Hypertrophy For Combat Sports & Why Tempo Training Sucks (SSOF Ep 161)

James de Lacey0:00

So, it's a pretty full-on 8 weeks. Not full on in terms of your time investment because you can kind of invest as much time as you need or want to. But it is definitely information that you will not have learned in any other course or anywhere else you get information because no one's teaching this stuff.

And that's just because Andrew and Dr. Job Abra are the only ones actually doing this stuff in the real world, which is why they have multiple clubs, teams, and pro athletes reaching out to them to do this stuff. So I highly advise you take advantage and jump on that mentorship because it is, it will be, it'll completely change your whole paradigm on programming conditioning and doing conditioning.

We've had coaches from various professional leagues all around the world join it like UFC, NRL, Premiership Rugby. I know there's been more. I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's been multiple sports as well. And we've even had people on there that have no coaching or sports science background.

They're just fighters come in and pick up the information from this and use it for themselves. So, it truly is open to anyone who actually wants to improve their conditioning. So, make sure you check that out. That'll be down in the description. That will start on the 15th of September.

So, it will be in one week from today. And once it's closed, it's closed. So, make sure you check that out. So, that's the final one on that. Also, if you are not into the education side, but you just want programs to follow, check out the Sweet Science training app.

I've now added a 7-day free trial option. So, you can just literally go in and try it yourself for free and you just cancel it within the app if you don't like it. Pretty simple. I just added the MMA 2.0 365 program.

So, I have 365 programs which are an entire year's training programs for striking, MMA, and grappling. Plus, they dominate the mat, cage, and ring. And I just added the 2.0 versions, which is the second year, which is really or highly influenced by some of the stuff on these podcasts.

I guess more quote unquote specific to the adaptations that we want for the sport if that makes sense. The first year is kind of going to give you a really well-rounded I guess you call it base. So make sure you check those out and we can dive into today's episode.

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This is the performance line which are higher protein and higher carbohydrate. And you can use code liftbig40. You'll get 40% off your first order. So we can start with building muscle as a fighter. So obviously there's things you want to consider before even going down this road and that's typically weight class related.

How you decide whether you're going to add muscle to go up a weight class is going to be a conversation between probably yourself and your coach and maybe your recent performances in competition and things like that and how you feel. So just put that out of the way.

But let's assume now that you want to build muscle as a fighter. Now the approach you take in my opinion is going to differ if you are a grappler versus an MMA or striking athlete. And that's because grappling is so highly influenced, at least there's such a big advantage with being big and strong in grappling.

And that's just not so much the case in the striking, maybe a little bit in MMA. And that's why you see a lot of personal trainer types when they come into their Instagram marketing stuff, they kind of fall into grappling because you can just apply basic hyper or basic bodybuilding or personal training principles to get someone big and strong.

And of course, it's going to help them because it's such a big advantage being big and strong. Whereas when you're in the striking world or even MMA to an extent, you can't go down that same road and use those same principle. Okay, you can use the same principles, but you're not going to do the same thing because there are other qualities that are more important and have more of an influence than being big and strong.

And being big and strong, at some, depending on what your sport is, could potentially be counterproductive. So that's just kind of the way I see building muscle. So if I start from the easy side which is grappling, typically jiu-jitsu, wrestling to an extent and then judo to an extent, you can, I mean people follow straight powerlifting and bodybuilding programs all the time in these sports and it's typically not an issue depending on how your, how you've structured your training and how your lifestyle is.

So it means you can kind of take a lot of those same principles and you can run things like 3-day full body splits or even 4-day upper lower splits depending on your actual mat training. And these can work. And typically, you're going to adhere maybe closer, slightly closer to what would be deemed as the quote unquote optimal training for hypertrophy, which would be accumulating more sets closer to failure.

It'll be doing more sets in a week, so having a little more volume. And because of the volume, you'll be doing a little more frequency in the gym. None of those in my opinion apply to when you're looking at striking in MMA because there is a speed component as well.

I mean, yes, grappling, yes, you can, there is also a speed component depending on your game and rule set and maybe your genetic makeup and things like that, but it's not to the same extent as the striking arts and MMA to some extent.

So in these cases, you really have to have, you really have to have a focus on keeping speed in. And by keeping speed in, it means that you're always training it even during a block of training where you're trying to gain size. So it means that probably at the beginning of your session after your typical warm-ups, you might be doing your speed-based work.

Say it's like 10 15 minutes of various jumps, plyometrics or throws or whatever it is. Then following that you will do some of your hypertrophy work. Now your hypertrophy work isn't going to be the same as what I mentioned with the grapplers. You're not going to be accumulating a lot of sets close to failure.

You're not going to be doing a lot of sets for volume and you're not going to be doing a lot of frequency because your goal isn't to optimize hypertrophy as a fighter. Your goal is to gain size but also retain or develop other qualities and also be able to have energy and not be debilitated from training to be able to do technical training.

So these are other considerations you need to take into account. Now typically in my experience this means not doing a lot for the lower body. I'm not saying don't train the lower body, but what I'm saying is you're not doing a lot of hypertrophy based training for the lower body.

And I say this because you spend a lot of time on your legs in these sports. I'm trying to frame this correctly. Having more mass, a lot of mass on your legs typically isn't a positive adaptation, for example, in striking and even in MMA to an extent.

And then on top of that, when you're doing a lot of hypertrophy style stuff for the legs, the recovery times are much longer. So, you have a two-fold problem if you're doing say a typical hypertrophy session for lower body: squats, leg press, leg curls, leg extensions, and all that in a session or even if they're spread out over the week, it's still a lot.

So, that two-fold problem, the two-fold problem turns into negative adaptations that you need for the sport. And then it also starts to blunt the speed and power development because of that fatigue and because of the work you're doing where the adaptations you're trying to gain from it don't exactly align with speed power adaptations.

And for the lower body, we know that the lower body contributes a lot to all the strikes, shooting takedowns, etc. So in my opinion you train the lower body movements like you would in a typical strength and power training program.

So, that would typically mean lower volumes or reps. Depending on the week, whatever it is, you might be a little further away from failure. And you'll be doing a lot more, I guess you could say, explosive movements, if that makes sense.

So, you might complex, in that example, you might be doing squats, complex with jumps. And that will, your nutrition intake is going to dictate whether you build muscle or not because you can do, you don't have to be close to failure to build muscle because a lot of people will say, "Okay, you need to be as close to failure or to failure as possible to maximize hypertrophy." Sure, but you can still build muscle 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 reps away from failure. So, that's what I'm trying to get out there.

So, you're going to kind of strength power the lower body and then you're going to do more of the hypertrophy style work for the upper body. Doesn't mean you're not going to do your strength power stuff for the upper body. It just means that in that session you might be doing more kind of dumbbell bench for a little high reps. You might be doing arms and shoulders maybe closer to failure with the isolation movements whereas you're probably not going to be doing that for the lower body with leg extensions and leg curls.

And that is going to help you maintain and develop speed and power while building some size. And I've done this extensively with that, especially within rugby where guys have to be big and armored because they're running into each other, but you can't smash their legs because you're on the field and you're doing 20 plus kilometers a week in movement and running, depending on the week, you might be doing even more.

And if you're smoking someone's legs in a session and then having them do sprints and everything else, you're running essentially run into injury problems. So you can apply the exact same methodology in the combat sports where you're kind of more strength power the lower body.

You can still do your strength power the upper body, but you're going to do more of your hypertrophy stuff and isolation based work, dumbbell work, rows, pull-ups, all that kind of stuff. And that's the stuff you want to push closer to failure, even body weight work because it is relatively it's easier to recover from.

So it's not about optimizing the hypertrophy response from training. It's about doing some of that work, but allowing other qualities to still come through and also allowing you to still get into technical training and not be an absolute bum while you're there. So, that's just things to keep in mind in terms of like maybe a general program structure.

As I mentioned, you might do some of your speed-based stuff in the beginning. You might complex a lower body movement, and you might even complex an upper body movement like bench press and throws. And then you might finish out with some higher rep rows and pull-ups and curls and triceps and lateral raises.

That kind of stuff will kind of fit. They will kind of be planned out throughout the week so you're not doing a whole bunch on one day of just kind of one body part or one area. I would avoid doing body part splits like the plague.

They do not serve any purpose as an athlete and they will just make it much harder essentially to do everything. But your other options typically full body. If you're doing four days a week, say you're a grappler, you can do four days a week.

Now, there is actually a program in the Sweet Science of Fighting training app for moving up a weight class that actually I designed that for strikers with some of these principles in mind. So you can check that out if you like. Which kind of actually brings me to this idea of tempo that the podcast I did with Bill Smart a couple of weeks ago, you should check that out as well if you haven't listened to it.

We talked about some of this tempo stuff and about the variables kind of when you're comparing UFC level fighters and we're talking like top five UFC level fighters versus professional fighters that aren't in the UFC yet. Basically, eccentric qualities differentiated these high level UFC guys to professional guys to the largest effect.

This is during a counter movement jump. So just a vertical jump basically. Jump height did not. Now as I mentioned in the video I did, jump height doesn't mean jump height is useless, just didn't predict level of MMA fighter in this particular cohort.

Now when we talk about the eccentric qualities, when we're talking about eccentric qualities during a jump we're looking at how fast someone can descend, how fast someone can then put the brakes on during that descent, and then how much force is being produced at that kind of transition area. And why this is important is we can, how can I break this down so it's manageable? Eccentric qualities are going to often dictate how powerful we are during concentric contractions or concentric actions or whatever you want to call it.

And this is because you need to be efficient at essentially using that elastic energy to be able to maximize force production on the other side. And people who don't have that ability will struggle to maximize I guess you could say struggle to maximize the speed to produce high forces and power at high speeds.

And we want to be able to produce high force and power at high speeds because that means we're going to be able to deliver a ton of force and impulse and momentum into whatever the target is, which means pretty devastating knockout strikes or could say taking shots through people.

So regarding these eccentric qualities we see the eccentric peak velocity. Basically if you took a cohort of professional and UFC fighters, UFC fighters would be in like the 95th percentile for that cohort for that quality. So they'll be able to descend really fast and they can also do the same thing and they can break and pump the brakes really quickly.

And you want to be able to do this because it's going to help you quickly be able to throw strikes and quickly be able to move around the cage where someone who does not have these qualities are going to be much slower typically.

And we can either improve this quality in training or we can look to make it worse. And that's not to say that there isn't a time and place for different types of training that do opposite adaptations because there always is, because you're not going to just do eccentric overload type training in training because one is very stressful and two you still need to be able to produce a lot of force and power concentrically.

So doing like your heavy I don't know let's just say three to three squats, yes you still got to do stuff like that. But going through blocks which is I guess it's usually very popular where people will go through like a tempo block where something like 3 seconds, 3 to 5 seconds down and then one second up or explode up or whatever it is or even like a pause on the bottom and then explode up, doesn't quite meet the demands that we want at least based on this cohort's data.

Now, if we took a wrestling based cohort in MMA, maybe we wouldn't see this. So, it could definitely be style dependent. But since all fights start on the feet, you probably want to have some of these qualities.

Because in order to be able to descend quickly in this jump and pump the brakes on really quickly, there are structural adaptations that you need to have and morphological adaptations you need to have. But morphological is typically muscle fiber type driven which you, training is going to really bias and shift towards that fast twitch muscle fiber.

Regarding structural changes you're looking at muscle fascicle. So length of how many sarcomeres or blocks of muscle fibers you have in a row. The longer that muscle fiber the faster the contractile velocity. You're looking at reductions in pennation angle. You're looking at increases in tendon stiffness.

All of these things come along with eccentric overload style training. Now, some of those for example like tendon stiffness can come along just from heavy strength training, but you're not going to typically get the changes in muscle fascicle length or decrease in pennation angle from heavy style strength training.

It doesn't mean there isn't a place for it, but it's just something to keep in mind that if you're deliberately slowing the eccentric phase during a lift, and I'm not talking doing eccentric overload, I'm talking say you're doing 70% 1RM and you're doing 5 seconds down. Are we getting out of that, okay, are we getting out of that what we want for the fighter?

And I say that because what are we trying to achieve by doing that? Because if you're just a beginner, you haven't been in the gym and you're just starting lifting, none of this even matters because you can do anything and you will get stronger, faster, more powerful. So I'm completely ignoring that cohort.

Once you've got some intermediate level, I guess, strength under you, training age, you've got relatively good numbers, is doing a tempo block or phase worth it? I don't think it is. I don't think it makes any sense in that instance.

Works well for if you're just trying to drill some kind of technical changes within a lift, especially for beginners. But for people who know already how to lift, there's no need to do a 3 to 5 second down eccentric 70 or 80% wide arm squat or bench or whatever it is. And it means you're going to, if you do a lot of it, you're basically shifting the adaptations away from these eccentric ones that we want, these ones that differentiate the highest level fighters, the professionals. You're shifting that away just from slowing that eccentric down.

So yeah, that's just some of my thoughts on the tempo stuff. Now, it doesn't mean that the concentric side isn't important because we still need to be able to push, essentially at least from a jumping perspective based on this data.

So you're still going to be doing your main lifts as such. I think that we can get too stuck in this idea of the barbell lifts being the main things when there are many ways to go about improving peak force or even just impulse in the gym. It doesn't have to be a barbell back squat or front squat.

There are many single leg options you can use. There are many other pieces of equipment you can use like flywheels. All of these, even ballistic movements, weightlifting, jumping, these will all help. And it doesn't just have to be a barbell lift. They just work really well because they're relatively stable, you can load them heavy, and it allows you to push hard against them.

Yeah, I think that was everything I wanted to cover regarding that. If you have any questions, throw them down in the description or in the comments as well, and I can tee them up for another podcast or do a video on them. There's a lot of different stuff I can do. But that was a short one today.

I'll have some guests coming up and we're going to cover, got one on, it'll be on boxing Olympic prep. I have one on microdosing I need to follow, one that would be quite cool, and the major league baseball with microdosing. It's going to get the UFC Shanghai. I think that was it off the top of my head.

Yeah, and then I'll have some more for you guys. So stay tuned. Please make sure you check the description for the conditioning mentorship and the training app.