Build Muscle WITHOUT Losing Speed & Power w/ Craig Twentyman (SSOF Ep 77)

James de Lacey3:02

What a season.

Craig Twentyman3:02

Yeah, but that was a challenging couple of years because we moved back to New Zealand, but I ended up being based in Australia because it was during that COVID time—the team had to be based away. So it was—I look back, it was an awesome experience, I loved working in rugby league, and there were some really good people at the club at the time that I was there.

But we had, you know, coaching changes, boys not wanting to be there, wanting to be home with their families, which is understandable. And, you know, it was challenging for a lot of people in a lot of ways. But at the end of the 2021 season, I managed to get an assistant role with the Black Ferns, which is the New Zealand women's 15s team, with a view to work with them the World Cup that happened at the end of last year.

And, you know, again, went into that role and there was a few changes and a bit of upheaval soon after I went in there, and I ended up leading that sort of space there. And that's the role I currently sit in now. So we managed to win the World Cup last year, which was awesome, being at home in front of a packed crowd, you know, unheard of, or unheralded sort of experience for women's rugby in New Zealand. And then, yeah, here we are now.

James de Lacey4:19

Nice, awesome. That's a great background. And I think listeners are going to be sick of me saying this, but I still think rugby, rugby sevens, is, I guess, the closest thing physical preparation-wise to combat sports. And if we're comparing different sports, I say that often on here and I think there's a lot of crossover and carry-over we can get from it.

But one of the questions I've had recently, and I've had quite often, is about gaining weight, gaining size, building muscle without losing the speed and power. And I think especially within combat sports, a lot of people—I mean actually most sports really—a lot of people go down this road. Okay, I need to get bigger, so they jump on the bodybuilding program they found from Jay Cutler in the 1990-whatever Flex Magazine.

Craig Twentyman4:46

And bro, yeah, bro—bro split and chest day, etc.

James de Lacey4:46

And then they come out of that after, how many months, and they're like, oh [expletive], I can't run, I can't do this, I can't do that, I'm slow, etc., etc. So do you want to maybe dive into kind of maybe your approach around gaining size and strength, obviously within a rugby, but with maintaining the ability—speed, power, fitness, etc.?

Craig Twentyman5:12

Yeah, so I guess it's a multifaceted question, and there's a thousand ways that's going to—we all know that, especially in the S&C world—what works for some people, some individuals, some groups just doesn't work for others.

But, you know, I sit very much on the spectrum that maximal strength is vital to the performance within the sport of rugby. And as you say, you know, it's an awesome sport if you're looking at fight sports as well. The crossover of the conditioning as well as the technical side of things, very important. And rugby league is very similar—rugby league probably more so with the focused wrestle aspect to it.

But I also feel that it's very important to keep in mind that you have to develop force-producing abilities that are robust to different body positions, okay? So what we think of as the traditional way of max strength training with the barbell and very set planes doesn't hold up when you get into contact and wrestle situations and the chaos of team sport. And I'd say that would be very similar to the chaos of a fight, you know.

And that chaotic environment where people are coming at you from different angles and you have to adjust and still be able to produce force robustly in different planes and positions. And that's where I think the 'how strong is strong enough' point for team sport athletes actually comes a lot sooner than what you might think of as typical 'how strong is strong enough.' You know, past which point I think that the return on investment of more maximal strength training is limited, whereas you could focus a little bit more on different areas and ways of doing things that will continue to develop your ability to be robust and your force-producing capabilities in different positions that you find yourselves in.

So I'm definitely a proponent of, like, that Westside conjugate sort of model—maximal, dynamic, repetition method training—but I'm also very wary of being able to produce force explosively through a number of different ranges, different velocities, with different external sort of stresses on the system.

And that's where that dynamic systems theory of force production, I guess, that Bosch talks about—and that we've spoken about a little bit—comes into play. And I'm by no means an expert on the complexities of Frans Bosch's work, but there's some things that just make sense to me.

And some of those include the upper body/lower body separation and trying to keep your running robust, if you like, and your running capabilities robust. And also the concept of minimizing muscle slack, if you like, when you're talking about that early rate of force development and someone being reactive and able to produce force at a high rate.

So when you're talking about putting muscle mass on and that sort of thing, we always lean towards finding volume through sets rather than reps, if you like. So keeping the percentage of your max, if you like, high, and performing a number of sets rather than, you know, your typical 8 to 10 to 12, 15 rep sort of sets. And then making sure that you're always thinking about the transference of your force-producing capabilities into your actions on the field, or in your audience's concept, you know, in the ring.

And making sure that you're complementing your traditional strength training with exercises that require you to produce force quickly through different ranges, through different tempos, and that sort of thing.

James de Lacey9:35

Nice. We'll dive deeper into that too. But we talked a lot about—I guess we touched on the kind of Bosch dynamical systems theory approach to stuff. I was lucky—I mean you worked with Dean Benton and things, so...

You obviously got a lot of exposure to it. I was lucky enough to learn a lot of the stuff firsthand from John Pryor at the Game conference in 2017, and I was lucky enough to be the demo person for all the stuff. They just try to make you look as bad as possible.

So that means I it all up, so that means I could coach it later because I knew all the points. This is actually good. Isn't it failing as badly as possible? Trying to do the hip-hop stuff? But yeah, I'm a huge fan of a lot of those ideas. Again, the upper-body dissociation—with sprinting, the foot from above and things like that.

I guess kind of linking it all together for the listeners as well, because you talked about obviously, for example, you're doing your traditional weight training, then you might have this kind of stuff might typically be a bridge, quote unquote, between what you're doing there and transferring, or what we call it reflex training or some kind of power training. Do you want me to just dive into some of those concepts and what some of those exercises kind of look like and what they're trying to achieve, or at least what you're trying to do with them?

Craig Twentyman10:58

Yeah, so you might have, as an example, I'll give you a couple of big circuits that we use. We might have a lower body strength option, traditional sense—single-leg, double-leg bilateral, something through big ranges of motion. And then we might transfer to a bent-over jackal position, so you're loaded through the lower body, you're over a ball, for example, and someone's trying to move you off that, out of that position.

But we might bridge it with a maximal squeeze through a soft medicine ball, for a six-second effort, high rate of force development—as strongly squeezing that as possible—and then you might transition to a big band around your waist. You're in that bent-over position, you've actually got a live person on the ground there holding a ball, you're trying to jackal over that position, and then someone is trying to pull you or wrench you out of that position.

So you're getting a lot of external perturbation through different angles, holding a basic position but you're having to stabilize within that basic position. Or another option, specific to running and skill execution: we might on the field have some wickets set up, so we might coast the athletes through a set of wickets. They might give them an aqua bag or a plate, and they might go through the wickets again and they're punching through different angles or they're rotating the aqua bag.

So you're trying to reinforce robust running mechanics—front-side mechanics, attacking down, keeping your thigh separation, keeping that fast thigh angular velocity—all those key points that they talk about with speed development, while focusing on that upper-lower body separation. And then you might transition to actually having someone to the side. You either keep going through the wickets or you go to the side, trying to keep those lower body mechanics and then receiving and passing. So you're linking that basic skill and the robustness of your running to being able to execute a skill at that velocity and with accuracy.

So things like that. And it might be as simple as: we go back to a basic bench press for your strength. You might go like a real wide pulse fly in that wide position, and then you might go an explosive push-up, for example. So you're focusing on strength as well as the transference to a grapple wide position or contact wide.

What I found when I was working in League—they're very front-on contact compared to Union. Union, as you know, you're trying to take people down, get up and over the ball. Whereas League, you're trying to hit and hold and delay that time to the ground, and then wrestle them to delay that time for them to get back to their feet. And we had a couple of instances where guys would get outside slightly—they used to be very front-on, same in the gym, very front-on—they'd get slightly outside and they'd come out of that contact and go, "Oh [expletive]!" and they'd have a pec injury.

So being comfortable in different ranges at different velocities is very important to make sure your force-producing capabilities stay robust.

James de Lacey14:40

Nice. Yeah, some of those running ones are options I've used too, and they really transfer well to the actual sport. But I guess a random example—obviously you mentioned about the jackaling over the board—so it could be, for example, a squat and someone who's maybe a grappler could be fighting over-unders or something like that from a standing position, just as an example. So someone could kind of blend that skill in.

Craig Twentyman15:08

Yeah, that's right. And it doesn't necessarily need to be linked with a strength exercise, but when we're talking about linking your strength training to your skill, it's important, I think, to integrate them. You're not going to get direct transference, but you will get a cognitive link between how what you're doing from a strength point of view can transfer to performance.

And I think that's where a lot of breakdown occurs—not breakdown, but there's a limited transference between what's happening in the gym and actually how that integrates into what's happening on the field.

James de Lacey15:36

For sure. Do you want to maybe dive into a little bit those bags as well, kind of what you're trying to do from there, and maybe a quick explanation of what that is for anyone listening?

Craig Twentyman16:02

Yeah. Aqua bag is just a big bag—sausage, or you can get round ones—filled with water. And if you haven't filled an aqua bag before, make sure you don't fill it up—impossible to move. So there's just a little bit of water, and obviously you fill them to different weights, so you can focus on different things.

But when we're talking about providing external perturbations to an action, aqua bags are really good because they provide that stabilization requirement, and will put you slightly off your center when you're performing an action. So there might be punches when you're running, there might be—you might be splitting your legs, jump splits, while you're rotating, so you're having to stabilize on that ground contact slightly each time.

With the round ones, you can have, say, halfbacks, for example, perform some pick-up and throws—or not throws, but punches—before they do a pick-up and pass. So you're putting yourself in the position, providing some external perturbation, and then performing the skill action that you're after.

James de Lacey17:01

Nice. Do you have any, I guess, say, core or trunk exercises you like to do with those that some of the audience might like to explore, or even without the aqua bags?

Craig Twentyman17:31

Yeah, so in GHD, for example, you can set yourself up either side bridge, front bridging, or back bridging, and perform really explosive punch-outs. So you're stressing the muscles at different angles and different actions, performing slow versus fast punch-ins back in, so your trunk muscles are having to switch on fast and switch off, or having to sustain an action.

So you're again trying to paint as many pictures—that's what I like to talk to athletes about, painting pictures for your body to adapt to. And anything you're doing, whether it be traditional strength training, trunk training, trying to replicate the chaos of sport when you're doing your skill training—try and expose and paint as many pictures as you can for your body to adapt to. And that's the Westside side of things—that's what they do with the changing of their bars and changing of their exercises across a phase. So you're always trying to expose your body to many different stimuli.

James de Lacey18:35

Yeah, I really like that, especially any—I mean all combat athletes, strikers, grapplers, mixed stuff like that—that off the glute-ham raise. Lying, I guess you could say, lying face-up with your bum on the pad, holding your plate or your aqua bag, and then doing fast or slow pulses in different directions. Anyone must give that a try. You can even do it with a weight plate, mate, if you don't have an aqua bag. Start with a lightweight plate, 2.5, 5 kilos, and really focus on experimenting with different angles of punches, different speeds. So you might have a set where you're doing eight and you might...

Craig Twentyman19:28

Do like one-two like that and then like a real slow focused effort, just again painting a picture for your body, trying to expose it to different intensities if you like. And then you flip over so you're face down. This is really good for your hamstring, lower back. Lock one leg in and again you're throwing the plate down if you like, so you're having to really switch on, switch off fast and different angles for your hamstring, which is something that we use to try and help strengthen that posterior chain.

James de Lacey19:58

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I actually had a whole progression system with that one. I would eventually progress to like a twist, a rapid twist.

Craig Twentyman21:19

Yeah, that was nice. The players actually really enjoyed it too, and you don't get the same soreness if you're doing something different. You can challenge them in their isometric, in those isometric positions where your soreness isn't going to be as great as if you're doing a lot of eccentric work or whatever.

James de Lacey21:42

I actually have a question here from the YouTubes asking if you're a believer in heavyweight bags for long-distance running. Heavyweight for—I'm assuming just carried like a heavy backpack or something for long-distance running.

Craig Twentyman21:42

Funny you say that. I made some notes around conditioning because you sort of floated that you might want to talk a little bit about that. And I've definitely used weighted walks before with a barbell over your back or a weighted vest or something like that. The aqua bag is a great option as well because again you're always having to stabilize it.

If you look at some of the Army camps, you see them carrying jerry cans. Tough, tough work, and really good for that sort of lower zone training, zone one, zone two, like sustaining an effort, which again I don't think team sport athletes do enough of, that sort of real low zone training.

You put someone in a—you put a team sport athlete, you'll find their heart rate ramps very quickly if you put them into anything where they have to endure anything more than sort of minutes. So teaching or exposing them to those sort of longer duration low zone efforts, I think definitely an important aspect that's often overlooked.

James de Lacey23:07

Nice. And I want to bring this back a bit too to building muscle and keeping that speed and power. So we talked a little bit about, I guess, some of that conjugate method when you're doing the repetition method or doing your reps, using more sets instead of more reps to get your volume.

But maybe let's cover some just general training week stuff. So, how often would, in general, how often would you be looking to say hit the gym and be lifting to build muscle? How often would you be looking to train quote-unquote specific, like speed power stuff? Where does conditioning fit into that as well? Is there a way to balance it all so someone can retain those qualities while getting bigger?

Craig Twentyman23:33

I think building muscle is always an interesting one. We have athletes obviously that come in as young—especially working the female sort of space, there's a lot of athletes at that school-boy level that I used to work with. There's athletes that, yeah, they definitely just need to put some muscle mass on, and it's not always just going to be through that high weight effort stuff. There is going to be a repetition sort of method aspect to it.

And that might be tagged onto the back of main sets, for example, or they might come in for a standalone gym session once or twice a week where they're focused on that sort of repetition effort stuff, sometime during the week where it's not going to impact on how they pull up for the sessions the next day.

But also calories in is a big thing as well, and that's an education piece that's required, actually eating enough to fuel muscle gain. And a lot of people—and I've seen it quite a few times—a lot of the younger athletes who have been successful to that point because they're super fit, and I guess this might happen in the fight scene a little bit as well, where they're [expletive] scared of getting outside their normal calorie intake because they're scared they'll put too much weight on. And I guess in a weight-class sport, that's a key consideration.

But eating enough calories to fuel muscle gain and eating the right calories is a big education piece, which is for someone to communicate that's more knowledgeable in that space than what I am. But how we set the week up is really important as well. Tony Holler always talks about not burning the steak and making sure that today doesn't sort of ruin tomorrow. So you got to be mindful about how you set that up in the different stages: preseason versus in-season.

Preseason looks a lot different from a strength point of view to what in-season does. We might be in the gym sort of four to five times for those athletes that want to be or need to put a bit of mass on. They'll be doing some extra sessions around that sort of repetition stuff. Whereas in-season, we might have two main strength power sessions and then like a pre-activation, power-up session. Some do a game day primer, which is short, sharp, explosive integrated with some skill stuff.

But yeah, preseason versus in-season also looks different when you've got that time and capability to put yourself in the hurt locker a little bit more and train fatigued versus where you want to be peaking for that Saturday game.

James de Lacey26:30

Nice. And then with the differences in-season, if you've got players that—I don't know, maybe they're younger players and they're not playing as many minutes or whatever it is—and they still need to pack on mass, there might be even some people in the fighting space that maybe in a similar situation, they need to pack on mass but they're competing quite often. Is there something that you're doing in there, or how different is it? When you're giving them that stimulus, obviously you can't blast them with like you mentioned during preseason, but are you still adding a bit of that in, just low volume?

Craig Twentyman27:02

I think that's where the micro-dosing comes in, and it's quite handy to think about it as, say, day after a game is a really good opportunity to micro-dose a little bit more repetition stuff, especially through that upper body, compared to say if I've outputted like 5Ks or like a really high-meters game involvement the day before. Just get a little bit of extra work done through the upper body on that game day plus one or fight day plus one. Look at me talking like I'm a fight expert.

Or then even mid-week where you've got your recovery day, you might get those athletes into a gym session for an extra half-hour blast, even though, say, recovery day, it's not going to take away too much from the next day's training. And the way you set the week up, you might have your main strength sessions earlier in the week. You might have these people in extra for like a little hit on the Wednesday, and then it might be just that sort of power session towards the end of the week. So front-loading the week a little bit allows you to get some extra work in.

James de Lacey28:22

Nice. Regarding training splits, actually, within like—because obviously you play weekly a lot of the time.

Craig Twentyman28:50

Generally full body in-season, but we generally skew it. So the first session of the week, so game day plus two, generally we'll have a lower body stimulus in there, but it will be predominantly upper body. And then game day plus three going into our day off will generally be lower body focus, but with a little circuit in there that might have a little bit of an upper body focus. So it might have an upper body robustness circuit on that game day plus three, but primarily lower body.

And then on that game day plus two, it might be predominantly upper body, but like a lower body robustness circuit or a couple of jumps or something like that. Just skewing it's like, generally full body.

In pre-season, we split a little bit differently. It might be an upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body, so you can focus a little bit more exclusively on the body parts. But very rarely would we go chest, tris. I don't think anyone does that in the sports performance world anymore.

James de Lacey30:18

Okay, that would be unreal. That would be a great program there. But do you have any power exercises you like to use in the gym that you tend to program often, ones that you find useful?

Craig Twentyman30:18

Yeah, I'm a massive fan of plyo work, and I think sometimes when you're looking at programs, I feel that they're skewed too much towards traditional strength training and not enough towards plyo work. So, as a comparison, a full range squat for strength versus like a frog jump or a depth drop into a full squat into a maximal effort.

Contrasting the athleticism required between the two and the transference effect to improving your ability to move yourself on the field. I think again, it comes back to that: how strong is strong enough, and what can we be doing outside maximal strength or traditional strength training to enhance our athleticism?

So we do a lot of that sort of dead start jumping. So rocket, box—like sitting on a box into a maximum effort broad or jump for height, bounding, hopping, dead start jumps through different ranges, both bilateral and unilateral. And then looking at rate of force development stuff or like reactive stuff versus starting from deeper ranges, through like taking that counter-movement out of it. And then also incorporating your ballistic stuff there, so your throws and your explosive rotational throws and that sort of thing. So we contrast regularly with our max strength stuff a lot of that sort of jumping stuff.

James de Lacey32:07

Nice. Maybe just dive into a little bit for the listeners as well that idea around muscle slack, because obviously you talked a lot about jumping from like a dead stop position, like seated. I'm assuming that's the muscle slack theory there you're playing into. Maybe just dive into a little bit of that and the reasons why.

Craig Twentyman32:37

Yeah, so a good descriptor or a way to conceptualize it was: so muscle slack's like having a rope tied to a car, and you pick the rope up so you take some slack out of it, but then there's also the slack when you actually try to start to pull the car and the tension having to be taken up through the rope.

So if you look at all that reactive training, so dropping off a box into a reactive jump or hop, anything that's challenging that ability to produce force quickly in a reactive way, I think has a really—well, it's not utilized enough, if you like. And it goes to injury resilience as well. Being able to be strong or hold strongly your joint angles required to produce your maximal force outputs. So there's that isometric component to it as well.

James de Lacey33:41

Yeah, yeah. Say another way of maybe thinking about it for listeners as well: like the idea of that pre-tension, right? So if you're dropping off a box, you're already tensed and ready for the landing. So when you hit the ground, there's no delay between that force, that rebound, versus—I think Bosch went really far with it. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to—he doesn't want to do any counter-movements because he believes counter-movements increase the muscle slack. But I'm not sold on removing counter-movements completely.

Craig Twentyman34:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I'm by no means an expert of it. The thing I really like with guys like Dean and John Pryor, as you mentioned, they've got a good balance. They seem to have a good balance between the traditional way of being strong and robust and the concepts around what Bosch is trying to communicate and his ways of doing things.

James de Lacey34:44

Yeah, I got to get Bosch on this podcast, actually. Maybe I should as well.

Craig Twentyman34:44

Yeah, make sure you translate it for everyone.

James de Lacey34:44

Yeah, I'll do my best. But you mentioned about being strong enough. Do you have an answer for that question: how strong is strong enough?

Craig Twentyman34:44

I reckon it's different for everyone. Like, I remember when I first started with the women's sevens, they had very little strength background, so we worked hard and we got really good payback for their general athleticism just by getting the athletes stronger. And then we'd sort of put some relative sort of focus and absolute focus points in front of them and try and get them to work towards, for example, like a box squat of two times body weight. And that's not like a 90-degree—that's like partial ranges.

Still cracks me up when I see the comments around partial range strength training, and, 'Oh, it's not full range,' and all this sort of thing. Like, dude. But it's all strength people who haven't trained anyone in any sports outside of powerlifting or strength sports. It's just strength sports coaches that only know strength sports. It's a completely different animal.

I think, as we touched on earlier, being—exposing your body to a number of different tempos, different ranges, is important to paint the picture of what they're going to come across in their sport. The chaos of sport and being able to produce force at a high rate in those different ranges and positions is really important.

James de Lacey36:23

Yeah, I think the 'strong enough' debate as well, it's always centered around how much you squat or deadlift or bench. But that's just an expression of force through a skill, right? So it doesn't really tell us much, because you can get people who are not strong in those lifts, but when they're on the field or whatever, they'll—

Craig Twentyman36:55

Yeah, exactly. You got the—and you must see it all the time in the fighters. A lot of those guys and girls wouldn't be strong in the traditional sense, but as soon as they grab you, you're gone.

And like, you see it in contrast. You see some unbelievably strong athletes in the traditional sense, and then you put them on the field and, what do they say, they train like Tarzan, play like Jane. Like, it just doesn't transfer all the time. And it's the same with conditioning, eh? Like whatever conditioning test or aerobic marker you use—yo-yo, Broncos, very common in union, league—it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to transfer that ability onto the field, and vice versa.

So some of our worst testers are some of the best gameplay athletes. And that's where it's really important. So I think identify some key sort of metrics and ways of measuring prep, if you like, related to the game itself, and then making sure that you're seeing improvements or enhancements in those metrics versus just relying on additional testing data.

James de Lacey37:53

Yeah, for sure. I remember the first pro team I had in Romania, we had a player fresh off the boat, Tongan kid, and he was a really damn good player. He was quick. And we ended up doing a just a simple mass run, and he could barely even complete the damn thing. It was like eight-plus minutes for like 1.6K, the shittiest time ever.

But on the field, like, he'll play a whole game and he'll carve up. So it's just finding that—these tests don't always—well, they don't tell you playing ability. They kind of just—that's where you're trying to find specificity in your testing to the actual game to get the outputs you're looking for, right?

Craig Twentyman38:58

And I've seen a number of times, like, sitting through a Bronco where some of the athletes are over that six, eight minute marker. It's just like, this is telling us absolutely nothing, and it's like purely—

James de Lacey39:26

It's purely a mindset that the athletes just not going to output what you actually want them to. So you just got to find a better way to assess how they're actually tracking.

So do you still use the Bronco testing? Because I know obviously you mentioned it's a tradition with the New Zealand Rugby now, but is that something you still use?

Craig Twentyman39:26

Yeah, we do, but it's not the be-all, end-all. We actually tried out a few different tests, and one that we're finding gives us good outputs is a repeat shuttle test basically. Start on try line out to the 20, down chest to the ground, back to the try line chest to the ground, and then hard out to 40 and back.

So you're looking at around that sort of 25 to 30 seconds, or some of the quicker ones are Sub-25. And that's around what an average work period is in Rugby Union, so around that 30 to 40 seconds. And then we're looking at a 60-second turnaround or starting each new effort on 90 seconds, and we do five of those.

And we have a look at their decrement between one and five. We have a look at how fast they can go in the first couple compared to their max velocity. With any of those repeat speed tests or assessments, you have to compare it to your max to actually show that you're outputting a decent effort.

And we're also looking at a high net output, which is a marker that we use via Stat Sport as a way to look at the accel-decel and high-speed cost.

James de Lacey40:49

So for some listening to this as well, if they wanted to implement this without running, for example, they could go on say spin bike, Watt bike or whatever. They could do maybe 10 to 30-second sprints times five on the 90 seconds and kind of just track average power on those and kind of see that as well and just to get an idea of, you know, this is my peak and this is how much I decline throughout these sprints and things.

Craig Twentyman41:19

Yeah, I mean there's endless numbers of tests that you can use. But the reason we use this is we're trying to be specific from a work-to-rest point of view to the game versus a Bronco. Like, no, there's no gameplay continuous in a game of rugby that's above five minutes.

And so the Bronco becomes limited. It's not meant to—it's just an aerobic marker. It's not meant to be specific to the game. But we were just trying to find something that is a little bit more specific that will give us the outputs that we're looking for, especially from our forwards.

We found that the plot of the Bronco just tells us nothing. Especially heavier athletes—turns 29 turns in a Bronco, which when you're a heavier athlete the peripheral fatigue actually takes away from your ability to express your central capabilities. So finding something that is going to allow you to do that a little bit better and give yourself a better idea of what you're capable of.

James de Lacey42:45

Hey guys, it's me again. I just want to let you know that I also have Sweet Science of Fighting rash guards and shorts so you can represent Sweet Science of Fighting on the mats and within competition. We have the classic, just like the shirt I'm wearing—rash guard, Sweet Science of Fighting on the front, and we have the logos on the sleeves and then "X" mark on the back. We also have that in a short variation, same thing with the Sweet Science of Fighting writing on one leg and we have the logo on the other.

But my personal favorite, this is my personal favorite by far—we have this in black and white, and it is the Taniwha protector guardian version of the Sweet Science of Fighting with the logo on the back. This was designed by a Maori designer back in New Zealand, so a bit of my heritage on this jersey. It represents the acknowledgement of battle and war.

It also represents strength and stability and also has the New Zealand silver fern. But even if you're not a Kiwi, cop this—this is an awesome design. It is custom-made design, you will not find it anywhere else. So check that, that'll also be down in the description with the discount code. But back to the podcast.

Yeah, so if anyone's listening is wondering what the hell a Bronco test is, 20 meters and back, 40 meters and back, 60 meters and back times five continuous, and that's basically that test.

But you mentioned obviously about the conditioning and transfer. How are you finding transfer between the conditioning you're doing and then the sport itself? Are you trying to use a lot of, I guess, similar actions that you find in rugby, for example, combining running and wrestling and finding these different intensities, trying to do things that are game speed or exceeding game speed and things like that? Or is it just a matter of just doing the work and then the sport will take care of the rest of it as you're doing technical training?

Craig Twentyman44:32

Yeah, I think—and I learned a lot from Dean around this—it's important to have basic physical capabilities to output what's required in the game. But beyond that, again, it's kind of like how strong is strong enough, how fit is fit enough. I don't think you need to continue to chase traditional conditioning at the expense of integrating the technical tactical.

And I guess that's where the tactical periodization model is really effective: integrating the physical with the technical tactical as much as possible. Because being fit and fast is all well and good, but if you can't integrate your skills to a high degree of accuracy and perform them to a high degree of accuracy, those outputs aren't going to be able to be expressed anyway.

So finding what your game looks like, what your worst-case scenario of the game is, if you like, and then looking at over-distorting speed and execution of skill at speed, then also over-distorting or playing around with work-to-rest ratios and what you come across in the games. And playing around with how you might increase the ball-in-play time across a block to what you'll find in a game.

Say a game's roughly 50/50 ball-in-play time in the women's game at the moment. Some training sessions will look to over-distort that to 75%, and we may not be getting skill accuracy at 75%, but we're continuing—we're in that physical capability to continuously execute for that 75% ball-in-play time across a certain block.

So the way you set your week up is important there. You don't want—obviously you can't be training fast all the time. So how you identify where you need to push and pull across a week and how you work with the coaches to make sure that you're not always training at this moderate level—you've got to have a clear plan in place of how you're going to over-distort your high days and make sure that your low days are low enough to allow recovery for your next high day, if you like.

James de Lacey46:47

Nice. Yeah, plenty of concepts that we've covered on the podcast before for anyone listening as well. There's plenty you can go back to and listen to a lot of those concepts too.

But I think it's interesting, obviously you talked about you increasing the ball-in-play time to 75%. You're looking at the outputs there. Obviously, you're looking at lower ball-in-play times if you're doing more technical skilled development with that. But I guess if we translate this to fight sports, for example MMA—I don't know if you watch much—but I think a good example if someone was looking at, say, worst-case scenario in a fight would be like Khabib versus Justin Gaethje, where Khabib basically just walked down Gaethje for the entire round and he was just [expletive], he was just getting mauled the whole time and he was so gassed.

And I think that would be a good example of, you know, if you're doing some kind of sparring, whatever it is, or setting up some kind of training day around that, would be having someone just constantly pressuring you over and over again. And maybe you're extending the time or you're doing lots of blocks of very high-intent stuff. And these just small little, I guess, things people can manipulate to, I guess, have more priority over certain things within their training versus just going and sparring with no objective.

Craig Twentyman47:57

Yeah, I think that's important there: to define what your session—what you're actually wanting to get out of your session—and over-distorting that aspect. Because you can't over-distort everything because you're going to end up underdoing some aspect at the expense of over-distorting another aspect.

So you have to make sure that you map your work out well to make sure you're covering all your bases, if you like: covering your worst-case scenarios, covering your ability to endure and that sort of thing, and making sure that each session...

Is not burning, you're not burning the steak if you like each session, because you're going to have a breakdown somewhere or you're going to underplay another aspect of it.

James de Lacey48:59

That's where a lot, I think that's where a lot of people fall into that trap, that kind of middle intensity where they think they're training hard because the lungs are burning, the heart's going, they're training for an hour, hour and a half, two hours hardcore. And that's kind of like every day and it ends up being the same thing.

You're not hitting the very high ends, you're the very low ends, you're stuck in that middle band all week, every week. And at some point something, it breaks, there's no more progress, burnout, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where you run into those issues. So as you mention that, yeah, go there Craig.

Craig Twentyman49:26

It's just important, like we talk about, I mentioned earlier, like training the poles, so training the extremely high end of one and making sure that you're covering the low range as well.

James de Lacey49:51

Nice. No, that's perfect. This has been a great chat, Craig. Where can people find you and follow you? I don't think you're very social media present.

Craig Twentyman49:51

I'm not very social, mate. I'm on Instagram at Craig Twentyman, so you can find me there. I followed you the other day.

James de Lacey49:51

Oh, that's right. I followed you back, mate. Is that what you mean to do?

Craig Twentyman49:51

Yeah, I guess. So if you want to follow me, I don't post much either on there.

James de Lacey50:17

No, no, that's right, actually. About, yeah, I was on Twitter, but then that changed, so I went off that.

Craig Twentyman50:17

So Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn, but that's a bit formal, isn't it?

James de Lacey50:17

Sweet. I'll link those in the description anyway, so people can find you. You've actually got, if anyone's listening, I'll put Craig's Instagram in the description, but he's got some good examples of some of the stuff we talked about regarding aqua bags and kind of that BOSU stuff on his Instagram, so make sure you check that out. But thanks for coming on, Craig. Appreciate it.

Craig Twentyman50:46

No worries. Thanks for the chat, mate. Thanks for inviting me.