Expert Advice/Notes From Legendary Coaches You've NEVER Heard Of (SSOF Ep. 157)

James de Lacey0:00

The other thing is within the training app as well, I've actually just started updating the Dominate program. So the Dominate programs are kind of like the hallmark programs for Sweet Science of Fighting that I originally created. So Dominate the Mat, Dominate the Cage, Dominate the Ring, and I've just started updating the conditioning aspects within them. So they're currently on version 3.0 and I guess I'm just going to keep it at 3.0, just kind of, I'm changing some of these sprint intervals to match more of what I'm seeing day-to-day from athletes in terms of what their data looks like.

So I think it should just fit better as a general prescription for most people. So that means you should ideally get a little more out of it in their conditioning. So again, use code HAPPY, save 20% on the annual membership. But today I wanted to take you through, I thought this would be a really cool one. This is like, if you're on video, this is like my little black book. This has gone everywhere with me around the world. And it's got notes from conferences, with chats with coaches, from lectures. It's got random planning things in there from various things I've had to write down.

So like different training cycles and stuff. It's actually, I refer to this actually quite often. And the main one I refer it to with is the GAIN conference in 2017. If you're not familiar, the GAIN conference doesn't, I don't think they do it in the formal manner they do now where it was like, how many days was it?

It was a few days, maybe it was three days or something. And we all, basically a bunch of coaches came in to Rice University in Houston. We all lived on campus for, I'm sure it was the three days, maybe it was more, I don't know, either way it was three, threeish days.

And it was just every day was just presentations, every morning was a practical aspect, and I think in the day two we had a practical aspect, but it was, and then we ate together, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was the best conference I've ever been to in my life. I haven't been to many conferences, but I know nothing will ever, ever, ever, ever beat that.

That's how I got to meet Martin Bingér, and I've obviously done a lot of writing for his Hmmr Media website. He's been on this podcast twice. And then obviously Barron Gamba, who's been, I guess, a mentor to me too around a lot of the strength conditioning stuff.

So from that I've got a bunch of notes from the various things that was shared in there, and I thought I'd just kind of go through some of them. Obviously some of them might not make sense. Some of them don't make sense to me now having looked into them, but there's still some interesting things in there. And some of these coaches aren't even, probably don't even know. But there was some really cool stuff shared in there and a lot of high, high level coaches, which is really, really cool.

I'm going to skip the ones that aren't as applicable to combat sports. Like for example, John Pryor's Bosch concepts. Actually Bosch concepts, okay, let's just cover it anyway. From probably from the podcast, various videos, I'm a fan of the Frans Bosch concept. If you're not familiar with Frans Bosch, I was going to pull the book out of my bookshelf, but it's a bit far away and I have to dig for it. But it's basically taking a coordinative approach to strength and conditioning.

So typically you kind of have like two ends of the spectrum. We've got the hardcore mechanical physiological side where it's all about, we just got to improve force output during whatever exercise it is, make the muscle bigger, faster, stronger, and then that will mean better performance. Then you have the coordinative side, which is like, okay, we actually need to train, I guess how would you do it, we have to overload specific parts of movements that will then allow us to transfer to performance.

I don't think you should be fully on either side. I think the answer always lies somewhere in the middle, and I'm definitely somewhere in the middle with this. And I really like the Bosch concept.

It's really founded on kind of a constraints-led approach. And we've had a few different podcasts in the past on the constraints approach for learning skills. But there's also a constraints-led approach that can be applied to strength and conditioning, which is actually quite cool. And I guess John Pryor was the one who really put this on the map, because him and Eddie Jones, if you don't know rugby, Eddie Jones is one of, I guess, one of the legendary rugby coaches.

At the 2015 World Cup, they took Japan there and they had the best World Cup they've ever had. They beat South Africa on pool play. And they use this approach extensively as part of a way to, as I've got written here, what do they say, turning disadvantage to advantage.

Now Japan are known as a small team. If you compare the size of their players to, you know, South Africa, England and that, they are a small team. So the idea was they were trying to turn disadvantage to advantage and what they called is, quote unquote, ninja body, a.k.a. agility. So essentially just being really good movers. Let me see what else I've got in the notes here. So they would have a learning/installation day on a Monday, and then Tuesday would be like a strength and physical style day.

And the idea was that they would do game replication where they would try and exceed game speed or number of contacts. This is where I talked about in the last solo podcast around worst-case scenario training. This is where kind of a lot of that comes from as well, at least for me, where essentially they would take peak periods of games or peak contact and they'll just exceed that by 30% within training, and they want to try and nail that game speed down.

Let me see what else there is. A lot of hip lock stuff, probably not as applicable to combat sports. Some talk about co-contractions. So co-contractions is often, I guess it's still often talked about within combat sports as, I guess, within general movement, but it's essentially agonist-antagonist coordination. It protects individual structures. So if you think about heavy squatting, you're going to have co-contractions, meaning essentially opposite muscles contracting at the same time around a joint, like around the hip, and that's going to help keep that hip stable.

Now this is not ideal for speed, because for speed you want the antagonist to switch off. That's just something to be aware of. But regardless, the co-contractions around the hip increases stiffness. And then you're going to build these to allow self-organization. And self-organization is another, I'm going to call a fancy term, but it's another concept around this Bosch thing that I really like. And it really covers back to that constraints-led approach where you're trying to have athletes figure out for themselves how to do the move.

Not just how to do the movement. I think that's a little bit of, I don't want to say flawed thinking, but it doesn't quite capture the picture properly, because it's not just about how to do the movement.

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But it's only when it fits contextually is when you can really apply it. And that's where a lot of the self-organization comes, and a lot of these different games that we've talked about on previous podcasts if you want to check those out.

John Mackey, Scott Seight, Josh Peacock, I'm sure there's another one I've missed, but you can check those out. A lot of this is running based. I'll skip the running based stuff because it's probably not as applicable. Yeah. Okay, let me move on to the next one.

So, yeah, that's a really cool little system if you want to really dive a little deeper in there. Then we have Steve Maryland, coaching better every day. This is actually some cool notes in here. Some quick notes.

Create a culture to support your process. Question all assumptions. Quantity does not equal quality. And then a process takes its own time. And this quote I really like. Athlete appropriate before sports specific. And I mean you can take this at face value really for instead of trying to fit exercises, periodization schemes, whatever to the sport, fit everything to the athlete first.

And a really simple and easy example of this would be someone has knee pain, which obviously negatively affects their ability to fight. Say you put them on a leg extension, you do isometrics, and you do just general quad strengthening on the leg extension.

That wouldn't be considered sport specific to MMA grappling, whatever. But it's specific to the athlete because they need that strengthen the quads, whatever, to help with their knee pain, which will then become sport specific because it can help them perform better. So, it's a really simple example.

I really like this one, too. Sport equals supple, strong, not strong and stiff. If you've watched any of my YouTube videos, not on the podcast channel, just on the main Sweet Science of Fighting channel on any of the strength training stuff, I talk a lot about this and this idea that a lot of maximal strength training or quote unquote gym-centric programs where you're lifting a lot or lifting a lot of frequency, a lot of volume and generally intensity that you lose

this ability. And in my experience, in my opinion, a key, one of the key keys to athleticism is the separation of the upper and lower body. So the upper body can do something else while the hips do something else essentially. So I think the whipping action when you're throwing kicks.

A really easy example in other sports is like soccer. Say the goalie is kicking one over and then the midfielders and strikers are looking behind them while they're sprinting forward. That would be an example of an upper lower separation and something that you lose that ability as you if you become really gym-centric just as an example.

So supple strong not strong and stiff. I really like that. Then one from Steve Magnus. If you're not familiar with Steve Magnus he's a college or high school cross, he's a cross country coach. He is I mean I've got his book in here.

Science of Running. Here's some really good stuff on endurance training. And here's some good thoughts on here on volume. So, does what we measure matter? Does it matter because it's all we can measure? So, that's just something to mull over in terms of testing data. Is what you're looking at, does it even matter for the outcome of the sport?

What does volume tell us? Is it training load, the metabolic intensity, frequency, neural stress? So there's a lot of assumptions to take into account with training load because training load is kind of an overarching number. Training load can be done as RPE multiplied by session duration.

It could be, I mean you could even take it as volume load like sets times reps times load. Sort of ways to take in training load but there's what is happening under the hood basically. Volume is not the only way to get aerobic adaptation.

So that's a cool one there because we talked a lot about sprint intervals and higher intensity conditioning on this channel and how you can still push mitochondrial adaptations, per adaptations, even central adaptations with high intensities. Now I know Steve is really big still on a lot of low intensity base work, but his athlete and his sport is based on that.

So, that's completely fine. Let's see. It's not max volume per week, it's how consistent we can be to keep your volume over the years. And what I really like about this is long-term thinking.

Not how much you can do now, but how high can we sustain that training load of volume over years. And that's what is going to bring you the results. So, a lot of times you'll see people go really hard. They quote unquote lock in if you're a TikTok brain rot watcher, which I am not.

You lock in for whatever how many weeks and then they kind of do nothing for a while or they break, but it's the ability to be able to sustain that kind of intensity and volume as you go. And then a really good one to continue off that is what you are used to matters.

And which means that what you've done previously and what you're used to doing as part of your volume intensity is going to dictate how much more you can do in the following weeks. So you're going to build that, you got to build that volume and intensity over time.

So it's not about how much do you need to do to, it's not about doing more volume to get the adaptation. It's about what do I need to do to get the adaptation. And it should be a thought process you're thinking about within your own training where you want to create training sessions and programs with the adaptation in mind, not just to do work.

And that's something that you probably need a little bit of understanding of what's happening in terms of physiology, biology, et cetera. But even then, I think even just a basic understanding will get you there. Am I trying to get stronger? Am I trying to get faster?

Am I trying to get more powerful? Et cetera that will at least give you some guidance. And I really love this one because it's one that I've, it's probably been part of my philosophy for a very long time is don't go there until you need to go there.

Another way to put it is don't play your ace card too early. Another way is you're just trying to move the needle with the lowest or minimum effective dose. Minimum effective dose would be the trendy word for it now. But you're just trying to do that little bit to move the needle to continue making progress.

So most of the time people can get away with just doing low intensity submaximal plyometric and jump training, circuit based work. You don't need to go straight to drop and depth jumps. Save that for when you actually need it. There was a, who's the coach, is it Hackinan old?

I can't remember now. But basically the idea is that you kind of blunt the knife where you use this intensity. You get mad gains from it, but when you go back, say you come back down, you work your way back up and you go to it again, that stimulus isn't as novel anymore.

You kind of blunted that knife for the next time you go to use it. So that's just something to think about. Here's some ideas for improving aerobic abilities without increasing volume. So there's pre-fatigue, so shorter run the day before, start the next day not fully recovered.

So that would be I'm assuming kind of reducing muscle glycogen and then starting the next day slightly depleted. So that's just, I mean that's probably more for endurance athletes. You probably don't want to do that as a combat athlete. So just bear that in mind.

Do your strength power work first then into an easy run. Again, that's just more pre-fatigue. End cool downs with quote unquote stuff. This is forcing aerobic work when fatigued, for example an 800 meter cruise. This is a running example for you guys.

It could be shadow boxing, shadow wrestling et cetera at the end of session. So forcing work when fatigued that could be another thing you can do. Obviously you can do your sprints in those sessions but if you wanted to do something lower intensity you could do 10 to 20 minutes or less or even 5 minutes, 5, 10 minutes of shadow boxing, shadow wrestling, whatever it is.

That's just some examples there. Miles per week does not equal performance. Oh, there are going to be some boxers that really don't like that statement because boxing loves to rack the miles of road work. I mean, we've covered this a lot on the channel as well.

Anyway, it's not just about the volume, it's not just about low intensity. There are other things that you need to touch. Is that measurement telling you what you think it is? Kind of refers to the first part we talked about.

Is there a different way to get that adaptation? That's a really cool one as well. Is there another way for you to improve, say, your aerobic ability and conditioning? Is road work the only way to do that? Is road work the panacea for central function? I mean, it's good for that, but there are potentially other ways you can do that.

All right, let's see what else I got here. Joe P. No, there's nothing on that one, but a chat with Martin that I had at the conference. Martin Binger, I referred to at the beginning. Cognitive work before a speed day reduces performance. I don't know what we're talking about there. Maybe it was cognitive work before speed day. I think we're talking about, like, so for example, a lot of team sports they'll do like a video session.

I mean, it could be similar in combat. They'll do a video session before they go on the field. So, lights off, video playing. [expletive], that always used to make me sleepy. I hated that. They'll do that and then they'll go on the field and do their skills.

Now, potentially doing something like that, like if you're watching a lot of video before you have maybe like a more speed power-based day, may not be the best place to put it. You may be better off, say, for example, on a Monday on that learning, quote unquote, installation day where maybe you're doing a lot of technical stuff. That would be the place to put it. And then, say, on Tuesday when you've got that high intensity day, you wouldn't have that on there. Oh, then the next note is the learning installation day mitigates that. There we go. That's what I just said.

Designing games to force certain outputs. For example, number of accelerations of 5 minutes or contacts. So that's just back to our constraints-based approach, back to the John Prior thing. So same thing within combat sports. I think Shan Mishka on the podcast, we talked through some different games for MMA that do exactly this.

So if you want to force more action in sports, you might probably have a smaller area to play in. If you want more evasion and distance cover, you might have larger area, things like that.

This is a good one. Tactical periodization. If you're not familiar, it comes from soccer. And it's this idea that you can get, I guess to sum it up in a very non-scientific way, you get all of your strength and, okay, get all of your conditioning and game preparation from just training soccer itself.

So you're designing games and drills to essentially hit the different things you need. But he just put it as it's just all staff communicating and working together, which I really like. And that fits the high-low model. Let's see what else we got.

Mike Joiner, I believe he's part of the Mayo Clinic. Again, is what we measure meaningful? Is it actionable or trainable or durable? This is a really cool one because you see people do testing and they do testing, they get numbers, cool, and then they just do whatever else for the next time and then maybe they'll test again later.

But the data you take has to be actionable. It has to come back. It has to influence your program somehow because if it doesn't, it's kind of just a waste of time. You're just testing for testing. I think he talked about relaxation drills here which we talked a lot about on the channel too.

Mile repeats at 5K pace with 3 to 4 minutes rest equals the fastest way to improve VO2 max. There you go for you VO2 max people out there. What do we got? Oh, Bill Knowles. If you're not familiar with Bill Knowles, he might be considered maybe one of the best rehab specialists in the world.

I mean, teams from Australia like the AFL, NRL, I think even Super Rugby, All Blacks, they send their players to him in the States to get through the rehab fast. And I think specifically with ACL injuries, that's what I remember, that's what he talked about there.

So this is a really cool one. He had a really cool story. Did I write that? Did I write the story down here? No. Where I think he had a skier that did her ACL and he had her back skiing or, it was some ridiculous, like, think about an ACL surgery. I typically give them 9 months for full recovery. Pro athletes will get back maybe within like 6 months. He had her on skis, like, as part of a rehab, I think within 6 weeks. It must have been less, I'm pretty sure. And it's just part of his process.

I'll see if I've got some notes in here about it. Words create images and images create actions. And he talks about pulling the athlete out of injury. So I think a lot of it is like the psychology of, often when you're injured, you can think about I'm doing rehab or I'm trying to, I don't know, return to sport, whereas this is about preparing the athlete to return to team training and address the injury at the same time. That's a really good one. That's just a way to put it.

To restore physical literacy equals movements, not exercises. The brain is plastic, meaning it can mold and fit, or and learn new things, I guess you could say. Biologically healed does not mean athletically prepared. That's a really good one. I mean, that's just typically if you're going through like the normal health system, they're going to say you're ready because you're healed, but you're not actually ready for the rigors of sport.

Movement is medicine. Need to start asking why on conservative protocols. That's what I mentioned about the skiing with the ACL stuff. Crazy [expletive]. Train versus treat. I really like that. Create an image of what, where, and how with rehab for doctors and physios. Restore acceleration, deceleration, sprint, not jogging. Yeah, I remember. I think I remember that where he doesn't jog them and has them try to get to speed as quickly as possible.

Focus less on what could go wrong and more of what could go right. That's a really good one around injuries as well is if you are injured, it's not about what I can't do, it's what I can do. If you reframe it like that, it's not going to stop your training. Yeah, that's that one.

Vern Gambetta's talent ID. Talent equals potential doesn't equal achievement. Are you athletically intelligent? So situations to increase athletic IQ, which is another feather in the cap for like a constraints-based approach to learning the sport. Are you able to figure out XYZ situations that are put in front of you?

Physical literacy is the base before foundation. So again, being able to just move well and do a lot of different movements. That's why I think programs who, or people who are starting strength training, like Starting Strength 5x5, aren't good programs for athletes. You need to have a wide range of program, a wide range of exercises and movements because you need to learn to move in a lot of different ways.

Strengthen the foundation to handle additional stress. So we talked about that as well around just generally being stronger is going to help you tolerate higher workloads. Training accumulates, build upon. I love that one. It's not about doing the perfect training cycle and the perfect training week or the perfect training session. It's just about consistently getting your training done and that accumulates over time and that is what's going to give you the adaptations and, I guess, the better performance as you go.

Oh, dulling the knife. We talked about this before, but dulling the knife, for example, fast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is a good one. This is on his hate for cool downs. I also hate cool downs and I've implemented a lot of what he's done.

So, for example, you might finish a session and it's been like, I don't know, maybe it's been a hard, a good speed power session, a speed workout in the gym or whatever, and then you finish the session with some kind of jogging or static stretching. And this is the idea of dulling the knife. And he often talks about the body remembers the last thing that is done. So instead of just jogging or static stretching or doing some [expletive], work on like hurdle mobility or addressing other needs that's going to prepare you for the next session.

Another option is you can actually finish with speed. Joel Smith in his book Speed Strength actually looked at this. I started actually implementing that with our Sevens guys many years ago just with finishing the session with some kind of speed because it's kind of the last thing there. Almost like primes, I don't know, some theoretical [expletive], but still it's an interesting concept.

So you might want to finish a, I don't know, a technical session with someone with speed, whether it's like speed striking with speed against bags or pads. It might be for grapplers, it might just be like with a dummy, some kind of like suplexes with speed. I don't know, you get what I mean there. And what else we got?

Yeah, high proprioception equals bulletproof. Increased ability to handle and recover from workload. Minimize use of external means of recovery during foundation. Oh yeah, I've talked a lot about on my Instagram periodizing recovery, external recovery, and that's just like if you are in, if you're not deep into, say, a fight camp where you have a match coming up, you don't need to start hopping into ice baths, saunas, come what, [expletive], pneumatic, what are they, boots or whatever they are.

You don't need to deal with that because you don't want to artificially clear the stress response for you to adapt. When you get closer and you got a lot of sparring going on and you really need to be fresh for these technical trainings and be as fresh as possible throughout the weeks, then 100% just throw the kitchen sink. But until then, don't.

And again, same thing with dulling the knife, right? If you're using ice baths every single week, multiple times a week throughout the entire year, at some point its effectiveness isn't going to be as effective as when you say bring it in four weeks out kind of thing.

Foundation work threaded throughout the year. I really like that. So just because you've moved on from a progression doesn't mean you can't have it in the program or you can't revisit it. Never take time off. Go play or do something instead. That should be for everyone listening. Always be active.

Coaching is teaching. Don't replicate the game, distort it. This has been one of my training philosophies for a long time. And it comes back to that John Prior one I said initially where they're trying to distort gameplay by 30% during their peak periods.

And it also comes back to this constraints approach, the Sean Miszka podcast, where you're trying to design scenarios where you're going to increase activity level or challenge them in some way that's going to be different to just say open sparring or live rolling. You're typically going to find yourself in similar positions.

If you're going against familiar training partners, you're definitely going to find yourself in the same positions every time because you kind of know each other's game. You need to find ways where you can distort training to be able to push the pace, be put in scenarios that you have to try and learn and figure out and self-organize yourself, but also to get a feeling of, you know, I can push this pace and I can understand what's happening and I can execute at this speed, which is a big one, especially when you look at elite sport where the differentiator in elite sport.

Yes, players are kind of bigger, faster, stronger, but what that leads to is the game is faster. And that's the one thing that kind of separates all the different leagues and all the different sports.

The very top level of rugby, you've got this stupidly fast game. And as you come through, the game goes slower and slower and slower. To be able to be at that level, you need to be able to process information quickly. And the only way you can do that is by training it.

What else have we got going on here? This is from Bondarchuk. So if you listen to Martin Bingisser on the podcast, we talked a lot about this too. So we got complex periodization. Doing the same thing until peak then change exercises.

So for example, I do the same 10 exercises. So it works well in sports like hammer throw because you can measure what you can measure the outcomes of programs or you can measure the impact of what you're training is happening because you're throwing all the time. You can measure that. So what they would do is they would do the same program until the hammer stopped throwing further and then they'll change it.

And they would train and they would basically do it every day, I think, or close to every day. They would definitely squat close to every day. Wouldn't be obviously maxing, a lot of volume, but they would do something every day and they would actually do, I don't know if I put it in here, but they would cover the pyramid.

So if you remember the pyramid of competition exercises at the top, which would be hammer throw, your special development exercises, your special preparation exercises, or did I get that wrong way around, whichever way, and then general preparation exercises, and they would actually through the entire pyramid, they would cover the entire pyramid every training session.

So it means you'll always be doing your general stuff in the session. You'll be doing a specific stuff and you doing competition exercises. Obviously it's harder to put into a chaotic sport like MMA, jiu-jitsu and stuff because you have so many different things in there and the competition exercises in just one movement.

But just to get the general idea, the magic is not in the plan, but the training process, the planning process, system process is plan. What else I got? Define performance parameters for the sport position and the athlete and then define what will transfer.

And then this is the question you need to ask yourself. How can I overload? How can I distort the game? This is why [expletive] like functional patterns and secret athleticism and all these, they talk about fascia this fascia that, whatever.

But they miss this idea of if you want transfer and you want to improve, there has to be some kind of overload. And overload comes in different forms. You can have a coordinative overload. You can have some kind, you can have like a speed coordinate overload. Usually it's like a time constraint overload and then a force overload, and you're trying to create some kind of overload to get the adaptation. And then it's also how you can distort the game and we talked about that just before.

All training causes physiological adaptations, hence tactical prioritization. Plan for transfer but also balance. I probably need to go back and think of context for that one. Cumulative volume at low percentages equals gain. So this is what they would do. They would squat, as I mentioned before. So they'll squat six times a week, five sets at 65 to 70% 1RM twice a day, which is 150 reps a week.

And that's how they would gain essentially their strength for hammer throw. Really interesting approach. And that's kind of what I mean by they touch on that whole pyramid throughout because squatting would be their GPP exercise. They're doing that six times a week, twice a day, five sets 65 to 70%. I should try that. I have to give that a go.

Limit variables in training. Fewer exercises, more constant stimulus, don't overreact. And by don't overreact, that means just because you might start to plateau, you might start to some kind of numbers or something might drop and the idea is don't overreact to this, just continue on, see what happens from there.

I have a question on here. When is Dave Miller Garjian getting you on his podcast? I don't know. He probably doesn't even know who I am. Comment on the stuff if you want me on there.

Change is the driver of adaptation. Change when you're on top of adaptive response. And this is the idea of their system where the hammer throws going up and then before it starts to come down, that's when they're switching again. Long-term change more so than short-term. Keep your knives sharp. So many knife references in this.

Use knife for a year and it goes blunt, then leave it to get sharpened. So the best exercise now won't stay the best exercise. This needs to be ingrained in everyone's head because we can talk about exercise, this exercise that, you can talk about old training routines.

This is one I was thinking about the other day. Actually, I guarantee you all of you probably have a training program, training cycle, or exercise that back in the day you did and you're like, I got the maddest gains from that one training cycle, exercise, whatever. I should do that again. And it's 5, 10 years later. And you go do that thing again, you get injured or it just doesn't quite work as well. And things change over time. The training you did back then fit well.

Probably because you were younger, you weren't doing much else. You're able to recover from it. It was a new and novel stimulus. It's what you needed at that time, but now may not be what you need. So it's just something to really think about, like just because it's something that gave you really good gains before, it might not be the one that gets you the gains now.

That I really like that. So again, use the knife for a year and it goes blunt, then leave it to get sharpened. So again, you might use a certain stimulus or certain exercise or training cycle for a while, then you're going to leave it on the back burner, then you might come back to it.

And we're not talking 5 10 years later. You could and it might give you some gains initially, but again, things might change in those years. And I think some of this is more coaching based stuff, so it might not be as applicable.

Oh, here we go. Jimmy Radcliffe. Jerry Radcliffe is a goat. He was with the Oregon Ducks when they were the most dominant. I don't know about college football. Someone are going to call me on it, but I think they were the most dominant college football team at the time. So yeah, he is one of the most well-respected best strength conditioners in the states.

Now he has some really cool stuff on here. So talks about tolerance for the uncomfortable. And I talked about this, talked about comfortable being uncomfortable when I was dissing all the dumb tech bro CEOs trying to optimize everything.

Issues make me stronger. Rhythm. Find your rhythm. Rhythm is a negotiation. I love to talk about rhythm and it's kind of impacted my philosophy a lot, hearing from Jimmy and from Vern as well around rhythm, and it's something that's overlooked I think within training and even within plyometric training because there's a rhythm involved in plyometric training and the stretch shortening cycle, and we talk about rhythm as a negotiation with the ground, et cetera, like when you're hitting the ground when sprinting, there's

A rhythm to the way that you hit the ground and bounce off, and that rhythm has underpinnings under it, not just within coordination, because you have to be able to pretense before hitting the ground, hit the ground nice and stiff and kind of bounce off and then relax again. So there's this interplay between relaxation, activation and different timing.

But within this, hang, I lost my train of thought there. I'll go to the next thing. We'll come back. When in rhythm, can adjust back to rhythm when negotiating other things, and he gives the analogy. I don't know if it makes sense here, but no salt in the salt shaker. And he also gives analogy of speed bumps. I guess these would be when negotiating other things, and this is the idea of, kind of comes back to this Franz Bosch options position constraints-led idea around sports and training, more skill-based, speed-based.

And it's this ability, it kind of honestly, it kind of actually comes back really well to how would you say it, somewhat to kind of this upper level separation as well. I think it fits well into. But it's the idea of being able to, say, impose. Okay, let's put it in a sprinting or team sport context, which is really easy. If I'm sprinting after a ball and I get bumped, like someone's trying to compete with me, but I'm able to stumble and then get back into my rhythm of sprinting, I want to be faster than that person. I'm going to get to the ball first.

Within combat sports, it might be things like pushing, settling into your rhythm in a fight, but then maybe something comes at you, some kind of scramble. Maybe they are disrupting your rhythm with a lot of feints, and it's being able to, or maybe you get swept or something like that, being able to find your rhythm again after these things happen.

And this just comes down to, it's not just physical training that does this. It's the technical, tactical, and being able to push like that. And you're probably thinking, like, strength conditioning, what does this have to do with technical, tactical? Everything kind of comes together.

And I even have my notes from when I first was coming into the Romanian national team. And one of my notes was gym seen as gym, field seen as field. Everything we do should link. As something I really tried to instill in the previous team I was with, where the things that we would do in the gym, not obviously not everything is going to fully transfer or translate, but things you would do in the gym, I want to have that same language and have the image for the athlete in the head that what we're doing here is for this reason on the field.

Now, obviously, like you're squatting big weights, okay, like whatever. But for example, we might do, like, I don't know what you call them, like step-downs. So like if you're on a plate and you're kind of switching your legs really fast, it will be more like a special strength exercise for sprinting. It's the idea. It's like, hey, we're trying to really get on and off the ground quick.

We're trying to get stiff on the ground, just like you're sprinting. It's trying to just get the idea of switching the legs fast, because that switch is what is going to get you that speed. And so we're just kind of drilling that in the gym on top of what we're doing on the field. So you kind of get this into play.

If they fail, wait, if they fall, they learn not to fall the same way again. Again, back to constraints approach. Oh, looks like little Odin woke up back there. He's sleeping in my office while I do this. If they fall, they learn not to fall the same way again. This is back to our constraints approach where you're trying to design exercise and drills where they have a, they typically say like a 30% chance of failure.

However you measure that, I don't know. But regardless, you want to set up tasks that are relatively hard and will make it difficult for them to navigate. And if they do fall, they're going to find a way to self-organize and not do that again.

Let me grab him so he doesn't cry. Hopefully. Okay. Let's see. Don't be a helicopter coach. That's a really good one. I think that's really prevalent in the United States for some reason. Over-coaching, which is kind of like being on the athlete's back for everything, really giving them instruction and coaching them on every minute thing so they can't figure it out for themselves.

Recovering from or for, which is another one I really like. You're not doing something to recover from a workout. You're doing whatever it is as extra recovery for the next workout. And then that will give you a better idea of what you're trying to achieve. Help athletes figure out their own rhythm. I like that.

And then I think to finish this podcast off, Vern and Jimmy Radcliffe. The perfect workout. Don't force more into the same time. This is one I think we all struggle with as athletes and coaches. You want to try and cover everything, but there's only so much time to do it and only so much energy to do it.

A couple of ways you can get around this. The next note is what are you going to eliminate to change. So that is one of the ways to not force more at the same time. What are you going to take out? The other way is to change from, say, a seven-day microcycle to a 10- and 14-day microcycle. So you're not trying to force everything to seven days. If you go back and listen to Vern Gambetta on the podcast, we actually talked extensively about this.

Train the way you practice. So they're really big on bringing speed into practice because a lot of times practice is kind of like going through the motions. It's slow. It's a slog. Whereas if you're trying to fight fast, fight with intensity, your training should reflect that. It means that you might have shorter rounds in training. It might mean, not obviously not all the time, but generally might mean you try and do everything with a lot of quality versus doing long, long sessions.

Systematically rather than symptomatically. And this is just the idea, I think. Based on, that's all I have on the note, is the idea is that you're not changing or writing training programs based on what is coming at you and being reactive. You're being more proactive in what you're trying to achieve with your training.

Skills, not drills. Again, it comes back to this idea of games-based training and learning skills, not just drilling things over and over and over. This one's really cool because I think it kind of shits on the idea of, there's been a lot of talk you see on socials around everything is GPP, everything you do outside the gym is GPP, which in my opinion is completely false. A really good example is, sorry, everything you do outside the sport is GPP, which is completely false.

March drills. So if you know like the A skip, B skip, C skip, skip in sprinting, they're often used as, well, they're often seen as like technical sprinting drills, but they're not technical sprinting drills. They're actually special or specific strength drills for running, because you're getting the ankle stiffness, you're getting the rhythm along with that, and you're getting that switching of the legs. So that would be like a special strength exercise. It's not GPP.

Some questions to ask yourself, maybe before the sessions you do. The objective of this session is. So what is the outcome of the session you're trying to have, whether that's in your technical, tactical, or in your gym-based work or your conditioning-based work.

We are going to win the workout by. This is kind of a good mantra to maybe have. If you, I know there's a couple of guys that actually run their own MMA gyms and stuff like that, listen to this. What is the, I guess, what is the word that you're going to give your athletes, or maybe if it's just yourself, that is the sole focus for that workout?

Like we're going to win the workout by. Is it some kind of quality? Some kind of intensity? Is it some kind of, man, I can't even think of a word right now, but I think you get what I mean.

And the last one is cool-down equals a reset. And I talked about the idea of dulling the knife before, from the previous one. End of the session, do something that's going to prepare you for the next session. Do something that you maybe need to work on. Don't just sit there and static stretch or run laps around the mat or something like that. It's pointless work.

A really interesting one, I think I talked to Vern about, is this idea of doing opposite-side stuff. So for example, if you're an orthodox boxer, as part of your cool-down and reset, maybe you shadow box southpaw. More cognitive load as well, having to think like different movements. So that's something you're going to get a little bit of your conditioning done if you're doing 5, 10 minutes of that on top of it.

So there's a lot of benefits of doing something like that directly after training versus just [expletive] around static stretching. If you implement something like that, let me know, because it's an interesting way of looking at kind of this cool-down [expletive].

And then the rest again is kind of coaching-based, I think.

But yeah, actually if you want to actually really go deeper on some of this idea of distorting game stuff, the Gamecast, I actually wrote notes here from that podcast. The Gamecast that's with Vern and Martin number 81 is probably seven years old now, but number 81 of the Gamecast will go deep into this.

It's don't try replicate the game, distort it. Perfect practice does not equal perfect performance. That's always since listening to them on that, that's kind of been my mantra on this because often as coaches, you want to see athletes do whatever you set out perfectly every time.

And you don't want that. You want them to fail at the thing. Okay, you don't want them to fail every time they're doing something. You want them to have some element where there is a chance of failure and you want them to be able to do that so they can self-organize and learn.

And that's why perfect practice is not perfect. The perfectly perfect pad drills, perfect drills, hitting the noodle, perfect passing the guard, side control, America, whatever it is, doesn't mean [expletive] when it comes to actual performance. And that's why perfect practice does not equal perfect performance.

And then in quotes, I have perfect effort is a better way to look at it. Interweaving is a really good one around practice. I guess the scientific pedagogy term is random distribution or block, I don't know, one of those block or random distribution. Spend five minutes or something, do something else, then come back. And if you do this within your skill stuff, you'll find that you kind of pick things up a little better versus say you're trying to I don't know, learn some technique in some game and you're just not getting it.

Instead of trying to do it for 30 minutes and failing, you just go learn something else, do something else, then come back to that. And it kind of gives it time to kind of wire in your brain. If I'm using really non-scientific, I'm probably just capping while I'm talking there, but you get what I'm saying.

Yeah, and that kind of covers my notes mainly from that conference. So hopefully that was insightful for a lot of you. Hopefully it's not too geared towards coaches and you athletes got something out of it, too.

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