Judo Strength & Conditioning w/ Casper de Wit - Olympic Judo S&C Coach (SSOF Ep. 30)

Casper de Wit2:41

Yeah, I remember because we've met just very briefly but I do remember you so now.

James de Lacey3:12

Awesome. Well, it's great to have you on here and I haven't had a Judo strength conditioning specialist or performance specialist on the podcast so it's great to have you here, got to share some of that knowledge. So maybe let's start with your overarching philosophy for physical preparation for Judo. Kind of, I guess, how you see strength conditioning or physical preparation fitting within a Judo preparation essentially.

Casper de Wit3:46

Well, that's basically to start it off, that's a really good question. It might be strange to say this, but whenever I look at what I'm doing S&C-wise, if you want to tailor it to S&C at first, I'm basically taking the Judo part out of it for a large portion. So I'm basically looking like, the Judo athletes, so what point are they in their development? What do they need? That kind of stuff.

So before doing anything Judo-specific, we're basically doing basics first for a long time. So from literature and from our own knowledge, we have done some needs analysis of what a judoka needs to have. And I can reiterate the data I have, but it basically comes down to you need to be really strong. You need to have a good bit of strength and power in the lower body, and what's characterizing is that you have to have a lot of capacity in the upper body. So that's basically like the capacity.

Then we've got like aerobic energy system that you have to have at decent level, like 45 to 55 milliliters per kilogram body weight. And then again, there's like tons of science that proves that this can do a lot of work and it can really dig deep into lactate energy systems. So if you have this information, this is basically very dry sports science.

And then we look at Judo. We have got all these weight classes, so we got basically all shapes and sizes of athletes from 48 kilo women to 135 kilo, well, basically beast of men. And in the 100 kilo plus they even go up to like 185 and that kind of stuff. We don't have them that heavy.

James de Lacey5:21

Oh my gosh.

Casper de Wit5:21

They are. So sometimes you're looking at a 48 or 52 kilo category and you're looking at 150 kilo or 130 kilo woman, and somehow it's still the same sport. Obviously it isn't. You got these differences in MMA as well, like featherweights and heavyweights, but for Judo it's really diverse.

And then with Judo, well, just before we started you mentioned you do jujitsu yourself, so with Judo you got all of these styles and all of these, well, weird gimmicky tricks that people can do. So Judo is basically a really complex art form. It's 4D chess. It's the tactical war there. It's fighting for grip. It's limiting other people's options and positions and it's attacking, well, your way, your technique.

So if you get all the complexity out of the way and we're looking at what is actually needed, well, we're looking at high levels of strength, we have a baseline of aerobic conditioning and we have high lactic capacity and a lot of lactic capacity. And the rules, if you look at what do I do with S&C, is that what I do with the athletes changes completely depending on the context.

That's basically an open door, but what I mean is if the athletes are all fine and they're doing a lot of Judo and they're doing a lot of randori, which is their sparring, and they do that four times a week, it takes about 60, 70 minutes of intense, well, drilling, sparring.

If they all can do that and they're fine, then I don't really add so much extra conditioning on top of it. It's very polarized. It's only maybe one or two hour session of aerobic and it's really hard, low volume, high intensity anaerobic conditioning on top, just to basically make sure that the ceiling gets raised and the bottom gets lowered. And then in the middle they have more space to play with. So it's basically a polarized approach.

When they are less able to do Judo because they have a minor nagging injury or they got a major injury or they don't have the partners to train with, then the rules are completely different. And I will put in lactic capacity work, anaerobic glycolytic intervals, red line training. I really don't like that kind of stuff, but sometimes if they're not able to get it through Judo then I'll have to add it in.

This is basically to answer your question, it depends a lot on the situation of the athlete. And in general I just try to provide the athlete with the underpinning qualities that they might need to express their Judo and fighting ability to their highest level. And that depends very much on where the level is and what kind of time in the year it is.

James de Lacey8:38

Nice. Let's start at the beginning there when you mentioned Judo players genuinely need to be damn strong, especially within the lower body. I don't know if you have any maybe strength or power standards that you use there, and if you do or don't, how do you develop the strength and power in that lower body for Judo? Are there any specific things that you like to do?

Obviously it's probably dependent on where they are within a calendar year with competition, but maybe looking further away from competition and then closer to competition.

Casper de Wit9:08

So to the first part is that we've known from, well, coaches' experience that being really physically strong often transfers. Not everyone has the same benefits, depends on style, but really being really strong transfers. And that's not per se that you can throw people big and you can expand a lot of force, but a coach told me that if you're really strong you don't have to be that strong all the time.

So if you have a lot of strength capacity, for example in Judo fighting, and you got a lesser physically developed opponent against you or you put him in a position that is less optimal for him, then you'll be able to hold on for longer. It's basically endurance by strength. So that's a big part of it. Then of course there is just the power when you need it.

But then I looked at literature, and for example from Duncan French's chapter in High Intensity Interval Training for Sports, I basically stole a lot of his work, doing literature deep diving, where I found out that what the coaches were saying, that strength is really important, is indeed really important when you compare it to other sports like...

For example, MMA or striking sports, wrestling, you also cannot strike, so it's also more strength dependent and power dependent. So that's basically where I get the benchmarks from.

To answer the second part of the question, we don't really strength test in the gym. For example, we don't got benchmarks like do a two and a half kilo deadlift because it depends so much on style and on body build. And you got some athletes that are so lanky that they'll never be able to do any decent gym numbers, but they're hella strong in their own style.

So the third part, basically what do I then actually do in the session or in the run-up to a tournament? Well, if they're Academy players and they're young and they're still not maxed out on strength again, or they have still ways to go, obviously we train general strength all the way through and then we deload a few times for a tournament that is important to them and often just train straight through a tournament. So they'll do lots of movement quality work and general strength capacity work, do lots of basically GPP work.

If it's developing athletes, they'll only focus on one, two, or three tournaments in the year and they'll basically train strength qualities all the time, all the year through. I've got a colleague, a really good S&C coach, that's basically focused on that, the developing athletes.

With my athletes that me and my colleague do that are World level, it depends a lot on where they are. So we don't really see athletes at World level that are really really weak. We don't actually have a lot of those. So what's difficult about the Judo tournament schedule is that there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of tournaments.

So there's only like maybe December, January is off-season, and then the rest of the year there's always some sort of Grand Slam or a Grand Prix going on or European Champions. There's basically a 10-month-a-year on-season. That makes it really difficult to really have a really general off-season.

We basically look at individuals and when we want them to peak. So for the Olympians, we basically focus on Europeans and World Championships and obviously Olympics. And what that then looks like is that if we have like 12 or 14 weeks to prepare, then we'll go maybe four or five, six weeks quite hard into strength and maybe aerobic, and then they'll basically drop the volume by more than half and that's maintain.

So I, only for the top level athletes, I only have three modes, you could call it, which is accumulation and we do a condensed triphasic block if they're that good and that strong already, or they do a hybrid version where they do everyday max, just some lift something heavy, and then they do speed work and ballistic work, or in peaking phase, which is maybe three or two weeks out from competition. I only do very, very low volume, high quality throwing, jumping work.

Just what may be interesting to note is that I pull a lot of volume away from peaking time, only the bare minimum. So I might be doing only one tenth of what I'm doing in accumulation in peaking. So that might be interesting to note.

James de Lacey13:51

Nice. Are there any exercises that you are really fond of during, I guess, for building strength? Is it just the squat and deadlift, or are there other exercises that you like to use?

Casper de Wit14:30

So we got, well, the Judo culture in Holland has quite a strong strength culture as well. So the program for a long time was married to basically powerlifting, deadlift from the ground to the barbell, and benching with a barbell, and then squatting.

Me myself, and the program, basically moved away from deadlifting and benching with barbells often to specialized bars, so like football bars or dumbbells. I've moved away from deadlifts with the barbell from the ground because it tends to annoy lower backs quite a bit and they already get battered in Judo.

So I'm a big fan of Wayland's approach to training strength for fighters. So basically, I already switched a lot to trap bar work and front squat and RDL tons. And I use his super maximal methods like Hatfield squatting to get extra stimulus in and split squatting. And basically, if we have a strong accumulation block that's finished, I also like split squatting with just barbells for the stability component because I feel if you only add stability stuff in that you lose some development of the legs or some sort of stability sense. And you want athletes that can basically stand strong on their own feet. So we build capacity and then refine it.

James de Lacey15:31

Nice. Yeah, I think the deadlift is a funny one because within, I guess, just general lifting, the deadlift is seen as the big full body exercise along with the squat. And then I don't know if you ever listened or heard about—I can't remember that guy's name—the strongman that went on the Joe Rogan podcast and basically said deadlift, athletes shouldn't deadlift, blah blah.

Casper de Wit16:05

Oberst, he was called, yes.

James de Lacey16:05

That's right. And then obviously the fitness or whatever community lost their mind about that. But I was in full agreement with that. I've never programmed the deadlift for any of my athletes. Well, let's not say any. I usually like them to squat as their main lower body movement and I'll use the RDL because to me, adding deadlifts on top of that is just like adding a pretty much similar stimulus to the squat. The lower backs take a beating from the sport as well.

And then on top of that, if you're going to replace the squat with the deadlift, you don't get that eccentric component that you do with the squat. So kind of like it doesn't make sense to do a lot of deadlifting to me, at least. Looks like you're in a similar boat then, you know, to prepare for sport when you've got other things you can do.

Casper de Wit17:06

Yeah, my rationale was really similar. Like, first off, I really like barbell deadlifting. I've done it for years, so I've got a certain love for the lift. But it's actually, if you look at it, it's a composite lift. So you pick it up from the ground, you do somewhat of a squatty movement straight up, and then you extend the hips.

And if you go really, really heavy, you get really fatigued, and Judo athletes are mostly always fatigued. You end up with a stripper deadlift basically where the butt comes up first, and that kind of force without the pre-tension and the myotatic reflex is not something I want to do repeatedly. Like, you're not going to break if you do it once or twice, but doing it weekly is something I basically just booted out of the program quickly. And I saw basically no negative effects from it. So we're doing RDLs and whatever is building athletic capacity and works.

James de Lacey17:54

Nice. You mentioned—actually, before I jump to the energy system conditioning stuff, I want to touch on the grip training aspect. Obviously, because they're training Judo so much, obviously grabbing gis, using their grip often, are you adding any extra grip training on top of what they're doing in Judo?

Casper de Wit18:24

Well, I'll be really short about this. No, I add next to nothing. Okay, so with athletes that do randori four times a week and maybe three or four technical sessions on top of it, I'm not adding any grip strength. So maybe I'm in a luxury position that now, and for the last two and a half years, I've been working with already the best players, so not talent or Academy players that might be deficient in grip strength. But I don't really do any gym-based grip strength.

So again, the rules completely change when there's an injury or when someone isn't able to do Judo. So for someone that's had an ACL or even a completely torn hamstring, didn't do any Judo for months, obviously then I'm going to try and add in a few weeks before somewhat of a return to the tatami is made, just to get a bit of feedback and to regain a bit of capacity that might be lost.

But my problem with the strength training for judokas in the gym is that it often, if you train it with like pinching or flipping plates or holding stuff or holding barbells, to me it doesn't always—well, if you think about it logically, it doesn't always make a lot of sense. So if you grip a gi, then first off, the grip's hopefully more tight, and it's not like a death grip. You also try and turn and twist it and create some torque.

So if you're deficient and you really notice that you can't hold on to a gi, then yeah, I'll try to build capacity in the grip strength. But I've actually never had a case where I needed to add it. So maybe that's weird for a Judo S&C to say, but I only added in very special cases where basically someone isn't able to keep up the grip strength through the sport.

James de Lacey20:22

Gotcha. Would you prescribe them to your Academy guys or lower level guys or anyone that maybe doesn't train Judo as much?

Casper de Wit20:22

I think so, yeah. If you do less Judo, you express your Judo at a lower frequency or do less of it, and you fight strong guys or—

You notice that you're getting beat up, then I probably added in. Yeah, so what I've been doing for athletes that maybe had a few wrist niggles and that kind of stuff, I've added in the rotation stuff. I don't know what the term is, it's called bam bams or something. You add a bit of wrist curls. Often you don't exactly know what happens, maybe time itself takes care of it and the niggles go away, maybe adding a bit of capacity in the wrist allows them to recover from it. But I usually don't encounter grip strength for at least Judo as to be a limiting factor.

James de Lacey21:20

Okay, yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean a lot of people would kind of make sense, hey, train the grip because it's such a grip dominant sport in that. But as you mentioned, if you're training a lot of Judo, adding more on top may not be the best idea.

Casper de Wit21:20

Yeah, one thing I have to mention though before people think that we don't do any extra additional grip training is that we have a, well not only the Dutch program but also internationally, it's a really common thing to do tons of rope climbing, like legless rope climbing. So after every training you'll see guys do legless, 10 meters up, 10 meters down. If you do three or four, you keep it up consistently, that's your grip training basically. So yeah, if you can't do that, maybe add some in, but I don't.

James de Lacey21:44

For sure. You mentioned about the upper body, the capacity of the upper body essentially to be able to perform hard anaerobic work. How are you developing that on top of, you mentioned you don't add too much extra conditioning on top of what they do if they're sparring a lot, but obviously sometimes you like to top them up with that extra anaerobic work. So maybe dive into some examples of how you do that.

Casper de Wit22:13

Yeah, so what you mentioned, the anaerobic capacity for the upper body, is basically just Judo. So if you enter a fight and you're fighting for grip, you do a lot of movements with your upper body, it's a fight, obviously it's very intense, so you'll have to basically dig deep and create some lactate and go into the red zone to keep on.

How we do that in normal strength training, we just try and build a lot of capacity in the body. I focus mainly on pulling strength because judokas tend to be quite decent at pulling, so thinking logically I think there's probably more transfer from pulling strength for the upper body to Judo than the opposite in pushing strength. But we do both obviously.

So we try and build strong upper bodies, and then we use that strength basically in randori. I top it up with often anaerobic alactic intervals with just assault bikes but maybe only the upper arms, row pulling, try and basically tire out the upper body, do a lot of work. You try, basically, if you want to prepare the upper body to be able to do a lot of work, and sometimes in the weeks before the actual intensification phase starts, you want to add in something that prepares them for the work that's going to come and that looks like a lot of upper body volume work.

James de Lacey23:44

Nice. I also want to go into kind of how you mentioned your phases there and then also in the week structure. But first, the phase, you mentioned obviously you have an accumulation phase of your volume, your intensification, and then your peaking. So how do those, I guess, kind of look in terms of how the training changes through? You mentioned obviously volume produces throughout, but is anything else within that that you could specify, with how those phases come together?

Yeah, or how far out from competition each one is even?

Casper de Wit24:10

Well, if we say that the peaking starts, well, two weeks out, for example, then probably the accumulation phase starts maybe 12 to 14 weeks out. And accumulation phase can last anything from six to eight weeks, usually. I think that I have to check where that seems to work, but it's more about what I tend to do.

So the accumulation phase with the top athletes, we only get so many weeks per year that we really have them at the training center without any competitions, that we can really work on underpinning physical qualities. So for athletes that aren't really high level or very developed yet, it will basically look like just maximal and general strength training. For the ones that are really, really strong already, and we're looking at guys that we train that have won Europeans already and are decently strong, then we'll put in a version of the triphasic block, do that Condens method, so two, two and a half, three weeks, and then switch isometric, do that two, two and a half weeks, then go to concentric. That's basically accumulation block we tend to repeat often, and that's maybe three or two or three times a year.

If we got that done, then obviously they're fatigued from all the heavy strength work. They're fatigued from the Judo that they still do, but they switch to more groundwork, for example, because it's less impactful. Then with transmutation, we basically pull a lot of volume away. So I still keep a thread of maximal strength in there because I always like to keep it in there because athletes feel strong if they are able to do it, and also I don't want to let that maximum strength capacity fade away.

In the transmutation phase, apart from the volume that gets basically half or even more, I do the very low volume heavy lifting. So that could be two times two, like a double or triple, and it is basically an everyday maximum. So I'm not shouting or pushing them beyond anything. I don't really care about next strength at this point.

And we're doing a lot of dynamic effort work. So low weight with barbell jumping, dumbbell jumping, throwing rotation balls with med balls, basically fast stuff. I tend to stay out of the middle because in Judo you are logging around and throwing other people's body weight all the time, so you kind of get that middle speed zone in there a lot. So again, I'm trying to, well, raise the ceiling by getting them more powerful and stronger, and I'm also getting them quicker by doing something that actually stimulus to get quicker and not just more of middle ground.

James de Lacey26:42

Nice. That seems to be a big theme across those podcast and stuff that I've talked about a lot as well, is that polarized approach or that high-low approach, whatever you want to call it, where you're hitting those very high speeds or high intensities in the gym or outside the gym, and then hitting the very low intensity stuff within your conditioning as well. And obviously that middle ground is typically when you're doing the sport anyway, as you mentioned.

Casper de Wit27:18

Yeah, yeah. So there's very small differences in how I approach it. For example, with heavy weights you could say, because there's so much mass involved, that it's more of a strength combat sport. There's, well yeah, you've got really quick fighters, but there's just more mass to move. So I think Judo heavyweight-wise is more force dependent, more power dependent. It's actually more rate of force dependence, because you want to move a really heavy guy quick. So we're doing just heavy lifting and throwing stuff fast and moving stuff fast.

With lightweights, usually I go into speed work earlier. With lightweight Judo, it's at a much higher handling speed, if you could call it that. So because there's less mass to move and everybody's, well, less sluggish, the tempo of the fighting is quicker, and also the speeds that you see people move are higher. So it's a little bit of a different ball game.

So I would say that for lower weight class fighters, strength is slightly less important than for heavyweights. So I still do it obviously, but I'm not constantly going to hammer the lightweights with tons of heavy strength work. At some point it's just enough.

Also, the ones that are the really acrobatic fighters tend to be quite fatigued if you make them do heavy strength work. So I try and stay out of that and just keep the speed up, use a lot of cluster, with clusters with those kind of athletes, use a lot of band, that stuff, and just stay away from grinding strength, if you could call it that, for the majority of the time. Because it, for my experience, it tends to, well, basically screw them over a bit, dampens the spring a bit, especially with some of those real elastic and powerful athletes.

James de Lacey29:34

Yeah, so that's always the, sometimes get these questions from other people, I'm sure you got it as well, it's the question that people always ask is, is strength training making you slower? It's an annoying question sometimes, but the answer is yes, it does on the day. It fatigues you, it makes you slower, but, and they'll definitely feel it if you done strength training in the morning, make a heavy session for example, and then you have a few hours later you have a technical randori session. They'll notice they'll be less sharp, they'll be a bit fatigued, you will be a bit slower possibly.

Casper de Wit30:02

But by investing in those capabilities and capacities, you build the potential to be better later and quicker and stronger later. So yes, strength training makes you slower now, but if the fatigue fades, then you'll be better off for it because

You'll be quicker and you won't be fatigued and you can express your ability at a higher level. And basically to make a bridge myself, that's also a big part of the peaking phase is instead of putting all kinds of fancy stuff in there that are somehow judo specific, I kind of want to do only the stuff that I know that's still got to have impact. So going to lift some heavy stuff and do the robustness circuits.

I don't want to add too much junk volume in that phase because the thing I want to achieve is they need to be peaking and I want to basically get rid of all the fatigue they've built up. So if I'm going to do strength training in that block and I'm going to add something that I don't really know what it's going to do, there's a good chance that the negative effect of whatever I'm doing there is not going to help them.

So that's why in the peaking phase I do very, very little. Also because if I want to add something that I say is going to help their judo, it might very well not be.

James de Lacey31:56

Do you do more conditioning stuff with the lightweight guys since their fights are more active, or does the judo take care of that?

Casper de Wit31:56

I think the judo takes care of that, to be honest. For the players that are high level and do a lot of fighting per week on the mat, I don't do a whole lot of conditioning extra. Maybe sometimes the athletes that fight at a really intense level, they usually drop one or mostly one session per week because they just can't do four. And then I put in a substitute conditioning session for them and I do that then, well, I take a log of it so they actually progressively overload and get better at it.

But yeah, it's going to be really basic powering conditioning like I mentioned. It's going to either be something aerobic if they're far off from competition or they need a bit of recovery. It's going to be something aerobic. If you're nearing competition then it's going to be anaerobic alactic. Or if it's a substitute for a Randori session it's going to be more glycolytic in nature. So that's how I want to keep the adaptations going without them having to do the judo in that case.

James de Lacey33:24

Do you want to maybe give an example of those three, maybe kind of how a set work up time and then maybe the modality that you might use within each of those?

Casper de Wit33:24

So what aerobic work I found that works well is that some athletes just like to, well, basically cycle for one hour and 90 minutes. And I don't really give much of an instruction with that, just basically wear your heart rate monitor so I can check if it's not completely ridiculous, because it often is. They'll say "I did a nice 60 minute cycling session" and it's just 85% of max heart rate for an hour, 90 minutes, because that's really a fighter judo thing, to basically go real hard all the time. So yeah, just I check that it's something that's under the threshold and it's something that's actually aerobic.

If they don't want to do any outside activity or cycling, then what I find works well is maximum aerobic speed circuits. So I just take the maximal aerobic speed, for example on a rower, because they tend to row quite okayish. And I make just intervals with that, so 930 intervals. And 90 seconds of rowing on, let's say, 100% max rower speed, and then 30 seconds of recovery at 70%. It's standard Dan Baker stuff.

And mix that in with other modalities. So you get a bit of ski erg in there. They also like that stuff because it's mainly upper body based. And just do basically an off-feet conditioning circuit. But the upside is to that is that you can kind of go a little bit above your maximal aerobic speed. So maximal aerobic speed is already a bit above where your actual aerobic-anaerobic threshold is, so they kind of get a little bit of a burn which they like, and they get recovery and then they can rotate to something else.

So you don't have them sitting on a machine for an hour. You can kind of keep the joints healthy because you're not having them running or rolling or fighting each other. They're just sitting on a machine and you get just energy system development in. That seems to work really well. So that's what an aerobic session would look like for what I would program basically. So it's either just steady state stuff or that maximal aerobic speed stuff.

Then, I think if you look at anaerobic alactic, we're looking at just a lot of assault bike because it's just a modality where you can expend a lot of energy. And you want to do that under maybe 10 seconds of work with a bit of a run up, because you don't want to crank the machine too hard in the start. I've broken many of those machines. And then ample rest, so you're looking at least like 50 to 60 seconds of rest after a 10 second work interval.

The idea is to basically continuously improve the peak power output. So I make the athlete send me the outputs they get and look at if they can kind of sustain it. So what you could do then is try and add more intervals in series and see if they can maintain the same output. That's something you can play with that.

And if you're nearing competition, so we're basically four, five, five, six weeks out, if they miss a session or there's not enough partners to train with, I'll just take away the rest period. So now we've got incomplete rest and now suddenly it's really horrible.

I've tried in the beginning to play around with different modalities, like really make a mix of throwing slam balls, rotation, that kind of stuff, basically going full CrossFit sometimes. And they really like it. They like a bit of suffering and they like variety. But what I've noticed is that if you put too much stuff in it becomes very difficult to actually pinpoint what you're trying to target. It gets very difficult to keep track of what your output is.

Like for example the maximum aerobic stuff, it's so easy to keep track of because you can, by through training, improve it. You can just add five meters, add five meters, and that's your progression method. If you do random circuit training stuff all the time, I don't actually know at some point what they're doing. And I'm often also not there when they do it. So I basically simplified it down to something that I can keep track of more easily.

James de Lacey37:50

Nice. No real secrets there, sorry.

Casper de Wit37:50

That's good.

James de Lacey37:50

If anyone's wanting to learn a little more about the maximal aerobic speed or the maximal aerobic stuff, I wrote, I think I wrote in my rowing for BJJ article, I laid that out there. And also your alactic protocols there are very similar to Andrew Zadel, who we had on this podcast as well, with his boxing sprint protocols. If anyone's interested in that as well, that's also in that podcast.

But yeah, that's very simple, eh? Like that's all it takes is really hard short intervals or just really long easy intervals essentially. But even though the maximal aerobic speed stuff is kind of like that in between, it's not easy. It's not very, it's not hard hard, but it's still tough.

Casper de Wit38:49

I want to add maybe one thing. It might be interesting for listeners is that the judo culture in Holland also had, you've got tons of athletes that like real, real hard training, I understand, because it's a culture thing. But they also like real, real hard training and stuff that I think is not really wise to do. So you've got real, real hard training in circuit training form.

You've got real, real hard training in some kind of like circuit training on gym machines. So they'll try basically try and destroy themselves by doing 10 to 15 reps with next to no rest and then rotate through six rounds or 12 machines. It's really horrible.

And I can understand it creates some kind of mental toughness, but it's often not the wisest choice to do. So what's interesting is that usually you want to get like an overload or really intense conditioning stimulus through the judo they do, and you want to intensify up to competition. And they train with the training partners and that's usually the best bet because you get, well, you get something that's extremely similar to what they have to do on competition day.

But sometimes there are not enough training partners or they want to top up that feeling. I also became more understanding of the fact that some athletes really like to dive deep into a very, very dark place, like conditioning wise. Like really hurt themselves conditioning wise just to know that if they step on the mat that they already been there to that dark place.

When I maybe like a few years ago I would have said that's all stupid and why would you do that. But I've became basically more tolerant to the fact that they need to, it's not only physical, it's not only physiological, of course, when you step on the mat. It's also psychological. And if you've felt like you've prepared well because you've been able to endure some horrible workouts, I do think you are

Actually better prepared. So of course I don't want to, my job is not destroying them, but the ones that do kind of like these sessions I will give it to them smartly though and be looking at, you'll be looking at tabatas and just basically just get them real, real destroyed.

So, for example, I had an athlete that had a knee injury maybe 10 days before she was supposed to go to the World Championship. So it was decided that even with a knee injury she would be able to go, but of course it takes like a shot to the knee, that kind of stuff. And she was, she wasn't able to do any Judo.

So that's a difficult situation you got right there, because okay, so you've got no peaking methods, you can't do any Judo because of aggravating the injury. How are you going to keep this athlete in shape and still be able to keep somewhat of adaptation or like a Judo fitness going and so she has like a fighting chance, basically?

So the answer then is, where normally I would say I want to stay away from these terrible conditioning sessions, now the rules completely change and I have to do exactly that. Obviously, you're looking at large muscle groups, high power output per interval of work time, so often assault bike is really skilled for that.

And then you basically, you do it's called a peripheral heart circuit. So you choose like full body exercise, you do something upper body, lower body, and you rotate that through. All the rest is incomplete, but because you circle the body parts or the limbs you constantly cycle, you get a really high fatigue level.

So I've done like an assault bike interval with tons of push-ups and arm crank stuff, and yeah, it was absolutely horrible. Not something I would say you need to do from competition, but it did help. She said it helped prepare her mentally to be able to dive that deep and know that you can go there.

And I also think is that if you do that once or twice, if you're not able to do any Judo, it will allow you to keep somewhat of the really quick fading conditioning adaptations you build.

James de Lacey42:44

Yeah, but I think it's as you mentioned as well with the psychological aspect of it, like that's one of the multifactorial I guess theories of fatigue is the perception of how hard or how you feel during that workout. If you're doing Judo and you suddenly feel like at this point in time I usually feel really tired but now I don't feel that tired, that's almost like a, what would you call it, it's like a momentum builder. You feel really good, you feel more energized because of that perception.

Casper de Wit43:13

Exactly. So that to add on that is that sometimes I also have an athlete in a peaking phase have them do an everyday maximum, just so comfortable double on bench. So sometimes when they're turning around, they ask, "Why are you doing this?" Like, why? The answer is because they want to also feel strong.

So if you send someone into competition that is, well basically tapering off, they do one set of two reps at somewhere around 85 to 90% of their maximum, and it flies up, it obviously makes them feel good. And if they believe that maximal strength is something that helps them, it does help them. So I'll take any pseudo transfer I can get.

James de Lacey43:42

Yeah, the everyday max is such an interesting concept. It was very in vogue I guess within the lifting community what, maybe a decade ago. I haven't heard of anyone actually using it within I guess like high level sport. It's interesting that you do. Is bench the only thing I think you mentioned you use it for? Maybe the lower body as well during some of your phases?

Casper de Wit44:16

And everyday I use for the everyday max basically during the transmutation phase, because if they're beat up, I don't want to hype them up to do something that is 95% of their max that day because it will absolutely wreck them if they feel like that. If they can squat 100 and they do 80 for two or three, that's fine by me.

Like I'm looking at adaptations, I'm not looking after numbers in that phase. I'm actually, I'm never looking, I don't ever want to chase numbers. I'm always looking after adaptations, and I don't want to push an athlete that isn't really ready or has a low training readiness just, feels basically, don't want to push him to hit a number that is ridiculously hard for that day.

And the flip side is that sometimes they'll be well recovered and they'll actually get PRs in the gym without too much effort, and that's a win there.

James de Lacey45:13

Do you have guys that want to push too hard for the everyday max?

Casper de Wit45:13

Definitely. Yeah, I've got guys that want to push too hard in the gym mostly all the time. Yeah, so you've got, and that can be something that's really a worthwhile quality.

So for example, we got the 2018 World Champion, Noel van 't End. He's going to fight for hopefully another World Championship in two days. But he's like in the gym, he's an absolute beast. He is freakishly strong, but he's also 31 years old in the moment, and he really likes being freakishly strong. My job is basically keep him intact in the gym.

So there's no, because he's so freakishly strong, he can also basically disintegrate himself in the gym. So yeah, I'll find ways to make him train hard without letting that kind of stuff happen, without breaking them.

James de Lacey46:14

How would you do that?

Casper de Wit46:14

So for example, with those guys that are already at a really strong level, I don't want to give a set number. Do, for example, don't grind out a set until they're nearly at fail speed. Make sure you do plenty enough exercise before they actually hit heavy weight.

So I'll do a warm up where they do goblet squats and zombie squats or hands-free squats. At least build up the intensity quite slowly, because they're that freakishly strong that they'll be able to maybe injure themselves if they're not warmed up properly.

So I've seen this happen with another athlete that tried to do a pistol squat basically straight out of bed and got stuck at the bottom position, but is strong enough to well, still make it. But you have to push that hard and you're not really warmed up, so pulled instantly, pulled like an adductor in the gym. So not just a slight muscle pull, but it will impact your training for two days.

So it's these kind of stupid little injuries, little niggles you can attract if you behave stupidly. That's something we have to watch out for, and especially ones that are really physically gifted, you have to make sure they don't, well basically explode themselves.

James de Lacey47:56

Yeah. Do you do any Olympic weightlifting or strongman style training within your program?

Casper de Wit47:56

No. So I've tried, but I've got some athletes that are decent Olympic weightlifters and I'll put it in for them. At the moment I don't have any athletes that are decent enough at it for me to put it in their program.

Also, the athletes I currently work with are that far in their development phase, they're world class, and they have, they're there without doing any Olympic lifting. So no, I won't add it in for them because it won't ever be good enough technically. It won't ever be heavy enough to be a stimulus for them.

So what I do do is that I just take the other route, the rugby strength coach route. I do weighted jumps, trap bar jumps. I do, which I really like, is called the flat clean. So you connect the TRX to a sled and then you just kind of just clean it up. It comes very natural to them because in the sport, fights are very hingey by nature anyway.

And you can, what's great about the exercise, is that it takes basically two seconds to learn. If you see someone do it, you can often do it. You can load it all the time. You can basically load it without any limiting factor, so you can put more, more, more weight on it. And the feedback is instant, so you can just measure distance. So that's what I often do just as a power tool for the fighters.

Those that can Olympic weightlift, I'll do it with them. But I also found it difficult in the Olympic system if you have many athletes in the group to get it done with enough quality. So for now I've basically just gotten rid of the Olympic lifting.

James de Lacey49:28

Gotcha. And in the strongman stuff, you doing any kind of carries or anything like that?

Casper de Wit49:59

Yeah, off season we do loaded carries. So it's basically just Dan John stuff. So it's squat, pull, hinge, carry, overhead press, pull. And I put in quite a bit of unilateral work because I believe it, first off you can overload the left or right limb just by nature, and I feel it really helps with stability, standing stuff.

James de Lacey50:31

Nice. I want you to dive into a little bit as well your week structure, kind of where the S&C fits around the Judo. So maybe you want to give the example of your high level elite guys, kind of where their Judo intensity first there. Maybe might, what might relate more to the listeners is maybe the...

I want you to dive into a little bit as well your week structure, kind of where the S&C fits around the Judo. So maybe you want to give the example of your high level elite guys, kind of where their Judo intensity first there. Maybe what might relate more to the listeners is maybe the academy guys who don't train as much Judo, kind of where their S&C stuff, or if they do train a lot of Judo maybe an example of someone who only trains Judo three or four times a week where you would fit that S&C.

Casper de Wit51:00

So basically if you want to come up with a week schedule, the general idea is that you want to put the sessions there first off where you're able to, so that doesn't interfere with school or work. But ideally you want to put the sessions there in the week schedule where it does interfere with other sessions, so that often means that you want to space the sessions away from each other, often by six hours.

So if you look at Judo, all the athletes, actually, they do either three or four sparring randori sessions and they're all Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, Friday. So Wednesday is usually an off day and the weekend is completely off, or Saturday do a bit of strength, but there's three off days and four randori days and two pairs of consecutive days.

Now what usually happens with the academy players that aren't, well they can't, they're not that robust, they can't handle that much workload, they'll just do less randori but still show up for every session. So that means they might after one randori after four minutes, they might rotate out for randori and then come back later, so they only do half the workload and they are more recovered, more rested. That's a way you can fix it.

The problem is, what if you want to take sessions out for Academy players, you end up with poorly populated training sessions sometimes and you want to have training partners. Obviously if you're of intermediate level, you sometimes have to support a higher level athlete and you have to be there for the training. That's just the culture as well, and it's highly practical. Otherwise you end up with some sessions where people just don't go to.

So the randori session is basically, well again, I'm not a fighter, but my understanding is that it's this: you want to obviously practice your skills, so you've either learned something from analysis or you want to learn, try a new technique, or you drilled something in technique sessions and now you want to express this newly learned technique in a sports simulating session.

So the randori session is just basically rounds of rolling just like BJJ, but you're obviously standing in Judo. So it's four minutes, a bit of rest and recovery time, take a sip of water, and then it's blocks of four minutes. So four minutes, four minutes, four minutes. And what the athletes do is they'll just continuously find a partner and fight them and they'll fight them with an assignment in the mind. They want to try a new technique or they'll try not to do a technique that really are well firsted in, just so they can basically practice a skill.

The problem with this session is obviously you don't want to have a five hour session because no one can actually make it and there, so you don't have enough rest all the time. So an hour of randori will often be, for 50% or more, it will be actual randori. So it's quite glycolytic, so you're resting, recovering, working above, getting work, quite a bit of intensity and you're getting lactate in the system, then you're recovering for a bit. So it's above threshold all the time.

So these sessions, the sparring randori session, you want to space away from all the S&C sessions you want to do, because you can imagine if you do any strength training or alactic capacity training, which strength training also is, and you put a half hour later, put like a minute of glycolytic wash away just behind that, you'll end up with a strong interference effect and you'll expend a lot of energy and probably get less in adaptations for both.

That's why I want to space sessions away. So basically if you do randori in the afternoon, then you want to do strength in the morning, keep at least four to six hours in between. Technical sessions, depending on the intensity, you can place wherever it fits. I see no problem with doing a skill session after strength or before strength. If it's technical drilling, take a bit more time because it becomes a bit more lactic. That's basically how I want to space it.

So if you have the ability to create a bit of space and time between sessions of a different nature, then you'll have to do that.

James de Lacey55:30

Do maybe give an example, maybe just like a detailed week of, say for example, you mentioned Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday is Judo, maybe where, what days you would place S&C within that.

Casper de Wit55:30

So for example, now start with accumulation phase. If you want to build strength, you're looking at at least three sessions per week, maybe four, but you have to go upper-lower, a different split. So if I have to basically write it down, otherwise I don't know as well.

Often we just try to keep the weekend free, so we'll just do Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So the Wednesday is already the day where they don't do a lot of Judo, so you've got time to recovery right there. Then on Monday afternoon, or Monday morning, you want to put a strength session because that's, you're relatively fresh, so you can get some adaptation and you have some response to that session you want to do.

And on Friday, again, put it away from the session, but Friday you're often a bit knackered as an athlete. So we do a bit more volume work, so you're looking more at general strength or robustness work or some tissue capacity work. And I think you can get away with spacing that a little less further away from randori.

James de Lacey57:04

That's good. So someone must see that as kind of a little a schedule that someone can use to hit the gym and not feel so up as well. Like I'm kind of doing similar right now. So I'm training man, Jiu-Jitsu. I've made Monday my heavier day for lifting because I'm fresh. I know Monday's class, it's low to moderate, it's not too bad.

And I know Tuesday is relatively easy, so then Wednesday if I hit the gym again, it's still more of a moderate day in the gym, but not as heavy as Monday. And then by the end of the week, like today I'm going to go train after this, but it's probably going to be like literally single joint bodybuilding stuff.

Casper de Wit57:31

We can go on for hours about this stuff. So basically as S&C coach, are basically problem solving all the time. So what the week structure looks like, it depends on the context all the time, but generally speaking, you want to place it away from any other training modalities and that's how you get the most bang for your buck. And there's better choices and worse choices basically.

So if you want to get adaptation from strength, try and not do anything glycolytic or very high volume straight after it because that is not the most effective. We can go into depths about what you should do in these sessions, but I'll probably just say that you could read into Triphasic because he has, there's a nice chapter on what to do and what sessions and why, and weekly structures. Or listen to any other podcast in your series, otherwise we'll be sitting here for like an hour again.

James de Lacey58:26

We have to get you on for round two. But William Way's podcast, a couple or a few episodes before this one, dives a little bit into that Triphasic model as well. But for anyone who wants to follow, I guess what you're doing, Casper, where can they find you?

Casper de Wit58:50

Well I don't actually have that much of an online presence. I have an Instagram which is just the ID, discuss the ID. So C point de Wit. Sorry, C point D-E-W-I-T. That's the only place we can actually follow me. I'm trying to produce more content, also because I like and I get a positive response out of it, but that's it, Instagram for the moment.

And is there something else? No. Yeah, the World Championships are on right now as a recording. And one of my goals is to give more insight into, well, our high performance kitchen at Papad. So I'm definitely going to be putting out more content, video wise and blog post wise in the next coming months. So stay tuned.

James de Lacey59:28

Awesome man. Yeah, I'll link Instagram in the description as well. And we have to do a round two at some point as well, but thanks for coming on Casper. I really appreciate it.

Casper de Wit59:28

Thanks. I find it, I always, when people ask me what do you do for a living, it's always a difficult question to answer. I think I always say I solve problems in elite sports. I think we can go on for hours, maybe you have to do a second one in the future. Well thank you, James, for letting me on your show basically.

James de Lacey59:53

No, no thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.