How Bangtao Muay Thai Are Creating The Next Generation Of Professional Fighters w/ Eoin Scullion (SSOF Ep 130)

Eoin Scullion0:28

The challenges with the rugby team was I had to try and keep the club together during the—he signed the dotted line for this club and then the next week, COVID, in lockdown. You keep all the memberships sort of engaged in the club. I was like, what? Never done this before. And then after three years in Singapore I had a couple of different roles in Singapore. I was an elite personal trainer in one of the companies and then I was head of education in another company.

And I decided that I just had enough of—course, I was looking around and then I got reached out to by a company in Saudi Arabia. Went, spent a couple in Saudi Arabia, which is a great experience actually. I loved every minute there. And a lot of people raise their eyebrows when they hear me say that because the Western media has thrown that place under the bus with, "Oh, they're sports washing, they got too much oil and gas money." But it was actually cool because I'd never really met Saudi Arabians before and they're probably the nicest of any country I've lived in. I haven't lived in New Zealand, by the way.

But of every country I've lived in, they're the nicest. The way they treated me was so nice. And I came out here to Thailand on a vacation last year. I've always had a keen interest in jiu-jitsu and MMA, even more so than rugby, to be quite honest. I'd watch MMA way more than rugby even when I was playing rugby. And on Woody a little bit—we went to UFC events in a couple, a few years ago.

And Woody's my boss. He's the head of strength and conditioning here at Bangtao. And then when we caught up last year, we were talking about building up an education sort of platform with like a certification and maybe being a home of education for the Southeast Asian hub. Headed off back to Saudi and kind of forgot a little bit, and I think he had kind of had too.

And then he was just one day, I think February, was just like, he posted something on Instagram and I replied to it like, "I'm coming out to work out there." And then back and forth, then you know, I am now.

It's been a great experience so far. I've loved it. And we've got some big things in the pipeline. Excuse me. Some really big things coming in the pipeline which kind of begins this week. We've got Anderson Silva coming out to do a seminar, which is cool. I was a massive Anderson Silva fan back in the day, so it's kind of cool he's coming out here to teach a seminar.

And then in 2025, we're going to roll out some educational events purely at strength and conditioning. We've been working hard on that at the moment.

James de Lacey6:33

Is Bangtao one of the only gyms that have fully fledged strength and conditioning embedded in the gym, or is that universal around Thailand?

Eoin Scullion6:33

So the boys have started Bangtao—all worked at Tiger. And they, you know what they—they branched out by themselves, as you do when you outgrow a place. You want to go off and start your own thing. And in this case the boys wanted to do it together as a group of friends. And Woody was the head of strength and conditioning at Tiger and they had a really big S&C area there, so he kind of took what he wanted and made it its own at Bangtao.

So it is starting to get a bit more common though, the S&C in the MMA gyms. I know one of the grappling clubs here is having—they're starting it here. I know one of the grappling gyms has also had a—kitted out an S&C area.

James de Lacey7:12

Interesting. Okay, so when we're talking strength and conditioning in these I guess different Thai gyms, probably the perception from the outside is—I think what you see, stuff on YouTube, is kind of like student classes, right, almost like the general population, tourists come in and maybe even fighters just do a random strength class together versus, say, maybe an integrated approach where you're maybe working with specific fighters for their fights one-on-one. So how does it look for you guys? Is it a bit of both? Does one pay the bills and the other one you're working with fighters and preparing them for fights? I'll leave that to you.

Eoin Scullion8:14

We have group classes every day. We have a conditioning class early in the morning—two conditioning classes early in the morning: 7:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Then we have a kettlebells class and then the strength and conditioning class, which, to be fair, is the strength thing. All these classes are kind of tailored towards anyone, and because we have a lot of tourists coming in.

And, you know, we do have some of the fighters come to the classes. The guys that probably aren't in camp will come to the classes and just to stay in shape. And the class—so we kind of tailor it, then we tell them what they have to be doing it's in, rep-wise, compared to Karen from the medical center sort of thing.

And then separately, we'll work with the fighters who are in camp, sort of things. So recently we, you know, we've had Zangi in at the moment doing camp with Woody. He's her main strength and conditioning coach. She sometimes comes to the fitness classes too.

I worked with Abdullah Al-Qahtani and Hatab Alfi, who just fought the weekend on PFL, which is a really cool experience because I actually met them in Saudi. And when I told them I was moving out here, they were like, "All right, well then we will as well." So got a great relationship with them both. And they both won on the weekend, which was great.

And then, yeah, so we kind of have it at least separate depending on who's in camp and things like that too, and who's in town too, because a lot of these guys are traveling all the time and things.

James de Lacey10:25

Got it. So how's the approach or how's the setup with the actual technical coaches as well? Because at the moment, obviously took my student kettlebell classes, which, as you mentioned, are for everyone. A little, they're isolated from, I guess, what else is going on. So with these fighters, is there a lot of collaboration with what's happening in their technical and skills training? How does that all come together?

Eoin Scullion10:54

So we kind of—Woody, myself, Brad, Frank, and George kind of will keep in sort of communication based on who we're working with. Like with Abdullah, Pikman was his main sort of head MMA coach, if you can call Frank that. Frank's actually, sure, head of wrestling, but he'll take the lead on one of the fighters. And then I'll maintain communication based on doing, you know, technical sessions are going in, and then we kind of manage—

Our loading around that I tried to just with the loading I just tried to keep the technical stuff, as everyone would do, the technical stuff's the main bread and butter and then we sort of plug the gaps with the S&C stuff based on how tired he is on the day. The thing is Abdullah's different to anyone I've coached before because he has the more is better mentality and when he hears this he'll laugh at it because we spoke about it so many times.

He just loves to just he's wanting to work so hard to get what he shows he deserves in life. It was kind of for him trying to plug the gaps was every gap in his calendar was just full of stuff that he wanted to do, so he's a bit of an outlier.

Yeah, so we do the main thing for us is just build out as a team the camp, staying in communication and then having to sort of autoregulate as we get towards the point at the end too.

James de Lacey12:33

So do you want to lay out maybe what just typical training week looks like and then we can go into some of the more nuts and bolts? I think that will provide some good context around what it is you're doing and why.

Eoin Scullion12:33

I'll just use Abdullah as an example. He would do either Muay Thai or jiu-jitsu in the morning and then the 4:00 PM class which is for all of the MMA athletes, which would mostly be wrestling. The 4:00 PM class is basically team training, so it'll change week as the week goes on. So Monday is literally wrestling, Tuesday is sparring, Wednesday's grappling for MMA, and then Thursday's wrestling again I believe, and then Friday's sparring. We spar twice a week in fight camp.

Then on a Saturday morning they'll do a fight sim and then as like four weeks out they'll go two, I think it starts with two rounds of fight sim, then the following week is three, the following week after that's four rounds based on how many rounds they're fighting in their event. And then from an S&C perspective I tried to get them in early, early morning like 7:00 AM, but for some of them that I've worked with so far here is very difficult, so you kind of have to plug the gap 11:00 AM. They've done their Muay Thai or their jiu-jitsu and then they want to do their S&C.

But I tried to just do two sessions per week of S&C getting exposure to sort of heavier loads twice a week, and we just try to time it. I tried to have it as on the morning of the sparring days because then they can have two high days a week and I think it's kind of the sweet spot.

And then we kind of on a Saturday afternoon some of the guys they like to go for a long steady state sort of run, but steady state is hard here because of the heat and humidity and none of these guys are, everyone here is chronically dehydrated too, so they're definitely not staying in zone two for sure.

James de Lacey15:29

Would you say each day then, because you mentioned your two high days, those two sparring days I think it was Wednesday and Friday, so with the afternoon MMA, would you say that the morning technical stuff is kind of the lower end technical work? Those MMA trainings can get pretty intense as well, so you almost have a hard afternoon most days I think, so.

Eoin Scullion15:29

But I think with guys, especially the sponsored fighters and the UFC guys and PFL guys that come through, I think they kind of know how their body's feeling and how to pull back a little bit too. With some guys they think it's let's just go balls to the wall every single session that we can. I think with the guys who are a bit more long in the tooth in the game, they are a bit more wise to how to manage their body and then how to manage their intensities too.

And I guess Frank and George and Alex, even Connor our head boxing coach, they all kind of will have an input like yeah you're looking tired today so just if we spar at the end just do two rounds. They're really emotionally intelligent to be quite honest, the boys that are all the MMA and the striking. Very emotionally intelligent guys for a group of [expletive] put together. They're very good at telling people when to push and when to go back.

James de Lacey17:01

Nice. And then let's jump into your strength conditioning session. So you have your two mornings on the sparring days, what do those typically look like? Obviously it's going to change depending on fighter stuff, but even just a very general or even a little case study on one of the fighters you have?

Eoin Scullion17:01

I use a, there's a guy I coach called Flash Daddy. It's not his real name but that's his name with Flash. He's a kickboxer, he's a Queensbury boxer, he's done a lot of street fighting over the years, now he's actually a professional boxer. Interesting guy, one of the honestly one of the nicest guys I've met as well. But so with him typically on say for example Tuesday morning, I'll get him in to do some, we'll start off typically with just a bit of movement prep. I use the EXOS style of movement prep and then we'll just run through that.

James de Lacey18:09

For the audience, the EXOS style?

Eoin Scullion18:09

Sure, so basically just something very dynamic. I get the knee pulls, the heel progressives through to high knee skips, some banded stuff, and then some plyometric stuff like hops, jumps, pogos, these type of things. Then I kind of, I love using, when I progress after the warm-up I like to use the medicine balls a lot. I don't, medicine balls and jumping quite a lot with these guys I would use quite frequently.

So I've kind of came up with a couple of easy circuits for the guys to do just comprising of four exercises, like an isometric shot put hold against the wall, step-by shot put throw against the wall five reps as fast as I can, a side shuffle to rotational toss at the wall, these type of things. I don't try to teach them too many new things because I also know that their brain's trying to learn new information in the MMA sessions too.

Try to just keep the same sort of stuff and just sort of progress it with time or sets or reps, or just make them throw it much harder than they have been.

And then we'll go into, I sort of typically plan my strength component is just full body because it just makes more sense, I can split the week up much better that way. So I'll just do a trap bar deadlift, a dumbbell bench press, and then I'll go into a tri-set typically of upper, lower, core kind of thing. And I'll do the conditioning at the end, or if they're fatigued I can do the conditioning a bit separate, like after they do their MMA training they can come back and do their conditioning component things so they're not too fatigued going into the MMA session too.

I think so, I keep it basic because I want to try to keep the S&C session to an hour max. If I can get them in and out within 45, 50 minutes, perfect, because they can go home and sort of rest a bit better. There's times where I've had to chop stuff out of the session on the fly too, just based on how the guys are. They're in the last two weeks of camp, two, three weeks of camp, and they may be a bit fatigued with the workload, and then it's just kind of a conversation of look mate, just go home and have a rest, you look exhausted.

And we just do the main bits, just the two main sort of horizontal lifts, the medicine ball stuff, the warm-up, and then don't worry about the accessory stuff, just head home.

James de Lacey21:30

I've been through that a lot with various athletes, having to change programs on the fly. You never know when guys come in just absolutely wrecked. But do you do any form of testing or monitoring to potentially influence maybe what goes into their program or changes to their program in the coming weeks from that?

Eoin Scullion22:06

I'll do a movement assessment at the start and kind of a testing battery. Kind of I copied what they do at the PI, but it's just so hard to manage because the conditions that the guys train at here is completely different to the States, it's different to anywhere, because the weather conditions here are so extreme. So there is a lot of autoregulation here more than anywhere else I've worked, but yeah, to answer your question.

Question: I have a testing battery. In the new year, a bunch of testing stuff is arriving next year that we're going to sort of gather more data, start collaborating with a couple of companies with data sharing and things like that with our athletes. But at the moment it's just I just keep it so basic. I get them to jump, chalk on the wall as they jump, a three rep max trap bar deadlift, a max rep chin-up, things like that I do.

There was one thing I learned at Opex as well that I thought was pretty useful: doing max calories on an assault bike for 10 minutes. It's more of a psychological test, I think, because it's very low impact too. Even though it's the same, I guess, same cross-sectional pattern of running, except you're not having the impact of the ground or the road.

But that—because it's towards the end of the camp—I can retest that and just really push them hard, and then once they beat it, and they always do, it's that satisfaction. You get a little bit more buy-in too. But at the moment currently, we don't have a lot of testing apparatus. We just try to keep it as lean as possible and then control just some of the main variables of the strength, the power output, and mainly fatigue management is probably...

I got a good relationship with Whoop. When I was working in Saudi, I managed to get Whoop into the company I was working for, and then we helped them roll it out across the Middle East. And it's a thank you that when I moved to Thailand, they sent me 30 pieces of the bands.

I've actually got all our sponsored team in a group chat, and we're all talking trash to each other about our Whoop scores. I think everyone's like—not everyone, but a lot of people, the jury is still out with this kind of technology. But better than not having anything to go off of in terms of seeing how their body's recovering from training load, the sleep, who's been up all night playing Fortnite or that [expletive], or even in the massage parlors in Patong. So it's—

James de Lacey24:55

That's spot-on. I really like the Whoop as far as that: you see the heart rate spike at 2 a.m., is that the problem there?

Eoin Scullion25:34

As far as monitoring goes, this is probably as close as that we're getting to right now. But we do have plans in the think tank to roll out some really good testing apparatus.

James de Lacey25:34

And what you got coming in? Secret?

Eoin Scullion25:34

We're in talks with a couple of companies to bring in some force plates and some VBT apparatus as well. Units—I think Output Sports. We're maybe going to get one of those.

James de Lacey25:34

I think so. I think I've been getting Facebook ads for them.

Eoin Scullion26:11

You will be now, exactly. So we've been—a bunch of different stuff and speaking with a few different companies, we're getting some stuff in to, I guess, just start making our product a lot better and a bit more advanced than anyone on the island and anyone in the world. We want to have UFC Performance Institute as our main competitor kind of thing. But no, it's quite exciting. There's a lot of cool things coming in the new year for what we're wanting to do.

James de Lacey26:50

Nice. Well, within that strength program, you stick with a lot of the basic movements and keep them similar, just so they're not having to think a lot about what they're doing—medicine ball jumps and into the strength work. Do you ever do anything in between that lower load, higher velocity work of throws and jumps and that higher load, low velocity strength work? So anything like loaded different loaded jumps or maybe Olympic lifts or anything like that? Does that kind of fit in the program?

Eoin Scullion27:16

It just really depends on the person. If someone's done snatches or cleans and jerks before and they're really good at it—because the thing is, I have never been able to do any Olympic weightlifting in my lifetime because my body is just not cut out for it, number one. And it's such a skill, and there's so much time dedicated to learning the skill of snatching and cleaning. I would much rather get them to throw a ball overhead and have the same sort of adaptation, I think—triple extension—than spending hours with them showing them how to fling a barbell over their head. And it's—

I love watching it and stuff, it's so tedious. I watch the guy I work with in Saudi Arabia. He's really big into Olympic weightlifting, and he was coaching this girl who's going to compete in the Saudi Games. So in the Saudi Games, you have the opportunity to win a million riyals, it's like 450,000 US, just for putting a barbell over your head. That's crazy, it's mad. It's crazy money.

So I just sat and watched Todd training this Brazilian chick, one of our good friends, and the detail—just oh, there's a millimeter here. He's got these graphs from this app on his phone showing him everything, and he's like, "You need to do more of this, need to do more of that." And to spend time with the athlete teaching them how to do this type of stuff—even if I did know how to, I wouldn't want to, because the main thing is the MMA, and that's where all the intel that they should be downloading into their brains—that's where that should be coming from.

That's the skills they should be focusing on. The stuff that they're learning in the gym, it should be so basic that an infant can do it. Because, be fair, these guys get punched in their head for a living. A lot of them are smart, but then there's a lot of them that aren't too. And then when they hear this, I'm going to be Public Enemy Number One.

James de Lacey30:09

You're going to be the next aspirin partner.

Eoin Scullion30:09

But it's just—the reason why I keep it so basic is because dips, man, they have worked time and time again. So I just try to—I think as well, as I've gotten older, my exercise vocabulary seems to be getting smaller and smaller as well, because it's just I don't want to confuse anyone more than myself.

James de Lacey30:09

How much does specificity or transfer play a role in just your overall philosophy? Because currently we've talked a lot of—I'm not going to call them non-general—exercises, right? Deadlift, bench, pulls, et cetera. Is there a role for specificity within your philosophy and training program? Is that something you ever start to implement, or is it like, hey, we're sticking with these? These are going to make you stronger, make you better on the mat. You're doing so much MMA anyway.

Eoin Scullion30:45

I think it just depends as well, mate. That's the worst answer ever: it depends. But it just depends on many factors kind of thing. If I'm working with someone who's got a high-risk, high-reward type of fight coming up, I'd probably say there would be more to gain for them adding some specific things into their program. But on the large, the main role of the strength and conditioning coach should just be to get them strong and conditioned, rather than to learn how to XYZ so much that it's going to improve their hip toss from the cage, kind of thing. Get the bands attached to the cage.

James de Lacey31:11

Full-on Seedman style.

Eoin Scullion31:42

Oh no, you can't say that name on this podcast. Sorry, I have to beep it out. But it's—I think as far as I would go with specificities, the sort of med ball stuff, really. If there was really anything—

James de Lacey31:42

Dude, so underutilized in, I swear, all combat sports. I don't know why.

Eoin Scullion32:19

I absolutely love them, mate. I love the dead balls, especially. Even the loaded carries with getting them in your Gable grip and carrying the heavy ones—the big sandbags as well, I think, those types of things as well are very, very good to use. Even everyone's doing farmers carries. Things like the old-school type of strongman training type of stuff is starting to make a bit of a comeback, I think, the last five, six, seven years.

But I absolutely love using the medicine ball stuff because it just really—because it works.

James de Lacey32:51

I'm with you on that as well. Is that—even if the guys are short on time, they've got sparring coming up—I'll get them to go do the little med ball circuit just for the warm-up to spar, just for that potentiation. Make them shadow box for a minute with bells in their hands, so when they go in on the mats, their hands feel a lot lighter, they feel a little bit sharper.

Eoin Scullion33:21

It's very, very—I think it's very, very cute. But psychologically, it's definitely, I think, very effective in a positive way for them.

James de Lacey33:21

Let's touch on the conditioning aspect as well. You—

You mentioned obviously you're trying to keep things for 45 minutes to 60 minutes in a session, so you're covering the strength work. So how does conditioning fit in there? What does that typically look like and how do you decide—that's a lot of questions—how do you decide what they're going to do in that conditioning?

Eoin Scullion33:54

I kind of have a bit of a template that I've gone off the last few years. So it's kind of a mixture of low intensity steady state stuff, and I like using the Norwegian protocol, the 4x4, 3 minute rest in between. I like using that a lot.

James de Lacey34:18

Is this part of that hour or is this after the hour, a different session?

Eoin Scullion34:18

A different session that they do by themselves that one. Yeah. Sometimes I jump in and do it with them as well, just compete with me even though I'm not as fit or as strong as them. But it's kind of like I want to push them to beat the coach kind of thing.

But it's like I kind of based off of this template I have, a lot of intervals. I try to, as basic as possible again, just—there's not the sledge hammers aren't out on the tires kind of thing. It's usually on the bike, pushing and pulling a sled, the HIIT type of stuff. So getting on the Watt bike and putting attention up to the fullest or they're cycling through quick sand kind of thing.

I like using Tabata a lot, even reverse Tabata. I quite like them as well.

James de Lacey35:26

Right, reverse Tabata would be 10 on 20 off, is that what you mean?

Eoin Scullion35:26

Okay, got you. Yeah, I kind of just have a bit of a little bit of a formula kind of. But largely mate, the conditioning components of the fighters, it changes week to week based on their workload. Because at the end of the day it's the MMA coaches dictate what their program needs the most and our job just to support them at the end of the day really.

James de Lacey36:03

So how are you deciding which of these different protocols you're going to add into a fighter's program? You mentioned obviously it changes, it may change week to week based on what the technical load looks like. So how are you deciding then what goes what goes when basically?

Eoin Scullion36:32

Basically it's—I use Abdullah as a good example. His cardio at the start of camp wasn't the greatest, but he was also a typical overtrainer as well. So we brought down—but he wanted to go and he would do sparring for an hour and then he would go and do pads for Muay Thai, but the Muay Thai coach to absolutely kill him, smash him.

For Abdullah it was just kind of a case of pulling back the higher intensity stuff and just getting him to focus more on rest. We literally sent him home one day. It was a Thursday afternoon, we told him come back by Monday. And this was maybe six weeks out from his fight last. Actually said don't come back to Monday.

James de Lacey37:14

How many runs did he do in that time?

Eoin Scullion37:14

No, we told his fiancé if he leaves the house it's only got to be to the sauna and ice bath and nowhere else. We want him to rest. Was back on Monday—I've never seen a bloke whose conditioning improved so much from doing nothing as much as I have in my life.

So what we changed in his program was he removed a lot of the intensity type of sprint volumes and just sort of made him do a lot more Zone 2 stuff. And then we did—he did the Norwegian protocol once a week and about two hours worth of Zone 2 a week split into sessions they could fit it in. And his gas tank—he was in a five rounder in that fight. His gas tank was was exceptional.

James de Lacey38:21

Did that change his perspective and his buying to what you're doing with that time off in particular?

Eoin Scullion38:21

I was actually—me and the other Irish coach Conor kind of said to mate, "You look terrible. You look so tired mate, just in his head. Just you look awful mate, you need to go home man, rest." "I look awful?" "Yeah, I feel tired actually. Yeah, now you mention it." Now, because he looked at it—man, you just see eyes were hanging out of his head.

And then he—me and Conor are laughing when he goes off, "Yeah, I go home. I'll go home." I go, "God geez, I didn't think he would listen. He's probably going to go home and buy a ski erg or something to smash myself." But now he did what he asked. We don't tell them—they are adults at the end of the day, we can only advise what they do. But he took our advice and it paid off because he came back well rested and he had a great rest of his training camp.

But it was kind of ESS for me. I could see that he was just so willing to do all this hard work. Then it's kind of when you say it to him then, "You need to stop doing that one, do this one instead, stick to the plan that we've wrote out for you." But he would just go and do it. There was one night I left my keys at work and I had to come back 9:00 p.m.—he's in the middle of the cage with the dumbbell shadow boxing, mate.

"Get up, go home." It's just—I think after he went home and had that rest it was like, "Yeah, all right, I get it now."

James de Lacey40:19

That's good. And I do want to go into—you mentioned a little bit earlier, but even just go into some more detail around out of camp versus say in camp with the strength conditioning and how that kind of progresses and changes. You mentioned obviously you might take some stuff out as they do more and more technical stuff in camp. But maybe see if we can get a little more granular just for the listeners of kind of maybe how it looks typically outside then inside. Let's just say four to six weeks out kind of thing versus there's no fight coming out.

Eoin Scullion40:49

Yeah, I think something I've been about a lot recently, just even with Abdullah just fighting on the weekend and Hattan fighting on the weekend, what they do next. And it's so—I think after they fight it's a perfect time to work on hypertrophy. Some more muscle, their flexibility around what they're eating, increase their calories and let them enjoy life a little bit.

I typically don't—if they're on the island, if they're here at Bangtao and they've got no fight booked, it kind of is let's focus get strong, gain some muscle. To the classes rather than having a specific individualized program. We have them do correctives, but that's not me that programs that. Amir our mobility coach or even Peter our kettlebells and sport scientist typically do the correctives and rehab type of stuff with the guys.

But for me it's just kind of just come to the classes because we can control it. We can still control the intensities that you're going to work at. You're still going to be way more athletic and stronger than half the people in the class, but you're going to be in a group and you have a bit of fun, meet some people.

And it's a lot better than me doing one-to-one with you, because it just—there's no need for it. It's to save them cash at the end of the day too, because you just get the same workout as they will in a group class sort of thing.

So but typically out of camp is just a lot higher volume for, more flexibility for them just to sort of have a bit of fun and enjoy their life. A lot of the guys as well, they don't want to take maybe two three weeks off. And then within that two three weeks they'll have a fight the things through straight back into the camp again. And I don't really blame them for having two three weeks off because it's like they want to maybe go back to their home country and see their family, come back out here.

That's kind of I think what Brandon Llewelyn does. Woody Hosey just did his fight camp with him. I think he treats it like this is me going to work thing, and then camp he back in Manchester with his folks. He's very close to his family.

So we try—I guess just kind of I don't want to make everything too complex because I think I've been like when I was in Melbourne, everything was so complex when it came to the training programming and things like that. And I could just see so much confusion in the athlete's faces. And it's kind of like it doesn't really need to be that confusion or it doesn't need to be complex until it needs to be complex. Plus at the moment we don't have the apparatus to sort of make make more work for ourselves as well.

But yeah, it's probably a little bit of a different type than what your normal guests have. But I think from being in the—

Environment where sport we relied so much on sport science like with using GPS units and gym aware every day, and it's kind of moving away from that and I kind of it's been quite nice to have a bit more old school traditional sort side to it for now at least, least until we as I said get some really cool stuff in the new year and start seeing really what we can measure and manage.

James de Lacey45:11

Yeah, well that's what technology eventually misses is that coaching eye. You have to develop without the technology and then you start layering stuff in as you mentioned, because when you if you come in as a newer coach and you just have technology you're [expletive], like there's no way you're learning the skills, there's no way you're learning the proper skills of coaching.

Eoin Scullion45:11

Pretty much in all my different gigs I had, every club I was at was bloody poor, well let's just say they're poor or they didn't want to spend the money because they're cheap asses more likely. But like I basically nothing, I remember I had to train for European championships, train a team of 30 or a squad of 40, split them in half, so I think we had like 20-odd guys in a little shoebox like seriously, a shoebox, one rack, two bars, some dumbbells and like a table column for like 20 guys.

So there's like no way I can program like squads because there's two bars on one rack and so you have to get really creative with things you're doing there because I can't come in and be like, oh we're going to start using, you know, as mentioned we're going to measure the velocity on all your stuff you do and it's like, well, kind of that situation.

James de Lacey46:13

Wow, that's that's hectic. That would have been a very busy gym. I was quite lucky in most of the places and pretty much everywhere I worked actually had a really good gym shop. The best one I've been in though is was in Saudi, you just imagine.

Eoin Scullion46:13

I can imagine all the black box equipment and like the all the woodways, Bentley leather on the benches.

James de Lacey46:13

My gosh, yeah, different planet mate, it's something else.

Eoin Scullion46:13

That is funny.

James de Lacey46:13

Run me through as well your in camp, how that kind of changes. You mentioned out of camp it's a little more laxed. In camp I'm assuming it's going to be similar to what you mentioned before regarding how everything's set out, but maybe go say four to six weeks out and then maybe what the kind of last two weeks of fight camp looks like. Even the week of the fight, are you doing anything with them then or you kind of just leaving that straight to the technical stuff?

Eoin Scullion47:11

Well I mean it's different for each fighter, but typically eight weeks out we'll go, you know, GPP a couple weeks, max strength for a couple weeks, and then the last you know two, three weeks is like speed and power, sorry power then speed mostly. So like fight week I would typically get like, as I said, like the medicine ball type stuff, the low-level metric type of stuff. I think it's essentially like fight week may.

So weird, it's a very weird week because I think it's like have to cut weight, I don't want to do this, so I think so it's kind of like if I can get a 15, 20 minutes in in something like power. Primer, sometimes mate they just want to talk [expletive] and walk on a treadmill as well. I kind of had a really good conversation with Ian Garry's strength coach about this. Like they train every single day some form of S&C and it's very, you know, very, very micro dose. They do 15 to 20 minutes a day.

That's a lot of exposure to an athlete for me, like a lot of repetitions of seeing him and them having the pat with me, me having the pat with them, sort of things. So it's, but I guess then again there's many ways to skin a cat and I think like with our, like it's cool thing about it is that there is so many ways and so many things that we can learn. Like I'm 34 and there's [expletive] I hear about all the time that I'm like I've never learned this at uni, like your podcast.

But there was a kid that came in a few weeks ago and he said something to me that like I've never heard of this term before, was like neural irradiation. I like I've never ever heard of that.

James de Lacey49:22

People just making [expletive] up now.

Eoin Scullion49:22

That's why, yeah maybe, but [expletive] he fooled me. It's the cool thing about it is it, like it's, we've all, I think and maybe you'll be the same, but we all kind of not gotten too married to the way we do things. But we do have our main meat and potatoes that we always can fall back on that we know works kind of thing.

And I think moving out here with like the sort of high risk, high reward athletes that we are, I've kind of had to fall back on that a bit more often because I'm still learning, still trying to understand demands and still trying to see how we can get more out of them as well. So yeah, it's definitely something that is always evolving as coaches.

James de Lacey50:33

No, for sure. That's actually a really good way in the podcast as well. We can, where can people find and follow you and keep up with what you're doing there? Again, where can people find and follow you and keep up with what you're doing?

Eoin Scullion50:33

I use Instagram a bit and my page is just my Eoin Scullion.com and then I'm on LinkedIn as well. I use that quite a bit. Then it's just my name. You can also find me in Bangtao Phuket Highlands.

James de Lacey51:08

Nice. Well if I ever make a trip out there I'm going to have to hit you up then.

Eoin Scullion51:08

Always, you're always most welcome out here my friend.

James de Lacey51:08

Appreciate that and we'll keep in touch. Appreciate you coming on.

Eoin Scullion51:08

You so much, appreciate it man.