The Perfect MMA Training Schedule & Using Wearable Resistance For Conditioning w/ Brandon Morgan (SSOF Ep 207)

Brandon Morgan1:05

So an isometric into a plyometric, there's really no wrong or right way to do this. I think the volume could be the wrong way, right? So maybe limit it to three sets tops, really two sets of an exercise is fine, and just pick one lower body quad dominant, one lower body hip dominant, one upper body pushing dominant, one upper body pulling dominant, maybe a rotational exercise. So I think pairing an isometric with a plyometric and doing that as your lift for that week is fine, more than enough, gives them a nice stimulus, keeps their nervous system ready to go.

A lot of guys move slow all fight week, right? We know that cuz they're cutting weight, they're doing jogging, all this slow, long, boring stuff. And what is that doing to the nervous system? Then all of a sudden on fight night we want them to move fast, but we trained them for a full week to move slow as possible. So we're confused why they're starting slow when they're not primed. It's cuz we're actually training the nervous system indirectly, whether they know it or not, to move slow.

So I think it's very important to get that priming session in. I just don't want to negatively impact their performance on fight night. If it's too close, I think it'll have a negative impact in my opinion. And I don't want to risk an issue with an injury due to dehydration, right? And loading the tendons when they're dehydrated is not a really good recipe.

James de Lacey4:00

Nice. Actually, I do want to go first. I don't know too much about your background, Brandon. So, why don't you give it to me cuz I'm sure the listeners are probably in the same boat. Sure, give me the whole spiel.

Brandon Morgan4:12

From New York, Long Island, New York. I was a martial artist my whole life. I originally studied Japanese jujitsu, which is an uncommon martial art. It's a combination, it is a mixed martial art. It's just not a mixed martial art that would be effective for combat sports. It's a combination of karate, aikido, and judo. However, there are some good karate techniques used in MMA and there's good judo techniques used in MMA. Aikido not so much. Maybe some concepts of joining with the energy conceptually is true, but not the real techniques if we're going to be honest.

Then later on, I got into, actually, I started that from when I was very little, right? So, from 3 years old on. And then I was overweight around middle school and that's when I started to discover something called, just came out, it's called P90X with a guy named Tony Horton. So, I'm sure we all did the videos.

And if you look back, there's actually some quality stuff in there. They're talking about periodization. You know what I'm saying? It was interesting if you look back, wow, they were talking about periodization and how to organize and deload weeks and stuff. Where is something that's very common to discuss now, especially with the sports scientists.

A common way and using that as a method of improving adaptations and reducing risk of injury, but at that time it wasn't that common. At least I wasn't aware of it, especially when I was only 12 years old. So, I got overweight, I did P90X to get in shape and I noticed my martial arts performance is getting better. And because I was performing better in martial arts training, it made me excited to go training and maybe become obsessed with being a martial artist.

So, I continued Japanese jujitsu. I actually competed in a lot of tournaments, won a couple of titles, championships and sport karate stuff cuz Japanese jujitsu, you can do demos in it, but it's really like it's almost like a Krav Maga self-defense type thing. But I did sport karate tournaments. And then later on in college I went to Cortland, which is a school in upstate New York. It's, Aljamain Sterling actually went there. It's a good wrestling school, wrestling kind of college or even a college for physical education, very common as a degree to get there.

Exercise science program was decent I guess. It produced me, so it's not terrible. I went there and got my personal training certification there, so I started training my friends. Got exposed to more Thai kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu there. I started training in that. So as time passes I'm training people there in college, and then after I graduate I start looking for MMA gyms to pursue strength and conditioning, right?

Cuz in college I initially thought maybe I'll go for a physical therapy thing, but then I saw the realities of working physical therapy. Physical therapy sounds cool, but the realities of doing it was not something I wanted to do personally. But I know some people do like it, so, it's more so I just didn't want to spend my life doing that. So then I decided to go into strength and conditioning. I got the CSCS. Everyone starts with that at least, at least you should, I think.

After I got the CSCS, I applied mainly to MMA gyms. No one got back to me. I started, then I went and then one guy did get back to me, Dr. Tony Ricci. He was the strength and conditioning coach at Longo and Weidman Mixed Martial Arts. Very well-respected in the industry, very knowledgeable. He's currently a college professor at Nova Southeastern University. He's extremely high-level and really took me under his wing and kind of guided me through the whole process and introduced me to people and introduced me to training fighters and the differences and we would have fun discussions about physiology, biology and we really clicked.

So, I was under him for at least a year and a half then COVID happened in between COVID and everything. So, and then eventually he left. So, once he left I started taking over there at Serra Longo. So, working with most of the fighters there. And then now fast forward now, now I kind of have just, not separated but I have my own facility in East Meadow in the Long Island, New York, Nassau County.

And now I'm open to all fighters. I'm not stuck to one gym. I can work with boxers, wrestlers, jiu-jitsu guys, fighters from different MMA gyms, wherever they are. So, I'm not stuck in only have to work with Longo's guys. But now I have Longo's guys can come, there's Long Island MMA guys allowed them to come, there's Ray Longo flares, the hit coach are there. So, I allow any local New Yorker guys to train with me as a strength conditioning coach, sports nutritionist, and athletic performance specialist. So, that's where I'm at now.

James de Lacey8:40

That's pretty sweet. So, are you able to collaborate much with the sport coaches in those other gyms since you kind of already have something?

Brandon Morgan8:45

A lot with when I was in the gym. Because it's very easy to see the training load and the training volume that the athletes were experiencing if you could observe the sparring session cuz a lot of athletes would say, "Oh, I sparred today." But you don't know the intensity of that sparring session. So, I'd actually get to see with my own eyes. I'd see how the wrestling session was on Monday nights at 6:00. I was there Monday nights at 6:00. I saw it. So, Tuesday night I did a boxing, Tuesday night at I think 5:30 or whatever Ray Longo's boxing class. So, I'd see that.

So, when I was in the gym, I was really aware of training volumes. I would auto regulate pretty well. I mean, I had a really good understanding of what was going on in the gym and how the athlete was doing cuz I got to observe the actual skills training. So, I think that's important actually if you can do that. But you don't have to. Most 98% of strength coaches don't and they're still successful. So, but I thought that was helpful for me personally at that moment in time. Especially when I was still learning the sport, learning how to work with an athlete.

James de Lacey9:45

Has that changed much? Obviously now, since you're not in the gym, does that change? Is it still able to work some of that auto-regulation in? Is it mainly just feedback from—

Brandon Morgan9:53

I do. I talk to them. I've been in that gym for so long that you kind of know the deal. Like I know how it works. I know how they do the Monday night wrestling, they do Tuesday night boxing. They want to do a puke drill, which is just basically three five-minute rounds with a minute rest of Thai pads into wrestling.

So that's a conditioning drill they do, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, constant. It's almost like a red line circuit or a red zone, pushing that past anaerobic threshold, definitely past LT2, whatever you want to call it. But it's keeping it right there for three five-minute rounds with a minute rest, so it's representative of the time constraints of a professional mixed martial arts fight.

Changing from grappling to striking, going from isometrics to explosive alactic plyometric activity, going from standing to ground, that's changing the blood pressure, right? So that's going to mess up your conditioning as well. So it's just I think it's a pretty good drill that's representative of the fight.

And then Saturdays they have sparring. But that's like for the most part how they organize. And then they have people who do their own jiu-jitsu and all this pad work and stuff that I don't even count that really. Like those are the main sessions. Those are good sessions, but that's not the main sessions. That's not causing a lot of stress, right? So because it's not causing a lot of stress, it's not a big concern to me. It's good to put in on your lighter days. And we know jiu-jitsu pad work can be a good lighter day session.

James de Lacey11:09

How do you then organize the week with strength and conditioning based on that schedule?

Brandon Morgan11:13

I just stack stimuli. So if we're going to do a wrestling day on a Monday, this is—okay, now I'm assuming I'm working with a Longo guy. Now Long MMA has their own style of doing it. And then also other gyms, now there's a couple different gyms around here. So some guys reach out to me, some jiu-jitsu guys. So now I have to understand their schedule. But I'm just going to use Longo's as an example because I was there for a while, so I really know the schedule pretty well.

I would stack Monday wrestling with strength and conditioning. Because those are both strength-focused things that are pretty demanding on the body. So I'm stacking the stimuli and I'm now eliminating the issue of making every day a hard day. So if I do one hard day, then I don't have to make every day a hard day. Because if you do hard-light, hard-light, hard-light, as in a morning and night session, if you look at it, every day is now hard, so you're actually never recovering.

So I like to stack the stimuli on one hard session. So I stack the strength and conditioning—usually lifting-focused strength and conditioning session, not so much a lactic or speed power session, right? More of a grinding strength through strength training—with the wrestling training. And I use the wrestling training as a conditioning.

On that day, I'm not going to kill them with the conditioning on the end. What's the purpose? All I'm doing, to me, is adding excess fatigue, which could possibly negatively impact their skills training later that day because you're doing a hard wrestling shark tank rounds against the cage. So that would not be beneficial, right?

So they're going to get the conditioning from the wrestling training. If I did add it in, I think it would actually just make the wrestling training worse, not better. So therefore, I don't overdo the conditioning on that day in particular. So I like to stack a strength day, let them recover like 5 hours, and then go to wrestling for conditioning later.

So it's stacked on the same day, but separate in timing. Like strength and conditioning in the morning, wrestling's going to be at 6:00 p.m. I can't control that time, so it's always 6:00. So I do mine first in the morning because it's just more pragmatic.

How does the rest of the week look then? Tuesday night there was boxing with Longo's boxing class. I like the concept, too. I agree with it. Like not that I have any say, by the way. People should just go and understand that they don't have much of a say. But I agreed with it there anyway. I liked it because it was speed, agility, reaction time, coordination, timing, relaxation.

So they're like, "Oh, it's not boxing." It's still good. It just teaches—it's like almost the constraint-led approach. We're isolating. We're giving you constraints. Now you have to adapt and figure out the environment and how to get better in that isolated skill. Now when you go back and edit back into the whole picture, you should be better in that situation. So I do like that boxing training. I think it was a good idea on his part. He's been doing that forever. So it's probably nothing to do with that.

Boxing then maybe—I've stacked that with a bad conditioning day or so maybe repeated sled sprints because that's more of a over-lactic day. Yes, that could be a hard conditioning day, but even when the boxing is done, it's explore-explore-explore-rest, head movement, footwork, fake, angles, explore-explore-explore-rest, head work, head movement, footwork, fake, slips, rolls, cover, angles, fake, go, blah blah blah. So you're intermittently going, which is similar to an alactic-aerobic-alactic. I know the aerobic system's always going to be happening no matter what. So aerobic-alactic type training.

So I'd probably stack the similar stimuli on that day with repeated sled sprints. Sleds are very good. They're very minimal eccentric load, so they don't cause soreness. Or repeated uphill sprints in concept, because the uphill is going to decrease dampening the effect of the ground forces causing excessive eccentric load. Eccentric load over time excessively at a high volume is going to cause unnecessary soreness that we don't want, which would negatively impact the skill sessions.

Maybe heavy bag conditioning. I like running heavy bag conditioning. I use the trackers, the Fight Camp sensors. So it tracks speed, almost like a VBT concept, velocity-based training, per punch count. This gives them objective feedback to know how they're doing that day. So some sort of striking-focused thing, or at least energy-system-wise the same concept.

Wednesday usually would be—depends on the athlete, because there's some guys who go to jiu-jitsu. I'd recommend to guys who go to jiu-jitsu that day personally. Like a jiu-jitsu pad day would be nice because Monday is pretty hard. Tuesday's not hard, but it's not light either. Because Tuesday, all power training and boxing is not as hard as wrestling and weightlifting, but it's still not easy.

Right? Like if you do your fifth round of the power-priming repeated sprint session, if you have an adequate rest, it's not killing you actually. It's not like you feel dead. But if you have a heavy weightlifting session and then an intense wrestling session, you feel dead. So that's the hard day.

It's almost like a moderate day in that second day, like a speed-power day. And then Wednesday should be a light day, so jiu-jitsu, jiu-jitsu pad work. And try to make the jiu-jitsu pad work kind of lighter. Like you can do jiu-jitsu hard too, right? If you do those CLR games starting from bad positions, and then that's pretty intense too. But I would recommend doing just jiu-jitsu drilling technique, couple live rounds, and then pad work. Because pad work's not fatiguing for most guys, depending on how you do it.

So then Thursday—and Thursday it depends. Some guys do the puke drill on the Thursday, because you did have a rest day on the Wednesday. I mean, you had a light-medium day on the Tuesday, so the puke drill is not bad to do that day. Or the puke drill or—so it's either-or. I also do something called the death circuit.

That's what I call it. It's really just a metabolic conditioning circuit. Actually very similar to—oh, what's his name? The Institute of Human Performance. The bald guy? He's been around forever. Spanish guy. He's in Florida. I can't remember his name, but he worked with Gilbert Burns and stuff. Similar to that.

You'll find his name here. Come too. He's popular. He's been around forever. Someone in the chat may know his name. He's been around forever.

James de Lacey17:33

I think I've seen that circuit. I think I know what circuit you're talking about.

Brandon Morgan17:35

So it's similar. Not really exactly the same. I think mine has a little more representative skill in there. What I try to do is skills under fatigue. I call that form under fatigue, skills under fatigue, poise under pressure. Can you perform some sort of martial arts skill that's representative of what you're trying to do in the fight while you're tired? I'm going to purposely get them tired with non-martial arts things, so we're not ingraining bad behavior. But then when they get tired, can you actually react and move and just do something under fatigue? So it's representative.

So I tell them do the puke drill or do my death circuit. And it doesn't matter which one you do, because it's both the same thing. Three five-minutes, one minute rest, on the heart and lungs and peripheral system. It's kind of the same thing. I guess it depends on injuries. But if you're an injured person, the puke drill is a lot of wrestling. So if you have a bad knee or bad neck, then maybe my death circuit is a little better, because it's going to get the conditioning effect without causing undue stress on your joints and connective tissue, which are recovering from an injury. Okay.

Friday should be a lighter day. Possibly another jiu-jitsu day. Good boxing drilling day. Maybe a good technique day. Like Aljamain Sterling does a lot of these flow sparring rounds I noticed when I was there at the gym, just to be creative and come up with new solutions to problems and just kind of moving around, feeling good. But it's not causing excessive fatigue, because Saturday is sparring. Sparring I leave alone.

And then either sparring—my other strength session either goes one of those days. Either I'm doing the death circuit—I count that as my strength and conditioning session. Maybe I do a potentiation day Friday, like a plyometric French contrast training. A lot of the Caldiet's concepts I do like. The reflexive plyometric method I think is extremely beneficial for combat sports athletes—loading the hips and the knees to be plyometric.

The rate of muscle relaxation, rapid eccentric, redirecting that force, that quick amortization phase, without excessively loading the foot and the ankle complex, which already gets loaded enough. It's hard to load the knees and the hips with traditional plyometrics, as Caldiet was talking about the other day. Same. I agree with it. So stuff like that, like a plyometric power day on a Friday could be good.

And then Saturday would be the sparring day. Either leave that alone, or you add a strength and conditioning session that day after the sparring. I wouldn't do it before. I'd do it after. Personally, I don't want to mess up sparring. Also, sparring to me is also a sports psychology thing. So I'd rather them do their exact warm-up for the fight, for the sparring. The same breakfast they're going to have fight day for the sparring.

If you're going to fight at 10:00 p.m. in that time zone, I'd do a spar at 10:00 p.m. Like there's all these other variables that you can go into to make the sparring really representative from a sports psychology and mental performance perspective, to eliminate novelty when they get to fight night and they get more comfortable environment.

So I think sparring is a great opportunity, besides a skills session, a conditioning session—it's really the most excellent mental performance sports psychology session to do. So take advantage of that. Don't mess up your sparring days. Treat them real. Get a real partner. Three five-minute rounds, one-minute rest. Do your exact warm-up. Come out to your music, you could. Spar at nighttime if you're fighting at night. Spar in the morning if you're fighting in the morning. I think you get a lot more out of sparring if you do it like that.

So and then Sunday would be off. And unless it's very long, I want to have them run the hills. He has this thing where he has them running up and down the hill. It's fine. It works. So he has—if they're feeling good, they could do that. If they want to take the off day, take the off day. Rather than recover anyway.

But if they're feeling good, let's push it. Well, not if you feel—as long as you're, as long as you psychologically and physically feel good and maybe your resting heart rate's not excessively elevated or your grip strength on a hand dynamometer is off, or something that we could measurably see that is off, like all right, I guess we could do the hill sprints, wouldn't be bad. Little extra conditioning day.

Personally, I recommend take the day off, because we got Monday again. Monday's going to be hard, so that comes back full circle. Here comes Monday again.

James de Lacey21:45

Was that JC Santana, the name?

Brandon Morgan21:48

JC Santana was the name, yeah, of the guy. Sorry for his name. I feel very really special to him.

James de Lacey21:53

The chat came through.

Brandon Morgan21:54

He's a legend in the industry. So yeah, for his conditioning circuit, I think I do something very similar to his. It's not exactly his. I didn't really take it from him. I just noticed that he was doing the same thing I was kind of thinking of doing.

And I don't think it's a brand new idea to do a conditioning circuit for three five-minute rounds, one-minute rest, for an MMA athlete. But I'd say he popularized that idea though. I think that's like one of his main things. So I want to give him credit for that.

James de Lacey22:25

Nice. We can thank the chat for bringing that through. But I actually have a question here from earlier that relates to this before we move on to some of the—I actually want to go into your Lighter Oxygen stuff too and maybe some more of that sparring stuff.

But what do you think about superseding your heavy lower body lifts with your jumps for post-activation potentiation?

Brandon Morgan22:47

Okay, there's two ways of thought on this. Technically, the research is showing now a lot of the guys recommend the opposite of post-activation potentiation. For example, doing the priming plyometric exercise first, then the lifting exercise, because it's actually going to potentiate you to do a better lifting exercise. And if you do the lifting exercise into the plyometric without adequate rest, you are going to move slower.

So if your goal is to move at maximal velocity and train absolute speed, then doing a lifting exercise first is actually counterintuitive. I think it would be negative because the residual fatigue of the heavy straining strength training exercise. However, in MMA, you're constantly transitioning from grappling to striking. So I actually like the traditional post-activation potentiation concept for that reason.

You're creating some fatigue with the heavy lifted grinding strength movement, which is similar to grappling or Brazilian jiu-jitsu wrestling. And then you're going into a plyometric explosive striking type movement. It's not doing a punch always. It's like a type of movement. The muscle's contraction dynamics, I guess, is similar to striking versus the contraction more similar to grappling.

So I like that, doing it on purpose. So the reason why a lot of modern sports scientists don't like it is actually the reason I do like it for MMA. If that answers.

James de Lacey24:12

Nice. Perfect. Yeah, it's a good time-saver too. Kind of gets you a couple of things done together in the same set.

Brandon Morgan24:19

And again, a little bit of a conditioning—not excessive, but almost like that alactic thing that Cal was talking about. Get the heart rate high, and then let's recover that back down. And it's not going to glycolysis too much.

James de Lacey24:32

Well, you mentioned obviously the sports psychology type of the sparring. That's a good point, and I think a lot of other sports around the world do a lot of that when they're preparing for various games. Maybe in combat sports, it's maybe less common.

But I'm interested to kind of go down maybe that rabbit hole a little bit for fighters listening, how they can better prepare for their fights with sparring or even with other sessions during the week. What else can they do? As you mentioned, eat the same breakfast, come out to your walkout music, all that kind of stuff. Are there other things they can do? Or maybe if they can't do that for whatever reason, maybe they can't spar at 10:00 p.m. even though they fight at 10:00 p.m. for whatever reason. Are there things that they can do to help prepare them through those sessions?

Brandon Morgan25:10

Control the warm-up. I think the warm-up is so important. Now, if you look at a fight, you warm up in the back, and then there's a lot of time before you actually go. So I think you could even do that. You warm up with the exact warm-up you're going to normally do on fight night. So you're eliminating novelty, you're eliminating newness, something Dr. Andy Galpin says.

So they're very comfortable. It's almost like you're training your brain like a trigger. Okay, we're going into fight mode now. Like we're doing the same warm-up. Doesn't matter what the warm-up is. It's all nonsense. We're just training the brain. I don't care what the warm-up is. It doesn't matter. It's whatever you feel is comfortable for you.

I just want you to end with something explosive just to get a potential priming, nervous system firing aspect and get your heart rate a little elevated, and then drop it back down. The reason why you want to drop back down though, as a point I'm trying to make, is there's a lot of time from when you warm up and then you walk out, then your opponent walks out. It's a lot. So you're not even warmed up by the time you actually fight.

Especially in the UFC, you're really not warmed up because there's a long time from warming up and fighting. So the warm-up is really a psychology thing. I don't even think you're really warmed up when you get in the cage because it's been 10 minutes since you finished your warm-up. Your heart rate's not high anymore. It's had to have dropped in 10 minutes. I mean, even if you're in terrible condition, it dropped in 10 minutes.

So I would actually train that. Train warming up, get used to that feeling of warming up, coming down—not totally being ice cold, but coming down for like five minutes—and then sparring. Because that's just going to happen. It's not going to be warm-up, go in the cage, go. No, no, no. You have like all the walkout, like a lot of stuff happens in between. So that'd be representative. I think that's a good option. That's good if you can control.

James de Lacey26:57

Yeah, it's a good idea, especially like with maybe unexpected delays too. You never know, so being able to at least practice and be somewhat familiar with having to wait longer after you come out or you're warming up.

Brandon Morgan27:12

And then intra-workout, like having electrolytes, Vitargo, just for performance optimization with the nutrition. Vitargo is a fast-digesting carbohydrate, but it keeps your carbohydrate levels steady. It doesn't spike and then drop. You don't get the insulin dumping effect, which could be negative actually from having excessive glucose.

So Vitargo is going to give you a steady state of carbohydrate energy, which has always been shown to improve performance if you time carbohydrates. I think I actually disagree with the people that are talking about eating excessive carbohydrates all the time. I don't think that's correct. I think they're wrong actually, and I think Dr. Mike T. Nelson has alluded to something about that with metabolic flexibility, being fat-adapted, learning to time your carbohydrates.

Because if you excessively time your carbohydrates—I'm on a podcast, see you, all right, bye. So if you excessively—now I'm all messed up. Sorry. You're excessively doing excessive carbohydrates.

Right, and excessively eating carbohydrates all the time, I don't really believe that's a real thing. I think that's negatively going to impact your body's ability to use fat oxidation at rest. You're training yourself to be more reliant on the glycolytic anaerobic energy system pathway in my opinion.

So I'd like using the—obviously you're going to be using carbohydrates at high intensity, so just time them for when you're going to train. But if you're not going to train, there's no reason to have excessive amounts of carbohydrates. That goes at best, so I'm just talking about during the swimming session, how to optimize it.

If you have carbohydrates and electrolytes, you're going to perform better. Sodium, besides just hydration, is just going to increase the fluid volume in the muscle tissue and help you contraction velocity and things like that. Electrolytes are big in the neuromuscular firing of muscles, right? So electrolytes and carbohydrates during the session, I think is important, yeah.

James de Lacey29:12

Nice. And I wanted to go down the road of your—I mean, you showed earlier you have the Exogen sleeves from Lighter there.

Right. So you have the arm sleeves, the forearm sleeves.

How are you using them? Tell me anything you're doing with them.

Brandon Morgan29:28

All right. So I do the shadow boxing. I'll do a round of shadow boxing with them on, then a round of shadow boxing with them off, and you will see a real effect on the increase in punch speed. It is kind of crazy. The fighters feel it, and if you record it, you could really see it.

Here's the way you test it: you do a round of shadow boxing without them on. So you get a baseline measurement. And do two-minute rounds. Don't—see, if you go too long, now you're going to add in glycolytic issues and excessive—that's really hydrogen ions, but people say lactic because that's what you can measure in the blood. But excessive hydrogen ions, right? So it's going to start slowing them down. So two minutes tops would be good.

I've just like inter-minute, like maybe 10 seconds on, 25 to 30 seconds off, but exploding for the 10 seconds. And you'll see their hand speed baseline. Then you do it with the weights. So obviously it's going to be slower because there's more mass on you. And then you do it after, and you look from the first to the third, the third is better most of the times.

So that does work. I mean, whoever knows what's happening there. It's like a PAP, could be a placebo effect, but I think there's something going on there where they're really—it is making them faster, especially if I load it in that spiral line. So if you load it normal, it's not the same thing as loading it in a spiral. If you load it in a spiral and the weight is—

James de Lacey30:46

Yeah, quickly explain it for the listeners just so they understand what you're talking about. Or no, you heard that, right? Like the spiral loading. Yep, yep, yep. But okay, explain these weights. Explain these weights to the listeners.

Brandon Morgan30:59

I got you. I was getting some tape off. You know, the problem is they fall off. That's what they got to fix. If you're punching with them and then one of them would go flying and hit the neighbor. So I'm going to have to get a tape off so you can see it.

But it's like these are them. These are the sleeves. They go on your arm. And then these weights, like this, and they just go on top. So if I have the weight, if that's on my forearm, imagine it's on. I have the weight here on my pinky side. So now when I punch, the resistance is actually pulling me this way. So I have to try twice as hard now to rotate at the end of the punch to get that snap at the end of the punch.

You know, the extra bit of tricep, that torque, the shoulder protection on the punch, right? You know, good boxing coaches will teach this. The shoulder protects the jaw. That happens because the hand's turning over a little bit. So I'm loading that rotational element of the punch, that rotational mechanics. So I think that's cool.

James de Lacey31:55

How much weight are you using? Is it micro or large?

Brandon Morgan31:57

Very little. Like this one's 100 grams, and then this other one is, good question, it's 200 grams. So I guess it's 300 grams total. Yeah, 200 grams. So 300 grams total, but I'm going to load the heavier one up higher because you know about like how force and stuff, moment of, what's it called? Moment of arm, what's it called? Lever arm?

James de Lacey32:26

Lever arm. Yeah, lever arm. Moment of arm.

Brandon Morgan32:28

Yeah, lever arm. Yeah, yeah. So it's here, the heavier weight, because if I put the heavier weight here, it's almost too much weight. And then I do the lighter weight down here so the lighter weight could feel a little heavier. Because it's down here, it's a value far from the axis of rotation, right? So that's how I load them.

I've used it for shadow boxing. I reckon on the heavy bag, too. I just got to figure, I got to tape them better. But on the heavy bag, if they're really ripping on the heavy bag, they do fall off. So it's kind of annoying. On the shadow boxing, not as much, because you're getting rid, there's no impact force. So therefore, I think that stops the reverberation from the thing flying off. But I think it definitely works.

The heavy bag conditioning with that. I even measured it with the punch tracker, so you could do the Fight Camp. You have to buy this company. I'm sure there's all kinds of companies that do these sensors. It is an app with it. So you do the sensor on that, so you could see the punch speed, punch count, punch type. Then you can put the weights on and you could see how it changes with the weight and without the weight.

And then you see the heart with the Polar heart monitor, with the heart monitor on it. There's also Morpheus and all kinds of other options, obviously. But I use the Polar just because it's been around forever. And you can get a pretty decent conditioning session out of it and not just having them randomly hit the bag.

You can have them hit the bag with bad intentions and get really good results with it that are measurable and progressable, or there's progressions to it over time. Instead of just randomly hitting the bag, you have no data to say your next session was hard or light, your recovery heart rate between rounds, how much weight you're using, how much load is there literally, the punch speed, the punch type, the punch count.

So if you don't have that data, you're just randomly hitting the bag. It's still better than not hitting the bag, but I think you could get better results over time from a conditioning standpoint. This is where the strength and conditioning coach could work nicely with the skills coach and kind of put them in a harmony where they work together and be getting the athlete better.

James de Lacey34:34

Just did a whole podcast on Just Fly recently on that topic, I'm working with sport coaches and stuff. So if you don't want to do that, should be up by the time you listen to this. But I want to go, I do want to go down that road with you. But first on the Lilo stuff, are you ever loading it the other way? It's almost over speed this kind of pronation.

Brandon Morgan34:51

Running downhill or the running downhill or maybe the concept of like over speed with the bands and you do the plyometrics and makes you jump higher. It's like over training, the trains you to really whip this thing forward. Yeah, I do that sometimes. Not as much actually, but there's no reason not to. I mean I could start doing it. Yeah, it's almost like a band assisted broad jumps, that is like that's constant concept of over speed. Yes, you could load it the other way as well. No problem.

James de Lacey35:21

So your main use is almost like a shadow boxing warm up with the weights on or like a targeted heavy bag session with the weight?

Brandon Morgan35:32

Right, right. The shadow boxing is not really conditioning to the same level as the heavy bag is. The shadow boxing is almost like a warm up priming. It could be for a martial arts session, but it also could be for a strength and conditioning session. There's nothing wrong because warming up is a misunderstood thing in my opinion.

Warming up, the only variable that needs to be true is that you're warm. There's, you don't have to do all those mobility exercises. You can do them, but there's no rule. Like someone somewhere along the line we thought we had to do like 20 different physical therapy rehab exercises in the warm up and that's not really true for how people warm up. So you could do, see, it's not like you can do it. You don't have to do it. That's not the purpose of a warm up. The purpose of a warm up is to increase core body temperature. So I can do that with anything.

James de Lacey36:17

Yeah, and that with the weights on the shadow boxing, that's a really nice way of doing it. I'm just trying to think if there's other applications. It might be pretty crazy if you wore them during sparring or something like that. Or even through your puke circuit or something, you know?

Brandon Morgan36:31

Well, if you're doing the death circuit, puke drill, or whatever like that, that would be cool that you're doing it. Sparring, kind of, it's going to make you slower possibly, or because I mean, it could just mess up your, I don't want to interfere, you see. I don't want to interfere with this.

The sparring is already getting overloaded actually from the hands, because they're wearing 16 ounce boxing gloves and they're fighting with very little in their gloves. And the hard sparring is done with boxing gloves, at least it should be in my opinion just for safety. So that's overloading it already. So I'm like, adding more weights is going to be beneficial in that situation.

James de Lacey37:04

Yeah, good call, good call. I do want to come back as well. You mentioned constraints that oppose stuff a few times. Is there, I don't know because obviously you're out of the main martial arts gym now, but either way from before or now, are you, is there anything you're doing there where you're integrating a lot of these skills into the conditioning and—

Brandon Morgan37:22

Oh yeah, I'm big on that.

James de Lacey37:25

We're kind of still, let's go through it.

Brandon Morgan37:27

With the heavy bag stuff, I do all kinds of different handicaps or constraints to get them to apply different skills or whatever I'm seeing that they're lacking. And then I go, I can't work with the skills, the more you work with the skills, so you're better you're going to get because everyone's on the same page.

Some of the one guys I train doesn't really have a main skills coach so I'm kind of doing both. Luckily, he has enough skills. He already had the skills though. You can't do this if you don't have someone who, he has to have skills already. He already has the skills so therefore, he get away with doing this for a little bit until he goes against harder opponents. Then we're going to need to get a real main skills coach. I would think be the correct thing to do. But for right now, it's fine.

So I kind of do the skills conditioning with him a lot, a lot of my experience with him. I just doing different stuff on the bag, different stuff with the Synaptech glasses. Like the, you know I'm talking about the glasses.

James de Lacey38:20

Those are the strobe glasses?

Brandon Morgan38:22

Yeah, the glasses. I actually have them. Let me grab them. One second. So the strobe glasses, that's going to add a variable that they're going to have to solve that problem, right? It's changing—

James de Lacey38:45

So you are using the strobe glasses on the heavy bag?

Brandon Morgan38:49

More so with pad work, actually. Yeah, I think the pad work's more effective for that. I'll use the strobe glasses a lot, actually. So I like the strobe glasses. Pad work, or even I have them flow spar with the glasses. Don't be punching each other in the glasses. But these are cool. If you, people haven't seen these, as long as they're charged, they'll turn on.

James de Lacey39:16

Yeah, I know Seefus Niskis talked about those quite a bit and how he's using quite a bit.

Brandon Morgan39:21

Actually it's not charged enough, but it blinks. It's like if you're blinking over and over again. So it's changing the way you receive visual information, okay? So that's the main effect of the Synaptek glasses. To increase visual information, you have to now solve the problem differently than you would if you had all your visual information. Then get put back in the real environment, you're like, "Wow, I can see so much better." You feel like Spider-Man.

For most people, my Dr. Mike Z Nelson said that someone if they have a rare eye condition or something, they could make them worse. I haven't found that, but I'm sure if someone did, I mean, I'm not saying he's lying. So if someone did have some weird eye condition, and then you're adding a strobe light to them, and it's actually messing up their eyes more, yeah, I guess it is bad. Right, it would make them worse. So we got to be careful on that.

Just say it happens, and if they're getting worse, then stop doing it. I guess it's not good for them, but they should be getting better, actually, over time.

James de Lacey40:17

So what are some examples of constraints you use on the heavy bag?

Brandon Morgan40:20

Okay, for the heavy bag a basic stuff and just one round just jab on every count, just putting parameters. It's not as advanced. Look, I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so I have a Jiu-Jitsu coach, John Pico, who's very big into this CLA thing. So he's really advanced.

James de Lacey40:41

Jump into that, too. Do you do both? Do you do grappling and the striking?

Brandon Morgan40:45

So the grapple to the striking will be like, I got a good example like if you're sparring. Like I tell this one of my fighters actually, "You know what you should do is, honestly, you should do the first 2 minutes of your round, instead of swinging crazy, just focus on your setups." Don't tell the other opponent you're doing it, but just focus on your jab, focus on your light kick, focus on your body cross, focus on your bread and butter clean mechanic techniques that work.

And then only the last 3 minutes of the round can you do whatever you want. So I'm limiting what you can do with the first 2 minutes of the round of the sparring session just so he can get used to not having those extra tools around him, and he could find different ways to solve problems and also encourage him to take his time and set up his strikes instead of rushing to just get the KO to be on Contender Series.

Everyone's just trying to get on. So they're swinging crazy just trying to get on the Contender Series. But they know how to fight properly. They get too excited. They have not optimal arousal, right? That would be the term in sports psychology where they want that knockout so bad, so they start changing the way they would fight, which is not beneficial. Obviously, because they end up leaving themselves open and put themselves in unnecessary situations.

So if they calm down and slow down, they'd do more effective. So I recommend to him is the first 2 minutes of your sparring round just work your fakes, your level changes, your jab, maybe a couple body crosses because he throws a really nice body cross and then some low kicks and that's it. Let's not do anything crazy into the last 3 minutes. So that's a CLA way of doing striking. That's not the only way of doing it. That's just an example.

Grappling is an analyst. I mean, the grappling's way more, that's more of my wheelhouse. I understand striking to an extent, but I would never call myself a striking coach. I'm not a striking coach. I can't box for myself. So what am I... You know what I'm saying? I'm not a great boxer. I can kickbox okay, but I can't box. Yeah, boxing can't do.

So the grappling's very easy. It's just basically doing positional rounds, but they tell you, all right, instead of saying do a body lock, do a single lock, do this, do that, here's the proper technique. It just says, all right, player one, your goal is to make a closed circle connection around the waist, closed circle connection around the leg, or a closed circle connection around the head and arm.

Player two, your goal is to break away and create distance. Go. And you see what happens. You don't say, all right, we're doing this technique. You just start going live. Then you learn from endless amounts of techniques and endless amounts of environments and just it's more positional based than submission based.

However, my coach does a lot of submissions where he puts you in the best anatomical finishing position, like that straight out of the John Danaher rule book of mastering the system, of how he has the perfect position on the rear naked choke and the eye hand grip, and his head's here, and he's pulling the elbow back. Like he puts you in this perfect position, you start there so you get the feeling, the sensation of what it feels like to have a perfect locked up submission.

Then your other player has to figure out how to get out of that. They have to figure out how to solve that unique problem. And now they're feeling what it feels like to be in a fully locked up submission and how to handle that situation. So that's how you teach submissions because a lot of people say, well, you can't teach submissions like that. You actually can. You just got to be creative in the way you go about it.

James de Lacey44:05

So are you implementing any of these in a conditioning context?

Brandon Morgan44:09

Well, I believe the skills training is the conditioning. So recently I've been going to some of the skills sessions with some of the other guys and I could train jiu-jitsu. So I just roll with it. I'll jump in and I'll observe what's going on there. So I'll train with them. So yeah, I'm watching them do the conditioning. That is the conditioning.

People are thinking it's something, this is like a... No, that is your skill session is your conditioning session. You shouldn't be doing two. It's super unnecessary. That means you're not maximizing your skill session if you're not getting any conditioning effect. You're actually adding extra volume.

James de Lacey44:41

So then that leads me to the next question. How do you set up a... It's hard because fighters, they have coaches and they don't have control of the session, but how do you set up a training session then to get the conditioning effect out of it? Because we all know you can go to various different classes or whatever. Some classes might be too easy, you don't get much. Some might be a lot of rounds. Some might be just a lot of rounds, but you end up in the same positions and you kind of chill a lot.

Brandon Morgan45:06

On Saturdays for this past fight camp with one of my fighters, Justin Montalvo, on Saturday he would do whatever he did during the week, his skills training, his strength and conditioning with me, training in different various gyms. He didn't really have a home gym or a main coach. He's kind of just a nomad of MMA. I kind of became his main coach, I guess, but not, I'm not his coach. He's going to eventually, I'm not officially.

So for this moment in time I was. Okay, so in that situation, that particular moment in time. So on Saturdays I had my jiu-jitsu friend come by and we ran through CLA games and we do 2-minute or time constraint. So he only has a minute to get out of a bad position, all different types. Or he would modify the games so the winning condition happens quickly. So you go, you win, go again. Go, you win, go again. So it's to avoid stalling. So that's the way we did the conditioning with the CLA for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

James de Lacey46:05

Does that mean then you don't typically prescribe, I guess you could say, extra off feet or non-specific conditioning for your guys?

Brandon Morgan46:15

Well, I consider the heavy bag conditioning. So I'll do that for most of the guys unless if they have their boxing coach really putting them through a hard bag conditioning workout, then I'm not going to double down. That'd be redundant. But if they're not doing that, a lot of MMA coaches don't do the bag anymore because they're all about the pads now. I think the bag is infinitely better. The bag's infinitely better. It's undeniably better.

But the pads is okay. It's fun. It's cool to do techniques. You can try stuff. You can be creative on it. But the bag is just infinitely better. It's undeniable. Ask any good boxer. They always talk about the bag. Never do they talk about pads as being important. It's only now that we're talking about pads as being a thing. So, it's true. Ask any good boxer. They always say bag. So the conditioning...

I like doing repeated sled sprints. I'll do that for conditioning as the off, not for the non-sport specific conditioning. I like death circuit. I'll do 30 seconds on 30 seconds off on the rower machine for 10 minutes. I've done that as a totally non-specific conditioning like a general physical preparedness conditioning session. I think that is a bang for your buck way of going about it because it's hitting everything. It's a little anaerobic. It's repeated. It has a lot of variables in it. So I like that. So I'll do that with them.

But besides that, the conditioning comes from wrestling practice, boxing, sparring, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training, kickboxing sparring, MMA sparring, doing pad work, doing all kinds of skills drilling. So you get your steady state aerobic stuff. People are going zone two and all that. You get that from doing drilling.

So I don't know if you're adding, if you need to do steady state aerobic stuff, I don't think you're drilling enough and I don't think you love the sport enough. Because if you think you need to do steady state aerobic stuff, that means you're not trying to get better at the sport at all times, trying to try new techniques. You should have no time to do steady state aerobic stuff because you're spending two hours drilling on the mat. If you're not spending two hours drilling on the mat then you should. I'd rather you spend two hours doing that than run mindlessly, personally.

Unless it's psychologically you believe it helps you. Unless you cycle. See, now here's the thing, the sports psychology is more important than anything. So if they psychologically believe that's real then I'm not going to rain on their parade. If it's always helped them, now it could be negatively impacting them because I'm trying to do something that has got them to the dance and now I'm removing it so it could mess them up psychologically. So that's the only reason I'd do it but from a real physiology point of view, there's no point in doing it in my opinion.

James de Lacey48:58

That's a good take then and a good point and actually wanted to come back a little bit as well to round out this podcast. You mentioned the reflexive plyometric stuff. I mean just for the listeners as well, run through that. What are you doing? What is it and what do you How are you applying it?

Brandon Morgan49:12

Okay, so the reflexive plyometric or the antagonistic facilitated special method or fear or oscillatory isometric is all the same concept. It's different variations of the same thing. The basic concept is that the rate of muscle relaxation is going to be what separates high performers in sports than people who are not elite but pretty good. This is something Cal Dietz has talked about a lot. I definitely got this from Cal Dietz and I'm pretending I didn't. He 100% invented it and I 100% took it from him. So I'm not pretending I had this great idea one day. No, I 100% got it from Cal Dietz. Undeniable.

So I can say that part of, for the reflexive plyometric, the problem of traditional plyometrics as Cal talks about is it overloads the foot and the ankle complex and the calf and the soleus and stuff, but doesn't really overload the hips and the knees to the same extent as we once thought it did. So, in order to overload the hips and the knees in that plyometric, rate of muscle relaxation, quick eccentric dropping into a rapid concentric that's short amortization phase for the hips and the knees, there's a way of loading that without jumping.

It's where you take a band, resistance band, and it's pulling you in the same direction of force. So, if I'm doing a squatting action, it's going to pull me in a vertical direction. If I'm doing a hip extension, more horizontal projection, it'll pull me in that direction. It could be done for any joint in the body, just have to match the direction of force and the band tension.

And the band is going to pull you rapidly down as you rapidly relax to the starting position, which should be an athletic type position, not excessively deep, I think, because in that athletic position, you're going to be able to produce force faster. It's going to work more effectively than if you're going to do an excessively low position. I don't see that as too important. I know there's a concept of those deep tier plyometrics, but for this concept, I like that strong athletic power position, similar to Olympic weight lifting for these banded reflexive plyometric exercises.

So, what they do is they rapidly pull you down, you rapidly relax, and then you rapidly contract the muscle. And you do this for about 10 seconds to keep it in the alactic training zone. And you try to get as many reps as you can in 10 seconds. And it's a very good stimulus for stimulating the nervous system to rapidly apply and redirect force, and relax, and then contract.

This also could be an interesting metabolic stimulus because you're actually there's some occlusion there because there's constant tension on the muscle tissue. So, it does have an interesting conditioning effect that I don't think a lot of people talk about.

James de Lacey51:53

What are some of your go-to movements? And you obviously mentioned that athletic stance. They'll be a tuck position kind of squat kind of thing.

Brandon Morgan51:59

Split squat's very good. I love the split squat a lot, especially when I was at Long's Gym and a nice rack where I could attach the bands and I put the belt on and did the split squat variation. Also, the split squat is going to be more representative of the martial arts environment. So, especially for striking, they're going to be in that split stance, right? They're not really in this neutral stance. Unless you're doing a takedown or something, but in general, you're in the split stance. So, I think it's representative and I like that.

For the upper body, I love rows. You have all kinds of upper body pulling with the band horizontally here. You do pushes and pulls, right? Because in a push, you're resisting and in a pull, you're resisting. You can do rapid. And try not to squeeze the band tight. When you squeeze this, it creates irradiation or tension, and it's going to actually slow you down. We're actually doing this to move fast.

So, the more relaxed your hand is, the better. And then we're moving this back and forth relaxed. And we're trying not to create the circle. A lot of people do this even when they throw punches, they create the circle down. This is incorrect. So, I try to go back straight, straight straight, straight straight, not straight down back. See, people do this as a compensation pattern, but it should be linear direction just because it's the fastest point, the fastest way to get between two points is a straight line.

So, doing this is going to waste a lot of time and actually ingrain improper mechanics. So, I like keeping the bands, queuing them to always say parallel to the floor.

James de Lacey53:18

So, how you doing the row one? So, because the row one, you're hanging on the band. Is there anything supporting you? So, because if you're

Brandon Morgan53:25

No, no, I'm standing. I'm standing in a fighting stance. I'm standing.

James de Lacey53:29

Oh, you're standing in a fighting

Brandon Morgan53:30

I'm standing in a split stance. I'm standing double hands in the split stance. The push is like twice as but actually because the way the band's set up, I'm actually pulling it back, too. So, I'm working both directions. There's resistance here, but there's also resistance because the bands set up on the J-hooks horizontally similar to the Y exercise that he did for the hips, but now I'm having it higher at chest level for this horizontal displacement of my upper body. That's the horizontal displacement of the lower body.

I got this from Dr. Tony Ricci for sure. He was one of my big influences, so I did not invent this concept either. At least for that exercise. Like first I took Cal Dietz's concept and applied it to Dr. Tony Ricci's exercise. So that's really I guess that's what I invented is combining those two things together, but it's not my thing, right? It's I took it from other people.

James de Lacey54:19

That's a nice push-pull though. That's a really nice push-pull.

Brandon Morgan54:23

Just keep going but you got to avoid this. This is going to be the biggest issue. You're going to start, even people posture to get tired they start doing this. It's incorrect. It should be full mode on the lower back. Any good boxing coach will show you that.

James de Lacey54:35

So if someone's going to use that, how much band tension are you using on that?

Brandon Morgan54:38

Not too much. I don't know the exact number. I could measure it with a crane scale, I guess, and get back to you. Sometimes I'll use the NT loops by Mike Tuminello, who's a personal trainer and strength coach here in the United States. He created these resistance bands that are fabric. I like those a lot. I'll use the blue and the red NT loop together. So whatever tension those two loops are together will be the tension I'm using because that's what I do on a standard distance of a squat rack.

So that's really the answer. So if you have the NT loop and you have the blue and the red one, you put them together, that is exactly what I do. And then push-pull, don't squeeze the band tight, and relax contract for the upper body. Obviously for striking, it's a striking focused type movement. 10 to 15

James de Lacey55:19

Did you have another upper body one you mentioned as well?

Brandon Morgan55:23

Well, you could do also isolated rowing. So, sometimes now I could put the bands low on the band pegs low, get into a sumo deadlift type position, I guess, or a little more closer, more narrow version of that of a hybrid deadlift position.

Athletic stance and pull rapidly and then what I'm doing here I'm going to pull isometric hold it, it's a little different. It's a little different than a traditional reflexive parameter but I'm pulling them holding and then on my verbal cue I'm going to say go. And when I say go they have to relax, let the band let the band win. That's a weird feeling because you want to slow the band down control the eccentric.

I actually want you to let the band rip you into that. This is an intense exercise by the way, it's not an easy exercise. So if you don't have the reciprocal joint tissue adaptations then it wouldn't be a good idea to do it, probably would put you at a higher risk of injury. But at the same token it would probably put you at a higher risk of not getting injured if you do this often because it's going to make your tissues more resilient. But if you're not ready too much too soon is going to cause an issue.

But are you here? You let the band win. Rapidly pull rapidly again. We only do this to my verbal cue so I'm connecting the brain and the body. So I'm connecting the ability for the brain to communicate to the fast twitch muscle fibers and how quickly can we turn that muscle on and off based on external stimulus.

I can do a verbal cue. Sometimes you do a physical cue, I do a level change. I move, I do some sort of visual cue and then their eyes have to pick it up and then they have to process and communicate that from the external environment into the brain into the body.

James de Lacey56:58

That would be a heavier band tension then, I'm assuming?

Brandon Morgan57:00

Well, it would be a heavier band tension, sets of tops. I mean, I like to go a little higher on the reps. The NSCA CSCS and other things are going to say lower reps, obviously, power speed type exercises. But it takes about three reps for them to get the feel of the technique and the mechanics.

So therefore it's not really eight reps, it's actually five reps because the first three reps are not moving at the velocity and the intensity that I'm looking for. So there's a learning curve to it, so that's why I do a little more reps than you would traditionally see in the textbook.

James de Lacey57:00

Nice, I like those. That's a cool way to round out this podcast, Brandon, with some of those practical ones. But if people want to find you and follow you and keep up with everything you're doing, where do they find you?

Brandon Morgan57:43

@bmofitforlife on Instagram. I do have a website, but it's terrible right now, so I got to get that fixed. But it's bmofitforlife.com. It's terrible. It's a bunch of chat GPT images. I don't know, I'll got to figure out how to make it better. I got to connect with someone who knows how to do that.

You can send me a DM. You can email me at bmofitforlife@gmail.com. Next time, if there's a next time, whatever, I'm also a sports nutritionist through the International Society of Sports Nutrition, and we can talk about more nutrition stuff and weight cutting stuff as well. But I think that's a good way to round out this podcast. We did a lot, there's a lot of talking, so I think it's enough. But next time maybe we'll do a sports nutrition one.

James de Lacey58:27

For sure. No, I appreciate you coming on and sharing with us some cool topics covered. Hopefully listeners here can take something practical out of it. But we'll stay in touch and I'll link everything down in the description as well for anyone who's interested.

Brandon Morgan58:40

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be on the podcast, especially with all the legends you had in this podcast. I'm probably the lowest on the totem pole in terms of guests. But I'm glad at least I'm on the totem pole. That's crazy. All right. Thank you so much. Peace. Appreciate it.

James de Lacey58:54

Appreciate it.