put some bands around the top of your legs or top of your arms and do your sets, man. Feels good. My knees feel great after doing it. Huge quad pump doing it. Don't have to go too heavy if you don't want to. So that's definitely worth having a listen to and trying out, especially if you're a little older, trying to, or if you're trying to maintain muscle, pack on size, or you have an injury and you can't lift heavy enough.

That is an intervention that is definitely worth doing and definitely worth trying at home. You can do it with arm stuff, leg stuff, whatever it is. So check that episode out because there's some great stuff in there as well.

Some more stuff on, I guess, more on the polarized approach or more on the conjugate approach even, from the question we had from Mel on conjugate method. So strength training and plyometrics. And I think it's important just to cover this. I've covered this before I think on a solo pod, but put it simply, heavy weights and fast exercises or low weights with fast exercises. And you need to have both of these.

You can't just do, for example, pure powerlifting programs. You can't just do pure bodybuilding programs. You can't just do pure calisthenic programs. These things miss the mark in every way. And there's a great graph actually. I think a video, the video should drop today or tomorrow, I went through plyometric benefits and I cover this graph again. It's probably my favorite graph that illustrates the force generation mechanisms during a muscular contraction, very simply.

And it's basically showing that for a given change in muscle length, we have obviously force generation increasing. But we can excite that force generation increasing to a higher level and it's done through plyometric training. And because it's sensitive to the rate of stretch, we can improve the sensitivity of these muscle spindles. It's a length feedback mechanism within the muscle. And if we do plyometric training, we can increase the sensitivity of this to be able to generate more force when we're doing other activities.

However, we have a force feedback mechanism, the Golgi tendon organ, within the tendon that doesn't like high force generations. It wants to pump the brakes as a protective mechanism. It's too much force, so you're going to rip the muscle and tendon off the bone, so it kicks in and then dampens the force output.

If we want to maximize force output in a muscle within a given change in muscle length, which is what we want, we want to maximize force output in the shortest possible time, we need to do plyometric training to enhance the excitation of the length feedback mechanism, plus other benefits I could run into as well. And then we need to inhibit the Golgi tendon organ or the force feedback mechanism so it doesn't kick in so early and doesn't kick in so hard.

Because untrained individuals have this kick in so early. That's why when beginners go to the gym, they just can't, they can't hit their high outputs. They might do a quote unquote one rep max squat or whatever, but it's not their true one rep max. They can come the next day and do it again because they haven't got the ability to really express maximal outputs. But getting under heavy loads starts to desensitize those Golgi tendon organs so it doesn't kick in so quickly.

That is why you need to do some kind of heavy loaded lifting and you need to do your jumps, throws, plyometrics, etc. So you can never just do a powerlifting program where you're just getting stronger on the squat. You can never just do a bodybuilding program where you're just getting bigger. You can't just do a calisthenic program where you're just getting reps and getting more powerful as an example. You need to have a balance of all of these things. And that's kind of what underpins my programs within the Underground.

But when we're talking plyometrics as well, I think they can, they're often done wrong. And if you look on social media, I mean, even some of the pro fighters doing plyometric circuits, obviously your booty influencers on Instagram doing random plyometric circuits as a way to, I don't know, build toned muscle, quote unquote.

One, plyometrics aren't a conditioning activity. They need to be done in most cases maximal effort. It's about reducing the transition time between the eccentric or the lengthening contraction when you hit the ground and the concentric when the muscle shortening phase as you leave the ground. For example, jumping rope is the most common plyometric activity within combat sports. It's great. It helps develop the adaptations that you want within the muscle and tendon down there in the calf and the feet to help improve the speed in which you can produce force.

So obviously the adaptations you're looking at, you're increasing muscle fascicle length. So if we're talking muscle fascicles, that's a group or a bunch of muscle fibers put together. So just think of it as a muscle fiber essentially. You have blocks, a muscle fascicle is made up of blocks called sarcomeres that are all in a row or known as in series. And we can increase the length by adding more of these sarcomeres along in a row. The muscle fascicle becomes longer.

A longer fascicle contracts faster, which means we can produce more force or we can produce force faster. Plus it increases the angle in which you can produce this peak torque or rotational force, which can potentially reduce your risk of injury. So instead of being able to, for example, in your hamstrings, you can produce peak torque or rotational force at 90 degree knee angle, now you can at 110, 120. So when you get to these long ranges, you can handle the forces being applied.

You're also looking at a reduction in pennation angle. So fancy term, pennation angle, it's essentially muscle fibers in a muscle. It's the orientation in relation to the line of pull or the line of force. So if we just take the bicep, for example, the line of pull is straight up, elbow to shoulder. And then your muscle fibers will be out to the side, and then how splayed they are is essentially the pennation angle.

And more muscular individuals, bodybuilders, have a greater pennation angle. That's just beneficial for muscle size. But with plyometric training, what we want to do is we kind of want to decrease that pennation angle and have it closer to the line of pull, because that increases our ability to produce force quickly. And that is something that happens when you're doing pure plyometric training.

Now, if you look at some of the meta-analyses of this, we see the opposite, an increase in pennation angle. But if you actually look at the studies, they're not really doing plyometrics. They're doing like weighted jump squats and stuff, which is not a plyometric. Plyometric is a very fast ground contact. A weighted jump squat is not a very fast ground contact. And it's more strength-based.

So those are some of the main ones. Also you got increased tendon stiffness. If you think about dropping a golf ball and maybe a half a water balloon onto the pavement, the golf ball bounces higher. It's quote unquote stiffer. It doesn't deform when it hits the ground. Think of your tendon and foot, you don't want it to deform when it hits the ground. You want it to be like a spring. And that is how, why plyometrics work so well for developing speed and power.

So that's part of your training with the conjugate method. Then obviously got your higher intensity, oh my gosh, dog is trying to go outside. But that covers that. And I think if there's any more questions, throw them in the chat. But I think I've covered everything I wanted to talk about today.

Actually, I don't know if anyone's interested in this. This is a pretty funny study that I came across yesterday. Has nothing to do with sports performance, by the way, so I'm just giving you guys a heads up. But essentially some scientists in Argentina decided whether, or decided to study whether guys prefer woman's breasts or butt. This is a legit scientific study that was published in 2012.

And they found dudes genuinely prefer butts over boobs. So if you agree or disagree with that, you can throw that in the comments of this recording. I don't know why this was studied and how this was published, but there you go. Dudes have a tendency towards butts instead of boobs, and is more intense as well than guys who like boobs. So there you go, that's your science fact of this podcast.

Other than everything else that we've touched on today, but if you're interested in this training program stuff, check out the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. I've actually put a link to that in the comments here as well, and there'll be links to it in the recording notes or in the descriptions.

For anyone listening as well, please make sure to review the podcast. Stuff helps it grow, all that kind of stuff. I can keep giving you more information like this.

Next week we actually got a really cool guest. I've got a dude that specializes in researching mushrooms, not the magic type, but like Lion's Mane and Shun, all the stuff that people keep perpetrating as like the next big thing and so healthy. But for me, I'm skeptical by nature, so I kind of don't believe any of the claims.

So I wanted to bring this guy on just to set the record straight, see if he can change my mind, and if there's some really good data around drinking these mushroom extracts that people have been pushing for so long. So that'll be very, very interesting.

I'm also going to have Zack Evanes on here. He is an OG within the strength conditioning space, specialized in a lot of wrestling stuff too, so he'll be a great chat as well. So those are coming up in the near future.

But yeah, please make sure to review the podcast, Spotify, Apple, whatever it is. Any of those helps immensely.

But thanks guys for joining me. We had a lot of good questions here. Maybe I have to do this more often every now and then. I'm actually looking to potentially do more and be more on Twitter Spaces, just because it's a little more interactive. You guys can come up and talk and stuff, so Sweet Science of Fighting on Twitter, you can follow on there too.

If that sounds like something that you'll be interested in, comment on the YouTube video below or on the Spotify podcast or shoot me an email or whatever it is. If that sounds like something you'll be interested in, because then I can potentially start doing that. I can bring guests on, all sorts of stuff. It'll be like an extra podcast basically.

So yeah, that's pretty much it and I'll see you next week.