Contact Drills + The Current State Of MMA & Rehab w/ Chris Miah (SSOF Ep 203)

Chris Miah1:54

But also, from the standpoint of especially, I think with strength conditioning and rehab, I think a lot of fighters don't have the funds to pay for what is probably needed in those. I've got so many friends and colleagues and old teammates who fought pretty much all the best promotions in the world, and they would seldom be able to afford conditioning if it was priced accordingly. They would usually be getting some kind of sponsorship or discount rate, and that's just the nature of combat sports and of the sport, unless you're in the absolute 1%.

So diversifying, I felt it was probably about time, and it's actually nice to be trying to learn again and trying to learn, go back to having a needs analysis for whatever sport you're in, but actually going and having to learn outside my remit, ask questions, speak to other coaches. You're always doing that to some extent anyway, but I felt like in combat sports, most people would ask me a lot of questions, and you'd go back and forth, but it was less.

Whereas in rugby, for example, or Gaelic football or some of these other sports, it's really, I'm really having to go out and learn off other guys, and I enjoy that as a practitioner myself anyway.

James de Lacey1:54

Rugby is a cool sport to be in and to work with because it's so multi, I mean it's like combat sports, so multifaceted. But we will definitely go down that road as well to learn there. But firstly, I was asking for questions on Instagram, but all I had was Dustin Label saying, "No question, just want to say Chris is the man." So just pumping you up at the beginning of the podcast here. So got some positive feedback there.

But I know one of the things that you have on your mind is kind of the current landscape of combat sports. I don't know if you want to go into the strength conditioning landscape or the landscape in general, but it would be cool to kind of hear your thoughts since you're so deep in it and you've been so deep in it for so long, kind of what you're seeing currently, and we can kind of go down all sorts of rabbit holes.

Chris Miah4:46

So I mean, something I think straight from the off, at the grassroots level is, and it ties with society in general, and I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's that there's monumental pressure on very, very novice amateurs and sort of, whoever you want to coin it, white collar. There's white collar in my mind, which I have my opinions about, but there's definitely, like I see young guys I've coached and young guys in gyms that are maybe 17, 18, 19, that they're having their first fight or second fight, but they've already got to do media, posters, trash talk.

And it puts monumental pressure on essentially what is a super, super low-level fight that years ago would have happened in a social club that no one would have heard about, wouldn't have made social media, and you learn and you go again and you have your experiences and you build your experiences without so much spotlight on.

And I think now, certainly grassroots in the UK is almost it's mirroring the misfits and things of that nature, like the influencer boxing, influencer events. And I understand it's also part of a way to make money in the sport. And see, I don't forbid anyone to make money and want to make a living in the sport because I know there is that side of things as well. But I think it definitely jams up some development because people are more afraid to lose, to take the tough fights.

And I don't necessarily think it's their fault, the young kids. Then they've got a poster and an interview for a first amateur fight, for example, and there's loads of comments and everyone's back and forth on social media. And I think it puts a lot of pressure that isn't really needed at that point of their journey.

Save that for when it matters, fight to fight, where your career goes. But having so much pressure on at such a young age and at such low experience, I think definitely is a detriment of modern MMA and society comparatively to when I was, certainly when I was an amateur, and even even after that. But I think I had 10 amateur fights and no one really knew what I was doing, but there was some benefits to that because there was no pressure. You just go and do your martial arts thing out the way.

And so I think that's definitely a big thing. And I don't know whether, I think that there's a positive of that. It's getting you more, potentially sponsors, potentially eyes on you, building a profile. Loads of positives in that way. But I also think there's a lot of negatives that for all that that goes on, I don't see the turnover rate to professional that high at the moment. And I can take it in Birmingham, a lot of guys who were super, super talented when they were younger or had a decent amateur career turning over because the money still isn't there in that next level.

So that's something certainly at grassroots I see, and I feel for them actually, because even though some of it's self-inflicted pressure, there's a lot more pressure for something that should just be a bit of fun. See how you go, gain some experience, go and do a jiu-jitsu comp that no one knows about and have some fun. That's the level of competition it is, but I think it's certainly prioritized a lot higher now with how the landscape is.

James de Lacey4:46

And it's funny you mentioned the influencer boxing stuff. That stuff is taking off. I mean, you see it, like I don't know if you watch Karate Combat. I used to watch Karate Combat when it first started, and it was legit karate people. And then whatever happened, ownership changed, guys come in, and now it's literally just influencer MMA. It's not even karate anymore. And it's some of the stuff you see, you're like, people, like you can't watch because it's just so bad. And it's just happening all over. It's the social media age of fighting.

Chris Miah8:38

And I think the, you know, the flip of the coin is, some people will fight on those shows and they'll get paid better than some of the guys that fought in Paris last weekend in the UFC. So each to their own in that way. But I definitely think that whole culture probably is slowing down development in some areas, because of the pressure that it kind of places on young athletes.

In terms of the sort of higher end landscape, something that I see is just that there's, I mean, there's no doubt the UFC have monopoly of the market.

And I can only speak for really European MMA mainly, but there's still not tons of opportunities. And I think it's also dependent on where you are in your career, but I've got some friends who are very good level and they struggle because they're almost too good to fight. They're not going to be given—they're too good to fight on certain shows because they want to build their stars. And so they give them their stars, they're going to lose, and so that's not good for business.

And then vice versa, if you're, and I say this to more my generation, if you're a bit too old to go and make the UFC a load of money, you're not really going to get touched by the UFC because you're not profitable for the next 5 years, 10 years, 15, how it kind of works. So there's a lot of guys sort of stuck in the middle that kind of struggle to get fights unless they're going to go and take a suicide fight or a badly matched fight. It can be difficult.

But then the other end, you've got young prospects who are getting matched very well now. And it's almost kind of like the pro boxing route with a lot of the younger guys. Whether with, in Europe and the UK, Cage Warriors is probably the premier feeding ground, they'll build up their guys. But they run the boxing rules a bit like Matchroom do, where they manage a lot of their talent. So they manage their talent, they match their talent, they make their talent fight and try to build them to the biggest stage.

Which ethically is probably not the greatest thing in the world, but it does work. And if you're a young fighter and you're on that side, it definitely gives you a—it is, no one's making loads of money. So doing it that way at least gives you a chance to get to higher paydays without taking too much damage. So again, it depends what side of the—if you're on that side, it's actually pretty good. But if you're not one of those guys, it makes life a little bit harder, I would say.

James de Lacey9:16

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What made MMA, or at least the UFC, so unique was the fact that it wasn't that boxing model and you had stacked cards. And you had, all through main cards, prelims, you had killer fights all the way through. And then obviously now it's kind of slowly started to move that way and maybe having a couple of big fights on the card and the rest not being at to that same level.

Chris Miah12:34

And it's kind of going down that road. And I think again, it's saturation of the shows. I mean, when, as you say, when you first—in the shows I used to watch as a kid, the whole card top to bottom would be stacked. And I think from a viewing perspective, even if you were an aspiring fighter, you would look and go, what a high level card.

I think now if you look at most cards, if you're a decent level fighter, you'd probably look and go a lot of the lower card you could—you probably fought at a higher level than that or maybe fought opposition around that level or whatever. And so as a spectator, it's not as exciting. The things that most people love to see, the things that we're in awe of, whether that's team sports, whether that's combat sports, whether that's boxing, whether that's pro wrestling for goodness sake—I know it's fake, but you want to see something that is special that you don't see very often.

And so if you see something that's a lower caliber sometimes, it's certainly harder to get the fan base behind.

James de Lacey12:38

I can't believe you said pro wrestling's fake. You just feeling the feelings on the—

Chris Miah13:46

I'm a big fan actually. I'm a big fan. But it's that spectacle and that greater than and something that we can't imagine being is obviously the big draw of that, right? And I think combat—why heavyweight boxing for many years was always the draw. It's that seeing something greater than what the average person can fathom.

And I think then it gets more watered down, it gets more realistic that some amateurs are watching the UFC undercard and going, 'Well, I think I'd beat that guy.' Now, I probably wouldn't, but the thought's there.

James de Lacey14:18

I feel you, I feel you. So you said you're going more down that kind of rehab route within combat sports. So maybe just walk me through kind of what your—how you kind of went down that road and now kind of broader S&C or broader coaching. What took you there and then maybe just things that you've kind of picked up along the way and things that you're seeing that it's allowed you to kind of give value in that area too.

Chris Miah14:18

So I originally actually started it—I did a sports therapy degree in the UK, which is a bit like an athletic trainer in the US, I would guess. I'm not sure what it is in Australia.

James de Lacey15:02

Like physio or something.

Chris Miah15:04

It's not as broad as a physio, but a bit more specialized towards sports injuries versus physio will cover more general healthcare as well. And I did that just before I turned pro when I was younger. So part of the deal I had was get a little bit of an insurance policy before I roll the dice and try and go as far as I can in mixed martial arts, which I did.

And I sort of worked part-time doing that while I was fighting. And then pretty much fighting took over as the main bulk of time until I had Bell's palsy. And that's when I went back and did an S&C degree and then kind of juggled it all. The last sort of five, six years I've had a couple more fights, ran an MMA gym and was doing bits of S&C, bits of rehab.

And I was doing a decent enough job, I think. But I definitely think spreading myself too thin, emotionally and not being able to be—like I say, I compare myself unfortunately to some very high level people in each field and then not feeling able to be enough or be able to do what they can do. That definitely was something psychologically wearing over time.

But also a friend of mine, so her name's Rosi Sexton. She was the first UK female MMA fighter in the UFC many years ago. But she moved to our local area. Now she's an osteopath, but again, osteopath operates very much like sports physio, rehab. To be honest, professional titles don't really mean anything if—it's a lot on the practitioner that I found in that sports medical field. Most are doing a similar job role; it's just the practitioner.

But she has a clinic in the local area. And so she used to run a company called Combat Sports Clinic, which ran probably about 10 years ago now. And was kind of doing a lot of the stuff that now is quite popular in modern social media trends—neck strength and all these sorts of things—we were doing quite a long time ago.

And so we're very good friends and we've sort of worked in collaboration between early stage rehab and then myself, sort of late stage rehab, over the last five years anyway. But I've been having conversations for a long time about what direction I want to go. And she has her own clinic here and potentially looking at a facility, gym pack but also combat sports.

And so through for myself, I've hit a point where I want to be able to give back into that realm of taking someone from injury or not being able to do something through to performance and being able to do that thing well. And I think, this is just more from a business standpoint of why I feel it's a good idea, but there isn't many places that can take it from one through to the other.

You tend to get your early stage physio, or if you're on private healthcare you go through that, then you might see an independent physio to take you so far. Then you might get an S&C coach if you're lucky. Most try to return to sport before that point, as a general, unfortunately. So it was just sort of having a private sector multidisciplinary team was kind of the idea with it.

Now from my view, it's something quite close to home just in terms of I've had a lot of injuries in my career. I see the guidance that's given a lot of the time and it's—in our echo chamber it is very good now, but it depends what echo chamber you're in, what advice you get, what you see.

And I know sort of the mental health effects for me personally when I can't do what I love to do or couldn't ever do what I was really there to do. And that sort of ties in with some of my own personal issues over the last few years in terms of men's mental health, or not even just men's mental health, anyone's mental health.

But actually being able to support people back to doing what they want to do, when they love to do, is probably a really good way to go about it. And the benefit obviously of Rosi and myself is we both fought at a high professional level, both black belts in jiu-jitsu. So there is that element of understanding within combat sports of not only how to get someone back from a—even if we're looking at numbers or data in terms of rehab, but also scaling return to sport on the mat or within skills.

Which is something that I don't—I think there is—I think Dr. Zach Lekus has done some decent stuff actually. I think he's decent on Instagram and he has done some decent stuff on actually periodizing return to play with movement drills and loaded scenarios and variable scenarios on the mat or within skill with a skill framework versus just the gym. And I think that's a really missing piece for return to play and return to injury.

You'll see it quite a bit in team sports, whether that's premeditated agility drills where they're starting to build in some ball drills and specifics. Whereas I feel in combat sports we don't really have a framework for, okay, say whether it's an ACL reconstruction, but when do we get back to doing any kind of grappling, wrestling drills that will progressively load that as we would progressively load ourselves in the gym over a period of time? I don't think that's really done at all, or not to my knowledge done very often.

So I think there's certain things like that that Rosi is able to give a lot more direction in than a normal physio, for example, or a normal sports therapist or S&C coach. Which is something again, it's just something unique that can be offered.

James de Lacey20:55

You're in a very unique position there with the strength and conditioning background too to be able to actually take someone from initial injury all the way through to actually getting back. You mentioned obviously there's still a lot of not so great advice being given to these fighters for rehab. What are the things that are still being bandied around?

Chris Miah21:15

I think my biggest issue is, and I'm not against passive treatments to deal with issues, but I still think there's a huge, and it and part of it comes in with again that framework of being able to pay for services, but there's still a massive tendency to push towards your massage, your acupuncture, and all kind, which aren't inherently bad by any stretch of the imagination and as part of an overall system that can be used great. But I think there's a huge push of passive treatments and passive modalities, and even as a first point I call now peptides online are so popular, which again research isn't there, but even if they did work it's a small part of everything else that needs to be taken into account.

And people look for something that they can take or be given or have done to them to fix, whether that's an overtraining issue, whether that's an acute injury, whether it's long-term injury, versus getting some expertise on what's going on.

Looking at the bigger picture with the skills coaches and even to a point of interventions in the sort of diet of, well, what are they eating? Are they in a massive deficit? If they're in a deficit and injured, that might not be going down. And it's slightly different if you've got a world title fight in the UFC coming up. Granted, you're probably still going to have to make the walk, and that's where if you're on painkillers, all come, that's a possible band-aid for that level of performance and competition that is pro sports.

But most people that listen to these podcasts, most people I know, most people training, are not that individual. It's akin to guys in the NFL taking painkillers to go out on a Sunday. Like, it's not healthy. We don't pretend it's healthy. That is what elite sport in some cases are. But most people recreationally who again look at even our material, not too many guys who are absolute world beaters are going to look at a lot of the stuff we put out because the freak athletes, they've already got all the attributes you would want.

So they going to be going down all the rabbit holes of research of good quality training? Probably not. But for the guys who are looking to how to reach that point or to mitigate factors that maybe they're not the most talented or the most gifted, and they're looking for ways to level up, or even just a hobbyist who just does it for the joy, I think those people need to be a bit smarter in their approaches of, okay, are we managing training volume, are we managing lifestyle, are we managing nutrition?

Are we, okay, if we have an injury, do we know what we're doing? Do we need to load it? Do we need to unload it for a small period of time? What intensity? And that's a bit of a collaborative process, which you need a really, a coach can be useful to bounce those feelings and ideas off.

James de Lacey24:14

I think it might be interesting. I know this is going to be a very general question and you need context and stuff like that, but if we take, say, the ACL example you gave earlier, people think, oh, nine months for ACL rehab, so basically do nothing or some low-level [expletive] for nine months, and then month nine, boom, we're back on the mat doing everything. Obviously that's a massive mistake.

And you mentioned how with your guys' unique skill sets, you can kind of look to start integrating maybe certain ways of doing skills training or just anything that kind of brings some of that context back into that injury rehab process. We're interested to maybe just go through your thought processes around, I know it's very general, but like how that kind of ACL rehab looks maybe throughout the months where other things get layered in that maybe people listening would have no idea.

Like, oh, I didn't realize that, you could potentially, obviously not diagnosing or health advice on there, but you could potentially do X, Y, Z as you start to feel better or as you start hitting these different strength markers or whatever it is. It would be kind of cool just to kind of get a general idea there.

Chris Miah25:14

So I think, and again, it takes, there's obviously nuance to each individual, but I think once you get a certain amount of clearance, I'd say as a general rule with a lot of the guys I've took, maybe four or five guys back from ACL reconstruction over the past couple of years, two back to on the mats or fighting professionally mixed martial arts, say maybe around month six is where sports-specific stuff tends to come in a little bit more.

But the way I would scale it is, okay, what ground-based work can you do potentially without full knee flexion, depending what surgery they had, whether there's any meniscus involved, depending whether they have that range of motion back or not.

And they're important questions, because if you can't, for example, sit on your heels and you're doing low intensity, when you got to sit on your heels, it's going to cause an issue because you don't have that underlying capacity to be able, before you can do that. So I think it's very important, no matter what stage you're at, that the capacity that you need to be able to do needs to be given before you put it into a sport skill.

So, for example, like full knee flexion in jiu-jitsu, if you can't do that without, you're not going to be able to do it within a sport constraint, right, because you can't do it day-to-day or you can't do it even there.

That's not to say you can't do anything, because you could scale drills that are doable without that range, but just sort of as a point of call of, like, you need to have the underlying capacity to be able to do that. Same with like hops, for example. If you can do, and this is a really good thing I like to do, a lot of people struggle with like the confidence in changing directions, and not so strictly with like in a team sport or a change direction in that facet, but hopping on a leg or doing like single leg defense or doing any kind of up a wall.

And I think things like just having a partner walk you, and again it takes a good partner, having a partner walk you around on a hopping leg and off-balancing you and building up that and building that up like you would a weight room activity. Week one, we wouldn't go and go, right, we're doing 95% of our 1RM today, right? But again, it takes a good partner, a good coach to look at that, be able to give that feel.

But maybe you have a guy working around 50% on certain drills, getting them hopping around, off-balancing and building some confidence, building some, propreception is a very weird word, I don't, it doesn't really mean anything in particular, but getting that feeling of where they are in time and space on these movements, on these activities.

Because I think that's exactly it. You could have someone 12 months post-op, but if they've not done any bridge work, they could be on a, someone could be on a leg on them, and they're so uncoordinated from not being in that position and unaware of the subtleties of balance that they, you can almost end up with a reinjury just as much as if you're at 9 months, if that makes sense, without sort of that work in between. But I would be scaling like the areas that are potential to cause damage would come later.

So things like leg entanglements where you're going to have big internal rotation torque, that I probably leave till later on. But you could judge those positions by loading them within the S&C first. So maybe it's just being comfortable in a 90-90, this is just potluck examples, but comfortably in a 90-90 position, say, then okay, once you're not getting no referred pain, then maybe then you can get put into leg entanglements where you're going to have to internally rotate your hip and knee, turn your knee, clear your knee line, and have the confidence to be able to do that. But you've already done the position.

Again, like I say, you've already built some of that capacity within S&C or mobility or whatever you want to call that term, to then be able to use that capacity within a skill realm. Use graded exposure of intensity in those skills till you're back to the full picture. And that's sort of the way I would look to approach it. And everyone's going to have different things based on their own individual injury, mobility prerequisites.

For example, like some guys might be great at balancing and hopping after 9 months and be like they can't be taken down, but a reap might make them feel so vulnerable and fragile that it could mean that they put themselves in bad positions or they're not comfortable there. And yet there might be someone else who's absolutely fine in a super mobile hip and knee position, but you ask them to balance or you ask them to hop on one leg to defend a single and they feel the knee is going to give way. So I think that's where individual variance is going to change what exactly needs to be trained.

But I think you could definitely make a pathway from, not only the structures being in place, like you say, you would want someone to be able to do some single leg plyometrics or pogos before you want someone on a leg chasing around trying to take them down. But once one's in place, you can start to bring in games and graded sort of exposure within the sport with a training partner. Or, I think that's the one, having a good training partner who can play with them and give the right feels to those sorts of positions to build up.

Then what tends to happen is you go back to pro practice when you feel good, you go straight in at the deep end, and it is a coin toss then of whether you end up reinjuring or whether you have a successful return to play.

James de Lacey25:14

What are your main goals then within those first six months before you're looking at the more those contextual drills?

Chris Miah30:45

Before that, very me personally, very acute. I would always stay with someone who's used to coming out of post-work, post-op, so probably at this moment in time not within my remit, but it's something I want to even further start looking at that side of things as well from when I get it's sort of restoring full range of motion, starting to load the tissues in safe ways depending on what they've been cleared to do from their early stage physio, and starting to try and introduce load if I can as quickly as possible.

I mean, I'm even a big fan of—again, everyone's got different sort of constraints on what they can do—but I'm even a big fan of single limb work as early as possible on the uninjured limb when if you can and it's easier said than done. Can they get to the gym? Can they get someone setting up the equipment while they're injured and get on machines and use the uninjured limb and things of that nature?

But I'm a huge fan of loading or loading optimally as soon as you can dependent on if it's allowable, building through some general strength work to greater ranges of motion, then starting to build in more reactive work, landing, kind of stop-start, and then starting to reintroduce plio and starting to do sort of plio and heavier strength work sort of mid mid-stage.

But I mean, and I think the danger is four months in, five months in, guys tend to feel pretty good, especially if they're just in a gym and they're just lifting and doing some jump, low-level jumps, and they're strong and they're starting, they start to feel really, really good. A lot think that they could do the sport. I think that's the hardest bit to catch guys back on.

James de Lacey32:31

Overconfidence in that area. And I don't know if you've read or listened to or watched Bill Knowles at all on ACL rehab. I was lucky enough to listen to him at the Gang conference almost almost 10 years ago, and he gets guys sent to him from all over the world for ACL rehab stuff. And he, there was a story of him, he was saying he had a ski, a slalom skier I think, and I think it was the week of or week after or two weeks after ACL surgery back on the skis going down the slopes as part of rehab.

He's super aggressive on ACL rehab stuff, and it's so interesting just hearing that kind of context. I wish I could remember the full story, but it's just this idea of getting them back into that movement as soon as possible even from that surgery. I was—yeah, I was—it's super interesting. I was like, whoa, I'd be way too scared. But—

Chris Miah33:26

I do think a massive thing going—someone who I've seen quite a lot of the stuff on there is a, there's a coach, Coman Bot. You've probably seen some of her stuff. She's a Canadian girl, but she was talking about, she put something today about it actually, funny enough, and it's always, a lot of it does depend on the level of athlete you were before you went into the surgery, how high your training load was, what sort of state you're going into your surgery.

As in, once you've had the surgery, what you're coming out with, that could have a huge effect on what early stage rehab, mid-stage rehab looks like, depending on what physically—have you had an ACL tear, had six months off training altogether, had the surgery, now you're talking about six months of detraining? Or you've gone in quite sharpish while still training, while still getting strong?

You can have two very different bodies that come out post-surgery depending on the training sort of arc of the two before they go in, or whoever it is before they go in. I think that's something always for consideration in terms of how quickly you can get people progressing back or into things, is how trained they were before surgery.

James de Lacey34:18

That's a really good point. I guess that's why you always see the pre-surgical training programs that are given, usually of random little quad exercises and stuff like that for the joint pot.

And now I do want to cover some of your rugby stuff now that you're in rugby, because it's such a cool sport to be in, and a lot of the principles kind of apply as you mentioned with the kind of wrestling and grappling. And I don't know if you have rugby league where you are, but rugby league obviously has a bigger wrestling component, and most teams have a full-time contact coach who's a black belt jiu-jitsu guy that come in to teach a bunch of wrestling stuff as well.

Chris Miah34:18

I mean, even with union, not to the same extent, but still you have a lot of the concepts that carry over.

James de Lacey34:18

So be interesting to kind of start with, we can go down the other roads of more strength conditioning stuff, but be interesting to start with, what are some of these principles, grappling principles, that carry over so well into rugby? And then are there any specific, we'll call them drills, exercises, et cetera, that kind of work well there?

Chris Miah34:18

I think, first of all, one thing that sort of certainly draws me towards rugby a little bit more is I think there's huge commonalities with the athletes between combat sports and rugby in general. Now, I'm not working with professional rugby. Maybe that would be an aspiration one day, but I would say professional rugby and professional MMA have a lot in common in terms of you get a lot of athletes who are very high level who, after a career, they're not rich.

They've lived a very high level sporting life and it's not like they can retire happily ever after unless they supersede the sport, become a bit of a celebrity, become an influencer, become—unless you supersede that, there's so many really high level pros who have to transfer to normal life or are relatively unknown.

I think there's quite a commonality of culture there between the two in that way of that you can have guys who've been playing next to absolute superstars or sparring or training or fighting on cards the same as superstars, and then you're kind of the normal person still at the end of the day when you come away from it, depending obviously how up you are and how high you are in terms of a star.

But I just think that's a really nice commonality between the two sports because you kind of come out of them quite broken with a load of experience and not a superstar most of the time.

In terms of the grappling side of things, the things that I'm noticing more, the biggest things that I'm noticing that grappling can have an effect on is not on initial impact. I think there's—I think obviously it can—but body positioning, the speed that you can work up to, your body weight, what's going to overcome inertia is going to be the biggest predictor of that first sort of heavy collision.

There's no way, no matter how, no matter what black belt I am, a 100 kilo guy is running at me at a set speed, I am not going to be able to use any technique to stop that collision, right?

But once the collision's happened and you kind of have that loss of inertia, I think that's where certain grappling principles, whether blocking and driving, tipping, turning, rolling, going with momentum, really can have a little bit more of a say. And I think that's where some of your fundamental principles of wrestling, Greco-Roman, freestyle, MMA grappling can sort of come into their own a little bit and give someone a good head start.

I mean, a lot, when I was coaching my MMA program and wrestling program for the juniors, we had so many kids who came through to do grappling with me that went on to scholarships at universities and schools, and they only came to grapple really for the underlying sort of tactile skill set that grappling gave them for rugby. And in their performances of watching their games and the dads would send me clips of the matches and things and whatnot, and it was very apparent that the additional skills that they had at that level, even if they weren't the biggest, again, after the initial collision, they were able to use body mechanics, leverage, angle changes to still get their partner down or get their person down. And then obviously then it goes into more the game of rugby from there on.

But it certainly had a—I'd say it has the biggest effect sort of sub just post-collision in my opinion. That's not fact, whatever. I'm still trying to learn where I think things fit in, but that's just what I see so far anyway.

James de Lacey36:56

It's funny you mention about the levels. It's been a few years in Romania, and even the club, club teams there, you can play professionally because there's just so many countries you can play a full-time career in all sorts of random European countries at different, different levels. What would be considered maybe quote-unquote lower levels of professional sport, getting paid full-time, living in a country, having all your expenses paid, and you can do that for your entire career in these countries. You can get a new citizenship, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that's one of the cool things about rugby.

And with those, with the wrestling stuff, yeah, for sure. It'll be interesting to kind of go down some of those kind of maybe drills or teachings even more in depth. I would use a pummel series often. I learned from rugby league that I'll bring into union, not as applicable, but I think the principles at least for me to help bring that in and then for the coaches to take over into tackle tech kind of made sense in terms of learning to pummel but staying really tight. So because when you see a lot of people pummel, you just see them smashing shoulders or—

Chris Miah40:12

So I teach, I make sure that, same foot, same shoulder, but it's swimming really tight and keeping the head really tight and then having the hooks and handles tight and being able to manipulate from that and then understanding the lower shoulder wins and that kind of stuff. So I'm interesting, is pummeling I guess maybe part of that teaching process and then what else have you got in your arsenal there for some maybe more of that carryover into that collision?

James de Lacey40:12

So I think first of all I think, and I can give a bit of an applicability similar to boxing. I've worked with quite an extensive amount of pro boxers on almost specifically pummeling hand fighting. And I'd say the same regard probably ties to rugby and that is, just giving pummeling as an example, but it's almost like yes it's not sport specific. You don't get double unders in rugby.

You're very rarely ever going to get two hands underneath two armpits to get double unders in rugby. And the same in boxing to a degree. But it's more the skills that you develop from doing that of body awareness, dropping your shoulder, dropping your level, dropping your center of mass, being able to balance if someone goes to tilt you and turn you, being able to keep your weight underneath yourself.

And those kinds of skills then are actually transferable and then right, I'm never going to coach someone rugby. I haven't played rugby bar at school very loosely. So I wouldn't be trying to teach anyone on how to play rugby. I don't even teach boxers how to box even though I box quite extensively. I'm not at the level of some of the guys I've coached in boxing.

But I'll teach them some of the wrestling principles that again are building some of the, that I believe, useful skills that can then be transferred with a bit more of a better coaching from some of the skills coaches is the way I'd probably look at it.

I really like, pummeling is obviously number one. Other things that I find quite nice are even, I don't know if you know the drills, there's some basic wrestling drills of someone being underneath trying to stop a go behind for example and someone just looking to get their arm out build back up and build back up onto the legs, off a low shot or off a sprawl, kind of getting stuck underneath position.

And I think that has a lot of value. I think getting into where you will take bad, you will make bad shots or bad tackles and trying to work the way out work back up to good head position not get spun, I think there's some value in those sorts of things.

And I even think in hand fighting to a good degree, you see a lot of posting and a lot of hand palm offs and of the defensive man the runner and I think being able to even negate some of those posts whether it's posting blocking elbow passing dragging to get back to get to center mass of your opponent and get to the body.

And again, it's not like you're going to teach someone within a rugby play to arm drag someone into a door leg, right? But I think that playing some games and building some of the skills into practice may then show themselves in games or in tactical situations.

And I think that's something that can sometimes get, I think sometimes we try to be, specificity takes its role and it does have to take its role at certain points of training. But I think building general skills or athleticism or whatever you want to call it GPP, whatever you want to call it, is undervalued of then when you go back to the sport that you're doing or the thing that you're playing or the bigger picture the bigger game you can have some crossover.

I don't think that's, again it's a bit like boxing is another really good example, a boxer doing some Greco Roman training that doesn't mean they're going to come into boxing digging under hook and dirty box but some of the underlying skills that they've learned from doing that will transfer in their own sort of natural perception of how they think that can work in the game of the player themselves. So I think seeing it as almost like a complimentary skill versus trying to make it ultra specific to rugby can fit a role.

And then the other role that I found it quite useful in just from a conditioning role of, if we're able to, rugby is a game of a lot from what I view and what I'm seeing is there's a lot of collisions there's a lot of scrums and then there's a lot then there's running. And versus just doing running as your conditioning or just doing weight actually having some kind of hybrid. I know I've been running things like contact games and then tempos for example as just as an offseason drill but actually having mixed modality conditioning within their conditioning practice.

It's a bit like hitting pads and then doing wrestling situations that we do in MMA versus that you're just doing boxing on one session and wrestling on another session and they're both tiring but when you mix them together every MMA fighter on the panel it's exhausting and it's a completely different feel. And I feel very similar with that in contact collisions and running in rugby. That's just what I see. Again, I'm by no means an expert at all in that. They're just things I see early on.

Chris Miah45:31

No, you're completely right there. There's often the school of thought where teams will spend preseason just running on the track and it's crazy. You should be doing contact from week one, week one, day one or week day two, whatever day it is, contact should start and it's through these games that you mentioned, hand fighting games to double under games, whatever it is.

And I think one of the really nice principles that I really like from pummeling and double under games is just this idea of tightness to an opponent in contact cuz sometimes you'll see players, they might lose their feet or maybe they just won't be as tight on they might hit and they won't stick or they don't understand that if you're actually really tight and you have some of these positions you can move people where you kind of want them.

And when you're doing these, when you're doing double unders, one of my favorite ones is just having someone have double unders and hold and the other person just trying to essentially escape or get his double unders back within 30 seconds or whatever. And you can see the who's successful and who's not. And the nice thing is it kind of acts like a ecological dynamics approach where you're having players kind of learn for themselves.

But you'll see guys that just lose really quickly and you just talk to them. You go, why do you think that is? What is the issue and eventually you can lead them down the path. If you actually stay tight enough and have your head in the way and if they're digging one side you can lift one side you can move cuz a lot of them kind of just static. It's kind of like they almost guys that just hit contact and fall and they just kind of hold and they're static they don't move and the other guy just gets whatever they need versus being dynamic with that and being tight at the same time.

I think that's a, it's a nice general skill to have at least in contact that is harder to teach and get through if you're just doing pure tackle tech if that makes sense.

James de Lacey47:17

That's the thing. Exactly. That sort of, whether you're doing big hits or you're using the pads or you're using there's that sort of bridged ground between how do you, it's a, I say it's and again I'm going to give combat sports references because that's what I know most, but it's a bit like saying bass on top right. People say he's got a really good base but what does that mean that doesn't mean anything for, it's not a technique it's not like I can show you this and then you've got it down you're going to fall off loads of times right.

It's more of, it's more of a skill or a complement of attributes versus bass isn't a real move. And I'd say the same with things like connection and tightness and those sorts of things. It's not like just squeeze as hard as you can. You have to be able to follow. You have to be able to move dynamically. But you could show someone once and they would like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." But doing it is another thing.

And that's I say, I used to run this even with the combat guys is things are skills versus moves. And you talk about ecological dynamics there. That was a big way I used to coach grappling and mixed martial arts was a lot I used a lot those kinds of principles. But I used to think of things as skills where I said yes you would might show some mechanics and some bits and pieces like finishes on takedowns and submission finishes. I think yes some mechanics and some details can be really useful.

But the skill of offbalancing someone or manipulating body weight or in this instance keeping connection and staying tight isn't just you can say it and someone's going to do it and it's not that you can show them if you get this grip then you'll be sound forever because it doesn't work like that. Their skills have to be sort of practiced refined and then the individual has to take their accountability of what suits them their perception.

Can they see what their solution would be with their attributes and some of the ecological stuff to figure out what would work for them. But it is really interesting I must admit.

Yeah, I love that approach, just the whole idea of figuring it out and essentially it's basically just context, really, if anyone's listening, like what the hell's ecological dynamics and whatnot. I think we've done a few different podcasts on it, but just this idea of context and having things in context. I mean, if most people have been through different combat or martial arts classes, you might spend 45 minutes drilling something and then you get to, I don't know, the positional work for it or whatever is at the end of the session and none of it works.

Chris Miah49:51

And it's not because the move doesn't work. It's because you just spent all this time drilling moves, the other person knows what you're going to do, which obviously makes it a little harder, but then you also have all these other movements that you didn't account for when you were drilling that perfect movement. And that's what puts it into context, that makes that, I guess, way of learning a much more sound methodology than just drilling.

I think as well, it also, the biggest thing that this is a big difference I found with that, is it poises the student to ask the right questions and to ask questions of problems or issues they're having. They can problem-solve themselves, but also if you were then to give a possible solution to an issue, it holds far more value.

Than you teaching them at the start of class, this is the move that we're going to do, because they have no relative view of what that means, why you would do it, why you wouldn't do it, what problem it solves, what problem it doesn't solve. Context. There's no context to it. Whereas if they see a problem, they're seeking a solution for a specific problem, and you have that, for example, and you do give them a bit of guidance, there's tremendous value to it because they can see where that fits in in the context of the problems that they're having.

But no, I think it's definitely, even from combat sports, it's the way I've moved a lot of coaching towards prior to the break, was ecological. And I had really good results locally. Our grappling team done really well, probably one of the better in Birmingham at the time. Our amateurs done really well. And that was, we almost went somewhat 80% E. And I know they say you should be one or the other, but still a bit of standard instruction, but we went really heavily that way and was able to get guys a lot better a lot quicker, which is great.

James de Lacey51:48

Yeah, that's awesome. And we can just kind of round this out with, we can even go down the strength training route here. And similar similarities and or differences with maybe some of your rugby guys versus combat sports, are you seeing anything there in terms of maybe how you prepare for each sport?

Chris Miah51:48

I think one thing that is cool with both is I think some of the injuries are very similar. So something that I did a lot of stuff with many years ago, Gat with Rosok spoke about, actually she had four discs in the neck which led to some of, we did a lot of neck strength stuff. And it's really in vogue now, but we were doing it probably 10 years.

There's articles online maybe 10 years ago doing it. But some of the neck strength stuff, building through progressions towards, and I see it quite a lot all the time, but you've got your typical isometric stuff, you've got some general strength stuff, and then more dynamic neck strength work, reactive neck strength work. So being the top pillar.

I think that always has great chance for, I think a lot of the general lifts, maybe the dosages would change. You probably have a little bit more volume and hypertrophy for rugby players than fighters depending on the weight class, but there'll be a lot of similarities. One thing I would say is that the biggest thing, and this is more of a change of my view of strength and conditioning maybe as much as the two sports, but it's preparing the athlete for the demands of training is probably harder than preparing them for the demands of whatever, of the event.

Whether that's three five-minute rounds in professional mixed martial arts, or whether that's whatever percentage of match time they play on game day. Actually, surviving in a training week of what that entails for each, very different training weeks, but just from a, that's just something of a shift I've changed my mind on. We talk about underpinning performance as a priority, which it is of course, and we want to underpin game day.

However, a lot of problems tend to come from people not being able to deal with, and a bit of survivorship bias, of being able to deal with the training to get you to game day. And that's just something more of my own mindset changes on strength and conditioning over the last maybe 6 to 12 months.

In terms of lifting volumes, off-season for rugby, they lift a lot more than combat sports for multiple reasons. We don't really have off-seasons in MMA or jiu-jitsu, unfortunately. It might be a good idea to, maybe not. I'm not too sure, or go back and forth on wherever it's a viable thing within MMA and jiu-jitsu at the lower levels, because unless you have schedules that are almost concrete, it's very difficult to do, because someone will go, I got a fight in two weeks.

And if you, I am, the amount of opportunities you would turn down by not being able to be available is a bit difficult in combat sports.

And then I would say there's the conditioning element, and I think you have really deep-dived on this probably the last year or so. And I think that's something that, it's something I'm probably greener, comparatively, to certainly yourself and some other coaches that are really delving into that. But I do think, whereas I was probably quite black and white on prescriptions for both before, we've talked, we've spoken, your general, you've got your aerobic, anaerobic, alactic, and looking at it from a purely time constraint or effort-based model of what we're doing.

But I think, and certainly we go on, but I certainly think for mixed martial arts, doing some of the work that you're doing about seeing what's going on at muscular level in terms of improving performance is going to be the next big breakthrough in terms of endurance performance for mixed martial arts, certainly.

James de Lacey54:55

Or even I think all sports now.

Chris Miah55:44

Sports, yeah. I think that's something, it's making me want to revisit energy systems work because I see how many blind spots I've got within that framework of some of the original frameworks I learned. And going, actually, that makes, just because something's written down on paper doesn't mean that's what's happening at a physiological level or to that athlete or even two different athletes. Maybe getting a completely different stimulus dependent on not just the heart rate, but a lot of other factors as well, that changed my conditioning outlook 180.

James de Lacey55:51

And there's not a lot of things, I guess, as you go through your career, where you do a complete switch. Usually that seems kind of like a bad thing, right? Like, oh, you lose, if you're changing all the time, this is only a one-time thing, I guess, in terms of a full, but if you, right, if you change your mind all the time, generally your principles are never strong enough.

That's what I always believe, too, is if you change your mind every week, that every different thing is the greatest thing ever, you don't, you're not really sure in what it is you're doing and you're just kind of going to change.

Chris Miah56:45

But this is something that I must admit, that from a conditioning element, bar using common sense conditioning of, like I said, with the rugby, using a combination of collisions and running, or in mixed martial arts, using a combination of constraints, whether they're technical constraints, whether they're giving objectives per round, where they're driving conditioning that way. I think on a cellular level, with the stuff you're doing and on a scientific level, I think that's definitely something I'm not very experienced in, but it's definitely the, if you're talking general training outside of specific sport skill, I think that's going to be the next big thing. And I've definitely changed my mind on that.

James de Lacey57:30

Yeah, yeah. It's funny you mention kind of having this time domain and stuff. You see often, hey, we're going to try alactic capacity, it's 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off. And it's like, yeah, it's highly aerobic if you do something like that. Is it, people will say it's maybe semantics, but then you're just prescribing things that aren't giving maybe what you're trying to get out of a session.

So there's a whole, there's a whole damn rabbit hole with that, but it's even with the transition stuff that's all kind of, it's not like when you go looking at the physiology, it throws everything else out the window.

It's like that transition stuff is important because you're going to, if you put N's devices on something like that, you're probably going to see, you're going to see maybe what's happening closer to a game. You're going to see maybe profiles or these responses that maybe you want to improve for that kind of conditioning anyway. And then, yeah, there's just a whole [expletive] rabbit hole that just goes crazy with that [expletive]. It does my head in every day because I'm like, I need to keep learning more, this, that, this, that.

Chris Miah58:29

No, and that's it. And actually, that's kind of what I'd say from my view of sort of revisiting. I'm almost feel like I'm a new student again in some ways in sort of the fields that I'm trying to go down again now because trying to find everything out again whereas I felt like with sort of skills coaching I had that pretty well but I was very obsessive with sort of the ecological approach, coaching theory, all those sorts of things.

But now sort of going and revisiting some of the new literature, new scientific evidence, new practices and some new sports, it's given for me it's given me a new lease of life in terms of being a learner again and actually trying wanting to know and again even if it does there's an element of there's an element I sometimes get with a lot of the stuff is like does it even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Does it matter? Our players and fighters are going to be the best because they're just the best and you get that there's an element of that but also some of it is just for myself to know what I'm doing is making the difference I think it's doing for my own not validation but for my own sort of honesty that I can proudly say what I'm delivering is what I'm delivering and the chips are still going to fall where they're going to fall but I think that seeking of new knowledge and looking at expertise is always a good for any coach.

James de Lacey59:56

Chris, where can people find and follow you? You've got a new Instagram where people can get at you.

Chris Miah1:00:01

I've got a new Instagram which is Chrisy Mia. Oh, give us any link. I think it's got S Y in it. But I start I've been saying it for a long time, but start putting out some more content now. This is sort of like my kickstart to start doing that a little bit more again.

But I would like to start I will be starting to do some stuff on YouTube and Instagram a little bit more as well and put out a bit more content because I've been quite quiet for quite a while on that sort of front. And if it helps people that's great. But yeah, really appreciate it.

James de Lacey1:00:34

No, I appreciate you coming on and chatting and hopefully people get a lot of value out of this too and we'll definitely stay in touch and have you on again.

Chris Miah1:00:43

Yeah, of course. Thank you. Cheers, James.