Pro MMA Fighter Chris Miah Shares S&C Secrets And How To Go Pro (SSOF Ep. 42)

Chris Miah0:00

So then when I've fought the last couple of years, I've been kind of juggling coaching S&C and skill work, fighting, and then also master's degree. But now kind of come to the end of a lot of those chapters and kind of moving forward in a little bit different lifestyle.

James de Lacey2:32

There's a lot to unpack in it. I think what will be very insightful for especially listeners, maybe some of them looking to go pro or just looking to have a competitive career, is to go down a little bit down your path. I want to ask you first about you doing your backup plan, doing that degree. Did you find that was, I guess, a catalyst to be helpful for you finishing your career, having that behind you already? And do you think you would be in a worse position if you didn't have that?

Chris Miah3:01

I think there's pros and cons both ways. You get, especially in our industry, you get this kind of David Goggins 'burn the boats, just go all in, leave your family, leave your kids, go and train full time.' And then you get, maybe sometimes you can be a little bit too conservative.

I think by having a backup plan, it probably allowed me to take pressure off myself eventually in terms of, when I—I always give the analogy, when and I still even find this with a backup plan—but when you're on your way up on the certainly on the international shows like Cage Warriors, Bamma, ACA, or maybe in America something like LFA or Titan and things like that, where each fight is literally a job interview where you could go two ways.

And there's a lot of pressure that comes with that. Forget the outcome of fighting and damages, but just in terms of, well, if I win this fight again, I might get double my pay and an opportunity to go on whatever Dana White Contender Series or UFC call or whatever it may be. Or I lose this fight and then I'm kind of back to square one.

I do think by having a backup plan, that kind of gave me, it took a little bit of pressure off in terms of I've seen fighters kind of crumble under that pressure of that financial burden of every fight is a job interview. And if you got a family to provide for or you got bills to pay, can put a lot of pressure on you in that way.

James de Lacey4:12

I actually wanted to go down that financial route. I know obviously combat sports are not well financed in terms of fighter pay at most levels, unless you're a superstar. So I guess coming to the ranks, how did you end up financing training, living, all of that stuff whilst fighting proficiently? Were you getting paid enough through the fights?

Chris Miah4:36

No. I was quite lucky, I guess. I lived at home for a long period of when I was a professional. I mean, for context, I think back in 2015 I had a world title fight on Bamma offered to me. Well, actually I fought it, but the champion at the time pulled out. So I fought another international fighter and it was £500.

That was 2015. But it's £500 for a world, for a legit, you know, that would be equivalent to probably your LFA or your Titan or something like that in America, a legit show. And it was just, you've got no chance of standing on your own two feet with those kinds of pay.

I'd say in England now, in the UK and Europe, it has got a little bit better with you've got Cage Warriors and you got things like PFL and Bellator Europe who have come over who are paying a little bit better now. But for me, it was very hard. And even at 28, I was still living at home and working coaching a little bit S&C on the side, coaching some skills on the side and still fighting.

But then that kind of was a catalyst, like I said, when I had that Bell's palsy to start going, well, if I can't fight, I need to be able to stand on my own two feet a bit more and be earning income from other streams, which is kind of what I've ended up doing. But even a lot of the pro fighters I coach, they're working the doors or they're having to work multiple jobs—PTs, gym instructor. I don't, barring maybe the top 1%, the UFC world champion, everyone else at our club has to work as well as fight.

James de Lacey6:19

It's so nuts to think about it and such a rapidly growing sport where there's so much money being put in, just fighters needing to work multiple jobs on top of training full time. It just blows my mind. It's tough. Hopefully in the coming years the trajectory is up. So I hope the guys I coach and the young kids I coach will hopefully have opportunities where they can earn enough in a career that maybe sets them up for a good life afterwards.

For sure. So if anyone listening who maybe is looking to go down those paths, how do you end up going from an amateur to a pro fighter?

Chris Miah6:46

So I think when I did—and still in MMA, still pretty green as in, in terms of when I turned pro, it was just, I'm going to fight pro. It was just a slight change in the rule set. MMA was very archaic, probably, I think I turned pro 2012, 2013. So it was very archaic.

Now we have a really good amateur pedigree. Well, it's starting to become a really good. You got the IMF World Championships. They're held all soon, right? Maybe in the coming, maybe next month in Serbia. But they've had them in Vegas before on UFC fight weeks.

I think hopefully the sport's moving in the direction it seems to be similar to how, you know, amateur boxing, which I'm a big fan of myself as well. I work with a lot of boxers and I've always been around that kind of environment. My partner is actually an amateur boxer as well. You know, you wouldn't dream of going pro if you hadn't won at least an area title, if not a national title.

You wouldn't be seriously thinking about quitting your job and training full time unless you had a really good pedigree as an amateur. Generally speaking, as an amateur boxer, you would have some kind of warrant to go, well, this kid's got talent, let's turn him over pro.

Whereas MMA was still like, oh, I could just fight pro. Whereas I think in the coming years, your amateur pedigree and background will kind of indicate whether it's a good idea to actually take this as a professional job role and to actually pursue it.

It professionally and give it your all and try and make some money. Whereas maybe five years, even now, you'll still get people turning pro who probably—they might be like a three and three amateur and probably shouldn't edge their bets towards a career in the UFC or trying to make a living. I think not to crush anyone's dreams either, but obviously I think there does need to be a sense of realism with it.

James de Lacey8:59

Obviously reality has to hit at some point. And even if you're fighting amateur or pro, you're still in the same situational scenario surrounding finances and having to work, right? It doesn't change anything else. It just changes the level you're fighting and your potential to move up.

Chris Miah8:59

Yeah. And I would say some of the young amateurs, from a skill set perspective some of the young amateurs now—certainly Chain, Chain and Renegade at my main gym—they're better than some of the experienced pros already. The level is just going up and up and up and up.

James de Lacey9:27

Nice. Now that's awesome to hear too. But I also wanted to dive into your own training with S&C. It's interesting, you've got a foot in two camps: you got a foot in the coach camp and a foot in the actual professional fighting camp. And so you probably have some unique perspectives here too. But do you do your own strength conditioning for your fights, or did you in the past as well?

Chris Miah9:52

So when I was younger I really—I said I made a lot of mistakes. I just did, I wouldn't even say anything was massively structured, through my whole amateur career. Even in my early pro career, you might have followed a program here or there, but nothing too structured. Coaches, skills coaches, usually try to take it into their own hands then, and you'd end up doing your circuits and whatever may be metcons and things of that nature.

Which I think the trend has definitely changed from that now, which is really good—from just beasting guys. That was slowly but surely—slowly again, maybe another topic in a bit. But I think people would still be surprised how a lot of the elite fighters still train regardless of what the PI have done.

James de Lacey10:22

Go into it.

Chris Miah10:22

In terms of my S&C, as I got a bit more mature and I started to understand the training process a lot more, I was always aware of my own biases. So I tended to refer out for fight camps and to have coaches coach me, purely because I'm aware, just really aware of my own bias. And I can justify anything to myself to do or not do. So I'm human at the end of the day.

Certainly the last four or five fights of my career, I outsourced my S&C and just followed it. I'm good at following orders in that way, so I just find it a lot easier to follow. Now I'm not competing, sometimes I will have a coach. One, also to learn as a coach, so I'll get coaching from different S&C coaches, different from different spectrums, sometimes maybe an extreme trap coach or different backgrounds, just to get—one, it's just for me, it's also improving my ability to coach and getting ideas off people. But also obviously it helps you as an athlete, as a fighter.

I would always generally—you want to try and have a team that you work with for a long time, in my opinion. Whether that's your S&C coach, your boxing coach, I'm a big believer in working with a core set of guys for a long period of time. I think that's how you really get to know your athlete and not just get clout because you've done a six-week camp with someone and you did these wonders because you didn't really do a lot.

But on that thing of fighters' S&C, I still see, and I think most people who work with fighters or are in the gyms, that there's still a broad spectrum of people doing good things and people doing not so good things. Even despite there has been a big push with the PI putting out the handbooks over the past couple of years, I still think if they actually—people are arguing about certain things and very niched strength and conditioning topics, but if you actually see what fighters are doing, a lot of it is so far away from what they think they're doing.

I think maybe a big thing I've spoke to a couple of guys even at the PI about was trying to make it a bit easier to digest for the fighters, so that they can start to understand what training should look like. Because the handbook's great for coaches, but if you try and give that to a fighter who's not got a background in sports science or anything, they're just—dude, no one's reading through those 100 pages. I've gone to the guys, put it in the group chat: 'Read this guys, this is gold.' Not one of them's going to have read it, right?

So I think trying to still educate the fighters in a maybe a simpler way might be a good thing to do. Because I still see a massive variance of even guys in the UFC where you look at the workouts and it's just crazy. But you don't know what you don't know sometimes. And I'm also cautious sometimes of shooting someone down because confidence is a big thing with whatever someone's doing.

So if I see a teammate who may be doing terrible training but they're confident and they're happy, who am I to go and go, 'Oh, that's terrible,' and they got a fight in a month's time? So. But there is still a very broad spectrum in what guys are doing across the board.

James de Lacey13:40

Yeah, there's time and place for change, right?

Chris Miah13:40

Yeah. A month before a fight is not the time to overhaul. Not the time to, yeah, absolutely.

James de Lacey13:40

No, that's a good call. I guess you mentioned about making mistakes within your own training. I'm assuming that might be part of it, but is there anything along with that that you found that you don't do now because you deemed it not beneficial or a mistake in the past?

Chris Miah14:07

I would say—this is maybe very niche to myself—but for me I've got, you probably know anatomy, but I had a hip impingement for most—I had five, so I had a lot of hip issues.

And sort of following what potentially, I think this comes down to more just following what your coach has said. Well, if your coach has a certain style of whether it's jiu-jitsu, wrestling, striking, that doesn't fit your body type or what your limitations are, I think it's important to know yourself as well and not try and force a square peg into a round hole. Whether that's that, okay, you don't have the dexterity—of your coach is showing certain moves that maybe you don't have access to.

But was like 10th Planet rubber guard? Exactly. There's no way in hell I'd ever get in that position. Exactly. But I can shoot a great blast double. So if I build my game around something potentially different—double legs, body locks and top position—that maybe, which is what I ended up eventually doing.

But I think certainly not dismissing coach, but also finding the right coach and the right style for yourself that suits your attributes. It's like if you're not a big puncher, fighting like a big puncher is not a great way to go about things, or vice versa. Just actually understanding your limitations, your strengths. And not improving your weaknesses, but also being aware of that—your strengths are strengths. And sticking to having coaches that amplify them, if that makes sense.

James de Lacey15:35

Yeah, for sure, that does make sense. Did you—how was your training week structured when you were fighting? Maybe out of camp and in camp?

Chris Miah16:03

So, look, the training schedule I've given now is pretty much what most of the top pros, certainly in England or Birmingham, London, and how it runs.

In camp and out of camp, I wouldn't say there's a ton of variance in the skill sessions. But usually people would maybe spar or they might come in and spar around if someone else has got a fight.

It'd usually be you'd have sort of cage work or wrestling-based practice on a Monday morning. So most gyms in England anyway have pro sessions in the morning, and then you have public classes on the night at the gym or your own S&C or padwork or whatever it may be. So usually be wrestling in the morning on a Monday, jiu-jitsu on a Tuesday or submission grappling on a Tuesday, sparring on a Wednesday, submission grappling on a Thursday, wrestling on a Friday, and then sparring on a Saturday. Okay. One sparring session, 16s, one sparring session—bumpers.

And then on the evenings, usually filling the gaps of working with a private striking coach, whether that's Thai boxing or boxing, whatever the athletes prefer. S&C, so usually two strength and power-based sessions most guys would do. And then supplementary cardio or—

I guess fill in the gaps on what someone needs. So some guys might be doing conditioning, more extra cardio. Some guys might be needing to go to extra grappling classes because they've got to catch up in that area.

But generally speaking, pro sessions in the morning and then obviously fill in the gaps on the evening with what you need and what fits your schedule tends to be the way 90% of the pros go, which is what I was doing towards the end of my career, the last four or five fights.

James de Lacey17:49

Nice. And you found that worked well for you and your body as well?

Chris Miah17:49

Yeah, I found it good. And that's something actually, there's always the debate on the high-low models that people run. But in my experience, I haven't found most guys ever actually run that in practice. They tend to be a hard session and an easier session a day rather than doing... just because the body's like, if you've done a really hard wrestling practice to go and, well, we're going to go and do 90% or 85% under deadlifts in the evening, just isn't happening.

So trying to tie in them high-low models, I tend to find usually guys are having one good hard practice a day in some capacity and then usually a bit lighter in the evening. In my experience, that's how I've seen most things ran.

James de Lacey18:16

Nice. And I guess within that strength power S&C, obviously mentioned obviously ripping heavy deadlifts and stuff after maybe hard wrestling practice is a mission, and I felt that myself too. So what does a strength power session look like in that regard if your hard session is in the morning for the actual technical training?

Chris Miah18:40

I think again, I think it depends on the athlete that you've got and their experience, where their weaknesses are. If max strength was a weak hole, you may have to look at their overall training for a short period of time to allow them to give those efforts within the weight room to build that capacity. But if they're already a reasonably decent athlete, it may look like...

I mean, I'm similar to the posts, which is what kind of gravitated me towards when I've seen your page, is when I would run a session, you'd start with some, a lot of extensive jump work to begin with, maybe some kind of power development exercise, something easyish to learn, usually like trap bar jumps or some jump variant, a lower body lift.

And then, I guess, so for me at the end of my career, I always had very high absolute strength from a weight class. So I started to pick lifts that were, or work with coaches that would give me lifts that didn't put as much stress on my body. So maybe single leg variations or RDLs over a trap bar deadlift or a back squat, purely because the poundages were a little bit lighter and it still gave me a good stimulus.

That was for me. I wouldn't say to do that with everyone. That's just what I found. But picking lifts that complement you, that don't fatigue you too much, generally staying well off, well off failure, well off 7, 8 RPE. Even, I prescribe stuff, most of the stuff for my comeback guys is around that area, just moving weight well with decent bar speed.

And then usually some robustness work at the end on key injury sites, maybe top up conditioning if they feel they need to, and trying to match the conditioning with whatever the lift they've done. So if they've done heavy strength and power lifts, to try and give some alactic intervals or something like that alongside it.

James de Lacey20:23

Nice. I love that philosophy around, you know, you don't always need to be doing heavy bilateral squats, deadlifts. Obviously heavy taken from the powerlifting world. You managed to work around, hey, I'm strong enough. I need to do things that aren't going to injure me. I mean, you mentioned you had a hip. I'm assuming squatting and stuff probably aggravated it?

Chris Miah20:49

Yeah. So deep hip flexion towards the end of my career started to flare up. Still does. I can get away with it sometimes. But if I'm trying, if I'm spinning too many plates or I'm dieting, sparring hard, and then deciding to squat hard, then again it's a case of spinning too many plates where something starts to give a little bit.

But that doesn't... like I said, that's what I found. That doesn't mean, so if I have a youth athlete who's relatively weak, I train quite a lot of amateur boxers as well in my own S&C business, and a lot of them probably don't have the issues. I've always lifted since I was very young. So when they're weak, they may be doing a lot of bilateral stuff and then not really taxing the body that hard because their absolute poundages, the actual relative intensity of what is quite low, so they can get away with that for a couple of years on end without really running into issues.

But I think especially when you're talking towards, I mean, I'm 31 now, I fought my last fight I was 30, because you start and I fought pro since I was 20. So I think when you're starting to work with guys who have mileage on them, adjusting plans for them to feel good at sparring is the be all and end all. Developing a little bit less. So you want to try to still kind of develop capacities, but being healthy is key.

And I think that's why when we see the training programs or we see athletes do maybe what might be considered some quite esoteric things on social media, I think that generally isn't what got them to the dance. That may be just where they're at in their career.

And I always give George St-Pierre the best example I've seen is he worked with a coach for 10 years, John Chambers in Canada, good strength and conditioning coach. Then he decided, well, I'm going to do some gymnastics and I'm going to do... and then, all of a sudden, everyone in England's doing gymnastics and going... forgetting he's done 10 years of good solid robust strength and conditioning.

So what you might see someone do at a certain point in time probably isn't what got them there. And making them adjustments and realizing that's quite important, I think, for coaches and athletes.

James de Lacey22:58

Dude, that's such a good point, man. I mean, remember the craze with Conor McGregor doing his touch butt in the park?

Chris Miah22:58

And then everyone jumped on that bandwagon. I mean, I don't think anyone does that anymore, but that was the big thing.

James de Lacey22:58

Yeah, of course.

Chris Miah22:58

And I think that's obviously, in terms of lessons, I think I mean I've made them mistakes. You're looking at what your favorite fighter has done or what someone, you're reading a magazine.

And a friend of mine, I used to work with him, I used to coach him, but he was a former professional boxer, Matthew Macklin. He's a friend of mine. He used to look up to this boxer, and he was like, he used to run five miles a day, five days a week. And then he's copying said it in a magazine. And then he met him in real life once, and he didn't even run them five miles. It was for a magazine. And you're taking the gospel, and you're thinking, well, my favorite fighter does this.

And what's half published isn't what they're doing anyway. So I think certainly, certainly doing, certainly hiring professionals who can look from the outside in and see what's best for you, I think, rather than following trends for a young fighter is key.

James de Lacey24:09

Oh yeah. And like, you mentioned about 7 to 8 RPE on most lifts. And to me, consistency is that thing for athletic development. I mean, young, even young, old, whoever, whichever athlete, just being able to train consistently without injury is going to get you, is going to be that ticket to whatever you're trying to get to.

But do you want to maybe explain to the audience what you mean by 7, 8 RPE and how they can implement something like that in their training?

Chris Miah24:36

Yeah. So RPE is just rate of perceived exertion. It's just effort level in simple terms. How difficult you find it. And there is some argument that maybe you need to be a little bit experienced training to be able to truly gauge where you're at, and someone who's a novice maybe undershoots. But that's why you have a coach as well to see where you're at when you're doing lifts.

But so a 7 or 8 RPE is essentially a 7 or 8 effort level out of 10. Or you can work reverse and go reps in reserve, so maybe you'd have 2 or 3 reps left in the tank after you finish your set.

The reason I really like this for certainly for combat sports athletes is because we're not powerlifters. As you said, we're not married to squat, bench. Our numbers are a means to an end. So if you're consistently lifting over weeks, months, years, the weight is going to go up and you're going to get pretty strong. Now, we're not trying to get good at lifting weights at 95%.

Or 100% like a powerlifter—that is a skill in of itself—but the risk that comes with that when we're going to be rotating, changing direction, doing a lot of awkward movements and grappling and wrestling, I don't believe that outweighs the benefit of lifting in that top-inch line, perhaps unless you're in an off-season, I would say. What it allows you to do is have good bar speed as well on most the lifts. Generally the bar is going to move quite quickly, and we know in terms of strength and power gains that's a pretty good thing to be having, rather than grinding reps without barely making a lift.

I think in terms of it, it can be difficult because combat sports athletes have the mentality—myself as well—we just want to push, push, push, push, just grind, to grind. But sometimes, especially in the weight room, I feel we place way too much emphasis on chasing weight. And I know I did again of myself, I'd say the weight will come over time anyway regardless.

A 7 or 8 RPE doesn't mean that—so 7 or 8 RPE even if you're doing it on week one and week four, your weight's still probably gone up because what would have been an 8 effort, as you adapt you would still be lifting heavier weight. But for me, I prefer, me personally, to kind of leave them max-out efforts for the most important thing, which is usually sparring or wrestling rounds or things like that. You only have so much effort that you can give in a training week, and to me the bigger rocks are practice over the weight room.

James de Lacey27:05

For sure. Are they how far do you stray away from, for example, you mentioned some of the single leg stuff you're doing and extensive plyometric things—these are the fundamental things that kind of underpin a lot of the strength power training within most sports—but do you stray, I guess any, or very far from those with combat athletes? Maybe closer to a fight, are you looking at more kind of specific preparation exercises, or is there anything that you like to incorporate as you get closer to a fight or for certain athletes?

Chris Miah27:30

I tend to have a little bit more focus, certainly in the strength and power—certainly in the power development side of moving a little bit quicker—depending on what we've been using. So sometimes things like French contrast where you'll run through, but run through obviously the whole spectrum of sort of the velocity, the force-velocity curve.

Again, even with that, I'd save that for a very experienced athlete. So I've actually not done that—that I used to do it probably like most of us. You learn something great, we choose French contrast, you think it's amazing, and then have a little look on, okay, useful here, maybe not here, maybe not with this athlete, maybe with this athlete.

I actually kind of stay very, very general with my strength work. So it will be a lot of extensive jumps, even med ball work, a lot of extensive med ball work. And it will move to a little bit more intensive, as in especially in the med ball work, in terms of a little bit more intent behind the throws. We tend to start extensive at the start of camp and work very intensive, high effort as we get towards the end, certainly with the med ball work, with the jumps a little bit.

I don't tend to do a ton of depth jumps and drop jumps and things like that anymore. I tend to say, especially when you look at the smarter coaches than me, but people have started looking at the double-pulse effect and things of how we actually create force striking. So sometimes trying to mimic that with throws and that's about as specific as I would get in terms of like big depth jumps or sport-specific movements.

I tend to—maybe prescribe, this probably comes from my sports coaching side of things—but I'll prescribe potentially capacity-based circuits with fight situations in, will have a bit of going, well, we work to rest on this, but we're working on a single against the fence or we're working, and start making the conditioning more specific, I would say. That's where I'd go more specific than the strength and power base work. Maybe I'd give something like bag work with alactic intervals and things like that, which is again is a little bit more specific.

But that's, I tend to go more specific with the conditioning and still keep the strength work fairly general and trying to keep them as robust as possible to do the sparring and the skill work. I know there's probably people that are going to have different schools of thought, but that's just kind of where I've come to right now, where we're not an absolute—if you were a sprinter or a thrower or a lifter where we have to peak a certain capacity, that one capacity for that day, compared to where we need to still have multiple qualities running plus all of the skill components on fight day. I don't think it's as big of a deal as people sometimes make it.

James de Lacey30:16

For sure. Do you have medicine ball exercises, or do have you ever had to coach someone that doesn't have a wall to throw things against? Do you have medicine ball exercises that you go to in that instance, for example, for the extensive circuits or even some of the intensive throws?

Chris Miah30:43

Sometimes I'll get them to—so this is something I've had particularly with remote clients lately—sometimes I will get them to kind of go to throw and pull back, so kind of get a contraction in that way, or come up with a decent swap to maybe something like a bench push-off if there's a bench. If I'm looking just for chest pass or something, and maybe do something, maybe split it, so maybe do some kind of bench push-off or something ballistic, a calisthenic row, and then also include some core work, some more dynamic core work.

Maybe they've got cable that could do wood chop. I still kind of compartmentalize it rather than doing it as a combination, a ballistic throw.

James de Lacey31:36

No, that's good. So for anyone listening, obviously not everyone has access to a wall or space to throw a medicine ball—those are all good options too. But I wanted to dive into as well, obviously we've talked about how sparring during that week is the most important session to be prepared for. So how do you modify, I guess, the extra strength conditioning, whatever, on maybe the day before or even the day after, so you are fresh for sparring and so you can essentially recover from the sparring?

Chris Miah32:02

So this is, I don't think most fighters have the—this is certainly in England—most fighters don't always have that control, purely because different coaches run different practices. And I still see across the board that there isn't that communication side of things. I've said this before, and if you pull where the coach who coaches Tuesday grappling is probably not speaking to the coach who ran Monday wrestling, who's probably not speaking to the S&C coach—that is still, unfortunately, maybe the biggest teams and at the highest level do that, but most fighters are not having that kind of communication.

In terms of S&C, I would—so in camp I would say I try to tie in the conditioning, high conditioning, as a top-up after sparring with some of the guys. So I'm not asking them to do—so people give cardiac power intervals and things like that on a Tuesday on Wednesday—but what I would do is spar on a Wednesday, do your rounds.

If in a perfect world you have a heart rate monitor on and maybe you do a top-up after, depending on how many rounds you spar, how you feel, and get it in in that one hit, so then you can do ample time to recover to then get for your next spar session on a Saturday. That's kind of the route I go.

In terms of strength and power, I find I'm very much a prescriber of—I think you've had him on as a guest—Will Waugh, and he's a high-intensity, low-volume plan in camp. So I don't think it taxes that—if you stick to those kinds of principles, I don't think it taxes you too much because the volume's quite low. So even if you did a good hard heavy lift on a Tuesday, it might even potentiate you for sparring on a Wednesday morning, providing you've built up to handling those, the weight, and sort of you're used to that stimulus. I don't think it interferes too much.

James de Lacey33:42

For sure. Do you want to maybe give an example of, I guess, a high-intensity, low-volume session, kind of maybe how that would look in terms of maybe general exercise selection and sets and reps?

Chris Miah33:42

I mean, I can give you an example—this is how low volume—I used to make bantamweight, which was quite a bit lower than I am right now. But it would literally, in camp I would literally be doing two sets of three on a major compound exercise with maybe between 80 and 85% one-rep max, dependent on how I felt that day.

We have a little bit of wiggle room just depending on how beat up it was, but generally ticking, checking some kind of power development, and then whether that's lower limb or upper body, and then usually some kind of squat pattern, hinge pattern, push, pull, and some accessories that—

It would literally be, in camp I would literally be doing two sets of three on a major compound exercise with maybe between 80 and 85% one RM, dependent on how I felt that day. We have a little bit of wiggle room just depending on how beat up it was, but generally taking some kind of power development and then whether that's lower body or upper body, and then usually some kind of squat pattern, hinge pattern, push pull, and some accessories that are unique to myself, whether it would be growing, rehab, whatever it may be.

Literally, maybe a little bit heavier, a little bit more maybe two sets of five on the upper body stuff. Generally on some of the heavy lower body stuff, literally two sets of three, 80 to 85%, would literally be a session.

And you come out and not really too fatigued, but you maintain qualities that you built out of camp. And I think that's probably a useful point: most of the qualities that you're going to build, in my opinion, from our job as a strength and conditioning coach, are going to be built out of a fight camp. So then ideally through camp we want to be preserving and maintaining those qualities with the minimum effective dose.

I'm not the biggest fan of someone going, "Well, I've got a fight now in 10 weeks. I start my strength and conditioning now." Those kind of adaptations that we need that we want to take place, particularly from strength and power, aren't really going to manifest in an eight-week fight camp when you're in a calorie deficit and training so much.

So the high intensity, lower volume in camp, why that works well in my opinion is it doesn't fatigue you for your main body of work, which is your sparring, your grappling, your pad work, et cetera. But you're able to still maintain and even to some degree improve your outputs you've built up over the last 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and maintain those qualities as you go through camp.

Which in my eyes is where our job, in my eyes, is mainly done out of camps, and we guide them through a training camp trying to maintain what we built and almost be an agony aunt for "this hurts, this hurts, this is injured, I need to work around this, I need to work around this," and trying to get them to fight out as fresh and as healthy as possible.

James de Lacey36:13

I love the example you gave, just two sets of three. I know some people listen to this might be like, "Do I do anything with two sets of three?" But I don't think people almost realize how little you can really do and still get a training effect and still maintain, even improve certain qualities. And as you mentioned, you're doing this and you should come out almost feeling like it's an extended warmup, and you feel really damn good, and that's the effect you're after, certainly in the strength and power realm.

And then there's different schools of thought with conditioning. I see some coaches love metcons and circuits, and I even see, we've got quite a lot of friends out at Tiger Muay Thai right now and they're doing absolute beastings in circuits. Oh yeah, I've seen some of those on YouTube, man. They get absolutely hammered.

Chris Miah36:39

And that's not my preference of how to go about conditioning for combat sports. I'm a big believer in really using a lot of using the sport to drive a lot of conditioning, or well-designed drills within sports practice to drive that conditioning, rather than just beastings and circuits of non-specific activities. But I know different people use different things, but I think from strength and power, those examples there have been what I found work well with my athletes, and they also work very well in my career.

James de Lacey37:34

Nice. Yeah, and if anyone's listening who's in the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground membership in the Discord, this week on Thursday we have AndrewUser. We're doing a little live chat. I did some Wingate tests and almost died, and he took my heart rate data and put some fancy graphs over it all. So we're going to go through that. So if anyone's interested to check out that Discord, we're going to run through, I guess, some interpretations of that data.

But how often do you come across fighters that start the S&C when they're coming into a 10-week fight camp?

Chris Miah37:57

So in MMA now, I think it's certainly changed. Boxing-wise, I still get, certainly private sector, a lot of my work has always been with amateur and professional boxers. I would say because they get paid a little bit more, so they have a little bit more finances to be able to hire a one-to-one coach, whereas a lot of the MMA guys I work with tend to be remote because it's more affordable because they don't get the kind of paychecks professional boxers do fundamentally.

But a lot of that mentality while is like, "I'm in fight camp now, so I'm going to start everything now. S&C, running, boxing more." And I don't tend to work with those guys anymore. I try to, it may mean a lot of custom short term sometimes because that doesn't really work out.

But I think trying to change the mindset of boxers and MMA fighters, that it's a year-round goal, like you mentioned about consistency, it's the same with skill development. Look at most of the world champions now. They're just putting the years and years in. They've had ups, they've had downs, and they've put in the years of getting better at the craft.

And I think changing that fight camp mentality is the best way to... I always give an example of amateur boxing: an amateur boxer may have 20 fights in a year. He's always within touching distance of where he needs to be, and it's probably where a guy makes their biggest improvements as a fighter, when they're competing regularly and they're just on the cusp of competing regularly.

So when we've got amateur fighters or even low-level pros in MMA having 12-week fight camps to fight twice a year, they're leaving so much development off the table from an S&C standpoint, from a skill standpoint, from a learning standpoint. And I don't see them all as... they're not different, they're all intertwined, they're all a long-term process. It takes years to get strong. It does take years to get to strength level. It takes years to get good at wrestling, years to get good.

So trying to bring them all up together as just consistently over a longer period of time, I think is what we want to try and educate fighters to be doing, rather than this fight camp eight weeks, "I'm going to get in shape," and then "I'm going to chill for eight weeks and just repeat."

James de Lacey40:09

No, that's for sure. Do you want to maybe give some examples as well for the listeners? You obviously mentioned about this specific conditioning, for example single leg up against the cage and the work-to-rest ratios. Maybe just a few partner drills or specific partner drills you like to do for conditioning for MMA, and then maybe just some of the work-to-rest ratios you're looking at.

Chris Miah40:33

Yeah, so look, I mean the one thing I always do, I do this, we've done this at Renegade, we've done it at American Top Team when I was over there with Brad, and they will simulate five-minute rounds in certain capacities, which near this, and this is more near a fight where you might pick up a big injury if you're sparring. So it's trying to obviously avoid injuries at the late, late stages of the camp.

But they may use something like ground and pound on a heavy bag, someone defending a single leg against the fence, maybe some upper body pummel in fighting for double underhooks. So like micro-games within MMA that you can battle really intensely without necessarily high risk of injury. And I think that's what you want to be able to...

The work-to-rest would vary on what you're trying to achieve as an outcome, whether you're trying to work on... so even with the kids, we'll do one-minute goes with a minute off and give an even work-to-rest ratio and let them really give high effort. And I even like that a lot for skill development as a coach on the mat, because when someone does a five-minute round, for a while they're going to coast.

You're doing a five-minute round of wall work or starting in a position, you're going to get a good position, you're going to chill out for a while. I think obviously when you're doing minute goes or 30-second goes or two-minute goes, your intensity is up a lot more, which replicates what we're looking for on a fight night. But you can manipulate the work-to-rest to whatever suits you.

I think it's just finding safe situations you can give 100% effort in, because obviously the risk of injury, you don't want to be going ballistic and getting injuries. And you need good partners to do that. But certainly over-under games, fighting from over-under, looking for double underhooks, looking to pin someone against the fence, someone circling off, and you can give 100% and the risk of injury is pretty low.

The better guys can just do specific sparring, maybe one starting on a single, maybe one's on a grounded double, and then also into mixing that then with whoever their regular coaches for pad work or striking. So you can get that level change of up and down, up and down.

And then like I said, the work-to-rest can literally be manipulated by whatever constraint you want. For striking, I do like the kind of Alactic kind of prescription of maybe eight to 10 seconds of a hard combination, active recovery, touching, moving, feinting and sort of...

Anywhere from usually I go on the minute every minute, but anywhere from a 5 to 1, 6 to 1 work to rest ratio for alactic work. I think that works well for striking. For grappling you can start to push sort of two to three minute goals and sort of touch on that kind of threshold type training where heart rate's a little bit higher, maybe you're working for two or three minute blocks and then having two or three minutes off as a block.

You can literally make whatever it wants to be. I just think it's important that it's safe and you obviously got partners that know what they're doing to drive a conditioning benefit from it. And I guess that would be always the counter argument for prescribing conditioning with non-specific means is if someone's of a lower level and they don't necessarily have the knowledge to be able to do those things.

You could always, it's easier to stick someone in an Airdyne or a ski and drive an output than it is for someone to do that with specific sparring on a single leg if they're not a good wrestler, for example.

James de Lacey43:51

Fair. I guess for someone like myself who kind of sticks in one realm or one martial art, for MMA obviously you have that transition grappling striking, grappling striking depending on how the fight goes for your fighting, etc. Are you training that transition between striking and grappling often? Is that something you find is where people tend to lack in terms of maybe conditioning or anything like that?

Chris Miah44:19

Yeah, and it's probably the biggest area that's actually, in my city now my generation of fighters are all starting to reach a really high level. There's people like Tumre, Leon Edwards, myself, Yanik Bahar, we're all the same age, we're pretty much the same generation as Birmingham MMA fighters. All the coaches in Birmingham before were very old school, not the greatest sort of level of mixed martial arts.

We've come from that thing of where it is about combining everything together, where it is about mixing takedowns with strikes, strikes with takedowns, ground, up, level, level changing up and down. And I'd say a lot of practice that I teach is always that anyway. But if I get someone from an individual discipline and they come over, that's the biggest thing that they struggle with generally speaking, is changing the levels up and down, up and down. You get a striker and they're going grappling and striking, grappling and striking, and even a grappler doing the same thing, you find they get very tired.

But I think that just comes from training, being comfortable in those areas, being comfortable doing that. That is the sport. So if practice reflects that, and I think that's the biggest in my opinion, one of the biggest things of conditioning is being comfortable doing whatever you're doing. So if you're predominantly new striking sparring, I guarantee you you're going to be exhausted because purely a proficiency standpoint. Vice versa, you take a pure striker and make them grapple, they're exhausted.

Like, this is the hardest thing to get together. So MMA in my opinion is its own sport. Even if you take a very good grappler and do grappling, but there's shots coming in, ground and pound, the person might just get up and off and get back to his feet, that changes their sort of comfortable, comfortability level when they're training. The heart rate is going to be elevated, the nervous, they're anxious. So I think the more comfortable we can make training as a general, okay I'm an MMA fighter, so therefore this is what MMA is, they're going to be more comfortable in all scenarios.

James de Lacey46:08

I guess, do you have any advice for someone who's maybe looking to get into MMA? If they should start with, find an MMA gym, just to do MMA, or should they find maybe an MMA gym, just Muay Thai and just jiu-jitsu and then come to MMA? Do you have a school of thought on that? Sounds like from what you're saying it would be go to an MMA gym, but it'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

Chris Miah46:34

I think now as coaching improves, go to an MMA gym. But that usually means that you're still working with the individual coaches. You're still working with a black belt jiu-jitsu for jiu-jitsu, you're still working with a good striking coach. You're still working the, I still believe in training the individual facets. I think there's value in going to a boxing club and sparring straight boxing. I think there's value in learning straight Muay Thai for Muay Thai and straight jiu-jitsu for jiu-jitsu.

But I do think now as the sport's growing, you can start learning MMA from the start. And I think providing the coaching reflects that. So for me, coaching five to ten years ago, especially in Europe and England, people who coached MMA were just not very good at anything. So that was the reality. They were very, very average at everything. So therefore the coaching then, I'd have said no, go to a jiu-jitsu club, go to a wrestling club, go to a great boxing club or a Thai boxing club.

Whereas I do believe in the coming years that there will be an environment where you can learn mixed martial arts. And I always think AMC Pankration, I think, which is Matt Hume, Demetrious Johnson's coach, I've always been a huge fan of both of those guys. And I think he made Demetrious competing individual facets first of all, the boxing, boxing, jiu-jitsu, but the emphasis has always been on putting it together.

He's not trying to be the best submission grappler in the world. He's not trying to be the best boxer in the world. He will compete in them sports to gain knowledge and to understand the art, but he's generally trying to become the best mixed martial artist. I think sometimes you can fall, you can go to a boxing gym, get beat up a little bit by one of a good amateur, and then you start making that your complete goal and take your foot off that. Your goal actually used to be UFC world champion or IMF world champion.

And that transition, it's the same as jiu-jitsu. Trying to excel and be an IBJJF or Mundial jiu-jitsu world champion, it's almost a completely different skill set to what you would need to be a mixed martial artist. And if you look at the guys now who are all really starting to dominate, that's the closest thing to mixed martial arts that you have as an amateur sport. And they're all dominating.

I think Craig Jones even said the other day, a phenomenal jiu-jitsu guy, he was saying that the Sambo guys have got it right in terms of what works for MMA over modern jiu-jitsu and how modern jiu-jitsu has evolved. So I think if you have the right coach, the level of coaching, and you have the right mindset, I think certainly learning MMA for MMA now will be what takes us forward into the future.

But obviously if you're in the middle of nowhere and there's a good jiu-jitsu club and a good boxing club, maybe you go there for a few years. But, in a perfect world scenario we just have loads of Khabibs and Nareevs coaching us and we just learn Sambo from the start and we're good to go. But obviously everyone lives all over the world, so it's making do with what you've got. But I think both styles can work.

James de Lacey49:38

Nice. I wonder if now more Sambo style gyms will start to open up around the Western world, since I guess with their success in the UFC, you never know.

Chris Miah49:38

Yeah, or at the very least, I think submission grappling now is moving in the direction of a more efficient style of jiu-jitsu for MMA. There's such a big focus now on wrestling and getting up and histing and gra'am'ing and sort of mixing college wrestling with jiu-jitsu in essence.

I think that is gonna make grappling a lot more excited in mixed martial arts in the coming years with that kind of hybrid style of jiu-jitsu and wrestling. Where jiu-jitsu in the '90s and early 2000s was close guard, armbar and triangle guys, and they just get beat up by wrestlers really. So the new hybrid style of jiu-jitsu in sort of ADCC and when you got Danaher guys, B Team, people like that, I think it's going to be a really exciting style to see how that translates to MMA in the coming years.

James de Lacey50:37

For sure. I'm with you there. I think I covered pretty much everything I had to ask you here, Chris, but if anyone wants to find you and follow you and see what you're up to online, where can they do that?

Chris Miah50:37

I've got my main Instagram handle, Chris Miah MMA. I sort of post general life stuff, post some of the coaching stuff I work with, the fighters I work with and some of my own training. Whether I ever come out of retirement on that, we don't know yet, but yeah. So yeah, just, you'll have to announce it on the podcast, but yeah, so I'm there and I generally reshare decent posts and just obviously try and put out the work that I do as well. So any followers are appreciated and hopefully useful for your listeners.

James de Lacey51:24

Awesome. I'll link all that up in the description too. But thanks for coming on, Chris. I really appreciate it.

Chris Miah51:24

No problem at all. Great to be on, thank you.