You Didn't Know This About Conditioning For Fighters w/ James Langford (SSOF Ep 195)

James Langford2:22

He does it at his wrestling gym at home as well, his home club. He trains with all the adults. I think it's easy to forget he's 16. So I think he was just developing, understandably, a few issues and a few niggles just from just only training and wrestling with full-grown men, basically.

James de Lacey2:52

Does he, did he not have any strength and conditioning kind of going on until?

James Langford3:04

No, he did kind of a little bit, but only kind of through what his wrestling club would give him occasionally. It wasn't anything that he'd really done before.

James de Lacey3:12

Got you. What have you got him going on then? 16 years old, genetic specimen, seeing you once a month.

James Langford3:19

Funnily enough, the first they messaged me about working with him, and the first week, I think I was like, "Yeah, cool. Let's do it. I'll help support him." He got diagnosed with a bone stress in his spine. So basically yeah, he had this almost like the beginnings of a pars fracture in one of his discs. So basically the first 3-4 months were kind of rehab and gradually building him back up to wrestling, which is tough given that I only see him once a month.

That's kind of the funding agreement we've got. So there was a lot of that, and he's now just about a couple of months ago been back into full training.

So it's really, I given that he's not done a lot before, he's in that weird stage of gym work. I used to find it a lot. It's, I mean, it's been a long time since I worked in rugby, but when I did a little bit of work in both rugby league and rugby union, you'll know yourself you get those athletes who kind of you watch them play on the pitch and they're unbelievably physical.

They're strong, powerful, and you get them in the gym and it's not that they're not strong and powerful. They just haven't got the coordination and the skill to be able to do anything in the gym.

So there's this weird disconnect between they they are incredibly physical and he's incredibly strong and powerful, but he can't quite manifest that in the gym yet cuz he hasn't got the skill of actually being able to do any of the gym work. So right now it's just teaching him a lot of that, really. Teaching him your classic squat, hinge, push, pull, be able to control his trunk a little bit.

Just just going through some real fundamentals with him so that I mean, I don't really need to develop his strength and power at all at the minute. He's more than physical enough for his age category, but looking ahead to a few years, that's probably when hopefully it will come into his own anyway. Starting his S&C now.

James de Lacey4:58

Yeah, that's funny you mention that about play. I still remember when I first started interning back in the young rugby in rugby league and there's a player one of the most durable players who make over 60 tackles a game every single week. Just an absolute freak. In the gym though, squatting maybe 60 kg, 80 maybe, maybe 100, not even full depth. Just that kind of stuff and you're like, "Huh. Some guys are just farm strong, built for the sport. And the weights are just."

James Langford5:29

They've got that farm strength essentially. That's just in the sport they're unbelievable, but try and extract anything out of that, and it's just yourself as well as I do. The gym is a skill in itself, isn't it? That you just spend time building them up essentially, giving them that skill.

James de Lacey5:43

Yeah, for sure. And obviously you've got a lot of these guys coming through your little one-on-ones and you've been through the conditioning mentorship as well, which is cool. It'll be kind of cool to maybe go into, I mean, we can just even start down the conditioning route. Are you using NIRS as well? I think I saw some posts, but?

James Langford6:00

Yeah, I am. So probably about what would it be? About a year ago now, I'd say, I bought two train red NIRS devices and kind of started going down into the rabbit hole that is NIRS and central versus peripheral and trying to really gain an understanding of how I can utilize that to then inform my planning and my programming off the back of the that conditioning testing.

I mean, it may, it's a little plug for the course, but I've loved it. I've really really personally, I think, benefited from using the NIRS devices and the combined it with heart rate and going through the repeated Wingate that obviously yourself and Andrew talk a lot about in the conditioning mentorship.

I think one thing that I had struggled with a bit previously when it came to conditioning pre kind of the NIRS devices and really getting to the idea of understanding central versus peripheral limitations, the thing that I'd really struggled with with conditioning was I think coming from a background within the English Institute of Sport and the UK Sports Institute, it's really kind of bred into practitioners to be adaptation-led and adaptation-driven.

So really understanding if we're prescribing three sets of three in the gym for maximal strength, what the difference is and what we're getting adaptation-wise in doing so compared to say if we were doing three 10s, really understanding not actually what the exercise is, but what we're getting from it. And I think I'd always struggled to find that to a degree within any of the conditioning I was doing and any of the conditioning testing.

I think the closest I got was probably the going down the Joel Jamieson route and his ultimate MMA conditioning. I think we all I think we all kind of went down that same path. But the same thing, isn't it? Cuz ultimately, the thing that I really liked about Joel Jamieson's ultimate MMA conditioning book was it it helped you understand a little bit to a degree around, okay, if we're if we're doing more intensive aerobic power work conditioning work, then these are the adaptations that we're getting.

Hopefully we're getting we're increasing the strength of our our heart, basically, as a muscle. Versus if we're doing more threshold work, we might be getting this.

But the area that I always really struggled with then understanding, well, cool, it's great that if I'm doing these modalities, this is what hopefully adaptations I'm getting, but there was always a bit of a disconnect between the testing I was doing and how that probably influenced it because I was always doing your classic, do a 6-second sprint on the assault bike to measure your alactic power, and we'll do a 30-second Wingate to measure your glycolytic energy system contribution, and we'll do a either a submax ramp test on a Wattbike or we'll do a 6-minute sort of max effort or max distance run to understand your aerobic system.

I always kind of felt like I've got these tests here that give me this information, and I've got my training methods here that give me these adaptations, but I always struggled to kind of put them together. Because there was never anything that said, well, this athlete needs X or this athlete needs Y. It was just this is how he performs in a 6-second Wingate, sorry, a 6-second peak power. This is how he performs in a 30-second Wingate.

But since using the NIRS and really then looking at that what is going on in the heart and what's going on in the muscle and trying to understand then where the disconnect or where the bottleneck is, has then almost made it much simpler, despite it being much complex at the start to try and understand. I then feel like it gets much simpler as going, "Okay, well, is this is this a delivery problem? Is this actually an extraction problem within the muscle, or is it probably a little bit of both?"

And then once I know those or once I understand what it possibly could be, then I can almost go back to well, what's now the right method or modality for increasing that? So do I need to go more longer duration intervals to maybe try and build some central adaptations? Do I need to go more sprint intervals to try and go more peripheral?

Do we actually not have a lot of time in the camps? We need to do more sprint intervals for more central and peripheral. But yeah, it's just I think it's really helped me clean up probably my transition from testing energy systems to then the implementation of what I'm going to do. Probably that's the biggest thing from the course I've found the most.

James de Lacey10:31

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I think we all came down, as I mentioned, to that Joel Jamieson road, and I guess traditional energy system, I guess being taught that through uni and then going through sport and then it becomes hard because you get these rigid buckets. And it's like this you have to do aerobic work. What whenever? Okay, so it means I need to I can only use these particular buckets in this time.

And you have these rigid little sets and reps and then they're trying to figure out how does it apply to the individual? Does the whole people all athletes do this prescription then because this is aerobic? And then you go anaerobic or whatever and then you're doing this, but then when you're actually looking at the research and what's going on, well, is it really developing quote unquote anaerobic fitness? When it's becoming more I guess majority aerobic contribution by the time you start doing sprint two, sprint three, etc.

And then these things you start to sit there and be like, what the hell's going on? How does this all piece together? As you mentioned, it becomes a lot more simple when it's broken down to these easier issues that you can look to address and then you just change modifying whatever you're doing, the intensity you're using just to be able to address whatever it is or the limitation that you're finding. And it becomes a little easier to piece together.

James Langford12:50

I mean, I think that was the that's the bit which I think is piecing together for me that the testing and then the what we do off the back of the testing. And also I think it's really helped for me clean up probably some of the conversations with some of the guys that I work with around where we're going with their conditioning cuz you get your classic after a test after a Wingate or after a six-second peak power, the question that any athlete always asks is like, is that good? And you kind of like, well, yeah, or equally no, but it doesn't really matter if it's good or not.

It's where we go with the information that I've got and that was always where I really struggled before because sure if someone's got let's say someone performed really well on their 6-second sprint and really well on their Wingate and really well on their 6-minute either max distance run or I do a sub-max ramp on a Wattbike. Historically, if someone performs really well on all of those then I don't want to put my feet up and cross my arms and go, "We're good here." You're working with me for a reason. We're trying to develop you physically. But those are all good, so where do I now go?

And historically, I'd always go down the route of actually if there was a scenario where it didn't appear like an athlete had a clear limitation, I'd put it to them and say, "Look, when you're sparring, when you're in fights, where do you feel you're struggling the most? Do you not feel like you're recovering between rounds effectively? Do you feel like whenever there's a more intense exchange, you're just not able to bounce back from that?" But I use that to try and help fill the void a little bit utilizing the heart rate combined with NIRS to go, "Look, is it central or peripheral?"

Or is it a bit of a mixed profile? But ultimately, which one of these is it? And then we can be super specific and go, "Well, it doesn't really matter if you're currently in camp or out of camp. This is what you need right now to develop your conditioning. So let's just do this. Let's not worry about going this aerobic power into aerobic threshold into glycolytic power into a la like you currently need some sprint intervals with a slightly longer recovery period than you do a work period, so let's do that.

Or you need some short sprint intervals with actually a slightly shorter recovery. It can just be so much more precise. And I also feel more confident in giving it as well, and knowing that well, this isn't always going to do what it's what I think it should, but I feel much more confident in this prescription of what I'm giving you, knowing that you have X problem and I'm giving you this to rectify it.

James de Lacey15:37

Yeah, exactly. And it gives you that the how and why. I think it'll be really interesting to go even deeper into this and go into what do you see when someone is maybe centrally limited versus peripherally limited and maybe in the conditioning test or whatever you're doing there, in order for you to decide which direction that program goes.

James Langford15:58

I think that the biggest thing to start on is I think I mainly work with either professional MMA fighters or professional boxers. Those are the two I have a few amateurs in terms of MMA, but every boxer is professional. Pretty much every MMA fighter is professional as well and they're a reasonably high level. I'm yet to come across anyone within my testing who is centrally limited. That's probably the big first thing for that that I've found from my breakdown.

Now, there's been a few where I've looked at it and gone it's a bit of a mixed profile. There's things here that are showing that you probably have maybe a little bit of central limitation and a little bit of peripheral, such as they are getting a reasonable heart rate recovery, but we're not getting maybe a full muscle reoxygenation. There's elements of both in there, but the biggest thing is it's peripheral. That is where the bottleneck seems to be for just about anyone at a professional MMA and boxing level from my experience.

And I think it makes sense when because the guys that I work with are professional, it's their job. They're not training once a day on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a couple of hours in the evening. Most of them are doing double days. They've already been training for a number of years and anyone who's familiar with any sort of MMA session or boxing session is generally speaking the work periods are quite high and the rest periods are quite short.

There's not a lot of super high intensity within these sessions. The sessions are always 2 hours, 2 and 1/2 hours. You do your longer runs or you do some longer intervals, but it's very rare. You probably work at that super high intensity that's going to drive those peripheral adaptations in the muscle. So I think it makes sense when you look at the testing and go, "Well, there's probably a reason why all these guys are peripherally limited."

The biggest challenge that I've found with that is actually probably getting them to try and shift their mindset with regards to what they need to do within their conditioning. Because coming back to I suppose my previous point around what I used to do in terms of the older conditioning methods, a lot of them would do longer runs or longer intervals and wouldn't really do a lot of they would do some assault bike or some watt bike work if they needed some off feet conditioning because they had an injury. But again, they wouldn't always do a lot of super high intensity conditioning. It would always replicate what they might normally do running-wise.

And the biggest challenge is probably in shifting the mindset from going, "Well, these 3-minute on, 1-minute off intervals you were doing in these 400-meter repeats that you've done for the past 6 years have got you to this stage, but I need you to trust in me now that 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off on the assault bike for six rounds with a decent long recovery and we're going to do three rounds of that is actually what you need right now because your oxygen delivery is so good that if you keep doing these longer runs you're probably just going to further develop those central adaptations in terms of getting the oxygen from the heart and lungs to the muscle.

There's no benefit to that. The muscles aren't extracting that oxygen any quicker and what you're doing isn't going to help elicit any changes that are going to increase the number of mitochondria within the muscle to help with that extraction. So, I appreciate you've done this for 6 years, but we now need to get on an assault bike or get on a watt bike and really ramp this intensity up."

So, that's been the first thing that's taken a bit of shifting. I've actually found that MMA guys have bought into that relatively well. The boxers have been a little bit more of a difficult sell at times. And I think that's just tradition. The way that I see it MMA is still probably a relatively new sport when it comes to conditioning and what people have really firm set beliefs in works versus doesn't work.

Whereas I think in boxing those beliefs are much more set in terms of one of the boxing coaches I work with is probably run the same conditioning pyramid with his athletes for the past 15 years. And all his athletes are super fit.

But it's then how you take that next step further and trying to convince someone like him and some of his guys that actually you might need to step away from what you currently do to that next level is kind of where the challenge is. But yeah, it has been interesting to look at it and go no one's really centrally limited at the professional level from my experience with the guys I work with. It's all peripheral.

James de Lacey20:41

So, what does that look like on the data and the graphs you have there with the heart rate and the nerves and potentially the power data?

James Langford20:48

Yeah, so really what I'm seeing, especially when it comes to the heart rate and the nerves, is these guys are able to really effectively ramp that heart rate up. So, I mean, there's one of the boxers that I work with, he in fact, he's probably the person who I did the most recent conditioning test with. Before we started the test his resting heart rate on the bike was like 85. We'd done a bit of a warm up and let him cool down. I think he was sat at like 85 bpm.

James de Lacey21:17

It happens to me though, but just from being nervous.

James Langford21:19

Yeah, basically. A little bit high, but he's just on edge slightly. And in that first 30 second sprint he went from like 85 up to I think 169. Which I think a lot of people panic about and go, "Whoa, that heart rate is really high." But I think when you come back to actually developing that understanding of conditioning a little bit you understand that that's what we want.

We want that heart rate to be able to climb really quickly to be able to cope with the demand of the increase in intensity. So his heart rate basically went from 85 up to about 168 in the first 30 seconds.

And then after the sprint recovered down to like 117 in that 60 second recovery and then basically went from 116 up to 174 and then back down to 119. So what I'm seeing with a lot of the boxers that I'm working with and the MMA guys is their heart rate graphs look like two mountains. Like it's really rapid climbs, but then also quite fast declines as well. Which tells me that actually that heart is doing a really good job of meeting the required intensity of the exercise.

But when we then start to look at the muscle oxygenation, as soon as they start the sprint you get that really really fast desat. And generally speaking most will actually do a really good job of recovering near enough fully after that first work period. So after that first 30 second sprint. Most will return nearly to baseline. There's a few anomalies where you get like a big asymmetry between the two. And I can't figure out if I've just not put the device on correctly on one leg or they actually have a massive asymmetry, but I trust in myself a bit more now.

But it's normally after that second 30 second sprint where then we start to get a slightly slower resaturation on the nerves through that muscle oxygenation. And I'm putting them on the rectus femoris, similar to Andrew mentioned about in the course. And ultimately when I look at that, I'll try and run some of the data and the slopes that Andrew runs as well, but I've started to get a bit better at just eyeballing it initially and going, "Well, you know what? If your heart rate is climbing and dropping that fast, your heart is clearly doing an excellent job of getting the oxygen to the muscle, but we're not seeing a full recovery of the muscle.

It's good, but we're not quite getting that full recovery yet." And from that I'm that then drives me down the line of, "Okay, well, it's clear the muscle isn't doing a good enough job of extracting that oxygen that it needs." Like it's doing a good job, but it's not as efficient as it could be relative to what we're seeing go on centrally in the heart and the lungs.

And then that then obviously drives me down the route of, "Okay, well, now what do we do in terms of interval prescription?" And that's then where there's the whole other section off the back of this, which then becomes how long have we got till they fight? What is the fight? Is it a title fight? Is it a four-round, a six-round, a 10-round? And there's the whole host of other things that then need to be taken into consideration after that test. But that's very much what I'm looking at within the test is just what's the heart rate doing? What's the nerves saying?

I look at the power as kind of like a secondary, just in terms of what the drop-off is. I find that more useful for guys who I've got a number of tests with them before and I can kind of look as to are they actually giving me 100%? I always find the second time someone does the test, when you've never done it before, you don't know what to expect.

So everyone always goes 100% and then drops off. But the second time when someone does it, I found there can be the odd person who holds back because they know how rough that second 30 seconds is going to be from having done it before.

The main thing I use the power data for really is just an understanding of is this a maximal test? Yes, what's your drop off in power? But really, I'm using the power to personally for me at the minute, primarily overlaid just when the interval starts, when the interval finishes to understand what's going on in the heart within the muscle. And then I'll look at fatigue index and the drop off across the 30-second sprint, but that's much more like a secondary data that I'm looking at as opposed to the heart and muscle.

James de Lacey25:37

What came out to you mentioned obviously the max with that really nice heart rate recovery, etc., and potentially limited peripherally. What would be or what is the I guess conditioning prescription off the back of that based on where he is in his training year, etc.?

James Langford25:51

Yeah, so with him, his peak power relative to his size on the bike, relative to his weight category, wasn't probably as high as I would have expected it to be. But it's the second time he's done that test, and his power output actually in the second time was higher than the first, so I could kind of gather from that that he hadn't sandbagged it. It very much came across as a genuine effort.

So one of the first things I've done is actually we're doing some I suppose you almost classic Joel Jameson style alactic power intervals just to try and really, how would I describe it? I suppose increase how quickly, hopefully, he can generate ATP to try and ramp his power output up a little bit. Cuz equally, the other thing alongside the conditioning testing during that time was I re-ran a full battery of testing strength and power as well.

And his strength, his maximum force production has shot through the roof from the last time we did it, but there hadn't been much a change in some of his jump metrics. So, I actually wanted to use the bike as a little bit of a dual tool. One to try and increase how quickly he could generate ATP when the intensity was super high. But, also it can be quite a good power development tool as well, personally.

So, we did that. And then I also went into some I suppose early level sprint intervals. So, we've just started doing, he hasn't got a fight date yet. So, I've kind of started off with some 6 second on intervals, 12 seconds off. And he's doing 10 of them. So, he's got a minute worth of sprint volume total. With a slightly longer recovery. Again, it's not quite long enough that he's going to get a full recovery in between intervals. And because of that, it's not going to be hugely peripheral based session.

But, it gives me room to build into in a few weeks time. We're going to go to some 10 20s. I've then started to bring the rest down a little bit to just really stress the muscles, stress the peripherals to try and generate some of those changes in mitochondria and and look at actually how efficiently he can extract that oxygen as opposed to anything longer intervals that might be more centrally driven.

James de Lacey28:10

Are you still looking at heart rate kinetics as well on top of all that?

James Langford28:15

Loosely. I will to a degree when he's doing these sessions he's wearing a heart rate monitor and I'm kind of looking at them. He'll send me a screenshot and I'll look at it. I think the thing that I'm currently trying to improve on as I suppose a coach and also within my business as well is, it's kind of a separate conversation, but I probably got to the point now where business is thriving and I work with a lot of fighters.

And in this weird way it kind of means that the actual day-to-day data interpretation I can do is actually probably dropped off a little bit because of the demand of coaching. So, I'm currently trying to figure out a way that I can basically not have that happen. But, I think that's the balance of coaching.

So, I am still looking at some heart rate kinetics from his own sessions he's doing and trying to understand, "Okay, well, what changes are happening week on week?" But, I actually lean towards probably repeating that conditioning testing more frequently and going off the changes in that as opposed to week-to-week changes within sort of heart rate kinetics.

James de Lacey29:21

It'll be interesting to go into your experiences, thoughts, and even just based on your own data. Obviously, it's always perpetuated online around this idea that you can't always do high intensity year-round because your gains cap within 6 weeks. So you can only do 6 weeks of high intensity. It's just interesting to go into maybe what you've seen within your data or even just some of your thoughts around that. That's basically been pushed everywhere all the time.

James Langford29:50

Yeah, so I think there's I see two sides to it from what I've played around with a little bit. Now, I work with one heavyweight MMA guy, guy called Abraham Bably. I've worked with him for I think it's 5 years now. We've sort of transitioned from amateur to professional.

And when I first started playing around with the nerves and the heart rate, he was the first athlete who I really started going deep on it with because he's unbelievably powerful, but conditioning has always been his thing. He got his first loss about 2 years ago, and that was a conditioning thing. He just blew himself out in the second round and just never recovered from that.

So we went really deep into his conditioning and I started doing sprint intervals with him based off the back of that because he was just able to almost bury himself into a hole where his body just couldn't recover. And again, similar heart rate kinetics were looking great on testing, but his muscle resaturation was shocking. I think he was just so powerful that any little action just bump and it was gone.

So I started using a lot of sprint intervals with him and found they—I think we did a three, four-month block of just sprint intervals. We had a big block between fights. And the changes to him conditioning-wise were like he would say himself, he felt his fitness increase so much. Not necessarily recovery during rounds, but just actually he's a very fast, explosive guy. He feints a lot, he moves a lot, and his ability to just keep repeating that. One, subjectively he felt improved dramatically. Also from the data within the testing, we've seen really good peripheral changes.

But, and this is the big but which is currently influencing my approach to programming them, we then got to a point where he got a fight date and it was 8 weeks away, I think it was. It was the start of the PFL Africa tournament last year. So that would have been around June, July. And he, although the sprint intervals were continuing to make some really positive changes, psychologically he just became so detached from the sprint intervals.

He got to a point where he was doing them, but I could kind of tell from the numbers that he was putting out each week that he was almost just so psychologically fatigued from having done them for so long that his ability to come into a session and just sprints intervals twice a week at a super high intensity had kind of died off a little bit. I don't think that was anything physical at all. And he would say himself he was just almost just psychologically fatigued with having done them for so long.

Having had to come in—and although it's only what, 3 minutes work total really, because the intensity was so high and I always pushed him that I need 100% from him every single sprint. Anything less than that just isn't acceptable. It's not going to do what we need it to do for you.

That was my first probably little realization into okay, maybe I do as much as I can see the benefit of doing sprint intervals. And I don't really buy into the, you know, they do 6 weeks then start to taper out and I think you can look at a lot of the research into them and go, well, you know, there isn't that many studies that do long-term year-long season duration, whatever it might be, studies into the effects of sprint intervals. Generally it's 6 weeks of this first 6 weeks of steady state or whatever it might be.

But I think that was my first realization into the fact that whilst physiologically with that super high intensity we can continue to make changes, there might be a little psychological piece that we need to look at in terms of going, okay, at what point do we actually play these to really drive significant changes close to a fight essentially.

I mean, he kept doing them for 8 weeks and it clearly worked. He won the PFL Africa title last year. Funnily enough, we did months and months of sprint intervals and really tough conditioning about helping him last in those later rounds. And he'd never made it out of the first round. But you'd rather know you could do it than need to do it.

But yeah, that was probably my first thing that—that was probably the first time it hit me that right, well, when I'm now looking into my conditioning and thinking about how I might program and periodize, I'm a little bit more conscious now about when I really bring in the real short work to short rest period sprint intervals into someone's program.

I'll kind of if someone's maybe got 12 weeks, then I might not start until 10 weeks or 8 weeks because I found—I don't know about it, it'd be interesting to get your experience as well, but I found even as a short-term implementation, you can make really fast changes peripherally with sprint intervals. And although those changes do continue, I've found probably that bringing them in at around the 8 weeks out, 10 weeks out point, person dependent, is when they can really kind of switch in and buy into them and really give them max intent into those intervals.

But I think either bringing them in too soon or trying to keep them in too long year-round at the minute is where I'm not 100% sure because I find yeah, there's the psychological input of can they actually just do this week in, week out and give the intensity required week in, week out, especially when they're not in camp for these guys.

James de Lacey35:36

I keep my online roster very, very small, so I've got two guys, an international jiu-jitsu guy, he's got ADCC trials this weekend, and a pro MMA guy. The jiu-jitsu guy I've had must be 1 and 1/2, almost 2 years. We've done sprint intervals every week for 1 and 1/2, 2 years.

James Langford35:54

Oh.

James de Lacey35:54

It beats a psycho. Yeah, yeah. He will be like I'll see him on the assault bike. "You feeling okay?" And he's like, "Oh, yeah, I was about to sit—I was feeling sick this week," but he did them anyway. I'm like, "Dude, don't do them when you're sick."

But he's just one of those psychos. But yeah, we do sprint intervals hard sprint intervals one to two times a week, depending on his—the schedule he trains. Double day jiu-jitsu Monday, Tuesday off, Wednesday jiu-jitsu, double day I think double day Thursday or one day. No, I think once on Thursday, double day Friday, once on Saturday. So he's training a ton of jiu-jitsu, works as well.

James Langford36:31

And what would a hard sprint interval be? You know when you say hard sprint intervals, what does that look like?

James de Lacey36:36

We would do—I usually cap it around 1 minute total work or 1 to 1 minute 20 total work. It's usually 10 on, depending on the week it's and where he is at. It's usually 10 on 10 off or 10 on 20 off.

So he's doing hard ones. I've pushed him to some negative recovery when he's looked pretty good. But he's staying on that. He's I mean he's set lifetime strength PRs and he's doing the sprint intervals and feeling really good. So it's we just keep going. Every now and then we'll do a time trial kind of thing or I'll back him off a little bit depending on how he's going. We might do some longer intervals just to give him a little break, but it's one week.

And then we're back into it and he just does something. MMA guy, we've been work must be close to 6 months now. But he's competing quite often. He's waiting for a short notice UFC call-up and stuff. So we're being ready all the time. So it's always having them in.

I'm trying to now bring in more I guess more specific work cuz you can kind of sometimes notice—it's not fun to die on the bike.

So you can kind of some personalities you can kind of see that, you know, they might not enjoy it as much. So I'm trying to—if I can get another way and if I can get it just doing heavy bag intervals, then we'll just smash those and just hit the bike once a week instead of trying to get two out of them for with that, you know?

So that's been where I've been with it. And I only have heart rates to off, so it makes that a little harder to really judge and be greedy. But it still always gives me enough where I can be like, "Okay." The MMA guy his heart rate recovery and his kinetics are really good. It's only small changes we're just trying to get that recovery coming early which actually starting to come. His latest test has kind of shown a little more faster recovery initially. So I've pushed him on some negative ones before, but it was—

James Langford38:48

Negative ones are brutal.

James de Lacey38:51

Dude, I haven't even done negative myself yet, and I was like he went through it and he was just like, and I was like, "Holy crap." Again, that would have been brutal. But it was at that point in time it was a good time to do it. And his data showed he was ready, he's ready to be pushed hard. After the first time we started working together he was on 10 on 10 off initially because his data looked like his heart rate was a lot better than a lot of others I've seen.

James Langford39:17

I think that's the one thing where I'm currently still finding my feet and playing around with it a lot, which is I suppose I'll still do, I wouldn't call it sprint intervals. I'll give the guys when they're let's say they haven't got a date and for quite a few of the especially the boxers and the MMA guys that I work with who are pro, because a lot of them are signed to organizations, most of them probably aren't going to get a fight with less than 8 to 10 weeks notice at this stage.

Which is funny because probably when we did our first podcast and that was 4 years ago, a lot of the guys I was working with were early pros and I was like, "Well, we might only get 4 weeks notice." A lot of the guys are the same, they're just more seasoned pros now.

But I'll drop it to maybe a 10 on 50 off 60 off just through that off camp period so that the intensity during that 10 is still super high, because I think it's important we touch up on that intensity so that when we need to really crank it up there's not a learning effect of them finding their feet with those 10 second sprints.

But I've almost started to view it as a little psychological break for them just so that when I say, "Right, it's time to go now," they are bought in. And maybe that's me being a bit too generous with some of them and applying a rule to some that doesn't need to be there, but that's where my head's at at the minute with it.

James de Lacey40:37

Almost like a switch. Like, okay, now we got to work.

James Langford40:41

Essentially so it's that I will keep it ticking a little bit throughout the year when they're not in camp and then as soon as we get the rough inklings of right, we've got 8 weeks, we've got 10 weeks, we've got 12, whatever it might be, I'm like, cool. Right, on the bike, heart rate on, nerves on, let's go. Let's see where you're at. And then from now, we're going to go and maybe rerun the test 5 weeks out or 6 weeks out just to make sure that what I'm still doing is we've not seen a massive shift and we suddenly need to change parties.

James de Lacey41:08

I have a question in the chat for you before I get to my other ones from famous music. He's always asking questions in here, which is good. Is there any interval setup or adaptations that you think of as "base work"? Example, stuff you would work on between fight camps or do you stick with interval approaches for short and long term?

James Langford41:25

I'll generally always go interval based. Like, I do try to—

James de Lacey41:32

Is that because of time or anything or something particular?

James Langford41:35

Because of time and also a lot of the athletes I—there's a few athletes I've maybe only been working with for a year or so now, but quite a lot of the guys I work with I've been working with for 3 or 4 years. So, we've developed a really good understanding of their training week, what intensities certain sessions are. I do tell my guys to try and get 30 minutes steady "zone two" done throughout the week. But for a lot of them, they do that through pads really or really slow controlled heavy bag work working on technique and I'm cool with that.

And that's not even necessarily building the base as such. I think for a lot of the professional guys that I work with, their base is ticked through their sport. They'll—a lot of the MMA guys are probably doing 14 hours on the mat a week. That's that volume and for them play at different intensities, but there's quite a lot of low intensity stuff. There's quite a bit of higher intensity stuff and ultimately the high intensity isn't really high intensity.

So I think a lot of the base stuff is ticked just through their sport. So I will get them to do a little bit of zone two steady state work, but I actually try and push them to do that on a heavy bag or even just a bit of shadow, because I think there's actually not many opportunities in the week where they can practice and work on techniques when there isn't pressure on them or where there isn't actually a—they can just relax and work through stuff. There's always someone on pads in front of them or they're always in a session or there's always someone watching them.

Just try and switch off and just flow for half an hour. If you want to go for a run or go do it on a bike instead, cool. Go do that. But if you want to do it just shadow or you want to do it on a bag just touching out, I actually think that's a good opportunity for you to play and experiment with this stuff as well.

James de Lacey43:25

So you have 30 minutes of this lower intensity work a week. Most of the—I guess that would be what we would consider a fight camp. And then or does that go all the way through and then the rest is topped up through the high intensity intervals?

James Langford43:40

So sorry. So that's what I was supposed to say. That's year round. I'll get them to do that. Try and get them to do it on a lower intensity training day and then the rest is interval based. It's basically year round. I say, probably not true sprint intervals 12 months of the year, 50 weeks of the year.

But it's always going to be interval based with most intervals being quite high intensity, 10 seconds on, 20 seconds on. But with varying work to rest periods. Slightly longer rest period when they're not in camp versus then dropping into I suppose true sprint intervals when they move into camp.

James de Lacey44:13

For your—I mean, you say you have no one that's centrally limited, but pretend that you did. What are you typically looking at interval-wise for someone who might be centrally limited?

James Langford44:26

I've run it with a few of my online guys before. It's hard because some of you—they send me heart rate data and it's harder to look at in isolation, but again, if they are out of camp, I'll run some of your I suppose almost classic threshold work. I might do four fours, 4 minutes on, 3 minutes off, your classic VO2 style intervals. And because I do still want to protect some of that intensity and I really like the idea of what the fighters that I'm working with when they go into camp almost thinking about flicking the switch.

And I want them to almost have the same thinking with the conditioning so that whenever they do go to do sprint intervals, I'm confident they're really going to be giving them 100%. So, I do still try and do slightly longer intervals whether it's 4 minutes on, 3 minutes off, your classic VO2 style intervals or more of your aerobic power like 1 minute on, 1 minute off intervals when they're out of camp.

I will still sometimes do some sprint intervals, but again, it's your longer recovery period. 10 seconds on, 90 seconds easy or 10 seconds on, 60 seconds easy, 75 seconds easy, whatever it is. And save the true sprint intervals when people are 8 to 10 weeks out or in camp.

James de Lacey45:39

Nice. With the—you mentioned obviously your heavyweight MMA guy, super explosive. And then obviously the sprint intervals works well for him. Does maybe the fighter makeup change some of your approach or prescription at all? For example, he's an explosive guy, but maybe you might have a more volume-based workhorse steady state guy. Does that change anything for you? Or you're just looking at the data side of it?

James Langford46:04

The main thing at the minute it changes for me is just the volume of sprint intervals that I'm giving people. And how I'm breaking down that block of sprint intervals as well. He's the first guy that I really ever probably truly played around with sprint intervals with for a longer period of time. I mean, I don't know quite how he was doing it but he was getting—one of the big things I always put to my guys off the back of sprint intervals is you're on a bike.

It's minimal loading. You're not really going to get much DOMS off it. You'll feel tired afterwards, don't get me wrong, but there's not going to be a lot of muscle soreness that's going to impact anything for the next few days.

Now for whatever reason it was like he was getting DOMS off the back of it. For the first few weeks we did it he was actually getting quite a lot of soreness through his quads for the first few weeks. So it's made me a little bit more conscious of those really big powerful heavy guys, especially when I first introduce any sprint-based work to. As opposed to where for someone else I might do let's say it was a 10 seconds on 10 seconds off. I'm similar to you. I'll probably do a minute's worth of total volume of that before some kind of longer recovery.

Whereas the first few weeks for someone who is a bit bigger, a bit more powerful, I might do three rounds of that, a shorter break, three rounds again, then a longer break, and gradually build into them doing the total minute's worth of volume. That's probably the only real thing that I'm changing. Just because he caught me off guard. He did his first session and I was like bro, I couldn't walk yesterday.

I'm like how is how? Like sprints on a bike, how can you buck? I mean yeah, he's super twitchy, like super powerful. He's actually he's moving down to the light heavyweight for his next fight, which will be interesting. Just to see how he performs there, but he's just he's probably a bit of an I've only really worked with one other athlete that I would categorize as a similar level to him before in terms of how twitchy and explosive they are in terms of like I just he can seem to drive himself if you give me the opportunity he can drive himself into levels of fatigue that I haven't really seen many of the people be able to do.

James de Lacey48:15

Do you think a traditional energy system approach where someone's like putting someone like that through I don't know a lot of low intensity volume would negatively impact that quality? I'm not going to say long term but just generally.

James Langford48:33

Yeah, I'm still I'm still not 100% sure. I still I have probably prior to getting deep into nerves and probably understanding more looking at conditioning through the lens of central versus peripheral like we have at times done a lot of low intensity higher volume conditioning based work with him. Sometimes that's been forced like there's been a couple of fights he's gone into carrying some injuries that have meant we we actually can't drive the intensity that high. But you could have been fights that he can't not take really.

I've not really seen it change stuff too much but I do think that especially for someone like him he is he's in the position he is in he's got to the stage he has in his career because of how fast and powerful and explosive he is that that's that's why he didn't see the second round in the last PFL Africa tournament it's that's the reason behind it.

So I do think there is a there's definitely an awareness and a consciousness within me that wants to really try and minimize changing him. Which is why I think sprinting and falls can be quite useful if we can create some of those changes without performing huge volumes of conditioning then brilliant.

But yeah, it it it's something I'm still not too sure of yet to tell you the truth, but my my gut leads me towards yes, if you were to hit him with say let's say you told me I had to do 3-4 hours zone two a week, I do think it would have a negative connotation as opposed to positive.

James de Lacey50:12

Yeah. Yeah, I I I think I think so, too, especially when you start getting into those higher and higher volumes. Yeah, the the low intensity part is interesting. Obviously it is time and place to get low intensity work in, especially if you're already you're doing like a 30-minute kind of block a week. The issue is you just need so much time. You need so much volume to continue progressing.

And obviously you mentioned that you're these guys are getting what, 14 hours of varying intensity, most of it low, in a week. Is like what, is adding an extra 2-3 hours on top of that? Is that going to make the change that you want? And I think that's where people potentially get stuck because maybe they view the conditioning as this extra binary thing where it's detached from the sport.

So, it's kind of like we do conditioning, we need to do our aerobic base work, not taking into account what's happening throughout the week. I guess for somebody who's maybe doing 3 hours a week of sport. But then again, if you're doing 3 hours a week of sport, you probably got a billion other things in your life going on that doesn't let you train more.

James Langford51:21

Yeah. 100% lads, I There's a couple in the past year There's a couple of fighters I work with who we've we've kind of brought them back from ACL tears, and they are they are people who I was getting to do quite a lot of zone two work on a bike throughout the week, but for no other kind of rationale than like do I think it's going to do anything amazing conditioning-wise for them?

No. But at some point during this rehab, we need to get you back to doing 12 to 16 hours worth of training volume per week. Like that's what you need to be able to do.

So, doing an hour a day at least is going to get you to the point where you your your body, no matter how it looks and at what intensity it is, is still doing 8 to 10 hours worth of training each week whilst you're out injured as opposed to just 2 hours of strength and rehab work. So, there's it's definitely a tool that I think can be used.

It's just, like anything, it's like when do you use it? And for most, I just don't think you have the time unless you're using it for something like light drilling or it's more of like a technical reason you're prescribing it so that they can just relax and focus on things they want to work on in the gym when not under pressure whilst possibly getting some low-intensity work, fine.

But I think if you're prescribing like two three 90-minute bike sessions a week or whatever, I do question how much is that actually going to move the needle when you're already doing 10 to 12 hours? And even with that, these are very, very high-trained guys, is that enough volume to actually shift the needle?

James de Lacey52:50

Yeah. Yeah. And at some point, you need intensity to force that adaptation. Well, or you can just add more time, but then who's doing 20 hours here in endurance athlete then?

James Langford53:01

And if if you're looking at it through the same lens as you would do like a strength training, like when we how do most people progress their strength training? Like do you add intensity or do you add volume? Like no one's adding two reps each week throughout the whole of a camp to the point where someone gets put on doing three sets of 40. Like we we add intensity because the intensity creates a lot of the adaptations that we're looking for and and the same as strength conditioning.

James de Lacey53:21

Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of parallels there and yeah, it's funny. But I mean, I guess a lot of people also run through volume like high-volume phases of strength training and to like hypertrophy phase transition phase, that kind of stuff. So, I guess they kind of mirror that up too. Whether you do that or not is I guess up to someone else's discretion. Not my favorite way of going about it, but some people like that kind of approach.

Be it's kind of to round this out. Obviously you're doing a lot of different other tests as well with strength training. What are you particularly looking at with them boxers and MMA guys? Are there any differences that you see between them? And then I guess how is that influencing some of your programming for them?

James Langford53:59

So the the big tests that I am running I suppose is I do a drop jump with all my guys every week anytime they're in the gym with me. Whether they be boxer, MMA minus a couple of injuries that mean we can't do it. But so long as everyone's fit and healthy generally I'll do a drop jump with them every single session. Really two reasons. One to look at I suppose the long-term progression of those elastic qualities, which I'd argue for boxing are much more important than they are for MMA.

But I think especially for the gym where the vast majority of my MMA clients come from, it's a very heavy striking-based gym. The majority come from Manchester Top Team. And it's a very heavy striking-based gym with quite a heavy boxing influence within the gym. So those elastic qualities through the foot and ankle probably underpin a little bit more of their training than if it was like a heavy jujitsu or wrestling-based gym. So I'll do it for kind of the the longer-term progression and monitoring of those qualities, but also as a as a readiness measure as well.

So looking at actually how is obviously I have a have a conversation with the athlete when they walk in the gym and look at their mannerisms and how they're moving around, but actually how are they presenting on this day? And do I need to either make any changes within my program or have a conversation with them about changes in my program and also maybe other changes they need to make in the week.

I'll quite regularly do a countermovement jump as well. I've started to step away a little bit from the mid-thigh pull and look more at a single-leg isometric squat. I'll still vary the two quite frequently.

But I've started as well as doing like weekly drop jump testing whenever a lot of my guys come into camp, I'll do a sessionally like isometric squat as well. So a single leg iso squat. Same thing, I'm just trying to track their force output throughout the camp cuz the point I've got to with quite a lot of my boxers and my main guys is having worked with them for like 4 years, some of them coming for up for 5 years this summer, I don't really think they've got much more to be gained through doing a lot of strength work.

Like I don't think maximal force is the quality that I need to necessarily be chasing with them anymore. But with that being said, it's not something that I want to have drop off.

So it's kind of a little bit of a my own experiment at the minute. So I do a yeah, a sessionally single leg iso squat to try and measure those changes in maximal force and relative force output as well throughout their their week to see if we are doing minimal max force work, is that actually impacting their maximal force producing qualities? Like does that isometric squat drop off throughout a camp or does that actually stay pretty stable? So that's something I'm looking at quite a bit as well.

I'll do quite frequent counter movement jump testing whether if that's in someone's program for a lot of a camp and we we do it routinely or I can sprinkle it in every now and again throughout camp just to look at that rate of force production. And but those are the big ones at the minute anyway. The yeah, the drop jump, the counter movement jump, and the single leg iso squat.

James de Lacey57:11

What are you mainly looking at with the drop jump and the countermovement jump?

James Langford57:15

A few things really. So with the drop jump, I'm mainly looking at the RSI is the big thing we're going off in terms of their actual fatigue. So looking at when I'm looking at their readiness monitoring, I'm looking at RSI. How's that changing? And also if there is a big shift in someone's RSI, I try and dive into it a little bit more in terms of looking at where that shift come from. Is it contact time or flight time? How have they shifted the strategy?

Then with the countermovement jump I will always quote to them their jump height because me feeding back to them their jump height each week, I think it drives the intent in their jump. But there's a few different metrics I'm looking at the minute. I'm looking at RSI modified to see how they are actually performing that jump. I've found a really interesting trend between force at zero velocity and relative force in a single leg isometric squat. The actual correlation is pretty strong within my cohort I work with.

James de Lacey58:18

Are they similar joint angles at the bottom of the jump versus the single leg iso squat?

James Langford58:22

No, varied a little bit. So I'm doing with the iso squat I'm at 130° knee. The jumps I'm not really prescribing their depth. I'm letting them self-select them. You just jump as high as you can. And then just assessing their jump height.

But yeah, I found a really interesting trend and correlation within those two. Kind of makes sense given that they're both quite I suppose quality as opposed to mid-thigh core which is much more posterior chain. But yeah, with the jump height it's mainly looking at changing that and I'm also looking at a few of the metrics I'm playing around with at the minute. There's force at zero velocity, RSI modified, concentric relative impulse and I'm still looking at peak power a little bit as well. Just to try and look at what is changing.

My goal for a lot of the guys now with their levels of strength is to try and increase that rate of force development and how effectively they are producing force quickly. But a lot of it is almost my own little micro experiments which is okay. If we do a block of, we probably won't go into it today, but if I do a block of flywheel training, what shifts within the jump?

Which of these metrics are actually changing the most and is that a positive or negative adaptation? If we're just closer to a fight, what seems to be changing? Is it bringing their weight down? And then how that might influence then future camps.

But yeah, drop jumps mainly RSI, countermovement jump is jump height, for then with then a few of the metrics in the background for me that are collected off them doing the highest jump they can essentially.

James de Lacey59:48

Nice. I do have a question for you in the chat to round this out. How would you plan a conditioning session for a big group of teenage judokas without any ergs, circuits, with simple circuit movements that ensure a high power output? Question mark.

James Langford1:00:05

I think the hard thing with without having access to any equipment is you're always going to be limited by the fact that the intensity is going to be specific to how effectively they can do the movements. I think if it was a young group and there was a lot of varying, there was a lot of variance in abilities, I'd probably, I'd go down the route of just doing a density circuit of, cuz you're going to get at least then going to get some decent adaptations in things like muscular capacity and muscular endurance as well, because ultimately you're probably not going to be able within a circuit to work at a high enough intensity to really drive any significant peripheral changes.

And also at that age, do you need to? Is it actually just more about increasing their movement patterns a little bit and building up a high volume of training for them to be able to build a high volume of tolerance in the future.

So, yeah, I'd probably my preference would be putting it maybe a little bit of a circuit where it's, okay, you've got, 20 seconds of how many X exercise can you do, little recovery of 20 seconds, maybe build up to little circuit going around, give them a bit of a recovery, 3-4 minutes, go again a few times through that. Not through necessarily the lens of doing any conditioning.

Obviously it's going to give a massive conditioning benefit, but not worrying about how specific I am if I'm being really core. It's just about them doing a high volume of work and hopefully increasing some muscle endurance so that when I can get more specific with them, they've got a quote-unquote better base.

James de Lacey1:01:31

Nice. You have a fan in the chat here from Aaron ABY7. James is very knowledgeable and one of the best in the game.

James Langford1:01:38

Oh, I'll take that. So, Aaron's I'm assuming it's, I only know one Aaron ABY, so it must be Aaron. He's an MMA fighter himself. So, I think he's, I think he's still signed to Octagon. But yeah, really talented guy. And I'm, he's got a degree in, he's got a degree or a master's degree in sports science and strength and conditioning as well.

Yeah, we've done a bit of work together before, but he's a really knowledgeable guy.

James de Lacey1:01:58

Nice. Well, that's a nice little ego hit to round out the podcast. Where can people find and follow you, James? Keep up with everything you do.

James Langford1:02:08

So, it's mainly Instagram. My Instagram handle is JL Performance Coach. The vast majority of stuff is Instagram. I don't really do Twitter or anything. I have started this year, actually, my little side project has been YouTube. So, I've started a YouTube channel. At the minute, it's just I've got a videographer comes in the gym, films a session, I give a bit of a breakdown as to what we're doing, why we're doing it, but it's just different athletes I work with at different points of their camp, and a bit of an insight into exactly what I'm doing in the gym and why.

I'm still trying to figure out where to go with that cuz I realize maybe two years that could be very boring just doing the same thing. But for the meantime, yeah, YouTube as well. Those are the primary two sources.

James de Lacey1:02:46

I will collab this podcast with your YouTube channel then.

James Langford1:02:49

Oh, man.

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Those are the main places.

James de Lacey1:02:54

Sweet. I'll link those up in the description, too, for anyone who's interested. But I appreciate you coming on, James, and sharing everything.

James Langford1:02:59

No, mate, appreciate it. I think this is podcast number three, so yeah, I've enjoyed it. Thank you.