Strength & Conditioning For Muay Thai & MMA w/ Steve Pipe (SSOF Podcast Ep. #1)

Steve Pipe0:18

And then because of that, I got to work with a lot of top level Muay Thai fighters. So I was training and fighting out of Yokkao in Thailand. And then the owner of the gym, he saw how passionate I was about these things. And he got Singdam, who's an eight time Thai champion to train with me. He was my first top level Muay Thai fighter.

And he's one of the best of a two time Sports Fighter of the Year award winner. So no pressure for your field. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's taught me a lot working with him because he's an incredibly kyphotic person and he's this because as his career developed, he got a bit of a suspicion. So he had to modify his style to have a shoulder really here and punch forward. So yeah, working with him taught me a lot because at the beginning, we can get into this a little bit later, too.

But at the beginning, I was trying to fix his posture, if you will. And then it meant that it really gave him an insane dance in areas that he wasn't supposed to have guns in necessarily. And he actually ran away from the gym for two weeks.

But the good thing was over time, I was able to get him back and then we got some really good results. And then from there, I was able to train pretty much all the other Yokkao fighters, all the top guys, Manachai, Yodchai, Spencer, Erhan.

And then from there, I got to work with Superbon and Petchtanong. So Superbon's the champion of ONE at the moment, the middleweight champion, and then or lightweight in UFC weight classes champion. And then I also got to train Petchtanong as well, who's a ONE FC fighter, Muay Thai fighter.

So that was my background. And then yeah, moving back to New Zealand, I always wanted to take that elite level of training and the caliber of athletes that I've been working with, it gave me a really good idea of where all the athletes worldwide needed to be at from an overall athleticism perspective, because you see these guys just dominating on the world stage.

And I was able to compile a lot of data and experience around working with these top guys. And then coming back to New Zealand, I always had that mindset of bring everyone up to that level too.

James de Lacey6:01

That's awesome. The listeners are in for a treat, then you've got high level experience fighting yourself and trying things on yourself, but then using it on essentially your own high level athletes. But I wanted to touch on quickly before we jumped into some of the topics on our strength conditioning training.

You mentioned about the kyphotic postures. Now obviously, for the listeners who are like a kyphotic posture, essentially a rounded upper back. And obviously, you see this a lot in strikers for the reasons you mentioned. Now from your experience and training others in yourself, what do you see as the benefits of essentially not so much correcting it, but training athletes out of that posture or giving them that range to be able to extend that thoracic spine?

Steve Pipe6:32

That's a really, really good question. I guess the best way that I can answer this is that when we improve thoracic extension and shoulder flexion and external rotation, what it does is it gives us the ability to load more, I don't want to say compromised, but more unstable positions which in turn helps us to, it has a big ripple effect outward.

So I guess what I referenced before, I was trying to correct his posture by training lower traps, rhomboids, training a lot of scapular retraction and things like that. You still there?

James de Lacey7:13

No. I'm still in the 20 looking back. That's not necessarily the answer.

Steve Pipe7:43

It's more about being able to get him. Oh, I got you. I want to see. Cool. Yeah. It's more about being able to get him into a range of motion that allows us to load those unstable positions.

And then from that position, if I'm able to get him up here, as opposed to out here, if I'm able to get here, all of a sudden it opens up so much more options for us from a stability perspective when we're looking deeper in the shoulder, the rotator cuff and also the serratus to some degree as well, depending on how we're training this position.

So those are muscles that are heavily involved with throwing strikes. The serratus is going to be stabilizing our shoulder when we're in a protracted position. And then the rotator cuff is also going to be working as well to stabilize the shoulder.

So I guess for me now, it's just, I want to get that range so that I can load it with specific exercises that are then going to carry over into his performance. That's not to say that I want to spend heaps of time focusing on this. I just want to get him here over time, systematically.

It's a long-term goal, systematically work to get him here and then look to develop the stability around this position, which in turn I know is going to carry over into striking. And that's something that it takes time and understanding to really gauge how that's beneficial to fighters and their striking performance.

But yeah, again, serratus and rotator cuff, those are two areas that we want to really target and stimulate. So that's where that thoracic extension comes into the play.

The other thing as well is that the lats are often the reason why athletes are unable to get into this position. So the lats are what stabilize our spine through rotation.

So when we're looking at getting this range of motion in terms of thoracic extension, it helps us to really understand how the lats are working in relation to the shoulder. And it just gives us a better ability to train the body systemically anyways or globally to improve the function of all these sub components.

James de Lacey9:56

Nice. Do you have any specific, I guess, you mentioned you do a lot of rhomboid, lower trap, rowing work. Do you have any other specific thoracic mobility exercise that you use? I know you showed me one that I love that I can barely do cause mine stiff as. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'll put that in the description. I'll put that in the description. Yeah, sure. Is that windmill, the half-kneeling windmill one probably your go-to favorite or you got some others in there?

Steve Pipe10:26

Yeah, so that really comes back to the lats and looking to train the function of the lats. So, again, what I was saying, the lats are what stabilize the spine through rotation.

So when we're looking at assessing how well the lats are functioning, we want to make sure that there's an optimal range of motion there through that T-spine, right? Because that's where the lats fan across. So yeah, that's one of them.

Another one would just be a really easy one that most people can do is a supinated lat stretch. So it's where you just grip onto a barbell or a rack or whatever, or a calisthenics frame, and you hold your hand like this. Then you just walk your feet backwards and you end up, you're trying to get into this position here.

So I like this exercise because it basically allows us to take the lat into its opposite in range. So the lats extend and internally rotate. So when we go flex and externally rotate, it takes us into the polar opposite range of motion in terms of what the lats are wanting to take us into. So it's a really good exercise to down-regulate the lats and take away some of this excessive internal rotation on the shoulders.

And then it allows us to, it gives us a temporary gateway into being able to load into an overhead position. So a lot of the time that's the two that I use initially. I'd start with the supinated lat stretch and I'd move into some type of bottoms-up press with a kettlebell because the kettlebell is going to be able to tell us how well our shoulder is, primarily our rotator cuff, is able to stabilize through this range of motion.

And it's also because it's an overhead press, it's also going to show how well we're able to get into this position as well. So rotations against the wall.

James de Lacey12:36

Oh no, what's going on? Yeah, I got your back now. I got your voice back. There we go.

Steve Pipe12:36

Sorry. Okay, cool. Sorry about that. Don't know what's going on. That's the gentleman on the whoops man. I think we need to get Starlink out here.

James de Lacey12:55

So we're going to touch on some of your strength training philosophy now, essentially out of camp and how that differs just based on what you've said so far. It seems like being able to get the arms overhead seems to be part of your strength training philosophy, being able to have the mobility to get there.

So you find that an important part of essentially a striker's, I guess you could say, strength training or training ourselves to be able to get the arms overhead freely and to be able to press weight over it freely essentially. Because I'm assuming there'll be a lot of strikers that probably can't do that because of the reasons you mentioned with the rounded shoulders and things like that.

Steve Pipe13:24

Yeah, that's right. I've streamlined a series of exercises and training routines that systematically allow me to build an athlete up to be able to acquire these ranges and then to load them. And I've gotten really good at being able to assess underlying issues that might be limiting the athlete when it comes to either the mobility side of things or the stability side of things or even the strength as well.

So it's just taking a lens and just going three layers deep and just seeing where they're at and then looking to help them to gain those positions to then be able to load them.

James de Lacey14:15

So then how does, for example, you have an athlete, say maybe he's had a fight, he's maybe got say half a year to a year to his next fight. How does your essentially your out of camp preparation strength training, how does that differ from essentially maybe say eight weeks out fight camp?

Is there much of a difference in terms of the way you're programming? Is it going from say more general to specific stuff? Are there exercises that you know you're going to use within the specific prep that you're going to build to, or is it just everything flows through naturally and they continue on what they're doing outside of camp?

Steve Pipe14:54

Great question. So when it comes to off-camp versus in-camp, we'll start with off-camp. So off-camp is going to be more about putting the athletes into more unstable positions. And when I say unstable, I don't mean standing on a wobble board or a [expletive] Pilates ball, it's not like that.

It's basically getting them to limit their base of support, for example. So standing on one leg and then holding a weight in one of their arms. So whether it be contralateral, ipsilateral, holding on opposite sides of our body and deviating the center of mass, which in turn shows a lot about what's going on in the hips and how well they're able to resist that force through their core as well and keep that pelvic stability.

So a lot of the stuff I do when it's off-camp is essentially rewiring. It's rewiring and it's building up that capacity to handle these different positions. And then also increasing the load in those positions too. Because for me, a lot of it is about building strength in specific ranges of motion and working a little bit more unilateral.

And then that way, if I have the right exercises selected, by the time we get in camp and we start to do, for example, quite high-intensity plyometrics, I know for a fact based on the track record, all the groundwork we've laid down prior to getting to this point, that this stability, the strength, the ability to absorb force dynamically is all primed and ready to go. All they need to do now is actually start to load it dynamically.

So that's where the plyometrics and the ballistics and things like that come in. If we skip this phase and we go straight to the plyo, we're adding an unnecessary risk into our athlete's training program. So if we have the groundwork here, when we get to here, we start to do the plyometrics and the ballistics, but then also maximal loading, so heavier loading.

So I'll start the camp off getting them to work into more bilateral compound strength movements. And the reason why is because that gives us a greater ability to add maximal load. So I'm able to expose their bodies to tremendous amounts of load. And because I know that there aren't any underlying stability issues or mobility issues, I know that there isn't going to be any real compensation patterns occurring.

As long as the skill's falling in line with what we're doing, nothing's going to really rear its head until they're actually getting close-ish to failure. So that's a great thing, because then it just comes down to strength. It's like, how strong are you?

And so when we're in camp, that's when we're starting to really start to ramp up the peak in terms of strength. And then obviously, as we get closer and closer to the fight, we build up to a certain point, maybe around about four to three weeks out. And then the volume is dropping a lot, the intensity is going up from a strength perspective.

Plyometrics training, plyometrics, we're keeping the volume at a medium tier, nothing too insane, but obviously you still need to have good intensity there. But then you're building closer to the fight, increasing up that intensity and then dropping the volume right away.

And then as we're getting even closer to the fight, it's really just fine-tuning, very small little details, very small movement patterns that we feel are going to yield big returns for that specific athlete. So that's where coaches understanding your athlete comes into the picture.

And then once they've had their fight, it's a case of just cycling back because when we're just doing all this bilateral work, it gives the body this time to mask certain things that are going on. So when we funnel back into the unilateral stability off-camp style training, it gives us the time then again to reassess what's going on under the hood, if you will.

It's like a mechanic. You've got this high-performance race car and you're sending it off on the track and it's just smashing it out for two months or whatever. And then all of a sudden you take it back to the mechanic and it seems like it's fine. It's performing at a great level, but there's all these nuts and bolts and screws and oil that's been leaking and all kinds of little things that just need to be fine-tuned before we then go send it out back onto the track again for the next season.

James de Lacey19:29

So then based on that, so you're only loading with heavy compound movements essentially once they start in camp. So before that is mainly the single leg or I guess you could say that mechanical side preparing them for that. And then as they get in camp, then they start to do more compounds and hit them up for the next five weeks.

Steve Pipe19:45

So let's say we had six months, right, building up to the next fight. So two months out of that would be more unilateral, limited base of support, deviating center of mass, looking to improve pelvic and rib-cage stability, all those kind of things, ensuring mobility was there.

Let's say the second two months, we'd be focusing on introducing specific bilateral exercises, so that when we get in camp, it's not a shock to them. They're not like, oh, I've never done this before. And it's like they're learning as they're in camp. So that's where the skill of learning the bilateral movements would come in, but we'd still have, there's still a heavy component or element of that unilateral work that we're doing in the first two months.

And then as we get more in camp, we'd start to phase away that unilateral work.

And we'd be streamlining more into the bilateral side of things. So it's this phasic model where it just blends really nicely through. And then say after the first three months, so the two months of unilateral, one month of incorporating bilateral but still unilateral work here, and then that first month I would then start to reintroduce small components of plyometrics and ballistics too, just to make sure that they have a good understanding about what's going to be coming in the next two months.

And then they're not, it's not going to be, again, it's not going to be a shock. Because when you're in camp, you don't want to be teaching new stuff all the time. You just want them to be able to come in, absolutely send it, smash it, and then get out. You don't want them to be thinking too much, oh, I've never done this before, this is really hard. You want to keep it as stress-free and as fun as possible. So yeah, that's how I blend it.

James de Lacey21:48

Yeah, for sure. That's a good lesson for the listeners as well. For anyone who's essentially maybe training yourself for an upcoming fight, there shouldn't be a drastic difference between your fight camp and out of fight camp. If you start a fight camp preparation with all new exercises, not only is it going to be hard and weird, you're going to be sore. And that's going to affect your training bad. So that's a good lesson. So make sure you take that in if you're doing your own training.

Well, I wanted to touch on as well, how many days a week then of strength training, essentially, or training in the gym, are they doing, say, out of camp versus in camp, or is it the same throughout, two to three times a week or something like that?

Steve Pipe22:16

Yeah, two or three. I think if they're in camp, normally it's just going to be two. And that's just because, depending on what gym they're at, they'll have quite differing conditioning routines and whatnot.

And again, a lot of it stems back to the fighter. There's one girl that I'm working with remotely at the moment, and she's historically really, really light. She always weighs in under what her weight class is. She fights on ONE Championship, and she's quite, she's starting to get into the upper tier now, because skill-wise she's really good. But then understanding that, while your weight is just way, way too light.

So for her camp, we actually keep three days of strength training initially, even though she's in camp. Because based on the time frame that we're working together, we made a consecutive decision, or executive decision, if you will, that it's better for her to have three days of strength training just to give her that solidity in her frame, and that strength. That's because that's subjective to the individual, right? That's going to be the most beneficial for her.

Whereas if you have other fighters that have done extensive off-camp training, they're really solid, they're really strong, everything's great, unless they have some type of small nagging injuries or anything like that, there shouldn't really be any need to have that third day. That third day is just supplement, it would only be supplement with accessory work. And depending again on their training routine, it could do more harm than good, because it's just introducing unnecessary fatigue, when actually you have to ask yourself, is it better just for them to rest?

Or is it better for them to have a third day of strength training? So it's all relative, but definitely they have to have at least two days.

James de Lacey24:26

I'm sure, I think you touched on this as well. I'm going to ask you about a little bit about specificity within that strength training. But obviously, as you mentioned, specificity is individual. Obviously, for your fighter in the ONE FC, she needs three sessions because she needs to hold that weight and maintain that muscle mass, whereas for someone else, it's two.

So within your strength training, then, do you have a set of specific exercises that you like to use that you think transfer best or well to say MMA or striking sports? For example, you see a lot of stuff on, I mean, Instagram is the worst example for most exercises anyway. But you see a lot of stuff on Instagram, for example, people doing banded punches, banded kicks.

But I have my own opinion on these, but I wanted to hear from you essentially, do you use them? What's your opinion on these so-called specific exercises? Do you have a set of specific exercises that you see that would transfer well, that maybe the listeners can have a look at?

Steve Pipe25:11

Yeah, this is a good topic. So I think the problem that a lot of coaches, the pitfall that a lot of coaches fall into is thinking that because an exercise looks and simulates what goes on in a specific sport or an environment, for example banded punches, or that kind of stuff, because it looks so close to the sport, that if we just add some load to it, it's going to yield really good returns. And it's going to be beneficial to the fighter. When it isn't always the case, there are a few exceptions.

But anything like the banded kicks and the banded punches, that kind of stuff, they can skew how the athlete throws their technique. And so because it skews how they throw their technique, and then when they go and hit the pads, and they're sparring, they revert back to a different technique. It kind of asks the question, well, is it actually really an effective exercise?

So for myself, what I try to think about is what's going to give me, what exercise is going to give me the greatest ability to add load, but that is also going to be conducive to the sport, as in it's going to give me access to ranges of motion that are going to be used in the sport. So that's why now I've actually moved quite far away from bench press and back squat. And I tend to use things now like weighted push-ups, landmine press, that exercise in particular, it's got a bad rap because of the way and the timing in which fighters use it.

But the reason why I like landmine press and I like weighted push-ups is because they give us the ability to load our shoulder in a protracted position. So which really helps us to stimulate the serratus, which gives us this stability in these more in-range positions, which is essentially what we're going to be using. If someone's coming at me strong, and I can just bridge on them or post them, and then counter from there, that's all coming from my shoulder stability, right, my shoulder's ability to be strong in its more protracted position.

And you see fight stances too. They never like back here like this. Being strong here nine times out of ten is going to get me knocked the [expletive] out in the ring. So training these type of ranges of motion has become more of a staple to me, especially as we're getting closer to the fight. Yeah, so things like that.

And it's this specific movement patterns that I feel have a much higher yield in terms of the results that you can get from the athlete and from the fighter when it comes to their performance. And it's a case of looking at movement patterns that are in this sport, and trying to find ways to load into them. And also at the same time, looking at other areas that they might be lacking purely from a biomechanical perspective, where then it's just not getting addressed in the actual sport, right?

So Muay Thai, for example, is very anterior chain dominant. There's a lot of hip flexion, there's a lot of loading just in general through the anterior chain. So being able to do things like a heavy hinge, for example, with like a trap bar, and other exercises that give us that ability to really build meaningful strength through the hips. Those types of exercises tend to be very beneficial for a lot of fighters.

James de Lacey29:07

Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of people forget that when you're designing a strength and conditioning program, you're looking to fill the gaps that the sport doesn't give you, as you mentioned. Because Muay Thai, everything's in front. So we need to do some stuff for the essentially for the back of the body.

And I want to change tack a little bit to the conditioning side. So we've covered a lot of the strength side for listeners. And we can cover some of the conditioning side for listeners too. But do you have much involvement with the conditioning side? Because I know as a coach, it can be a little difficult, because obviously within each gym, they essentially, a lot of them do their own conditioning. The fighters do it with their sport coaches there, within a team. So do you have much involvement in that or much say in that? Do they come to you for say extras or anything like that?

Steve Pipe29:45

Yeah, so just as you said, and as I said before, it's very subjective to the gym. So for example, the fighters that I train, I train about five or six fighters now from City Kickboxing, which is being rated as the number one MMA gym in the world and things like that. So they have already got in place a really good strength and conditioning routine that they follow. So when I work with fighters from that gym, it's really just working on the strength side of things. Other gyms as well, they have their own kind of more,

I would say traditional style of conditioning. And so working with their coaches and with them as athletes, my goal really is just to slot specific things in that might be missing from the overall programming. So most of the time, it's just submaximal aerobic power-based training that they're missing because a lot of the time they're either going balls to the wall, 100 and a million, 50%. They're just going crazy, right? Pushing to the absolute limits, or they're down more on this steady state realm, but this is that mid range that they're missing.

And also I think another part that can be overlooked is the pulmonary side of things. So looking at how well their lungs are able to expel CO2 and also how well they're able to attach that oxygen into the blood. So there's certain protocols that I just put in that fill in these little gaps that could be the missing link for each athlete. But it really just comes down to a little bit of trial and error.

You trial something for a period of time, you're in close contact with the athlete and you're saying to them, how's that feeling? How are you finding that? You feel like I feel amazing, man. I feel super fit. Like this is the fittest I've ever felt. Awesome, just keep doing what you're doing. Don't change a thing. As opposed to, I still feel my conditioning isn't there. Okay, sweet. Is it a psychological thing or is it they're actually not where we want them to be?

So that sub-maximal work, it gives us a great ability to see how fast they can recover, especially from a heart rate perspective, because you can link together how quickly someone can bring their heart rate back down from a relatively high intensity with a really high degree of aerobic fitness.

So a good example would be some of the triathletes that I've trained and some of the top, top Muay Thai fighters that I've seen when we studied them with the heart rate monitors in Thailand. So they'll send their heart rate up very high and within 30 seconds, if that, they'll already be back down to a grey zone. So around about 107, something like that.

So a good example is Muay Thai. He was at 170, 180, for a good solid 90 seconds. The time it goes, he's got a minute to recover with the net first 25 to 30 seconds. He's already back down to grey, low grey. And you're just like, damn, that's just insane.

So his cardiac agility is just so phenomenal. It just gives him such an edge going into each round, right, because he's essentially back to normal where someone asked their heart rate could still be sky high unnecessarily beating way too fast. And they're just going back in it, oh, I got to pass out. Where it's he's just, all right, sweet round four now, cool. Touch glass. So I would have found that to be a really good indicator of where an athlete's conditioning levels at.

James de Lacey33:58

Nice, so how are you then addressing that, that heart rate recovery? Have you got specific protocols to use or essentially progressions you use to improve the heart rate recovery, or is this going to be based on the individual?

Steve Pipe34:12

Yeah, so a lot of the time I see the athletes who get the best results are the ones that have the groundwork done and dusted in their off-camp period. There's one guy that I'm working with at the moment, his name's Michael Isaac. He's a top level amateur pro. He's just trying to transition into the pro scene now, but he's a young guy. He spent his entire off-camp just getting in that ground level aerobic capacity work and just maintaining his fitness through bag training and not super intense. It's almost more along the lines of flow state, bag work training, skills training.

So because he got that base level training in for that period of time, let's say eight weeks, when we started to bring the intensity up, when we got in camp, his ability to recover is so much higher than someone that's just said to me, okay, dude, I've got Steve, I've got 12 weeks. I need to get in the top shape that I can. We plug in their first aerobic power session and then we see that their recovery rate's not as good. So to answer your question, the groundwork is what dictates how well they do in these initially.

The second thing is understanding how they're breathing can improve their recovery rate, especially from a heart rate. And a lot of it is about getting the athlete more in tune with their own body. So teaching them how to recover. So are you breathing through your nose and then a little bit more diaphragmatically in between rounds, not obviously when they're fighting because that's a little bit dangerous, but in between rounds, teaching them how to utilize that specific breathing techniques that bring them into more of a parasympathetic state in between rounds.

So they're able to recover and they're able to be more present in the moment. They're not just this passenger on this massive adrenaline dump and fight or flight mode the entire time. They're able to channel in and out of different states and different heart rate levels or heart rate zones throughout the course of a fight.

James de Lacey36:31

Nice, nice. I like that focus on breathing too. And I want to touch further on that breathing as well. You mentioned about training the lungs essentially. How are you going about training? Specifically training the lungs in terms of conditioning.

Steve Pipe36:47

Yeah, that's a good question. So there's kind of two ways that I do that. Number one would be getting them onto a salt bike or a rower, something that's you're able to maintain a relatively high intensity but not too high. And it's really important to understand that because if we go super, super, super high, it's really hard to maintain this full extension and compression of the lungs during that highest or super high level of intensity.

So I tell them, I want you to go hard but I only want you to go as hard as you can whilst being able to maintain this breathing technique. So what I'm really trying to do is build up their lungs capacity and capabilities to provide their bodies, provide their working muscles with enough oxygen and at the same time, expel CO2 out of their body too.

So it's short intervals with a little bit shorter rest, so it's a two to one work to rest ratio but short intervals for a long period of time. So let's say 16 rounds and then what we're looking to do is maintain this kind of expansion, compression, expansion, compression and they're fully expanding and they're fully compressing. So it's almost like treating your lungs as a working muscle.

So yeah, this is what I do with the guys when they're in camp. And if it is something that we've addressed as one of their issues or one of their core weaknesses, it would be something that we'd also look to incorporate from an off-camp perspective too but again, towards the tail end of their off-camp.

So yeah, that's one way. The other way would be in a pool, same kind of thing. You're looking to move it an intensity that allows you to fully expand and compress. Being in the water, it just gives us that little bit more resistance there. So that's one other way that we can look to improve that area of conditioning, the pulmonary side of things.

James de Lacey38:48

Nice, I'm gonna come to the gym at some point and you can show me some of that. Maybe we do a little YouTube video or something.

You're stealing your secrets.

Steve Pipe39:01

No, that's good. That's interesting.

James de Lacey39:01

I want to touch on as well. Oh, actually I want to touch on that quickly as well. Is there a way that you identify someone that needs essentially extra lung training? Or is it more, hey, this is what we're gonna do anyway, because most people do need it.

Steve Pipe39:25

Yeah, so identifying what is someone's rate limiter when it comes to conditioning can be quite a challenging exercise to go through. For me, what I like to do is I kind of take more of a holistic approach or a broader approach. And then what I do is I kind of chop things up.

So I'll expose my athlete to, let's say, the more cardiac based conditioning protocols, then I'll expose them to the more pulmonary and then we'll also go down a little bit of the utilization route and we'll just see how they respond to all three and then we can look in the off-camp to chop certain things up.

So I might go okay, we'll take away utilization and we'll take away the cardiac and it's how do they feel? And then we can chop and change and we can just see what area it is that they feel they're really lacking in and a lot of the time what they think is the issue might not actually be the issue. So it's just that trial and error if you want to get really technical about it.

You need to get a blood oxometer and you need to do really specific testing, so it can be in my opinion with a combat sports athlete, it can be quite challenging because they're not in one specific position and one specific range of motion. So it can be quite a challenging thing to do, to say the least, to really get accurate data around it.

And so again, that's why I kind of just tend to take a more broad approach and just give them everything. And then obviously not everyone has lots and lots of money that they can invest into really high-level equipment. So I'm just trying to find the base level conditioning protocols that I've seen really effectively work over time with a really broad scope of athletes.

Obviously, primarily strikers, but a lot of them—let's say over a hundred at least now—and I know that these conditioning protocols yield good results because they always tell me, "I felt the fittest that I've ever felt. I was in that ring. It was the last round. I felt like it was the first." Things like that. You're like, no, it's anecdotal evidence, but at the same time it's obviously subject to the individual. But when you hear it from so many athletes and no one ever says, "I felt so unfit," you're like...

James de Lacey42:02

So then do you have maybe just one example of a set rep or duration protocol of that central cardiac, I guess, targeting, and then the utilization or peripheral targeting?

Steve Pipe42:02

Yeah, sure. So with the more cardiac side of things, I'll be looking to get my athletes to work at about 85% of their heart rate max. Now, getting to find someone's 85% of their heart rate max can be a little bit of a weird one because, most people will think, "Oh, it's 220 minus your age." But then if you're working with an athlete that's been training their whole life, a lot of the time the actual true heart rate max is going to be quite a bit higher.

Or, yeah, but normally I just give kind of a little bit of a leeway based on how long they've been training for. So it's kind of like an estimation, and then it comes back to kind of infield data as well. So it's just seeing how they respond, because you could have two individuals that have been training for about the same amount of time.

And both of them, you get them, you plug them in at a specific heart rate. Let's say I've got two 23-year-old guys. They've both been training for years. They're both considered to be very fit. They don't really have any major conditioning issues, but they just want to get to that peak physical condition. I plugged them both in at 170.

One of them could say, "Holy [expletive], Steve, that was super hard, man. To maintain 170 was really tough for me," right? And the other one could say, "Oh, that felt easy, that felt very easy." So I'm like, okay, well, for the 170 person, that's great. Maybe I could plug him up. I could give him a little bit more room to move. I could get up to 175 maybe. And the other person I could say, "Okay, I'm gonna bring you down to around 165."

So it's just these little kind of minute details that we just modify, and we just want them to feel like they're working hard, but then they're able to sustain it for the entire time that we're working. Okay, so a good example of this would be, okay, let's say they do three minutes of work and they do 90—they have 90 seconds of rest. So it's like a two-to-one work-to-rest ratio, right?

For that three minutes, we get them, we plug them in a specific intensity, 85%, for example. And then we get them to maintain that for that full period of time, and then we see within that 90-second window they have to rest, how fast they're able to recover.

Okay, so that's one example in the cardiac side. On the utilization side of things, there's other things that we can do. It depends on how much data you want to get from it. So if you're wanting to get more specific data, you could get them on an assault bike and you could just say, "Okay, for eight seconds, I want you to go all out, every single thing that you've got." Okay?

And there's two things that we look at. So within that eight seconds, I'm looking at, one, how many calories they can burn in that eight-second window, and two, what's their max RPM in that eight-second window as well. So that kind of tells me how much force and output they can produce in a really short space of time. And then it just gives me something to—it gives me a base level reading.

And what we see is, as they kind of progress throughout their camp and as their other areas start to take shape—so for example, their cardiac base conditioning and their pulmonary conditioning—as those both start to improve, when we retest, it's a lot higher. So their ability to produce force in a short space of time... and it's not just that first initial reading. It's like I might get into that, I get them to rest for a minute, and I get them to do it again. And I just keep getting them to do it until we get to a point where we start to see a significant drop-off.

So a lot of the time when I do this testing with my athletes, they might be able to hit, say, five to six rounds, and then after six they start to have a significant percentage drop in terms of their output and their peak RPM. But then at the end—let's say mid to like three quarters of the way through their camp—we retest and they're able to crack out double what they did in their first session, right?

So it's just giving them, providing them one with this data that helps to solidify that their conditioning is improving and their ability to turn that oxygen into fuel in a really short space of time is also improving as well. So that's one way that we can do it.

Another way would be just getting them on a bag. And this is where I'd really like to have a bag that every time you hit it, it tells you how hard you're hitting.

James de Lacey47:00

Well, I just—I'm like, okay, Seth Laretsky and a friend of mine is now in Canada. He was developing that, but I think now—I think since COVID it's been a bit of a [expletive] show. But I'll hit him up and I'll see if you're still doing it. But I think, yeah, they were looking to develop similar stuff for that.

Steve Pipe47:13

That'll be epic. Wow. And even if you hit up, speak to guys at Millennium as well, I could put you in touch there. I've got a bag, a water bag with a sensor on it for their—

James de Lacey47:26

Oh yeah, I'll get them on the pipe, so—

Steve Pipe47:26

That's awesome. So they would just hit the bag for the same thing, 10, 8, 6, 8 to 10 seconds, and we just see how much power they could consistently put up. And then over the course of, say, 12 rounds, where they start to drop off.

James de Lacey48:03

It's so cool, right? And I thought of it's sports-specific. Yeah, so this is where specificity would actually be beneficial in the strength and conditioning world, right? Because it's giving us data which we can then correctly link over to the sport, as opposed to a Dyna band punch or whatever or kick or whatever. It's just hard for us to really know if they're actually making meaningful adaptations. We're just able to load it. We can add more weight and more weight. The movement's great, technique, everything's good, so we know that they're actually getting stronger there.

Well, when you're in fight camp or later in fight camp and you've got, say, fighters have maybe two to three sparring days—you say you're in charge of their conditioning as well—how would you balance the conditioning with the sparring? Somebody's sparring can take its toll. Is there a method to the madness there, considering you need to generally increase the intensity of the conditioning with a fight camp to prepare for a fight, but then the intensity of the actual sports training is increasing at the same time. So how are you finding that balance?

Steve Pipe48:54

Yeah, yes, you're a Christian, bro. So, it's interesting how we kind of develop and we evolve as coaches. So like I was saying to you, I've kind of played around with cutting specific things out. So now I've started to actually cut away the utilization side of things because I feel like from an intensity perspective, it can push our athletes a little bit too hard and can put in maybe a little bit too much of a stress response there.

Especially if they're really deep in their camp and, as you were saying, they have a very intense training routine with sparring and really intensive, hard pad work. The beauty about the aerobic power and the pulmonary-based training is that getting the athlete to go balls to the wall, all out, it's almost more like a mid to higher tier intensity that doesn't generally induce too much systemic fatigue onto them. It doesn't have too high of a stress response.

It's something that if everything's calculated correctly, it shouldn't actually damage them too much. So to answer your question, I would still be very mindful about when I plug those sessions in. So I look to do it on a day—

That might be more skills and drilling. So for example, they might go in, they might do an hour to an hour and a half of just drilling and skill work, but it's not that kind of thing. You know what I mean? It's a bit more chill.

So then it's okay, well now we've got some more room to move here, right? Because you've had a lighter session here. So I can plug, let's say five hours later, I can plug in this conditioning session and it's not going to be too taxing on your body because I know that it's not super high intensity. And historically speaking, I know that it doesn't induce too much fatigue on us as well.

James de Lacey51:03

Now, that's a good point. Do you think there's room ever to put harder conditioning after sparring? So then you can put all in the same session the same day or is that starting to push too far down? Well, it depends on how intense the sparring session is, but is there ever room to put a short 10, 20 minute at the end of a sparring session?

Steve Pipe51:33

Yeah, that's a good question. I think you can and I know that there are a lot of coaches that do. I think having been a fighter and having gone through full fight camps and sparring with really, really high level guys, I think a lot of the time it's actually quite nice just to finish sparring, your sparring and just to kind of tap it there because when you do get up to a high level and you are sparring with really elite level fighters, it can be quite taxing just neurologically because you're in there with really, really, really strong, powerful, high fight IQ killers that are, you know, you do get injuries.

You get half kicked or low kicked or you take some shots on your arm or something. So at the end of that session, it's kind of nice just to do something that might be a little bit more skill specific to areas that you felt were lacking in your sparring. So you've got this fresh kind of example of areas where you're lacking and then you're looking to kind of balance those areas out from a skills perspective. This is skill, skill, you know what I mean?

If for example, you're in a gym where a lot of the fighters, they aren't at a super high level, the sparring isn't too intense and you felt like maybe you weren't getting that level, that intensity and that stimulation in terms of sparring, then I'd say that there would be definitely room to have some type of 10 to 20 minutes of conditioning at the end.

But I just use the guys, some of the high level guys that I've trained. And I know when they finish sparring, they're pretty wrecked, even four or five hours later, they're pretty rinse. Then I need to make sure they rest, they have food, they have a coffee or something. And then they come and do their other training with me. So it can be a bit of a balancing act there for sure.

James de Lacey53:33

Yeah, for sure. In terms of the day to day schedule, how would you structure the day when you've got say skills plus strength work or conditioning and things like that? Do you prefer having the technical, I guess martial arts work, combat sports work done first in the morning and then the strength and conditioning in the afternoon? Or do you reverse that? Or does it depend on the day? Is there a little system you have there?

Steve Pipe54:06

Yeah, so if it's up to me, I'm definitely, definitely going to get them to do the skills based work before they do the strength training. 100%. And skills training, being more drilling and technical sort of things, that type of training is most beneficial to be done prior to any other type of training, right? Because you want them to go into that as essentially fresh as possible.

That being said, if for example, they just there's no way around that, and they have to do the S&C or the strength work first, as long as the following session isn't a really high intensity, pad work conditioning session or something like that. I think it's not the end of the world if they're going strength first, they had a decent window, they say four or six hours, or around four, four and a half, five hours, and they float into the next skills based training session.

It's just a lighter session, and it's more skill orientated, it's not going to be too bad either, because they're not going to be inducing too much fatigue in that session anyways. So the kind of compounding effect of the strength work followed by this session, it's not going to be too great, right? Because they're just kind of stimulating their muscles if they've trained effectively, not annihilated them. And then they've gone to their next session, where they're just kind of moving and flowing.

So it's not really going to, if anything, it could be beneficial, right, to get a bit of blood flow through their body. If they're going into a really high intensity wrestling session, or sparring or something, then I'm like, man, don't do it. We'll find another way.

James de Lacey55:48

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I think as well for maybe for hobbyists as well, maybe you have some advice for them, for example, maybe they train four or five times a week, evening classes, but obviously, usually with hobbyist classes, you've always got some hard work done. Is there a way for them that they can balance, say, morning strength training or morning strength, conditioning training that you have advice on? Is there a way they can do that where they can still do the class and the high intensity stuff that they have to do there, but not be so beat up for their sessions?

Steve Pipe56:21

So I'll tell them, definitely, definitely give yourself rest mornings. I think that's something that a lot of time, people hobbyist based trainers, or people training in combat sports, kind of neglect, they think like, I've got to go hard, I've got to make the most of every day, this kind of thing, right. But they just have to understand and accept that they're not a professional athlete, they do have a nine to five job, they're not, they don't have the luxury of being able to go home and have a rest for two or three hours in between sessions.

And because of that, because they are going into an environment where they're going to be awake and stimulated and whatnot, they don't have that luxury of being able to rest. So they just have to make sure they program in days where they're actually taking a rest.

So to give an example, let's say Monday, Wednesday, Friday was the high intensity pad work evening transition. And then Tuesday and Thursday was the sparring days. So I would say maybe Monday and Wednesday, they could do this, or maybe they could go Monday, and maybe Thursday or Friday, they could do the strength days. And maybe they have one conditioning day somewhere in the middle there. But the other two mornings are rest mornings. So they just take the morning off, they have a sleep in or whatever, maybe they do some recovery stuff, something just very chill at most.

And then maybe Saturday or Sunday, they could do some kind of low steady state, conditioning based training. So whether that be just going for a walk or a light jog, something or a cycle, a bicycle, whatever, just something that's really chill, that isn't going to screw them up too badly.

James de Lacey58:04

Yeah, some good advice. Some very good advice. Well, we've actually covered quite a bit in this podcast. It's been a good hour now. So I don't want to take your whole day because we could keep going. But is there anything you'd like, website, social anywhere where people can find you?

Steve Pipe58:18

Right. So yeah, if you guys want to follow me and see some of the work that I'm doing with some of the fighters that I'm training, and you want to learn a little bit more about my training, it's probably the easiest place to find me would be on Instagram. So that's at Steve pipe fitness.

And if you guys are wanting to get in touch with me or get a program from me, I have a new program that I've just finished creating, I've just been kind of beta testing it on a whole stack of different top level athletes. And the overwhelming consensus is that it's really good. So it's called dominate. Let's go dominate foundations. So if anyone's interested in trying it out, they can just message me on Instagram. And we can make that happen for you guys.

James de Lacey59:07

Perfect. I'll throw that in the description too. So if anyone wants to get there, you can just click the link down there on YouTube. Or if you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify, it'll be in those descriptions too. But thanks for coming on Steve, really appreciate it. And we have to do a round two at some point too in the future.

Steve Pipe59:22

Yeah, keen as though. Thank you, James.

James de Lacey59:22

Perfect. Cheers, bro. Appreciate it.