Conditioning For Kickboxing & Importance Of Low-Intensity Aerobic Training w/ Jon Mackey: Head Coach Ireland Kickboxing (SSOF Ep. 25)

Jon Mackey0:00

So the fundamental science of endurance and the adaptation sought around improving endurance, while fundamentally based in long-distance sports, has now leveraged a lot of new activity within other sports similar with similar physiological demands of our own. So I've been down that rabbit hole. I keep coming up every now and again for a wee breath.

Managed to publish a paper in 2021 which was focused on some of the physiological thresholds relating to functional threshold power, which is a concept probably better known within cycling and triathlons. So just started a professional doctorate this week within the domain of elite performance of sport. I'm probably going to take a pivot on that one.

So I work professionally in high-performance sport within canoeing here in Ireland. So I'm the Performance Director for the Olympic program. And because it's a professional doctorate, I need to kind of square the research around what I'm doing professionally on a day-to-day basis. So looking at kind of sustainable pathways into high-performance programs and bringing young people through sport and stuff like that. So that's pretty much me in a nutshell, James.

James de Lacey3:31

Nice. There's a lot going on there, a lot for the listeners to be able to learn from you too, especially within this endurance demand. Maybe we let's start there. Obviously that's kind of where you've been lately as well, in terms of, I guess, maybe what you've been researching and applying.

So maybe let's start in terms of your philosophy of, I guess, conditioning and preparation. Let's stay with kickboxing for now, since that's kind of like the easiest one to go with. So kind of your overarching philosophy of that and kind of, I guess, how do you look at conditioning? Are you taking a physiological approach, like looking at maybe energy systems and that? Or you kind of like more on the work capacity side, just want to improve the outputs at certain time intervals and things? Or blend, or what?

Jon Mackey4:25

Yeah, it's definitely a blend. It has changed. My overarching philosophy has meandered over the last couple of years as I try to make sense of the literature and the research. It's as wide as it is deep in relation to what's been found with endurance sports over the last 50 years.

And my philosophy for conditioning within kickboxing is starting to shape itself around actually a polarized model or a bastardized version of a polarized model, pretty much because our end game or our end output is not long-distance endurance, it's not high volume. It's small in volume, it's high intensity, short duration.

And with that, I have come to kind of an agreement in my own head of what's probably best, and I see this in terms of testing. So I do a lot of physiological testing with the team here in Dublin and have been doing for a couple of years. And I've had the opportunity to apply some of the theory and practice in relation to endurance capacity building into some real-world experiences.

And the application of a polarized approach at certain times of the year, from my observations and from my experiences, has seen an increase in kickboxing athletes' endurance capacity. And what I mean by that, when I say endurance capacity within the context of kickboxing, it's the ability to perform repeated high-intensity exchanges without fatiguing, as opposed to just being on a steady-state process from one time point to another.

So effectively athletes see—with an 8 to 12 week block of polarized training, athletes generally seem to see an inflection in their aerobic capacity and in particular in relation to the relationship between physiological thresholds such as the ventilatory threshold, the first ventilatory threshold and the second ventilatory threshold, and just high-intensity outputs. In terms of 30-second sprints or 30-second max efforts on the bag and an increase in the overall output of that, and the amount of, for example, the amount of 30-second intervals that they can sustain.

And you see like a nice rapid recovery rate in between those 30 seconds, in between those sessions. So to answer your question, the generation of my philosophy has come to a point now where I like to apply a bipolar approach, I guess, in relation to training intensity distribution, where I do encourage the athletes to focus—I wouldn't say as much as what a typical endurance athlete would do on a weekly basis in terms of their cycle.

I mean, some of these guys, well-trained endurance athletes, are putting in between 5 and 10 hours a day. Some of these guys are funded, they've got the lifestyle to do it. You talk to an amateur kickboxing athlete who's trying to hold down a job or in college and has other commitments going on to do 10 hours endurance training a day, and they look at you and think you're off your head.

But I do try and encourage an amount of low-intensity training, somewhere between 70% of the training program at low intensity, and then the other 30% constructed around threshold and above, or high intensity. And so far, so good, in relation to that.

And I guess what you have to try and do is build it around the athletes' kind of real-world experiences, what's happening in their lives and stuff. But to date we've found some reasonable results in that. It's a good application as long as you're not taking away from the skills training. It seems to be working pretty well, getting some good results in that.

James de Lacey8:12

Nice. Yeah, we're very similar philosophies then around conditioning and around prioritizing that low-intensity area. But just quickly for the listeners as well, do you want to maybe just kind of define what you mean by polarized model and then by the ventilatory threshold one and two?

Jon Mackey8:42

Yeah, sure. So the polarized model in relation to endurance training probably found its birthplace in Norway with the great Doctor Stephen Seiler. So a study that was done as in circa 2006, which was spearheaded by himself, is an observational study, as well as anything else, about how elite endurance athletes and world champions, Olympic medalists, were actually scheduling their training intensities throughout the programs.

And what they found across multiple sports was that some of the top guys were allocating around 75 to 80% of their training time to low-intensity training. Now, low-intensity training is generally kind of found to be in and around that first ventilatory threshold point. And this first ventilatory threshold point on a graded exercise test or a ramp test usually correlates with the first lactate turn point, or the gas exchange threshold—you might hear it called by that.

That's the thing with these threshold names change. You could go to different papers and different books and different podcasts, and somebody has a different name for the same threshold point.

So the identification of the first VT1 is that area within the intensity continuum that is said to be at low intensities, essentially just before lactate starts to spill out of the cells and into the blood. So just below that, the athlete is set to be producing ATP purely aerobically.

James de Lacey10:18

So is there a way to know if you're at that point without a test?

Jon Mackey10:18

There are some reasonably validated field tests. I guess one of the most common ones is the talk test or nasal breathing. So if you're, for example, if you decide to do some training, some low intensity training, and one of the modalities that you use is jogging, well then you should be able to jog relatively comfortably and able to have a conversation with somebody if you're out with them. If you're not with them, you should be able to comfortably complete the run nasal breathing.

So I guess it's that point that there's a change in minute ventilation when you cross over that threshold because of a slight increase in lactate. And of course with lactate comes the pesky hydrogen ions that come with that problem. And it's the increase in ventilation as we try to buffer these ions and get rid of them that suggests we've just crossed over, we've just moved through some sort of physiological phenomena.

So just below that or at that is the first ventilatory threshold or the first lactate threshold. And high-end elite endurance athletes were found to spend nearly 80% of their time training at this particular intensity, with the other 15 to 20% found at the other end of the intensity spectrum, which is at the second threshold or above that.

So the intensity continuum has broken down into four intensity domains: low, moderate, heavy, and severe. And I guess one of the thresholds that's come under most scrutiny and most discussion and debate and research is actually the second threshold point, the second ventilatory threshold, the second lactate threshold, the respiratory compensation point, sometimes referred to, although outdated now, as the anaerobic threshold, which is essentially, when I talk to athletes about this, because I try to keep the nomenclature as simple as possible, I say this is the fatigue threshold.

This is the gateway into unsustainability, where you can't sustain high power outputs for too long without having to slow down or take a break or come back down below that threshold, recover and go again.

So in relation to combat sports or kickboxing and performance, this is a very important threshold, and we'll go into the reasons why in a couple of minutes. But to answer the question about where the polarized method comes from, what they found was the elite endurance athletes spent 15 to 20% of their time training at the other end, and very little in fact was spent in the middle. So it was either low intensity or high to super high intensity efforts that they were training in, and this led to superior endurance adaptations.

Now the discussions, as I said, and the debates are raging and ongoing, and only recently we had some papers published. I was suggesting that a polarized approach wasn't the best method at all, and in fact it was a pyramidal approach where training that threshold was said to be more conducive to endurance training and endurance preparation. And I spoke to Steven Seiler about this online and I was interested to hear his thoughts in relation to why athletes should steer away from training at or below threshold.

And he said that wasn't the point at all in relation to polarized. It was everything just below, at, or above threshold, as opposed to being after that threshold point.

So he said as long as you're accounting the time spent at that second threshold point and categorizing it as high intensity, well then it's effectively a polarized approach. But essentially those athletes spent very little time in the moderate domain. So where this has been termed sometimes as no man's land, or the athlete being in moderate, just in between these two physiological threshold points.

So there's things that can be learned from that. I guess it's not to suggest that nothing happens within the moderate intensity domain, but I think it's about buying for your buck and getting the best out of your training in relation to training for endurance.

And that polarized approach is essentially built around those two physiological threshold points. So hence the reason why, as a combat athlete or any athlete within a sport that has an element of endurance to it, should really understand where they are within their own physiological makeup.

James de Lacey15:00

No, that makes sense. That's that whole polar model, high-low model. I guess another term you can use for it that maybe some might understand from reading Sweet Science of Fighting as well. But I guess the question becomes then, a polarized model, you're focusing on the low intensity end of the spectrum and the high intensity end of the spectrum. The technical training itself, do you believe that covers enough of the low intensity side to not have to do as much on this, or do you always need to just top up on the low intensity work because you need it?

Jon Mackey15:36

It depends. It's a great question, James, and it really depends. And it depends on the athlete that you're working with. So from my experiences, athletes who tend to be very well conditioned, when they do their skills work, their bag work, their pad work, and even during their simulated sparring work, tend to always push towards the higher intensities because it's easier for them to do that. They're quite efficient. They get a good response to that type of training.

Athletes less conditioned tend to be a little lazier, and only because they can't push as hard. And they do end up hanging around between those two threshold points, but it's never really low enough to say it's a low intensity training session. It's never low enough. I've never witnessed, and I've taken so many heart rate monitor readings and lactate readings and RPE readings from athletes just training, just bag working, pad working, and simulated sparring.

And it's never down around that first threshold point. It's always either in the middle, or with the more conditioned guys who are happy to push themselves on, will flow towards 85% max heart rate, like, because they're working hard and they're working efficiently.

So yeah, I mean, I would take an individual approach on who I'm working with. And it's not just about running them through a test and then saying, oh here, spend 80% of your time training down here and the other 20% doing this. But I do try to get in with them and try and monitor what's happening within the skills training classes and where they tend to hover in terms of their output in that, and then try and build something around that.

So yeah, it's important to understand that, because at the same time, you don't want to be overwhelming the system with a lot of intensity if they're already kind of at that. And that's important when you are dealing with conditioned athletes who are trying hard and they're spending extra time at that second threshold. So they're training high intensity a lot more than what they probably think they are.

So if you've got an athlete who does that, so they're on the pads, they're on the bag, they're doing their skills training, and they're pushing 85%, 80-85% max heart rate, and then you come along and stick a lot of high intensity training on top of that for two or three times a week, well then you may have doubled what they're doing from a high intensity workload perspective.

And of course what comes with that is overreaching, and pushing them into that overtraining state, and all of the negative implications of doing too much high intensity training. Even though they're conditioned athletes, that can still have a negative effect on them.

So you have to take it on an individual basis, James, and just make sure that whatever they're doing and working on their own baseline physiology, that you can actually structure a program that suits them and that they're going to get some bang for their buck from.

James de Lacey18:42

Does this ratio, let's just take for example this 80-20 ratio that's used for a specific athlete, does that change as you get closer to a fight? So that would be maybe out of camp, but then in camp that kind of changes?

Jon Mackey18:42

So, to some of the physiologists through Twitter and that we've come to call this kind of a, I called it a bastardized polarized version, but they didn't like that, so we call it a bipolar version. So yeah, effectively, I mean, in kickboxing it's not like professional sport where you've got every fight, every fight that comes up is super important. You've got this undulating schedule or calendar throughout the year.

In kickboxing, while we have World Cups and targeted events throughout the year, we essentially have one big event to focus on, which is either September or November, and that's either a European or World Championships. So they're the big event. That's the big target for national team members.

So we can apply, in some ways where it's lucky, we can apply sometimes a block, a block polarized approach to the GPP phase. But in terms of that 80%, it will invert itself closer we get to camp. So the idea of...

Training outside of camp is just to build a massive platform of aerobic endurance, build your strength capacities, improve your force production rates. And then when you get to a 12-week camp, you're going into that camp and you're going to be able to train your backside off. You're going to be able to train really, really hard for that.

And as that happens, as you get closer to the event, less time is spent training within those low-intensity zones and more time training on those high to super high-intensity zones. So we've got this kind of inversion that happens or a bipolar approach the closer we get to an event.

James de Lacey20:29

Gotcha. I guess, how much extra high-intensity conditioning can you say prescribe as you get closer to that fight? Because I'm assuming as they go into camp, maybe sparring starts to ramp up, maybe more frequency of training, more frequency of high-intensity training. Is there a point where you don't even prescribe any more extra conditioning because of that?

Jon Mackey20:57

Absolutely. About eight weeks out, maybe 8 to 10 weeks out, again depending on the person, I would be suggesting that all of their conditioning, their high-intensity conditioning, is done through their sparring. They should be sparring consistently. They should be sparring different people consistently, getting fresh people in consistently, high-intensity bag work, high-intensity pad work, and just monitoring fatigue levels on a daily basis with them. And if there's room, I tend not to try and get them to do some kind of sprint training in terms of actual running, just because of the risk of injury.

Combat sport athletes aren't good runners. They're not trained runners, they're not trained sprinters, and I've heard some horror stories of guys going out trying to go balls to the wall and blow hamstrings and stuff like that because they're just not conditioned to output. So sometimes we wheel in the assault bike and we use that just because it takes the eccentric loading off the legs and we get them to hit some big power outputs on that.

But generally, if possible, bearing in mind that your sparring work is important, it's super important, but it's also high impact and you have to be careful about injuries and busted faces and broken noses or concussion, even knockouts. Unfortunately, we've had two of these now in the last six weeks here in Ireland which have impacted on the team. So you have to be really careful about what you're doing with your sparring, making sure that your guys are matched up well enough that that doesn't happen.

So if you wanted to pull back on your sparring a little bit, you can bring in the assault bike or you can do some uphill running and that to try and stimulate that high-end activity.

James de Lacey22:17

Gotcha. And then I guess the other question as well, in terms of specificity of conditioning, do you put much emphasis on—maybe let's move it back towards out of camp, because that's probably the most time you're spending doing conditioning activities outside of the gym—are you emphasizing, well, hey, you should be doing shadow boxing, whatever it is, something that's related to kickboxing versus going for a run, swim, whatever it is? Or you kind of blend those approaches?

Jon Mackey22:43

Absolutely blended approach is always best. It's very difficult to get combat athletes to just do four hours of running in a week just because of the boring kind of activity that it is. So I tend to try and make it more sport-specific—long on the bag work and mixed up with some bike work if possible. I'm not a huge fan of it outside the camp, and then if you can get some low-intensity runs in during the morning time, that's a win, because running as opposed to cycling, is weight-bearing, is a little bit more of a transfer to the sport that we're in. We're on our feet.

The biggest barrier or the biggest obstacle to doing the low intensity in terms of the high-volume stuff is that most people will say, "I haven't got that kind of time." So you have to work with them and help them kind of create time within their day. And it's the first thing I say to young athletes: take your phone out and look at your screen time.

So you've got on smartphones now they'll tell you how long you're spending on a daily basis on the screen. I'm not joking you, James. Some of these guys are spending eight hours plus on their screen, and that's not eight hours from start to finish. It's just throughout the day they're just running around on their social media and stuff.

And I said, "Look at that. There's eight hours of screen time here. You telling me you can't take four hours of that? Get up early in the morning time, making sure your sleep is in, get fueled, and get for a low-intensity job." But generally try and prescribe between four and five hours a week, which is not huge in the greater scheme of things. And better again if you can kind of compound those hours by doing, say, a two-hour run and a three-hour run or hour-and-a-half runs as opposed to an hour on a Monday and hour on a Tuesday and hour on a Wednesday.

Because the research says that in order to stimulate aerobic adaptations, it's not just about doing low-intensity work but doing high volume of it and making sure that that work is compelled. So trying to get in at least two hours if you're going for a run to get two hours of it, or break it up between pad work and other kind of skill-based work.

James de Lacey25:09

From your research, is there a difference between, say, going for the three one-hour runs or splitting that three hours into, say, 20-minute blocks each day or whatever it is? Is that too short to be able to almost like micro-dose that? Or do you just need to have, okay, you just need to go for an hour or 90 minutes or whatever it is to kind of push?

Jon Mackey25:09

Yeah, unfortunately you can't micro-dose those aerobic adaptations in relation to low-intensity work. And we can talk about high-intensity stuff as well—you can mix that, you can mix it up too, you can do some fartlek training, ramp up on a speed work, working from low to high and that. And if you wanted to do it that way, but to answer your question: because the aerobic system takes a little bit of time to heat up, to warm up and get going, it could only be running as full throttle when you decide you're just going to pull the plug on it.

And adaptations don't come from easy sessions. You have to stress the system. So stressing the aerobic system is generally found through that high-volume method of low-intensity training. So yeah, it needs to be long in duration in order to get that stimulation. No micro-dosing.

James de Lacey25:56

And then the high intensity, yeah?

Jon Mackey25:56

It depends. Out from camp, I like to prescribe some training in and around threshold. This is will generally be around 90 to 95% of that second threshold point. So if we understand that second threshold point as being a physiological marker, kind of a physiological break point between sustainable activity and unsustainable activity, or steady state versus non-steady state physiology.

Now, if you try to get a combat sport athlete to maintain speed at threshold for a period of time, you generally find them falling away from threshold pretty quickly because they're not conditioned runners. And this is why I'm not a proponent of running for running distance for time. So trying to find a 5K time or an 8K time—and combat sport athletes tend to like this approach a lot—but the problem with it is is that because we're not trained runners, we don't fully understand the concept of threshold running or running at threshold or, in endurance sports it's called tempo running, or race pace, which is just below that sustainable physiological marker.

So what happens with combat sport athletes, and this is from experience, is that they'll, they'll running 5Ks or 8Ks, they'll start off pretty fresh and they'll squash right up the threshold for not that long, maybe six or seven minutes, and then they start to fall away from threshold. And as that happens, as the power output declines, they tend to fall into that no man's land area. So they end up being in moderate for 25 or 30 minutes, which is not ideal, and they could certainly be doing something much more beneficial for that time that they're spending.

So to get an athlete to work at threshold, I generally prescribe just longer intervals. So five-by-fives and sometimes four-by-eights at threshold, which means that they can actually stay at threshold for a consistent period of time, accumulate a good block of working minutes there, and take away those adaptations—and those aerobic adaptations at that physiological point—rest and do it again. So you're getting these nice injections of high-intensity training into a session where they're not falling off threshold, they're not able to sustain their pace.

And they generally don't understand that from a running perspective or being a trained runner—how hard it can be to maintain that pace for a considerable amount of time. And this is what happens when you see combat athletes focusing their running on time and distance. Instead, they should be really focusing on—

James de Lacey28:59

Is there a simple field test that one can do to figure out their VT2 threshold, or that anaerobic threshold up there?

Jon Mackey28:59

It's difficult. You'll see people using percentages of max heart rate and stuff like that, so it can be pretty easy to get max heart rate. Just find a hill and run up it for about 12 minutes and see what you've got at the end, and then use percentages of that.

The problem with that is that not everybody's threshold is at the same percentage. Not everybody's second threshold is at 75 or 80%. Depending on your own conditioning, your own fitness levels and status, it could be much lower than that, it could be much higher than that. So if I give an athlete who's unconditioned just a benchmark of 80% max heart rate to go out and they try and do that, they're effectively burning themselves. They're burning the candle at both ends. I'm honest with them, they're going to be pushing themselves a lot harder than what they should be.

Understanding that whatever session that you're doing, whatever session you've got programmed to do, there has to be a focus on it. What's the adaptation that you're chasing? You have to have a specific focus on what are we chasing today. Are we chasing... Are we looking to extend? Stephen Seiler would say, are we looking to extend or are we looking to intensify?

And I think that needs to be at the forefront of everybody's minds when they're going to do their endurance training or their conditioning training. In order to do that, in order to have that specific approach, you need to understand where these thresholds lie and you need to be able to know that you can work in and around them, rather than just guessing or using other field measurements to try and get there, because you run the risk of either overtraining that stimulus or undertraining it and just wasting time.

James de Lacey30:40

And by extend or intensify, you mean if you're looking to extend, you're heading the low intensity side. You're looking to intensify, you're...

Jon Mackey30:40

And then, what I get a lot of the time is discussions around why bother with low intensity training when our sport doesn't rely on... It's not a low intensive sport. Why does it matter?

And there must be 15 or 20 years worth of research and papers within the literature that shows that high intensity repeatability is effectively built on the aerobic base and how strong that is, leverages our ability to be explosive multiple times over and over. And there's a great... Niels, I can't remember second name now. He was an endurance skater. He released his training program there recently online after he won the Olympic gold medal, and he made a great quote in his essay. He kind of released his training journal and he said that with great aerobic power comes great anaerobic responsibility, playing on that old Spider-Man catchphrase.

And he's right. And this guy was doing seven hours of low intensity training a day, every day except Saturday and Sunday. And one of the outputs that he found from that was that his high end, so his capacity to be explosive and repeatedly explosive while on the skates, was massively improved by the time that he spent at low intensity training. So the evidence is quite solid behind that change. And I think combat sport athletes, regardless of whether they're kickboxers, MMA athletes, or boxers, I think disregard that modality at their own expense.

James de Lacey32:11

I think can we do too much of that low intensity and take away from that?

Jon Mackey32:44

Yeah, 100%, for us for sure. I mean, we're not long distance endurance athletes, so there's no need for us to be doing seven, 10 hours a day. Absolutely. I mean, there's a fine balance to be had in relation to that. I mean, if you spend all of your time training at low intensity, well then you're going to take away the ability of fast twitch type 2 muscles to function. They need to be stimulated. In order to stimulate them, you need to do the high end stuff.

So we don't want to become marathon runners. We don't want to become cross-country skiers where their physiology leans heavily towards type 1, high fat oxidation rates, very very low lactate production. We need an amount of that to support where we generally belong during competition, which is most of the time above that second threshold. We are in the heavy intensity domain. We're 90, 90 plus percent max heart rate. Sometimes we're at VO2 max, and that's all very very high intensity work.

But our ability to be there and be there repeatedly is built on a platform of aerobic base building. So it's about getting that balance right. And this is why I think physiological testing is so important for athletes, just to get an insight. I'm not saying it's a panacea to all problems in relation to endurance, but it just gives an insight in relation to: are we getting the right adaptations here with this program that we've put together for you?

Are things starting to slip? Is your high end stuff starting to contract? And with that insight, we can manipulate the program in order to get a better result.

James de Lacey34:06

Gotcha. I guess the other argument for this polarized model as well is how quickly you adapt to the high intensity work and how quickly it may plateau. Do you have any maybe experience or data or anything on how quickly that occurs?

Jon Mackey34:35

Yeah, absolutely. There's pretty significant research in relation to the adaptations from high intensity interval training. Now what we know from that research is that the response, so the bump that you'll get, is pretty rapid. But it doesn't stay around for too long. So it kind of peaks pretty quickly and then kind of tapers off in about six weeks.

And this is why we have to be very careful with our prescription of high intensity training. Because if we just continue to layer it on, well then the fallout from that is that you just push the athlete off the cliff. So it's like having that glass under the tap. You turn the tap on and now the glass is overflowing, and none of that is any use to anybody.

There are some papers that show an increase in autonomic stress, oxidative stress from too much high intensity training in trained and untrained people. It's even worse in terms of degradation of PGC-1 alpha, which is a master regulator for endurance adaptations and stuff like that. So down regulation of that and other nasty things that can push a person into overreaching and overtraining. And effectively, we run the risk of making them sick, fatigued, maybe injured.

So yeah, you used to be careful. And this is why it's called a prescription, right? You go to your doctor, you get a prescription you can follow. So yeah, it's important that we administer the right doses, in particular for high intensity training. If we're doing too much too often, we'll peak the athlete too quickly. And then if we expect them to stay there in peak condition while they're still training maybe eight weeks out, then we could run into some issues. I'm not saying that happens all the time, but you certainly could run into some issues.

James de Lacey36:19

So there is a... Yeah, there's always a chance there doing too much too soon. Gotcha. And then how do you put this together into a training week? Obviously you've got the low intensity stuff to touch on, maybe the high intensity stuff, and then you've got all your technical training on top of that. So how does your week look in terms of the prescription throughout that?

Jon Mackey36:19

Yeah, and this is the tricky bit. This is what you have to work with guys on, because everybody's circumstances are different. But we do try to get an undulating approach to the weekly program.

Generally, I suggest trying to get that low stuff done early in the morning. Try get it out the way before the day starts. If that means getting up an hour or two early, as long as the sleep is good. Okay? So if they're saying to me "I'm in bed at half 11 every night," I say, "No, let's target 10. Let's target half 9, 10 at night time if we're going to be serious about this."

And then we're up at maybe 6, half 6 in the morning time, and we knock out two hours, an hour and a half of low intensity. That leaves them then some time during the day to refuel, rehydrate, recover. Some guys will go get a swim in the afternoon, maybe do a yoga session, and then they'll get their skills training in the evening time.

And we'll look at the evening time and see, well, what's on the menu for the evening time? Are we going to be sparring? Are we going to be doing bag work? If so, I suggest you try and push it a little bit harder and try to get into a high intensity zone. So you've got this undulating approach to their training on a daily basis, and that changes and that flips on its head from day to day.

To day, as long as you've got your kind of your standard approach to training intensity distribution, you know you won't put power sessions and high intensity sessions back to back. You won't do very high intensity sessions late at night because it'll interrupt sleep and stuff like that. So you have to work with them in some real world applications and try and build it around their college, their work, their personal life because they're amateur athletes, they're not pros.

You have to take all of that into consideration. But generally, yeah, generally that's the approach.

James de Lacey38:08

Do you maybe have like an example of someone you're working with now of kind of how their week looks?

Jon Mackey38:08

Sure, so I'm working currently now with the 60 kilogram world champion female world champion Amy Wall. She won the World Championships last year. She's a school teacher, so her days start early. Well yeah, it starts early, but here in Ireland primary school teachers continually finish about half past 2, 3:00 in the day.

So she'll go up early in the morning time before school and she got the treadmill in the house and she'll knock out a couple of hours on the treadmill. And while she's on the treadmill she's probably planning her day out in terms of how the day is going to look in the classroom. So she gets her low intensity runs done early on. We'll meet them during the day and we'll get some pad sessions done.

To give you an example of what we did last week, last Friday it was a typical day. We met Friday, did some pad work, some technical work. She's got a fight in Spain this coming weekend. And then we did some high intensity work towards the end of it. So 30 second repeats on the bike, monitoring heart rate and heart rate recovery in between.

So that's a typical day. And then interspersed that during the week with some strength training which she's in power training now at the moment, so speed and power. And we keep that minimum dose at this point. So just doing a lot of med ball work, heavy med ball work and throws and jumps and stuff like that to keep that topped up as well.

James de Lacey39:21

Nice. Where does the strength training fit in that week? Is it twice a week in the mornings as well?

Jon Mackey39:21

Twice a week. I generally leave them to work out where that best fits. Okay? If the high volume work, the low intensity work, works better in the morning time, it tends to work better in the morning time for a lot of people. But if they've already got a programmed in session, well then that's fine, let that stay where it is and we'll move the low intensity work around.

I tend to keep the strength training simple, trying not to spend too much time doing all of these fancy things that they see certain people on Instagram balancing one foot and they got a dumbbell on their forehead and all this crazy stuff. So we try to keep things nice and simple, especially in the strength building phase. Doing your meat and veg, your squats, your bench, your push, your pull, your press, all that stuff. A lot of hinge work, um keeping it nice and functional.

And then once that strength phase is done, just keep that kind of micro dosing that then throughout the program. Not spending too much time in the weight room. We can spend a lot of time in the weight room, we can spend a lot of time in conditioning and do very little skills work. These guys need to be spending a lot of time in skilled work. And I find the strength training then is a help to just keeping them robust and keeping them injury free.

James de Lacey40:33

Nice, nice. So there, okay, that covers the week. But I guess the other question is around a sparring day. So how does the day look before and the day after a sparring day?

Jon Mackey40:57

Yeah, it depends. I mean, if we're sparring, so there's two kinds of sparring that I use in our training. One is kind of technical, tactical kind of working out conceptual theories, some constraints-led approach to developing skill and decision making, which we kind of operate at about 70% kind of speed and intensity. And they're fine, they're kind of standard kind of sessions.

But then there's test sparring, so the Vaseline goes on, the big head guards going on, the 16 ounce glove goes on and they're going at it. So they're getting tested. So that's super maximal activity. And it's important to ensure that in the buildup to that kind of session that they're not after doing a load of high intensity work that day or that morning, that they're well rested, they're well fueled and hydrated, and that they've got ample time to go home and unwind from those sessions before they hit the sack and get a good eight, nine hour sleep.

And then generally the next morning I'll try and prescribe something very low intensity for recovery. We have to walk or a swim, bit of mobility work. Some of these guys love to foam roll for some reason for hours and hours. If that's their thing, let them at it.

But essentially kind of buffering out either side of those meticulous sparring sessions. One with adequate rest, recovery, fuel for the session itself, because they're psychologically hard on themselves if they don't perform in test sparring. And then making sure then at the end of that, the day after, that part of the day then that some amount of time for rest and recovery if they've got the time within their day to do that.

James de Lacey42:17

Nice. I actually want to come back a bit to your sparring. You talked about that constraint-led approach to your sparring, kind of almost problem solving. Obviously this is more a little more on the technical side, but obviously as strength and physical preparation grows we're getting this blend of physical prep and the actual technical, tactical of the sport, as it should be. But how are you, I guess, creating these sessions, I guess what we'll call problem solving sessions within the sparring?

Jon Mackey42:45

Yeah, it's such a, I love constraint-led coaching because you can be so creative with it and you're essentially just experimenting by using different scenarios. So essentially like a constraint-led approach from a combat sports perspective, James, would be manipulating the environment, essentially manipulating the environment that the sparring is.

So reducing the ring size, for example, would be one way of doing it. Reducing the ring size means there's more activity. More activity means that there's more decision making to be had. And within that then we might constrain one of the fighters by saying, well, you're not allowed to use your backhand in this one, okay? Or the other person can only use the front hand. Or sometimes you're not allowed to respond, it's just head movement and angles, trying to get into a dominant position just by footwork.

There's lots of creative ways you can create constraints within combat sport training in order to enhance the athlete's own decision making. There's lots of ways to do it. I guess one of the biggest mistakes that coaches make is that they're trying to prescribe a specific outcome by using a constraint. In fact, the use of a constraint is to allow the athlete to find the way out or what's called those affordances.

Okay, so what's in front of them? How can they work out the problem that's in front of them in order to get back into a dominant position or score a shot or even go for the knockout shot or whatever the outcome might be? But the underlying philosophy behind all of that is that, like all sports, James, to varying degrees, they're all puzzles, they're all chaos. And the person that's involved in it is the person that needs to make the decisions in order to work out the puzzle.

And that's really really prevalent in combat sport where you've got one person in front of you who wants to hit you and beat you, whether that beat you down or beat you on points. But for me that's just, it's just a puzzle that needs to be solved. The coach acts as a support mechanism outside the ring in relation to that. It's the athlete that's in there that needs to solve that puzzle, solve that equation. How do I get around this? What's happening in front of me? What's the rhythm I'm moving at? What tempo are they moving at?

What happens when they move the front leg? What hand do they prefer to fire off first? Do they kick first? When they kick, do they stand square after the kick? All of these things, massive amounts of decision making in combat sport. So constraint-led coaching and constraint-led training enables the athlete or empowers the athlete to become better decision makers.

Because too much joystick coaching takes place in combat sports. It's an old school approach, it's an old school mindset where the coach thinks they have the answer to what's going on in the ring and they're going to shout the answer to the problems into you. And you have to repeat physically what they're telling you to do. And there's no worse way to develop an athlete by doing this because you're essentially killing their own ability to make decisions for themselves.

The best coaches are the quiet coaches. The best athletes don't require constant reminders from their coach in the corner about what's going on.

To do if you have an athlete that you're telling what to do every second of the fight, you're not doing much coaching the role to be honest with you. You need to reevaluate your practice on.

So to answer your question, I'm sorry James I tend to ramble around and corners a little bit and come back to the point. The constraint-led approach is one of the ways that we can enhance our athletes' decision-making abilities and make them more rounded fighters.

James de Lacey46:46

I guess that's why they say some people look great on the pads but as soon as they have someone in front of them.

Jon Mackey46:46

Exactly, there you go. Everybody loves sessions on the pads and posting them on social media, but there's an old Bruce Lee saying—those pads don't hit you back. And apart from anything else, who's calling the shots on the pad? It's the pad holder, right? So you're not dictating anything, you're just responding to instructions.

Pad work works great for some form of endurance or technique development especially, but throwing lots of random shots on pads and thinking that some way it's just going to transfer into the ring—yeah, it's a little bit ignorant I think, it doesn't happen that way.

James de Lacey47:11

Do you think that's almost kind of a good advertisement for the way I guess Thai fighters like to almost play or low-intensity spar often? That to me makes sense in terms of development being able to do that as much as possible. I guess that fits into that decision-making model.

Jon Mackey47:40

Yeah, you see these guys doing that a lot. And you do see from time to time in professional setups where athletes and coaches have come to conclusions themselves and they come up with training scenarios like this which make perfect sense. They've solved the problem for what they're trying to achieve and they come up with this way of training.

James de Lacey48:04

Yeah. And then oh I had another—I had another question on—it completely slipped my mind now. I just had it, I had it on the tip of my tongue. It's there somewhere. Ah, and someone's going to learn, maybe read up a bit on the constraints-led I guess approach to training—are there any resources that people can?

Jon Mackey48:04

Yeah, there's lots. There's very little in combat sport, but I mean it doesn't need to be specific to combat sport to understand the concept. You just need to be creative in terms of your session, your practice design, to ensure that you're using a constraints-led approach.

But there's lots of books out there. The constraints-led approach, CLA—jump on to Twitter, there's lots of great discussions on Twitter with academics and practitioners and coaches. The constraints-led approach is massive within field sports—soccer, football, basketball, Invasion Sports, rugby, and stuff like that.

James de Lacey48:59

Yeah, I used it often in—

Jon Mackey48:59

There you go. So I mean it's a concept, you just need to mold the concept into your practice and making sure that your session design then is shaped in some way that your athletes are getting the best out of that. That you're not being too prescriptive with it.

Sometimes the best thing to do is just design a session, put some constraints in, stand back, and see what these guys are doing. Because they're solving problems in reality, and you can get a lot as a coach so, "Geez, the way that guy sorted that out or fixed that or came to that conclusion." And you see a lot of that in relation to kind of flanking or using angles, stepping off, pivoting.

One of the philosophies of my kind of skills training is always try to get to the back of the opponent, slipping off tight to the flank, being in a position where they can't see you for a split second but you can see them. And you just throw that into the mix and you get a group of athletes to work that out. Make the ring smaller, put two on one, and see what happens. They've got this lovely flow, this lovely style of just moving, just slipping under the elbow, coming under the armpit, finding themselves in very advantageous positions.

And then saying to themselves when you do kind of a reflection period with them afterwards, "That felt really nice, that felt really flowy. I ended up in a position where I was in a much more dominant position against them and I wasn't getting hit. I wasn't side-stepping, I was using acute angles and stuff like that."

So there's lots of resources out there once you go looking, and it doesn't matter if it's in field sports or if it's in sports that are not like ours. Take the concept, understand it, and then try to apply it to your own practice.

James de Lacey50:39

I think something else that's often not used as much as just the idea of play as well. Just letting athletes play and kind of do their thing instead of, this is the drill, you're stuck in that. Whereas just let them explore and do more. Some of the best sessions we have is where we just tell the athletes to be creative, just go and do stuff. Fight-spar if you're not normally, so just do it and see what comes out.

Jon Mackey51:05

Yeah, exactly. Throw those spin kicks that you don't normally throw. You throw them out on the pad but you never throw them in the ring because there's no confidence there behind them. Throw it. To hell with it, see what happens. Be creative, enjoy making mistakes.

And that's not something you hear a lot in combat sport environments. It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to be creative, it's okay to try and find things out for yourself. It's usually very prescriptive, and what you find—you find the coach's kind of theory and philosophy imposed on the fighter.

So if they're working on particular techniques then they refine, they naturally contract to that kind of narrow viewpoint of the coach, where they might have a much broader sense or a much more developed set of tools that they never get to employ because they've been told to follow a prescriptive kind of approach.

So that creative approach for me I think is one of the best ways for athletes to tap into things that they're good at, that they get comfortable with doing. But that can only happen in an environment that allows it to happen. Some of these combat sport environments—yeah, they've got this toxic masculinity going on. It's all about bravado, it's all about not losing, "Train hard, go hard or go home," all this nonsense.

And it's an environment which doesn't allow for creativity, it doesn't allow for mistakes, it doesn't allow for discussion and reflection. I think these are really important concepts within a proper talent development environment for sure.

James de Lacey52:52

I want just to finish this—I want to bring this back to the conditioning and I have one more question to you regarding I guess the building and developing of new mitochondria. So I've talked to a few different coaches on here about mitochondrial biogenesis or just building new mitochondria within that. And I guess for anyone listening we just talk about like the powerhouses of the aerobic energy system.

And I've had coaches talk about low-intensity work to do this, high-intensity work to do this. Is there maybe something you've looked at, used, anything like that that maybe kind of runs down the path of, "Okay, we're creating new mitochondria, this is kind of like almost the protocol to do it." Can you do it both high and low intensity? Is there one better than the other or anything like that?

Jon Mackey53:22

No, there's definitely not one better than the other. They all—and this is one of the myths around training zones. "Training in Zone 3 establishes this type of adaptation, training in Zone 5 is a completely different one." Now, training across the intensity spectrum essentially stimulates aerobic adaptations or mitochondrial biogenesis or an increase in mitochondrial respiration.

The only differences being is that if you're training high intensity, the endurance adaptations are stimulated via a different biochemical pathway through AMPK enzymes, and through low intensity, low to moderate intensity through CAMPK enzymes. So two different pathways, but they essentially meet in the middle. Same master switch is flicked, which is that PGC-1 Alpha protein, which stimulates the aerobic adaptation which is mitochondrial biogenesis—the development of more mitochondria—and an increase in mitochondrial respiration rates and capacity and stuff like that.

The only issue with the high-intensity stuff is that what research tells us is that there's a possibility of too much of that stuff tends to undo some of those adaptations or can certainly peak too early. So yeah, you can stimulate those adaptations using either of those modalities.

The plus of low-intensity training is that one, you don't accumulate tons of autonomic stress while doing that, which allows the athlete to remain fresh, to remain consistent, to remain injury-free. Just to give you a real-world example: one athlete that I was working with recently, after an analysis with him, he joined an athletics club in order to improve his conditioning for combat.

Sport, but the discipline that he got involved in was 400 meter running. These guys are running at the extremes, you know, 400, 800 meter running, so they're running high intensity every training session. And he was deconditioned for that.

So from evaluation, he was starting to see the effects of training too hard too often. And eventually got them around to thinking about training a little bit more at low intensity and just parking the high intensity training for the time being and allowing a system to rest and recover.

And what he found in within six weeks, and what he reported to me in six weeks, was that number one he found that he was sleeping better, he had more energy during the day, he felt fresher during training and felt he was recovering quicker in between rounds. Now that's not because he did six weeks of low intensity training and low intensity training fixed all of that through mitochondrial respiration and biogenesis.

And it was the fact that he wasn't spending so much time at high intensity sessions all of the time. And in fact, all he was doing was actually allowing his body to recover and adapt. And now he was starting to feel the benefits of how he had been training by feeling that he had more energy during the day, he was sleeping better, et cetera, et cetera.

So this is why training intensity distribution is so important, is that you're targeting the same aerobic adaptations, you're targeting the same endurance capacity in order to be able to do high intensity repeated exchanges. But you have to be sensible in how you're doing that, understand that training at low intensities for duration allows you to remain consistent. It doesn't layer on autonomic fatigue and stress, it allows you to stay fresh, and it allows you to train consistently in a buildup to a camp.

The other end then, the other end of the polarized approach, is that you're just tapping into that anaerobic capacity and you're keeping it topped up two or three times a week. And that's it, because that's all it needs, two or three times a week until you're getting closer to your event. Then you've got that kind of bipolar approach where they invert and high intensity training becomes more prevalent.

James de Lacey57:15

Gotcha, that makes sense. And then obviously within the higher intensity when you're bumping up the volume in that domain, you're almost looking to be able to tolerate that build up of lactate there and obviously the hydrogen, everything that comes with it. And then backing off a little bit from the aerobic side so you have more time and energy to spend on the high intensity work.

Jon Mackey57:15

Yeah, absolutely. And more mitochondria developed, more mitochondrial biogenesis means a quicker clearance of lactate. And lactate just happens to be a handy biomarker for hydrogen ion concentration. Lactate is not the issue at all.

Lactate is actually a very functional molecule that does a lot of really funky things in our body. And in fact, is a fuel source that allows us to continue to train at high intensities. It's what comes with that as part of the glycolytic ATP process is that there's free protons hanging around, hydrogen ions accumulate, and they're generally in a ratio one to one with lactate. So if there's lactate in the blood and if it's accumulating, it's a biomarker for an accumulation of hydrogen ions and a drop in pH, which is when we start to get that intramuscular fatigue and acidosis.

The more mitochondria we have, well then the quicker the uptake of lactate into the muscle where lactate is changed back into pyruvate and is oxidated in the mitochondria. So this is where the aerobic system is so important at high intensities. People think that we get to a point within the intensity continuum, aerobic respiration cuts off and anaerobic metabolism takes over. That's not the case at all. If that was to happen, we'd probably only last a couple of seconds once we get past that physiological threshold point, a fatigue threshold.

The reality is is that our ability to be powerful at high intensities is built on our aerobic system, because it's the aerobic system that is replenishing, it's clearing lactate, it's replenishing PCR. It's doing all these funky things that allows us to keep in the zone at high intensity. And without that platform, without that base, our ability to do that will be diminished considerably and we'll gas out really quick.

James de Lacey59:37

Is there a point where there's too much? I know we talk about too much high intensity being really fatiguing and a lot of other things there, but is there a point where that acidosis starts to erode mitochondria, I guess, and then starts to reduce aerobic ability? Where's the...

Jon Mackey59:37

There's not. I was listening to a podcast there not so long ago. It was actually with George Brooks, who was one of the leading professors behind the discovery of the lactate shuttle theory, so moving away from this concept of lactic acid, which doesn't exist at all in our systems, and understanding the lactate shuttle.

And he mentioned reading a paper at one point where a coach was interviewed and suggested that too much lactate in the system might actually be bad for mitochondria, mitochondrial function. I don't think, to the best of my knowledge, that there is any empirical evidence to suggest that. That's not to say that there isn't.

Lactate has so many functions, so many roles in the body. It's produced aerobically, it has an endocrine effect as well, it's a signaling molecule. It shuts off beta oxidation, it transfers energy to the brain and to the heart, it's a preferred fuel source for the brain. It goes to the liver for gluconeogenesis. Lots of really positive aspects to lactate.

And I have yet to come across a paper myself that says, oh lactate's not good. That's not to say that maybe in certain capacities it could have issues. I know there's a lot of research around cancer and lactate metabolism around cancer and tumor cells and stuff like that where lactate seems to be prevalent. But people are still, scientists are still trying to get the grips with what lactate's role is around tumors and stuff like that.

But to answer your question, I'm not confident to say that there's significant evidence to lactate is an issue for mitochondria.

James de Lacey1:01:32

That's good, that's good, that's very good. And I think it was you there posted in the Science Sport Group one time when I posted about lactate pills, I think. So tell me, is one, is that a thing at the moment? Two, do you potentially believe that could be something almost like an endurance, we'll call it a hack, because that's obviously what they're going to call it when I see it.

Jon Mackey1:02:02

Yeah, possibly. There was a drink developed many years ago by Professor George Brooks, and it was a lactate polymer that was injected into this sports drink with the idea that lactate is a fuel source. So if you put lactate into the blood, into the system, that it will keep peripheral lactate from being developed and there'll be an adequate supply of lactate in the blood.

I don't think it took off. I don't think it took off and I'm not sure there's a whole lot of evidence or a lot of research in that area. Who knows, who knows, it could well be something, but I'm not sure, James, to be honest with you. I'm not sure, I'd be skeptical.

James de Lacey1:02:31

Yeah, definitely. That'd be very interesting if they started doing some research on that and that becomes the next big insurance. Can you imagine, Lactate Plus or something?

Jon Mackey1:02:55

Exactly. Perfect.

James de Lacey1:02:55

I think I've asked you pretty much everything on this podcast now, but is there anything you want to add you can? But other than that, is there a way people can follow you, find what you're doing, keep up with?

Jon Mackey1:02:55

Well, if anyone finds me interesting enough, I hang around Instagram every now and again. I've just started a doctorate degree, so I intend on not being there too often, but I'm John Mackey on Instagram. Probably want to jump on and make contact, I'm happy to have discussions around the concept of endurance training with combat sports.

I guess it's important to say that what I've said here in relation to my approach to endurance training in kickboxing, it doesn't mean it's the right way. We're still wondering and still trying to find out what's the right way to apply our conditioning training within combat sports. There's lots and lots of different opinions out there.

And really looking forward to AndrewUser finishing his PhD and making some publications around the work that he's doing. I think that work is going to be seminal and it's going to fill a knowledge gap in relation to what we know about what's happening at a peripheral level, at a cellular level within in combat sport. I know he's boxing and specifically, but there's, I'm sure there'll be a lot that we can take from that into the other striking arts.

So I'm looking forward to that. But my main point is that look at the science behind endurance training and see if you can make some informed decisions around what you're doing with your own athletes and take it from there.

James de Lacey1:04:13

Awesome. Yeah, if anyone's interested, Andrew User was on a few episodes ago. You can listen to that. His research is going to be epic. Also, Gary Turner's research on concussion or traumatic...

Jon Mackey1:04:44

Brain injury, that's going to be, I believe, change the game in that regard as well. I think we can't be ignorant anymore on combat sports.

James de Lacey1:04:44

Yeah man, it's a scary thing. So yeah, there's some awesome stuff coming out. Even last week's episode with Carl Langan Evans, he's got some great stuff coming out in terms of weight. I've had him over, Kickboxing Ireland, doing a webinar on weight management and sort. He's a mind of information and a cool guy too.

Jon Mackey1:05:16

Yeah, he's a beast. So a lot of good research coming out in the combat sports space, especially since it's such a relatively new space in terms of research as well. So yeah, thanks for having me, pleasure, pleasure. I hope it was useful. I hope people got something from this.

James de Lacey1:05:16

Very, thanks for having me on. Hey, even I learned a lot from this, so perfect. Thank you so much. Best.