Periodization For MMA & Exercise Classification w/ Martin Bingisser (SSOF Ep. #10)

Martin Bingisser2:09

I mean, my definition of periodization is probably different than the standard scientific definition, or maybe you can give input on that. But typically people think about periodization as like the sequential long-term planning of training. And from my point of view, I take out the whole sequential part because I don't think it has to be sequential.

For me, it's more about just the long-term planning. How are you going to structure your—it could be an 8 or 12-week plan if you're leading up to a fight, it could be a yearly plan for us track and field athletes, or it could be an Olympic cycle plan for track and field athletes. How are you looking to build up the athlete over the long term?

And as I said, the traditional approach is to build it up sequentially. You build block A and then you build Block B on top of A. You start with general qualities and then you add the specific qualities on top and so on. But it doesn't have to be that way, as we'll talk about. So I like to just define it more as, "Okay, what's the long-term planning?"

And one thing I think people miss too is it's the holistic plan. It's not just about what you're doing on the strength conditioning side. It's what you're doing on your sports side, it's what you're doing recovery-wise, it's what you're doing tactically. You can plan every single element of training, and we get so focused on the sets and reps in our planning that we forget, "Oh, if you're sparring, what type of sparring are you doing? How long are you sparring? How many times a week are you sparring?" That's also part of the plan, and that should be integrated in the periodization as well.

James de Lacey3:48

Those are good points you mentioned about you don't need to sequence. How I guess I'm trying to just visualize in my head because I guess the typical way you get taught, you either block, hypertrophy then strength and power, or you're going from, as you mentioned, general to more specific to maybe competition style. If you're not sequencing it that way, then how is it looking? I mean, it's a pretty general question. It's probably going to depend on the individual, but how would that look from a general standpoint?

Martin Bingisser4:11

I think you're always going to have, I guess, sequencing in the terms of you need to have an element of change and you need to have something new. And if you're always doing the same thing, you're not going to move forward. So you need to have sequence in that regard.

What I guess I mean is it's not always a linear approach that you go from A to B to C to D, and you're building from general to specific. So what I mean it doesn't have to be that way is you need to have that element of change, but the traditional approach you read about in the textbooks is, "Okay, we start off with general work. So we're going to build this aerobic base, and then we're going to go into the weight room and we're going to do high volume work.

We're going to do sets of 10 on squats, and then we're going to move up to sets of five, and then we're going to move up to sets of three and one and start to work towards maximum strength." So it's very from that general qualities towards the specific qualities.

And when you look at a lot of what the top coaches do, it deviates a lot from that textbook. And if this is on the agenda already later, but I'll skip a little bit to it. If you're going to be a good hammer thrower, I can't take a six-month block to build up that base and only halfway into the year really focus on the technique. Technique is paramount in hammer throwing. Technique is paramount in boxing. It's paramount in MMA. It's paramount in almost every sport.

You have to be able to be doing a little bit of everything at all times. You can't just focus only on those isolated elements and then hope that they come together at the end. So for me, you need to have a bit of everything at all times.

And I mean, almost every sport, there will be sequences. Maybe you focus a little bit more here on one thing or there on another thing, or maybe you change how you're doing each element. So you have sequences where it's, "Okay, well, yes, we're throwing the hammer the whole time, but we'll throw with heavier implements or we'll throw with lighter implements, or we'll do this type of drill to work on that element or that type of drill." So you have built-in sequences of change, but the elements in play are often quite similar.

So that's rambling a bit here, but you were asking about the different types. I mean, block periodization is one thing you'll hear about. That's where you're working very isolated—we're going to work on only endurance, now we're going to work on only maximum strength, we're going to work on only these things, so trying to focus the stimulus on one thing.

What I'm talking about more here is what's—you have different terms for it—I call it complex periodization, but that's where you're focusing on trying to build up the different qualities together. And so yes, you're going to work on strength and technique and tactics at the same time. There might be a slight emphasis one way or another, but you have those elements in there at all times. And you get your change through not necessarily changing the focus but changing the exercises you're using. So that would be one way to describe it.

James de Lacey7:04

Yeah, no, I'm always trying to preach that idea. You can't just remove a whole quality or multiple qualities from a program when you're in a sport that requires pretty much every physical quality you need. Combat sports, rugby, whatever it is—you need aerobic, anaerobic, alactic energy system development, you need strength, power, speed, all of it. And when you start just doing one thing and get away from everything else, then you just start to run into issues, especially further down the line.

Martin Bingisser7:35

I think even more so in a sport like the combat sports where you typically have an 8 to 12-week buildup. You don't have enough time to really isolate each one and then try and bring them all together. If you're doing a shorter buildup, you really have to try and find a way to do it all together.

If you have a year, you might have a chance, and that's how a block periodization approach still works in track and field. Some coaches use it, but there you can spend a month or two on each individual quality and have some time to try and bring them together at end of the year.

But in other sports there's no chance, or even in field sports. If you have a four-week rugby pre-season, forget about it. You got to get right into the skills, you have to install your game plan, but at the same time you need to quote unquote get fit at the same time. You need to build strength. You have to do everything at once. That's the reality.

James de Lacey8:49

And I mean I guess many fighters as well potentially get a call up to fight in two, three weeks as well and you never know when that's around the corner. So if you're in a hypertrophy block coming out of that, you're probably going to have a bad time getting into that fight just coming from there.

Martin Bingisser8:49

Genned Tety was one of the top swim coaches of Russia who went down to Australia and worked with, uh, what's his name, the big Russian sprinter swimmer. Anyway, he coached some of the top, top guys. And he always said, look, my athletes will be ready to jump in the pool any time of year and they're going to be within a couple percentage points to their best.

And you can't say that with a lot of people using traditional periodization. But, you know, you can jump in and you're not going to be maybe your top, but you're going to be close. And if you get that call up for a fight and you've been doing a little bit of everything, then you're going to be close to your best.

James de Lacey9:41

Nice. Those are good points. So let's dive into maybe one specific area because obviously you've worked with Bondarchuk. You've done his programming. So maybe you want to dive into the exercise classification, maybe his philosophy around periodization, maybe some common misconceptions about it too.

Martin Bingisser9:41

So I mean, Bondarchuk is a, for those who don't know, he's hammer throw coach. He was the world record holder in the early 70s, became the Soviet National coach. And, his athletes set world records. They won basically every medal from 76 until 92 when the Soviet Union fell. He completely dominated the sport of hammer throwing on the technical side, also reinvented the technique quite a bit, but was quite progressive also in the periodization planning.

And that's where I think his ideas get a lot of carryover. And what I like about his approach is that he was my coach for a while. So that part of the reason I like it is it worked for me. But he tries to simplify things in an area where it can get really complex. I mean, everybody's a bit different. What works for one athlete won't work for another.

This is one of the reasons that got me interested in periodization is because when I was 19 years old I went to university. I showed up with a bunch of other freshman athletes, we all got the same exact program. And all of my training partners were improving their bench press and squat 10, 20%. I mean, we're 19 years old, we're full of hormones, we should be getting stronger. And after eight months, I was a couple kilos stronger in the lifts than I was before. And I was like, why is this the case? Everyone else is getting better and I'm not.

It's because everyone's a bit different. We react a bit different. And it's not as formulaic as we make things out to be. And so that's what attracted me to Bondarchuk is he's very individual in his approach. But it's not individual in the sense of there's this huge mathematical formula that you have to crunch the numbers and then this will get you the perfect plan. It's more, let's do the basic things. We put together a plan with the basic elements there and we do it until it stops working, and then we'll try something else. Really simple approach.

And to talk, it starts, you do a basic plan. What does basic mean for him? You can break down any sport into four categories. You can nitpick about what's in this category, what's in that category, but the idea is you got four basic things. You got the sport itself, which he calls a competitive exercise. For us that's throwing the hammer. You have specific strength exercises, he calls those specific developmental exercises, but those are things where you take a part of your sport, you break it down into its parts so you can overload it a little bit.

So for us, if you watch the hammer throw or if you have no idea what the hammer throw is, we take this ball and chain, twirl around four times and launch it into a field. A specific strength exercise might be, instead of a 7 kilo hammer, we take a 20 kilo kettlebell from a standing position and throw it. So we're emphasizing that release movement. We're breaking it down to one element of the throw, taking something a bit heavier, so we got the overload and working with it.

It can be, doesn't have to be overload, doesn't have to be heavier. It can be faster. It can be overloading balance. You could be doing it on an unstable surface or something, so you're overloading a different component. But the idea is you break it down into its elements and make it a little bit harder.

So that's the second category. Third category are specific preparatory exercises. And that's where you start to have exercises that they don't look like the sport, but they're training the same muscles and they're training the same energy system. So hammer throw is an explosive sport. We're using the legs, we're using the whole body. Going in the weight room, doing cleans, doing squats, those types of things, they don't look like the hammer throw, but they're building the same muscles. They're building explosive strength. So that'd be kind of the third tier.

And then the fourth tier are general preparatory exercises. These are things where you start to get away from the sport completely. You're building energy systems that are different. Might be doing circuit training, work capacity work, things like that. And so he uses that kind of as a checklist. These are the four areas. They're also kind of the priority too. The priority for everyone should be their sport.

That doesn't mean that the third and fourth categories don't play a role. I mean, if I weigh 180 kilos and I'm completely out of shape, I'm not going to be able to do the training I need to get the throws I want in the first category. So you have to have the general exercises there. You have to have the raw horsepower.

You have to have the overall fitness to be able to prepare you to train. And so those third and fourth categories are always going to be present because you need to prepare yourself to train. But those first two categories are there to prepare you to compete.

And he has a little bit of those elements available all the time. And the checklist is then, let's take a couple from each of those categories, we'll put that into a training program. Get four categories, you might get maybe 10 exercises out of that. Three, four specific exercises, a couple key whole body exercises in the weight room, and some core circuits or things like that. And that's your training plan. You get maybe 10 exercises, you do it, you repeat it.

Might do it five days a week. You might do it when I was training with him, we trained 10 sessions a week sometimes, the same thing 10 times a week. And you repeat it, you track your results until you stop getting better. Like I said, maybe that's after three weeks, maybe it's after six weeks. And once you stop improving, then you change it up.

So it's pretty simple approach. But like I said, it's, he calls it complex in that you have all four categories present the whole time. Other approaches, like a more block periodization approach, would be, okay, let's start in the general category, let's do that for a month. Let's move to the specific preparatory exercise for a month, let's move to the specific developmental exercise for a month and kind of isolate those qualities. And he's trying to bring all those qualities together. Real simple. Do the same thing over and over, and then wait till you stop improving and then change.

James de Lacey15:50

So you mentioned about your exercise classification, you're doing a bit of, I guess, a bit of everything instead of just the GPP and just SP, et cetera. Why do you think that works so well compared to just blocking it?

Martin Bingisser15:50

One thing I've noticed in the hammer throw world, and I think it applies to almost any sport, is when you try and build up, let's say use a more traditional approach where you do GPP and then SPP and this, okay, you get a really good base aerobically in the general phase. And then you, let's say, you get a really good hypertrophy phase, and then you get a really good max strength phase. Well, you spend four weeks on each, that's 12 weeks. And then you get into the technical phase. You're fit, you're strong, but your technique is...

And what does that mean? Who cares how strong you are if you don't have the technique to apply that force? And then by the time you build up that technique, it's been, okay, 12 weeks since you've had the aerobic phase, eight weeks since you've had the hypertrophy phase, four weeks since you've had the... those qualities start to drop off a little bit. So yes, your technique's coming back up, but it's always these waves are never aligned. You build one up and it drops off, and you build another up and...

It drops off. And what you want in any sport is to have hopefully all your qualities in line at the same time. You want to be strong, you want to be fit, and you want to be technically proficient all together. And it's a bit difficult sometimes to align those.

And also I mean it's not just the fact that physical qualities drop off, but it's also the fact that your body changes. If you get stronger, your timing is going to be different. If you get bigger, your timing is going to be a bit different. It takes your body time to adjust to that, and by the time you adjust and put it into your technique, whatever extra benefit you got from putting all your energy into maximum strength, it might have dropped off a little bit.

So with the complex approach, train everything together. It might, you might—well, I don't say you might, you will not get as strong in four weeks focusing on everything as you will as focusing on one thing. You're not going to get a 10% maximum strength gain. You might get a one or two percent, but that one or two percent you can use because you're training technique every day and it's usable strength, not just weight room strength. It's strength that you can put into your sport because you're training every day and you're going to be able to bridge that gap.

James de Lacey18:00

For sure. You also mentioned about you would do the same workout multiple times a week essentially and then track the progress basically with your throws. Just thinking now, wonder if was that that Bondarchuk philosophy where you do the same workout until you see no change or improvement in that competition exercise and then you change the variations? Or can, or is there another way of I guess using that style without having to do the same workout all the time?

Martin Bingisser18:25

I mean the simplest model is we would do the same thing over and over. Now that can get a bit monotonous. At the same time, if you have a good training group and you're doing the same thing, it's not boring. I think a lot of people look at it on paper and say, "How could you ever do that?" It's like, well, you're training with your best friends, you're working with the best coach in the world. It's training is as fun as the environment, and so if the environment's fun, it'll be fun.

But that's the simplest way. We did the same thing. What you can also do, what we did before, is we might have three different workouts we cycle through. So you have, if we were Monday, would be workout A in the morning, workout B in the afternoon. Tuesday would be C in the morning. Tuesday afternoon would be a rest. And then we kind of cycle through so we're doing kind of the same thing repeating, but it's broken up into different sessions.

So it's not necessarily the same thing every single session, but you know, an advantage we have in the hammer throw is we have, we know exactly what shape we're in every single session. We can pull out the tape measure, and other than a few environmental factors, if it's terrible weather, something like that, we know I threw 68 meters today, that's how good I am. You can't quite say that in MMA, at least to that quantifiable level. You can't do that in rugby. You can't do that in a lot of sports.

But we can go out and see how good we are every day. And you know, Mona and weightlifting, the same thing. If she wanted to, you can with either max testing or even with velocity based work, you can kind of see, okay, this is where I'm at. And that allowed us to kind of gauge the long-term adaptation. Are we adapting? And it's not always going to be up. Sometimes you take a step back before you go forward. But you can kind of see, is this program working and when it's the time to change it?

James de Lacey20:30

Does that mean you had a specific program that you peaked with because you knew what worked, or would that always change?

Martin Bingisser20:30

It would change a bit. I mean, as I said before, everyone's a bit different and it takes a bit of time to understand what works for someone. So with some athletes, you definitely get the idea these exercises, they really react well to.

You know, for me, like close grip snatch, I loved. I'm not sure if it was just a placebo effect or if it was actually physically what helped me throw better, but when I was doing that in training, it's one of the fastest Olympic lifts. You know, the longest range of motion, you have a really long, quick pull. I felt snappy when I did it, and that was an exercise I would save for kind of that peak phase. And it would work well.

There are certain hammers I threw, like if I really heavy hammers, it slowed the movement down so I could hone in my technique a bit more. And those are, again, when I'd been doing this program for six, seven, eight, nine years, you start to realize which things work for an athlete and then you can use those when you really want to get in peak shape.

But you know, that kind of goes back to, we're not doing a hundred things in training. As I said, we're doing like 10 things. And so if we do a training block, we can kind of figure out, hey, this worked. You know, if I'm only doing three or four key weight room exercises and a training block I really reacted well to and had a huge jump in performance, I'm pretty sure that those are the things that helped.

If you're doing a different session every day and every day you've got 20 different bodybuilding exercises in there and you got good after a month, how can you say what was it in there that actually helped? Was it the leg day? Was it the arm day? Was it the technical work? Was it the this or that? And that's why I think one of the beauties of Bondarchuk's thing is, is not necessarily it's better, but it's simpler.

You have so few elements involved, when something works you learn from it. And there are a lot of times when it didn't work. We'd have phases where we didn't get better, but then we realized, okay, that, you know, I did ass-to-grass squats five times a week with 80%. Okay, well it didn't work. Maybe let's try it at 70%. Let's try, you know, you learn from the mistakes as much as you learn from the successes.

So by keeping the number of variables smaller, you start to see what worked for the athlete, how long does the athlete need with a certain program to adapt to it. Not everyone's going to need four weeks or eight weeks. You know, it's going to be a bit individual, and you start to suss out all these individual elements of how does it work. And over the years, if you're using a similar program, you can really start to hone in on, okay, this is what the athlete really reacts well to.

James de Lacey23:05

Does that mean then if you have exercises that you know you peak well with, that you avoid using them in the buildup so they're fresh?

Martin Bingisser23:05

Exactly that. So, as I said, we, it's we still have sequences in that you need change as an athlete. You can't always do the same thing. It's not that we're going from general to specific. We're going from one type of specific to another.

So if I know close grip snatch works really well for me, I might not do that for eight months leading up to a competition, and then I'll put it in the last program. I might do cleans, I might do high pulls, I might do snatch. So you're always doing a little bit different each phase, and then when you get to that, it's something new, it's something fresh, and you get that stimulus again.

If you do it, even the best exercise in the world, if you're doing that every day the whole year, it's going to be dull. So I like to say it's like sharpening your knives. You might have the best knife in the kitchen and it slices beautifully, but if that's the only knife you use, it's going to get dull after a while.

And you got to switch knives. Maybe the second best knife, you pull that out, but you know the second best knife is the sharpest one now, so go ahead and use that. And while you're using that one, you can sharpen the first knife again and go back to it. But you want to make sure that it doesn't get dull.

James de Lacey24:16

That's a great analogy. Do you have then maybe some examples? Maybe we can use MMA because it's probably the most hybrid of all the combat sports. Breaking down, say, exercise classification for MMA. So from the competition all the way down to GPP.

Martin Bingisser24:38

Yeah, and here, as I said, it gets a little bit towards gray areas because at a certain point, what category something is in doesn't really matter. What's important is that you kind of get in the whole spectrum and that you understand what you're trying to do with something. So if you're really trying to use a general exercise to build up your specific capacities, it's not going to work.

But if you take it at the competition level, you know, what is the competition for MMA? You know, that would be sparring, and it could be, I'd be a bit more broad than just actual doing rounds or something like that, but it could be shorter spars, longer spars. But it's something that's going to involve, you know...

Different ground-based work, standup work, all that type of stuff, trying to pull it all together. So you have some tactical elements in there as well.

When you get to the specific development exercises, that's where I think you're going more towards isolating different qualities. So it might be some more ground-based work where you're putting someone in different positions and trying to get out of it, trying to make it maybe a little bit harder than it would be to really build up those specific elements of the fight. Or maybe working on specific type of movements if it's a punching movement. It might be working with heavy bags or something like that where it's starting to look like elements of it, but it's removed from the complete sparring type of situation.

Again, you're reducing some of the variables so you can overload it a bit more. So it's a little bit less chaos, but more load.

Then the specific Preparatory work is again going to probably be more building up individual qualities like power, but leg power more generally, upper body power more generally, weight room exercises, that type of thing. And the general work too, because you're using every single Energy System, it's hard to say that okay, general is using different Energy Systems. Well, you're using every Energy System, but I think those last two categories start to blend in a very hybrid sport like that. But they're both again working power quality more isolated, work capacity quality more isolated, those types of things.

James de Lacey27:03

Yeah, I know what you mean by those bottom two categories tend to be blended. Because again, you're trying to train so many different qualities. Even getting, I guess you could say you could still get too far away from the sport, even the GPP phase. If you really pushed it and did something completely out of the thing, so I almost struggle to call it GPP. It's more like specific general preparation because you're still trying to bridge that gap between what you're doing there to kind of influence the things up the pyramid.

Martin Bingisser27:33

Exactly. And even if we start to talk about Energy Systems too, one thing I've noticed about rugby is that we think of qualities like endurance. Well, endurance could be very specific. Like we have some really fit guys who can go and they can do a Bronco, for example, or an endurance test, and they do great. But after 20 minutes on the pitch they're exhausted.

And being able to run at a steady pace for a long time is different than being able to take hits and give hits and being in a hold where you're in an isometric contraction for seconds. Those are very specific qualities. So even on the endurance and work capacity side, there's a spectrum as well.

And when I started playing rugby a bit, I noticed that exactly. Because compared to other forwards, guys that are 115 kilos like me, I'm fit. I can run faster than them, I can run longer than them, all that. But you put me in a scrum and I'm bending over on my knees for 15 seconds after because that's just a different type of endurance. And taking hit after hit, like getting back up from that, it's a different type. So I'm getting winded whereas I should, if you look at me on paper with the test, I should be more fit than these guys, but I'm not.

James de Lacey29:03

That's funny. Like I mean that brings us back to, we've talked about it quite a bit through the past, how many years, the ones that are strong in the gym and on the field, or sorry, I should say on the field or within the sport, the absolute animal, but then in the gym and on the field, they don't put up the best numbers, they don't put up the best fitness scores or anything like that. Yet they're the best players or fighters that are there just because they're so technically good.

They understand the game, they understand the rhythm of the game, so they're able to pace themselves. They can manipulate the pace based on their skills and things like that. So there's so many other factors to take into account than just, oh, I'm, as you're saying, quote unquote fit, fit enough to do the sport.

Martin Bingisser29:48

And that's kind of what I mean, to bring it back to Bondarchuk. That's what started his whole thought process on trying to reinvent this. Most of the periodization models were trying to get athletes as strong as possible. And he noticed he set the world record and he wasn't as strong as the guy who had it before him.

And then his athletes set the world record and they were 10, 20% weaker than he was. And so he's like, there's not, we're all strong guys. It's not that you can be squatting 100 kilos and be a world record holder in the hammer throw. You gotta have a lot of strength, but the strongest guy is not winning here.

So maybe we need to invert the whole planning model and focus less on strength and put the top priority is throwing. The world record holders, if you look back at it, all had better technique than last. So there's a correlation between technique, there's a correlation between specific strength. And the further you get from the sport itself, the further down that exercise classification, the correlations are weaker and weaker.

So who has the best mile time has zero correlation, or maybe a probably negative correlation. The people who have the best mile time are going to be the worst hammer throwers because they're going to be little skinny blokes. So trying to suss out a bit, okay, let's put the priorities where they need to be and try and figure out what's going to actually transfer over from training to our sport.

James de Lacey31:03

Do you see the trend of, I guess, chasing maximal strength slowly kind of eroding away? I think it's slowly getting there, but there's still a lot of people just looking to chase numbers in all sports, I think so.

Martin Bingisser31:03

But it's always going to be the default, I think. It's always something pretty measurable. And I think it's human nature. We want to get bigger, faster, stronger. So telling someone you're strong enough is always hard to accept that as, okay, well, let's focus on something else. Because it's harder to quantify my technique or quantify my tactical skills or things like this. If I got 5% better in the squat, I know that I'm better, even if I'm not performing better in the ring.

So I think that's always a fallback. I see that even with some of my athletes now. We try not to focus on maximum strength, but we do that with some athletes just because it's easy to focus on that. And sometimes it also does bring benefits. You got to figure out, maybe with some athletes, it's not that maximum strength doesn't matter. Maybe that is what works with them.

You see that with different, we have different technical styles in the hammer throw. Some are more speed dependent, some are more strength dependent. But you also see that probably in the ring, some fighters are more strength-based, some fighters are more agility-based, some fighters are more endurance-based. Kind of learning what makes you tick.

In general, maximum strength is not going to be the thing that's going to get everyone better. But maybe with a subset of athletes it is. So you got to experiment and see, well, maybe that is what works. It's not that we're over maximum strength, but it's not going to be the solution for everyone. So all I'm trying to say.

James de Lacey33:04

For sure. And there's probably ways to, I guess, do it well for the sport too. If you're doing pure powerlifting, full range squats, benches, and deads, you're probably going to run into some issues. But I guess if you're doing max strength, maybe doing like quarter squats, shorter range of motion stuff, stuff off the pins and things like that, there might be, it might be a little easier in terms of recovery, not from absolute load standpoint, but at least muscular-wise from the range of motion and the stuff you're putting yourself through.

Martin Bingisser33:27

Exactly. And as Bondarchuk would say, you can train maximum strength, but it shouldn't be too much to the detriment of those more specific categories. So if you're training maximum strength and that means going ass to grass squats, 90% all the time, yes, you're going to get maximum strength. But you're going to be so fatigued the next day or two, you're probably not going to get as good of technical training.

So train maximum strength more sensibly, like you say, maybe quarter squats, maybe full range, but okay, less frequent, or maybe more explosive, or trying to figure out a way where that work doesn't work to the detriment of the technical development. Because you can combine them both. And unless you're like an Olympic or powerlifter, I've seen almost every athlete can increase maximum strength with two, three sessions a week. They don't have to be going into that red zone every single session.

You can get maximum strength gains without going crazy and you can still keep that focus on the specific work at the same time. Because you can, you can literally, like you can lift, I guess for the listeners out there, you

James de Lacey34:51

You can do anywhere from what, 65 to like 80%, and you can keep the volume generally. You can still improve maximum strength just from sitting in those ranges, less fatigue. It's almost the opposite of that high-low model where obviously with the energy systems you're looking at really high outputs and speed and then the really low-end aerobic stuff. But then with strength training it's like you want to sit in that middle ground, and it seems to be a nice way in the gym to be able to get stronger but not have so much fatigue carrying over to whatever else you need to do that day.

Martin Bingisser35:18

As I said, we would sometimes train up to 10 times a week. Well, if you look at that training, even if we're doing squats, we were doing squat 10 times a week, but we were doing three sets at 70%. If I'm doing three sets, three by three or three by five at 70%, I can come back and do that again later in the day. I can do that the next day. It's easily recoverable, but it's also you would see strength gains from it just because the amount of volume you get in a week is crazy.

Even if you're doing two, three sets a session, that's 20, 30 sets a week of squats, high intent, high speed. So yeah, it's, you know, if you talk about a high-low model, it's in the middle as far as one rep max. But it's on the higher spectrum in terms of velocity, so you're, and higher spectrum in terms of power. So you're getting a lot of good qualities out of that, and you can push up the maximum strength at the same time without the detriment of just feeling sluggish, feeling sore, and all those other side effects that might affect the specific work.

James de Lacey36:05

Awesome. I actually want to touch on the residual training effect stuff too. So we're in the process of writing and publishing a, I guess we can call it a counterpoint to the current residual training effect. So maybe you want to just for the listeners define or explain what the residual training effects are, and there may be just some ideas around that in terms of training and how it could potentially influence or not influence training.

Martin Bingisser36:33

So this comes back to, like I said, block periodization. And Vladimir Issurin is one of the chief authors about block periodization and put together his kind of model of block periodization. A lot of it is based around what he's defined as the residual training effects. And if you spend, as I said, one block focused on one quality and another block focused on another quality, it's important to know, okay, after I finish the maximum strength block, how long is the residual training effect?

How long do I maintain that quality I just built up? Because that helps me allow how long can I go without it before I have to go back to it.

So if the residual training effect for maximum strength is four weeks, that means after a max strength block I could do something different for four weeks and come back to it. And you know, I'm plus minus a few percent from where I was. If I go six weeks, then whatever gains I had I start to lose more of. So he's written in the literature his interpretation of how long the residual training effects are for different qualities to help with planning it.

And what we've been talking about is of course they are residual training effects. When you train something, after you stop training it, it's going to fall off. How long it takes to fall off, how much it takes to fall off, those are up for debate. And that's with Issurin's work, he makes it seem much more formulaic. If you train this quality, you will retain it this long. And it's not that simple because there are so many factors at play.

I mean, first and foremost, everyone knows this firsthand, like your training age, how long you've trained. If you've been, for instance, I haven't done cleans. I've been focusing a lot on snatch lately. I haven't done cleans in months, but I could probably walk in tomorrow and be pretty close to my clean because I've been training them for 20 years. The longer you train, the easier it is for a quality to come back.

Same thing on the technical side too. I've taken so many hammer throws over the years that I haven't thrown a hammer since last June, but I could probably walk in and my technique is okay. So training age plays a role. What you do during that break, are you just sitting around doing nothing? Or are you doing other peripheral exercises? If I don't do any training at all for a month, my qualities are going to drop off faster than if I do cross-training or some other peripheral training. And there are all these different factors involved.

And we need to pay attention to them as a coach. I think where we fall into a trap is when we start to think, oh, we have these formulas, we can predict training. We instead need to realize this is a complex process. There are a lot of different factors involved. It's going to be very individual how long one athlete can go without training a certain quality is going to be different than another. And we need to be aware of that in planning so we can be a bit more flexible in our approach.

So that's kind of, I think, the point we're trying to get across is training is not mechanistic, it's not formulaic. There's a lot of uncertainty involved, so we need to plan with uncertainty in mind and be a bit more adaptable in our approach rather than just falling back on these formulas.

James de Lacey39:59

I mean, it's funny how we can give such precise, almost like day, like down to the day plus or minus a few days with a quality lasts. I mean, as you mentioned, there's so many influences. I think the biggest influence is the fact that you're usually doing other training anyway, like you mentioned. You're doing snatches and you haven't been doing cleans, but that's still going to carry and help you with your clean.

Martin Bingisser39:59

Exactly. I mean, I was, I wrote an article about this years ago, but there was a time when I did no snatches and no cleans for a while and then came back. And I was able to, I think, equal or tie my best in the snatch. But if you look at the hammer throw release, that's a pull. That's a pulling movement. I'm doing that every single day. It's a different type of pull, but yeah, that's some type of strength training I'm doing every single day. So I'm doing something.

And rarely are we in a situation, a lot of the research looks at, okay, what do people do when they have a four or six month layoff? How many elite athletes do you know that have a month-long layoff or two-month-long layoff? We might have a week or two. So yes, the research might tell us something about that situation, but that's something we never encounter as a coach unless you have an injury or something like that where it's a forced layoff. So yeah, it's a complex topic, but we need to appreciate that complexity if we want to plan for it.

James de Lacey41:10

That's an important thing to mention too. You said you were throwing the hammer and that was essentially like a pull. I mean, a lot of sports, they can be considered somewhat strength training. I mean, grappling, when you're having to manipulate another human, is essentially a form of strength training, even though, depending on how you're doing it, you're going to gas yourself out too, as you know from your contact training. So I mean, that also plays a role in maintaining strength.

It might not be maintaining the ability to back squat whatever it is, but you're still producing a lot of force, and you're producing it in a way that's specific to whatever it is you need to do. And strength isn't just the ability to express it in a certain exercise like the squat, it's the ability to produce force in whatever that task is that you're competing in.

Martin Bingisser42:00

I mean, every training, you're never only working on technique, you're never only working on strength. You can try and isolate those qualities, but if I'm hitting a punching bag 20 times, that's also strength training. It's a different type of strength. So that's why I think it's important to understand the categories, understand how much overlap there is too, but that also makes us realize we need to plan for every category.

I think too often, historically, let's take in the hammer throw, we'd have a very detailed sets and reps plan down to the rest periods and everything in the weight room. And then we go out to throw and we say, oh, let's throw for half an hour. I don't know how many throws it's going to be, that's how much time I have as a coach. Or in rugby we say, okay, we have this very detailed strength training plan, but then we're going to have an hour on-field session. We'll work on passing today. It's very vague and generic, and that happens at the highest level too, unfortunately.

James de Lacey42:54

Exactly. And we put all this time into planning only one category when we should put, you know, if you look at Bondarchuk's plan, he has sets and reps for every single category. What weight implement are we throwing? How many throws are we going to do?

Martin Bingisser43:18

All those types of things, and when we get to rugby and you look at the top clubs now, what they do on-field is also detailed. We're going to do this drill for five minutes. Normally we'll have so many meters run during that phase, so much of high-speed running. They know exactly what is the load of each drill for the specific work and the general work. And same thing with sparring, it's not just okay, we're going to spar.

Let's just say we're going to have 10 30-second high-intensity bouts with two minutes rest in between. Just trying to go into a bit more detail what you're planning so that you can try and focus that stimulus on what you need, instead of just saying, "Oh, that's just the technical work we're going to do that." You need to put as much emphasis in that in the planning as everything else because that's also physical training. You can't just say this is physical and that's tactical and technical. Everything's everything.

James de Lacey44:06

Wasn't it Mayweather that had his coaches counting his punches in training with a clicker? I swear.

Martin Bingisser44:06

Yeah. I mean, that's extreme recording of volume right there. And you even had the, like, talking with some of our friends from Gain, and John Prior and Dean Benton, when they're working with some of the top rugby clubs, they can get GPS to measure how much they're running in a session, but that's only part of the load.

So they would actually count the number of tackles and contacts and stuff so they can see, "Okay, well, we're setting up this drill, we want to work on tackling. Are we actually tackling that much? Are we getting what we're supposed to out of this drill?" And so, yeah, they would measure the number of contacts per minute or things like that, just to try and, you know, quantifying isn't the end all be all, but it helps give you a feedback of are you accomplishing what you're trying to accomplish.

James de Lacey44:52

I love that. That defensive, one of the defensive setups we used to use was things like trying to exceed contacts per minute, like maybe an average or maybe a worst case scenario in a game. So it could be similar for, I guess, MMA in things. It could be, what is the worst case scenario in a fight? It could be maybe you have a flow of punches against the fence for 5, 10 seconds, and then you get taken down and you have to try escape, and maybe it's a whole 30-second sequence.

And you go, "Okay, well, that is the worst thing you've gone through condition-wise. Now you're going to train to exceed that." So maybe it's taking higher intensity, whatever, of punches, being held down for longer, and you try to escape for longer. Yeah, there's just so much that can be done.

Martin Bingisser45:39

Perfect. I think we covered everything there, Martin. Is there anywhere where people can follow you if they want to keep up with what you're doing?

Yeah, we're up on social media, Twitter and Instagram, HMMR Media. So it's Hammer Media but spelled a bit different, H-M-M-R. You can go to hammermedia.com. We got a lot of resources up there. And mentioned a couple times, Gain, which is Vern Gambetta's community and conference that takes place in June every year in Houston, but we got some other digital events here and there as well. And idea is to bring together coaches from different sports as well.

So you can find out about that at thegainnetwork.com. Great networking opportunity. So those are some places. And if you guys have questions about these, feel free to shoot me an email. I can either answer them or point you to resources we have out there that answer them, because there's a lot of almost everything we talked about, there, even more available online about it.

James de Lacey46:29

Perfect. I'll link up your stuff in the description, but thanks for coming on, Martin. Really appreciate it.

Martin Bingisser46:29

No problem. Always great catching up with you. Cheers.