S&C Strategies For Older Or Beat Up Fighters + Black Friday Deals (SSOF Ep 84)

James de Lacey0:00

But essentially 50% off the annual membership or you can opt for a $1 first month trial. So those are the two options. Obviously the $1 trial is not limited to any spot numbers but the annual one is. So the annual one is going to be VIPSSOF. So if you use VIPSSOF and the checkout that will give you 50% off the annual. And then if you just want the $1 trial you can do SSOFBF. And all those will be down in the description if you're listening to this later. And you can take advantage of that.

The obviously the VIPSSOF only lasts until there's 20 spots but the $1 trial and everything that goes to the end of the month. So you can jump in on that whenever you want. So those are the two big Sweet Science of Fighting sales. Take advantage of those while you're listening to this.

Secondly in terms of equipment I've got obviously my own Sweet Science of Fighting gear that's on Xmartial, Xmartial always running sales but they're running big Black Friday sales. I think they've already started but obviously my tie dye shorts, my tie dye rashguard, this is in white and black, it's sick. You've probably seen this on some of the podcast and obviously the main Sweet Science shorts and then the main Sweet Science rash cards. It's pretty much all I training now.

Obviously if you want to, if you want to buy these, click through my links in the description to help support me and the channel. Otherwise I don't get, I don't get a cut of if you buy these without it. So make sure you check those out. Those should be on special as well.

For more equipment, obviously Iron Neck. I've got the box in there. Iron Neck is, they're running a big sale right now. I think they're running up the whole November. They're doing like $100 or $200 off there. I know people I've had a couple emails asking if the Iron Neck was worth it. 100% yes. If you have any kind of neck pain from grappling, striking, whatever it is, it's the only thing in the world that helps and fixes my neck pain.

And then be able to do rotation with it is the most unique thing. Like no neck harness, no nothing will give you that. So Iron Neck is very unique in that aspect.

And to get it at that price, I think it's like under 500 bucks now for the pro. Obviously the pro and start, pro and non-pro, the only difference is the friction dials. So the pro version you can increase the friction when going left and right with your rotations. The normal version you don't have that option, it just stays loose.

That friction is actually quite handy to add a little bit of resistance as you do some side to side. But if you're on a budget, yeah the other one will give you everything you need too. So check that out. Those links will be in the description too.

Then there's also Yokkao for Muay Thai gear. That they haven't started the Black Friday sales yet, but they do one every year. It's usually like 30% off. So if you're looking for new Muay Thai gloves, shin guards, all that kind of stuff, again that link will be down in the description.

The last one is BJJ More and that's for anyone who's in Jiu Jitsu looking to level up, essentially as a white or blue belt looking to level up as a beginner. A lot of guides they have, their course, courses for accelerating your Jiu Jitsu learning. That will also be down in the description. They're doing a big Black Friday sale. So check those out. That's every, that's everything I've got current that I know will be doing sales there.

Obviously some other companies that might be doing sales. RDX gear might be another one with their gear. Hit and Move boxing gloves, I'm hoping they're going to do a Black Friday sale. I'm not sure if they are. And those are definitely worth it. And then yeah, that should, that should be it regarding Black Friday. So make sure you check all those out. Click the links in the description to help the channel.

But we'll go straight into our topic and that is the training strategies for older beat up fighters. Now obviously this applies for anyone who's suffering from niggly injuries and things like that. But I've got some strategies that I've used. I mean my body is, yeah, it feels pretty good. I can do everything currently with very little to no pain. But obviously sometimes things get flared up or I've done a lifetime of competing in different sports as well. So I've got some wear and tear and that's normal. It's just part of life and part of being competitive.

And even if you're not competitive, you probably still got these things from being competitive in the past. So I've got some things that I like to do that I have been using a lot over the past few years that works really really well for people who are struggling with some of this. And the first one is a reverse of the, I guess, sis design philosophy.

So typically you'll hear me talk about okay you should do your fast movements first and you should move towards your slow movements. So as an example you might do your warmup, you might do some jump plyometric stuff, you might do some throws, you might do some loaded power movements like barbell jump squats or Olympic lifts or kettlebell swings. And then you might do your heavier movements like heavy squats, etc.

If you suffer from knee pain, just other niggly injuries like that, even for the upper body like elbows and stuff like that, reverse it. So start with your heavy strength stuff. So you do your warmup, then you might do your heavy squat first or whatever it is, or you might do some kind of heavy Olympic lift and then a heavy squat, something like that. After you've done that, then go and do your explosive movements.

Now it sounds counterintuitive but I promise you if you go from doing your heavy squats or your heavy Olympic lifts and then you go and you finish your session with jump some kind of jumps or throws, your joints feel so much better, 10,000 times better, that you can actually do them with no pain. So that is something to to experiment with.

I think just going through the full range of motion for example in a squat with heavier load, it just, it's like the ultimate warmup to the point where if you start going to do different jumps, you don't have that sharp pain when you're going about them. So give that

A try for upper body. I don't think it applies as well, like if you have a really funny shoulder, like doing heavy bench press isn't smart or heavy overhead press if it hurts. So this is more geared towards lower body, especially knees, just with tendon pain. I don't know what it is. It's like the extra warmup of the load and things like that kind of gets you onto a point where you can do jumps and things with no pain.

So reverse that order. Don't do your jumps, plyometric stuff, in the beginning. Do them at the end. If you are suffering as a combat athlete, you can also remove more high impact, I guess you could say, jumps and upper body plyometrics and opt for something that is less impactful. So throws don't have the same impact as a more intense plyometric. So you can lean more towards throws than jumps as an example.

Olympic lifts, depending on what you're doing, tend to feel okay. As long as I wouldn't do the full lifts, I would do some kind of powers. Even the muscle clean and muscle snatch are really good because you don't have the impact as you move your feet and hit the ground. So those are also really nice as well. And then obviously the high pull variations are awesome because you don't have any impact whatsoever. So snatch high pulls and clean high pulls are legit power exercises. Then obviously you got kettlebell swing as well, which can be great hip hinge power movement, again that doesn't have the impact.

So you kind of shift, you kind of stay away more from the jumps and things like that, and you gear more towards the throws and maybe the heavier Olympic lifts. If you need something more velocity based, just a lighter ball or jumping, like box jumps might be the only jump you do because you don't have the impact of the landing, right, because you're jumping up onto a box, step down.

And that can be something you do instead of doing repeated jumps like vertical jumps where you land back on the floor. So just little modifications like that can help you so you can train longer and be more available for your technical training and not be suffering in pain while you're trying to improve physical performance essentially.

A second thing to do, what I've found is using loaded isometrics as a main strength movement works really really well. So I was going through a period where I had some pretty bad knee pain, must have been last year I think it was. And I just couldn't squat, like front squat, back squat. It would just hurt regardless.

So we know that isometrics have a really good ability one to numb the tendon before training. So typically you're looking at doing long duration like split squats, like 60 plus seconds in a split squat position, and you're trying to almost scissor your legs together. So you're pulling with the front leg and pushing with the back leg and creating that tension. And that isometric hold tends to remodel the tendon to help with the collagen fibers.

So usually within tendon pain you've got collagen fibers in the tendon that are all like spaghetti, messed up. And then the slow movement of the isometric almost pulls them apart and tries to realign them. So isometrics have that ability to help improve the tendon.

What I found as well is depending on the isometric you're doing, because you're loading a stretched position, you're becoming more mobile. So with particularly the Bulgarian split squat is the one I used often, it worked really well. It loads the rectus femoris muscle. So the muscle that runs in the, it's a quad muscle, runs from the top of your hip through to your knee. So it's the only quad muscle that crosses both joints.

So if you're extending the hip and flexing the knee, you get a huge stretch on that muscle. So the bottom of the Bulgarian split squat stretches that rectus femoris hard. And then when you load it on top of it, it's now supporting the load in that end range, potentially improving your mobility, making it stronger, making the muscle longer. That can help potentially relieve some of that pain, especially, I won't say it's all down to, but sometimes that tight rectus femoris is going to almost pull on that knee and you can kind of feel it during some movements.

So I did loaded Bulgarian split squats with the barbell. And I'll do 20 to 30 second holds. So I'll start with body weight to warm up, I'd use the bar. I think I got to a point where I worked up to 50 kilos, so what's that, 115 pounds or something, for 30 seconds, couple of sets. That's brutal. It's really damn hard. So work your way up slowly through the weeks, even like 30 kilos, 40 kilos, that kind of thing done in a loaded Bulgarian split squat position.

I found my leg size maintain, my leg size easily, if not they looked slightly bigger because you get a mad pump holding that position. But my legs were just as strong when I got back to squatting, my legs were just as strong. And just holding that position is so powerful and you don't even need that much load. Again, I only worked up to 50 kilos for 20 to 30 seconds for one or two sets because I'll count the sets working up as working sets once I got to a certain weight like 40 kilos.

So give that a try. It's well worth doing if you suffer from some kind of pain. And you can make that your main movement because you can do that. And then if there's something, then after you've done that maybe you can do some kind of single leg, some kind of single leg you can even do Bulgarian split squat afterwards as, if you need some extra hypertrophy or whatever it is your goal is, you can do that straight after. You're already warmed up in that bottom position, you've got load and everything. So it shouldn't hurt if you're suffering from some kind of pain there.

Yes, give that a go. It's well worth trying. I think the barbell's a better option than dumbbells when you're doing the loaded iso. You can kind of load it heavier and it just tends to feel better. I don't know why, it just does. So give the bar version a go. And 20 to 30 seconds, a couple of sets, and you can do whatever you're doing in that session.

Another way for upper body, you can do it with push-up and you can do it with your hands elevated so you can get extra range of motion. So if you have like two plates and you get into the bottom position, you get a big stretch on the chest and shoulders there. You can definitely do that, have load on your back, have some plates on your back, whatever it is. And you can do the exactly the same thing with the upper body.

So you can, if you're suffering from some kind of elbow or shoulder pain, that will hit a good, like for example I've had this funny thing with my left shoulder that just felt a little gummy. It hurt a little bit when I do straight bar bench press. It wasn't too bad. But more recently is a machine chest fly. The gym my wife and I go to on Mondays, it's kind of like our date thing when we have a babysitter, but they have a machine chest fly. It's a really good one. It's an Arsenal Strength one.

And instead of it just being a straight incline bench, it's like an incline chest fly. But instead of it being a straight incline bench, it curves round. So it's almost like your back is fully open, your chest can fully open. And I've been doing that for reps and getting like a huge stretch at the bottom, just trying to get the biggest stretch I can in the pec and shoulders with relatively light load, like 25 pounds each side.

It's nothing crazy on a machine as well. And I'll do like anywhere from 10 to 20 reps on it and just get a mean burn and just get that stretch. And my shoulder feels so [expletive] good from doing that.

So just straight bodybuilding movements with loaded stretches, if you're old and beat up, is going to be a lifesaver for you and your joints. And I'm telling you now, if you're not doing this stuff already, you need to do it. And if you're going to do them, you should do most of these at the end of a session. The loaded Bulgarian split squat I think you can do at the beginning as a main movement.

You wouldn't do like a machine chest fly as a main movement. So you would do, say you do your normal pressing or whatever it is, weighted push-ups, etc., you do maybe one movement and then you would do your loaded stretch. And that loaded stretch movement will be kind of like a finisher.

So some options for that, the machine chest fly or chest flies in general, they're really damn good just for opening up your shoulders. I think it's good just to be in those positions as well in case you find yourself in those during your combat sport. You can do the same thing with the lats and there's a really nice lat stretch exercise where you put the neutral handles on the lat pulldown. Instead of sitting on the lat pulldown and pulling yourself down, you stand behind the bench.

You put one foot against the bench and you lean forward and let the weight pull your shoulders, pull your lats. And you come back and row. And you're going to do that, pull, come back and row. And then you're going to come all the way forward again. Every time you do that, you get this hard stretch on the lat through the eccentric.

Your shoulders feel so good after doing something like that. So that's one for the lats. You can also do the same thing with pullovers, so dumbbell pullovers at the end of a session to really open up the lats as well. Because remember, people say you should be doing two to one, three to one pulling to pushing, but that's [expletive]. If you're biasing the lats through pulling and you're biasing the pecs through pushing, the lats attach to the front of the shoulder, so if that was such a problem you're literally just making it worse by doing a lot of pulling and a lot of pushing.

So the best thing is to do loaded stretches at the end of the session. Honestly, it feels so damn good. So lat stretches, machine flies, those are the two main ones for the upper body. We've already got the lower body one, the Bulgarian split squat. Obviously you can do the same thing, Romanian deadlift would count as a loaded stretch, especially the bottom position. You can hold that as well as an option. Seated leg curls, if you have access to a machine like that.

I wouldn't advise doing too many leg curls in your training session, but there is a very good place for them before squatting as well. So first let me touch on the seated leg curl. The seated leg curl puts your hinge in a way bigger stretch than a lying leg curl. If you're doing leg curls, maybe you're training for mass or whatever it is as a grappler or something, so you do seated leg curl and you lean forward and that top position gets a huge stretch. Really good for hypertrophy, really good for lengthening the hamstrings.

But where I think the leg curl has the most value as an older, beat up fighter is if you are doing some kind of lower body movement. Let's just say you're going to do the loaded Bulgarian split squat. First, you will do the leg curl, and you do the leg curl, you'll get a really good hamstring pump. 10 to 20 reps, a few sets, doesn't have to be crazy to failure but it can get pretty close.

That hamstring pump makes your knee feel a million dollars before you go and do some kind of squatting. So even if you're not doing the loaded Bulgarian isometric split squat, you could do the leg curl and then go and do squats. I'm telling you now, it makes the biggest difference doing the leg curl first before you go do squats, and that counts across the board. So if you're doing your squat first or whatever it is in that exercise, do the leg curl first and then the squat.

And that's where I see the leg curl has real, real, real value when you're a little beat up, especially on the lower body. So do that first, squat or isometric Bulgarian split squat loaded, and you can get that extra range of motion there. So that's another one for the lower body. Obviously you can do the same thing with calves and things like that. You can go and get the loaded stretch there as well.

You can do the same thing with the adductors, the groin. So lying down like a butterfly with your feet together and legs open, you can put a plate on one leg and you can isometrically push up and let that weight bring your leg back down. That's another option to help lengthen that. Although this is basic, it's all basically mobility training. Remember, mobility training is strength training just at long range of motion or full range of motion.

So taking an approach like that, one, it will still retain all your strength. These in-range partials, in-range isometrics are super powerful at building muscle and building strength. You don't have to train like a bodybuilder to do that, especially when combat sports is potentially your number one priority. So yeah, give that one a go.

Another thing that you need to do if you are older or beat up is pause your reps when you're doing your main lift. So let's just say for example, maybe you do bench press as part of your training routine. Don't bounce everything off your chest so quickly. Same thing with squat, don't bounce out of the bottom so quickly. Control it down, slight pause, and then drive up.

Honestly, when you start doing stuff like when you start doing those pauses and really controlling it, the joint just doesn't exist. So it's just about controlling that load instead of just bouncing everything and giving that wear and tear on the joints. So that's definitely worth doing, pausing the reps. Obviously that's not always possible, maybe not in every training cycle, things like that, but majority of the time do that.

The other thing is to either do higher reps, so for example I mentioned 10 to 20 when you're doing chest flies and stuff like that, or if you're doing heavier loads, stay way further away from failure than someone else. So instead of doing five sets of five, or you can completely reduce the volume, instead of doing say five sets of five at 70% of your one rep max for a squat or bench, you might want to do five sets of two or three at the same percentage. So you're staying way away from failure but you're going to feel way fresher, especially as an older or beat up fighter.

That's super important, especially if you're prioritizing what's happening at technical training. That is something you can do. If you're more of a recreational, maybe fighter, you lift your lifting to look good and be strong, and then you're kind of doing your combat sport just for a bit of cardio, learning something new, then obviously it might not apply as well. You might still need to do the volume. But for someone who's prioritizing combat sports, yeah, completely drop the volume of what you're doing in the gym, and then you'll feel way better.

The other thing to do is try stay away from barbell movements. Typically that's a general rule for someone who's older and beat up. The fixed bar tends to cause problems, especially, again, with the example the bench press, the straight bar with the shoulders and elbows can be an issue. If you have specialty bars, that's the best thing ever. If you don't, dumbbells are probably your better option. Dumbbell bench, dumbbell overhead press, etc. for your upper body are typically better options than using the bar if you are feeling, if you have problems in your upper body.

For lower body, same thing. You don't have to squat with the... Look, there's no hard fast rules. The barbell is for barbell sports. You don't need to use barbells to strength train. You could do your entire strength and conditioning for your combat sport with no barbells. You could do that. There's nothing wrong with that, you'll still see great results. But opt for things like dumbbells. If you have specialty bars, safety squat bars are awesome.

Even though the thick bar is a barbell, I tend to find the thicker bar tends to be easier on the joints, probably because the loads are lighter because you can only hold so much. Thick bars, you have cambered bars that are slightly bent, those are great for your hand position if you have it on your back and things like that. You got Swiss bars which are awesome, they have the neutral grips and angled grips. Those are great if you have shoulder problems when benching and pressing. These are all great options.

If you don't have any of these, again, dumbbells. I would even put sandbags in there. Different weight sandbags, you can do all, you can throw sandbags, you can carry them, you can do Olympic lifts with the sandbags. There's a bunch of, you can squat with them, you can press them, all of it. You can do a bunch of stuff with the sandbag.

It's awkward, which is awesome, develop that rugged strength or farm boy strength with them. Those are great options to use, especially when you're feeling a little old and beat up, probably honestly make you feel better because you're kind of deloading a lot of the weight you would when you're using a barbell. So yeah, give those a try.

I think that was four or five things I gave you there if you're older. Again, just to recap, perform your explosive impact plyometric jumps, explosive exercises at the end of your session or after a heavy strength training movement. For example, you do your leg curl and squat, and then after that you do your jumps and things. You'll feel way better doing that.

Use loaded isometrics and the end ranges, for example a Bulgarian isometric split squat in the bottom position or in the pushup in the bottom position, holding those for 20 to 30 seconds. Pause your reps, don't bounce them, just for joint health. Use different implements within your training instead of just barbells, and you'll feel a lot better for doing that.

But yeah, but this is a little shorter podcast. It was just me this time, didn't have many people joining live. But make sure I will let you guys know when the, hopefully the podcast channel that I created comes back to life, by YouTube deleting it. So once that comes back I'll let you all know as well. The podcast will be on there and the training vlogs and the informational videos will be on this channel.

I've actually got a whole, I think it's a 20 plus minute video on in-season wrestling training coming up. I've also got a video on why you should train more like Sean Strickland, who spars every day, so I dive into a little bit of that for you. And I've got a bunch more videos lined up as well that will be coming out there. But hopefully you enjoyed that. Make sure you comment, like, subscribe, share, everything you can to help grow this, and I will see you.

Next week.