Clarifying My Strength & Conditioning Philosophy For Combat Sports (SSOF Ep. 55)

James de Lacey0:05

Now obviously within the sporting world, a lot of strength training philosophy has been taken from these sports and transferred over into combat sports and other team sports. And it's done so for a couple of reasons. One of them is a lot of people within strength and conditioning come from those kind of backgrounds. They love strength training, they love lifting, and they come into strength and conditioning coaching with that background and that bias, and so a lot of what they know comes from those worlds of getting stronger.

The other reason is a lot of it is relatively well researched within the Soviet, all Soviet tactics, and that's kind of what they built their bread and butter periodization on: things like track and field throwing, things like Olympic weightlifting where they're going after gold medals.

Now obviously the issue with taking things exactly from one sport to another is training for one sport is different than using or training as accessory for another sport. So to make that a little clearer, doing a full powerlifting training routine to benefit your combat sports performance is probably not the best idea, mainly because powerlifters aren't doing anything outside of powerlifting training, whereas as a combat athlete your lifting is there to complement your combat training.

So if you take a, I mean, you can even take a typical powerlifting routine, 5x5. That's considered an intermediate routine. That's a lot of volume. 5x5 squats doesn't sound like much if you're lifting, but if you're trying to lift to get stronger and to transfer to your combat sport, that kind of volume will cause you to struggle within your technical training. Even if it's just three times a week, 5x5 squats, 5x5 bench, and usually it's 1x5 or 3x5 deadlift, is still a lot of work.

The other problem is the idea around only lifting heavy. So powerlifters, yes, you can go down the road of conjugate method and Westside using that and doing special dynamic effort method where they're doing 50-60% one rep max for like 12 doubles for speed. But when we're talking speed in combat sports, we're not talking moving 50-60% one rep max because that's still slow.

And the problem is when we're only lifting, for example doing barbell dumbbell work, we create full body tension. I know I've done this myself. I've been involved in strength sports for a while, I've been involved in combat, Jiu-Jitsu for a while too. But man, lifting, when you're just lifting and you're not doing other forms of athletic training, we could call it, rotating, jumping different directions, single leg work, plyometrics, that teaches your body stiffness and being stiff and tense under load, because you need to have that ability to transfer force from the floor all the way through to the barbell, and your body needs to be stiff to be able to do that.

And that's why you find really flexible and mobile people aren't very strong, and you'll find that athletes like sprinters, they're not very flexible and they don't need to be and they shouldn't be, because that flexibility will reduce their ability to produce force quickly. And that is one of the unfortunate adaptations that occurs when you're doing years and years of just heavy lifting without doing some other form of training with it.

Now obviously it's beneficial to do maximal strength training. There's no doubt about doing that. The problem is when all you're doing is trying to push for numbers. So for example, you're doing a powerlifting routine and you're doing a combat sport, but you're trying to push for bigger totals over, I mean, the thresholds are very arbitrary in terms of how strong you should be. That's a question no one can really answer.

I know what's quite interesting within American football, there's Matt Rhea. He was with Alabama as their strength and conditioning coach, now with the New Saints. And he quantified 1.7 times body weight squat seems to be the threshold for when players essentially no longer get faster. So if you can squat 1.7 times your body weight or more, in that specific scenario players do not tend to benefit regarding speed.

Now within combat sports you can use a similar metric, 1.5 times body weight as just a general strength number. Honestly, with my philosophy, I think it's important to have that, but I don't think it's that important to have benchmarks for the power lifts. It's just easy to measure when you're using them.

Remember, strength is a coordinative task, and it just means that, yep, you've got the strength in the legs and the body to be able to squat that weight, but do you have that strength when you're grappling, wrestling, striking, whatever that is? Those are different things when you're applying it in very different circumstances. However, having a general strength base, there's nothing wrong with that.

Now outside of chasing numbers, when you're doing your strength training for your combat sport, it should be covering essentially everything you're not getting within your combat sport training, and then you can also attack various weaknesses. So let's start with attacking what you're not getting.

So say within striking sports, you're not getting a lot of maximum strength or even moderately loaded strength work, what you'd call strength speed or maximal power exercises, because you're only throwing essentially limbs at targets and that's very high speed or high velocity, and you don't have that strength component.

So your strength training for strikers, while it will focus on getting quicker, faster through various plyometrics, throws, jumps, etc., you will still touch on the maximum strength side because maximum strength can increase the potential for you to be faster, because speed is force done quickly. And if you can produce more force or have the potential to produce more force, then you have the potential to produce more force quickly. If you cannot get there even within longer time frames, you cannot get there within shorter time frames. So that's kind of the philosophy around maximum strength.

Obviously you have the idea of reducing the risk of injury. Being strong, you can handle heavier workloads within training. So stronger individuals tend to be able to handle harder training sessions and more of them. So that's another benefit of just genuinely being strong. Again, it's not about spending all your time chasing numbers on certain lifts. You can be strong in, I guess you could say sport specific for lack of a better term, exercises and positions.

Now when we're talking about attacking weaknesses within strength as well, that's another thing that can be done. There's simple tests you can do. I've done a boxing strength training video on YouTube that kind of runs through a few of those tests. It could be things like a reactive strength index test, and it gives you an idea of essentially how well you are able to quickly go from an eccentric to a concentric contraction.

So here's a way to think about this: is bouncing around the ring, how quickly you're able to bounce around, which is highly important not just for that, but also for throwing punches quickly, throwing kicks quickly, things like that. And you've got force velocity profiles, and you can take into account your optimal profile and you can compare that to your current profile, and that can dictate whether you're going to touch more on the force

Side or the velocity side of training within your strength training. So those are a couple of things you can do in there, but overall it's more about making your strength training complimentary to your combat sport. That's literally the underlying fact, and that means not doing as much volume because most strength programs are typically too high volume for combat athletes. Because their goal is to solely improve numbers without anything else, that's the number one goal, so they have high volume. You don't have anything else outside of that training, but you do.

So even if you're going to run something like a 5x5 program as an example, you might drop that down to three sets of three at the exact same intensities, or four sets of two, five sets of two, whatever it is. You just need to lower the volume so you don't have that fatigue carrying over. The other thing is intensity. When we talk intensity, it's usually in percentage of 1RM. Typically if you're doing a low volume program, higher intensities are better. Higher intensities are easier to recover from than higher volumes of training, and it's going to give you the adaptations that you want.

Now within a certain training session, you'll see this within the programs in the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. Typically a transition will go from fast movements to slow movements. Obviously these rules are broken as you progress through to other training cycles and doing other things, but that is a very good place to start. Do all your jumps, plyometrics, throws first.

Move on to something that's maybe moderately loaded. It could be an Olympic lift, a weightlifting derivative. There's a whole course in the Underground for that too. It could be kettlebell swings, something that's a ballistic action that is loaded. And then you can go into your heavier lifting. This could be your heavier squats, deadlift, bench, whatever that is.

Now how much you do of each is going to be dictated by what you're trying to improve within that. So if you're going after becoming faster because you think you lack in that area, you might do more volume in terms of more sets at the beginning of the session, because that's where all your fast stuff is. And then when you get to your heavier loading exercises, you might only do two sets, and that's just enough to kind of keep you going and improving.

If you were just looking to get stronger, then you can just flip that on its head. You can start with the light, the jumps, plyometrics, etc., but you only do a couple of sets of a few of those, and you might spend more time doing the maximal strength training and maybe some hypertrophy style training.

So the program can be pretty similar, but it just changes. And then once we get into more advanced training techniques, things like complexes, pairing heavy loaded movements with light power movements, these things change your session structure. But these things are further down the line in terms of what you may be trying to achieve. So I think that covers most things within this, within the strength training philosophy. Often people get caught up in the minutiae around it.

Honestly, it's often just about consistency. If you're in the gym consistently two, three times a week, you're going to make progress. Not every session, you don't have to add weight, reps, or sets every session or every week you go in the gym, especially when combat sports are your main priority. You can do the same, exactly the same session two, three weeks in a row. Then maybe on the third or fourth week you add weight or add reps, things like that. You can slow cook it right down and just really try and improve how you're doing the session.

Now if combat sports are something you do on the side, you just enjoy doing it, but you also want to improve your general fitness. Maybe you're looking to build muscle mass and just kind of have a well-rounded, you want a nice physique and be strong, but you also just want to have some kind of martial arts background. Maybe you're doing that two, three times a week.

That's a different story because you're not trying to maximize combat sports development in that scenario. Yeah, you might do more volume in the gym and not worry so much about being fatigued for combat sports, or you might do a strength sports or bodybuilding routine in this situation. But that's a completely different situation than someone who is trying to get the most out of combat training.

So just be aware that depending on what your goals are, there'll be different methodology around what you can do. So when I say, hey, you know, bodybuilding routines and this and that, you know, it's not good for combat athletes, I'm specifically referring to someone who's looking to really do well within their combat sport. That's kind of where Sweet Science of Fighting has positioned itself in combat sports training, trying to help people like yourself get the most out of their combat training because maybe you love it, maybe you want to compete, maybe you want to get to another level, nationally, state level, whatever that is.

However, that doesn't mean that I don't take into account also people who may not want to get that much better at combat sports and just enjoy doing it, but really want to improve their overall lifestyle, fitness, all that kind of stuff and lifting. It's just that is a different message, and that is a completely different approach to training. So just bear that in mind as we go forward with different, as I keep posting YouTube videos and various methodology and things like that, it's all geared towards the combat athlete that's looking to get better.

If there is anything else you want me to cover, maybe it's trying to balance combat sports and lifting and stuff for someone who doesn't want to compete in combat sports, then please let me know in the comments and all that, and I can also have a look at that. I tend to go down that road a fair bit even though I do compete every now and then, but I'm not looking to become a professional in terms of combat sports.

So I think what would be good is going down now the conditioning road. If anything else with strength comes up while I'm talking about this, I'll come back to it. But we're going to get on the conditioning rabbit hole, and it's something I think that gets confused a little as well because of, I guess there's a lot of ways to approach the conditioning aspect. And I've had a few guests on that have differing methodology and ways they go about it.

And I think what might be good is first clarifying my position in terms of what you may have read on the site, what you may have read through the various ebooks and programs and things like that. And the first one is the idea of low intensity steady state cardio or cardiac output work. And your cardio, I recommend doing that a lot, and I prescribe it a lot for people who are coming in to Sweet Science Underground and some of the first programs.

And people may get confused as, okay, that's the only thing you need to do, that is the best thing to do because XYZ. Now the reason that I prescribed the low intensity steady state cardio initially, at least for the ones that don't have a good conditioning base, is one, it's the lowest hanging fruit. Most combat athletes haven't done or don't do or need to do. And the reason for this is there's a trend where in combat sports it's always just about killing yourself in the gym, killing yourself doing your conditioning, everything has to be hard.

So if I'm going to give someone who's coming into the program the complete opposite, we're going to see gains very easily. Two, we get to move the needle with the lowest effort possible. And part of my philosophy within training is you just want to move, inch the needle bit by bit as you progress. You don't want to go jumping so far ahead that you don't have anywhere, any room to move, because you've just desensitized your body to these very hard high intensity or high volume stimulus when you could have just taken the easy road to get there.

And then when you got to that point, continue to progress by adding those things at the end. So that's the idea around prescribing the low intensity stuff.

Now that doesn't mean that's all you do. For some of the less, I guess, quote unquote fit fighters, yeah, it's just an easy thing to do, and you're getting your, I guess your power, electric work done in the gym through jumps, etc. Now within a polarized model, which I really like, you do your low intensity conditioning. And remember, low intensity conditioning doesn't just mean steady state cardio.

Steady state cardio is just one method that people often use to elicit certain adaptations. Like what most people talk about is the eccentric hypertrophy of the left ventricle. And very short explanation, essentially the heart chamber expands, you can pull more blood in there, then you can pump more blood per heartbeat. So that's your oxygen delivery.

Then you have oxygen utilization within the muscles, which is a whole another science in itself. I mean, some of the stuff I don't even understand, hence why we've got Andrew Usher coming on, and John Bab on Thursday, who will run through a lot of that. But essentially it's your muscle's ability to use that oxygen, create energy, and then you can continue to create forceful contractions, in simple terms.

But there are other forms of low intensity conditioning that aren't as low but are still considered low. So if you check out, if you search HIIT for MMA on Google, Dr. Chris Kirk, he wrote a whole article detailing high intensity interval training, and he dives into a lot of the different, I guess you could say criteria, and a lot of the different stages than high intensity interval training. And obviously you can do long aerobic intervals within that, and that would still be considered low intensity.

Enough where you can do that to still gain some of those same adaptations, some of those same heart and central adaptations. So it doesn't always have to be that. You can also go down to fartlek groups, and this is something that's probably really forgotten about. It's mainly used in endurance sports, but it's not used as much in team sports, combat sports, where it probably could be very beneficial.

Essentially it's self-paced activity. So for example, that's just how you're running, because it's an easy example. You're running at an easy pace, and then maybe you see two lamp posts. Okay, you're going to increase your speed between those two lamp posts. Then after that lamp post you slow down again, and then there's another, I don't know, lamp post further down. Okay, now you're going to sprint between this one and the next one, and then you're going to slow down again.

And it's just about... fartlek is actually called, I think it translates something about play. And it's used well within Kenyan runners who use it as almost like a play session where it's a fartlek session and they just run. Someone at the front dictates the pace, then he drops off to the back. The next person will dictate the pace.

So you can do the same for yourself, and these are things. So for example, a 30-minute conditioning aerobic session, you might be doing just your low intensity stuff. And every now and then you might do a little sprint, you might do a medium speed run, et cetera, et cetera, within that. And you just kind of play around with the different paces and allows you to kind of simulate, I'm going to say simulate a fight for lack of a better term. But the heart rate comes up, down, up, down, throughout that session, which means you're getting into play with all the different energy systems.

Now within that model as well, the polarized model, ideally you're doing some form of sprint interval training. It will be called under high intensity interval training, or under an energy systems model you would call an alactic power session. So both of those things are really the same thing. They're just two different models call them two different things.

And you think you're going to do anywhere from 6 seconds, even technically up to 10 seconds of maximum intensity work, and you're going to have full recovery between each effort. And this is just to improve power production. And if you go back and listen to Seth Lauby on the podcast, he talks about doing that on the heavy bag for boxers is probably the best thing you can do. So 6 to 10 second efforts and then full recovery.

And if you don't do it within your combat water, you could do it on a bike. Bike sprints as well, bike sprints is another way you can do that. Ideally I don't recommend running sprinting. I think the risk of injury is too high. But you can do swimming, rowing, whatever it is.

So you'll do that on a day, and you do your lower intensity stuff on a day, and that's your polarized approach. And the reason I say to do that is because you're going to get most of your middle intensity between that within your combat sport training. It's not to say middle intensity is bad, because if you're not doing combat training then yeah, you might do some stuff that's going to sit you in the middle of that conditioning spectrum.

But because, say, you're training four or five times a week and maybe you're doing a little bit of positional sparring and you're doing drilling and you're doing maybe a little bit of actual sparring within that, you're getting a lot of that middle intensity done. But what you're probably not getting is a lot of the low end and a lot of the very high end. And that's why you kind of sandwich it in between when you're doing your conditioning outside. Again, touching on what you're not getting within training, but also improving. These are going to improve what happens in the middle.

So that's kind of the idea around that. And then obviously as you get closer to a fight or as you progress through training, you will increase the intensity of the lower side and you'll reduce the rest of the upper side and potentially increase the length of those high intensity or maximal efforts. So for example, you do alactic capacity or repeat sprint training. Again, pretty much the same thing, just two different names for them. You might do 10 to 15 seconds of work, and then you might do it on the minute.

You can even go right down into, I guess, what you could call it, still repeat sprint training, 20, 30, 40 second efforts. And you can go even lower with the rest, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off. That's another example. Remember, it's not so much the time that has been done, it's the intensity that's being done. Because you can do a quote unquote aerobic work with say 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off, and you're doing it at 70, 75% effort. Or you can make that into a full hard session, you're doing those efforts at 100%.

So intensity is going to dictate what happens there. So keep that in mind as well with the conditioning. Now the other thing is the idea of aerobic conditioning improving your recoverability between rounds, between efforts.

So it's interesting, a lot of the research around recovery between efforts and repeat sprint ability, and I've done a whole video on this that came out on Friday. You can go back and listen and watch that on repeat power ability and high volume power training and repeat high intensity efforts. And I think it's interesting, a lot of the research from rugby and rugby league translates so well to combat in my opinion, just because the sports are so similar in terms of the energy system demands and what happens there.

So if we go on the idea of repeated high efforts, that's literally combat sports to a tee. Your whole goal is to be able to repeat maximal efforts repeatedly throughout an entire fight, an entire round. And the person that cannot do that will start to, for lack of a better term, will start to gas out. And then their shots, their strikes, their whatever it is, will not have as much power behind them as they did at the beginning of the fight. And if you're able to maintain yours, ideally you'll be faster, stronger, et cetera, throughout that fight.

So the whole game is to be able to repeat that. And I go into some stats within some of the combat sports too within that video. But essentially a lot of the research started within repeat sprint ability, obviously with team sports like soccer. Being able to repeat sprints is important because those are the important actions within a game. If you're having to sprint past to score a goal and you cannot get there, then that's a problem.

And the idea behind repeat sprint ability is obviously you need to be fast initially. Because repeating something that's slow doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how well you can recover between efforts if you're slow. And one of the good example sayings is, I'm going to paraphrase here because I'm going to butcher it, but essentially if you can't dunk a basketball, it doesn't matter how many times you don't dunk it.

And the same thing in combat sports, you need the power behind it. If you can't throw, as a real crude example, if you can't throw the knockout punch, it doesn't matter how well you can maintain that power. So first you have to have the high power output, speed first, and then you're going to have to repeat that over and over. And you will diminish as you repeat, which is fine. It's part of the thing. But having a well-developed aerobic energy system can help you recover faster between those efforts.

Now the problem becomes when we start adding in things that aren't sprinting, because most of the research is around in sprinting. When we look at the research that involves tackling within rugby, so a lot of the research there covers running and tackling, obviously in the combat sports you're moving around, you're throwing punches. There's still part of a wrestle component in striking sports when you've got the tie, and then obviously within MMA you've got the grappling situations. Then within grappling it's all grappling.

And you'll find that the repeat sprint ability is not related, or isn't related very well, to repeat high-intensity effort. So just adding that wrestling component or that tackling component changes the game completely. And you need to be able to repeat these efforts. And not having the aerobic... just let me backtrack on there. Aerobic ability also isn't very well related to repeated high intensity effort. So both aerobic and repeated sprint ability.

So yes, you can have a genuinely well-developed aerobic energy system. So you might have a lower resting heart rate, and then you might recover faster in terms you might operate, I guess, more aerobically at higher heart rates. Essentially you're, lacking a better term, your anaerobic threshold is higher. So when I'm operating at 160, 170 beats per minute, I'm not redlining where someone else might be, and that's an advantage to me.

However, when I'm starting to throw a flurry of strikes, when I'm taking shots and scrambling, I'm on a redline regardless. It doesn't matter how fit you are. In those situations you're going to redline. And you want to be able to bring that heart rate back down quickly, because that's going to be your recovery.

Now unfortunately, being more aerobically fit in that situation doesn't seem to help as much as doing training to specifically try and get that adaptation. And we're going to talk about this on Thursday with Andrew Usher as well. He does this over and over. His sprint protocols on the bike are basically high volume power training, but with using a bike and cycling. High volume power training is one way you can do this, and I see it as probably one of the most...

Beneficial ways of doing it for Combat Sports, for strikers, for MMA, even for grapplers. It doesn't have to always be done on a bike though. You can do this within your strength training, for example using jump squats, and you will do anywhere from 80 to 300 reps in a session, which is pretty nuts. I did a cycle of this last, I think it was last year, and that was brutal and it will wipe you out.

And that is how you can develop maximal power and the ability to repeat it simultaneously with one exercise. And honestly, I don't see it being used within Combat Sports. It comes mainly from the team sport area, and it's probably something that if you were able to implement and do it well, could change your conditioning for the better. So that's just something to think about there as well.

In terms of low versus high intensity, you need both. It's just a matter of fitting it within your schedule and how you plan it. Now when you look at guys like John Babab and Andrew Shah, who we have on the podcast on Thursday, they're fully on the super maximal Sprint side. So this high volume power training, that's pretty much all they do outside of boxing or Combat Sports, even for the MMA guys and jiu jitsu.

But it's mainly because a lot of their guys, I believe that a lot of them are close to full-time training, so they're getting a lot of their low intensity work from long training hours in the sport. Now if that's you, then you'll probably benefit from doing something like this and sticking to the very high intensities instead of spending more time doing low intensity stuff.

Now as well, Andrew also talks about that a lot of fighters don't get the opportunity to really push within the sport's training itself. So that's why you use non-sport-specific modalities of training for a lot of these Sprints. You can do some of the, I guess, the alactic power or Sprint interval training with full recovery as the sport itself, but once you start getting to shorter rest times and more fatigue, you probably want to do it with exercises where you have less degree of freedom to mess it up.

So for example, within the gym you would use jumps versus Olympic lifts, because if you're doing 15 reps of Olympic lifts, yeah, something's probably not going to go well versus jumps. It's easy, just down and up, simple, no skill component. Same thing when we're talking within Combat Sports. If you're trying to do multiple rounds of 15 seconds hard with, I don't know, hitting the bag, pads or whatever, with only 15 seconds rest or 20 seconds rest, something's probably going to give technically, which you may not want.

Again, may not, depending on the situation. You may want to do that on some kind of off-specific conditioning modality like the bike, row, whatever that is. So just bear that in mind as well. Ideally you want to keep things as close to the sport as possible, because the adaptations occur in the working muscles and typically within, I guess, the way that you're performing the exercises or movement.

So a very crude example, obviously most of you have probably gone through something like this, maybe you spend a lot of time running, but then you go to do some laps in the pool and none of that running has helped you. And that's just one very crude example of why, for example, doing all your conditioning, doing some kind of boxing hitting the pads, then trying to get on the mats to wrestle, yeah, it's not going to translate very well.

So those are just some things to think about too. But if you're doing a lot of your Combat Sport and then you are doing bike Sprints, for example, yeah, that's going to be cool because such a short period of your training time, you're just looking for that pure physiological adaptation. Plus a lot of the bike Sprints and the jump squats and stuff you're doing within this conditioning is, I guess, able strength training. Strength training is not just lifting heavy weights or lifting in the gym.

Often some of the things that you're doing within conditioning also count as strength training. Even wrestling itself still counts as some form of strength training, depending on what you're doing. So just bear that in mind as well.

Now I think I covered pretty much everything regarding strength and conditioning philosophy, I guess, around Combat Sports and kind of how Sweet Science of Fighting has developed that philosophy and what it all means when I'm talking about some of these things. I try not to speak too much in absolutes, but sometimes you kind of have to. If I'm talking to a certain audience, like this is kind of what they need to do, but there's always exceptions.

And if you're part of the Underground Community, you can always message me, message in there and get a clear idea too. Some of the guys in there maybe have short, I guess, buildups to some of their fights, so they take a different approach to a lot of the stuff that's within the programs because they need to dial in the intensity quickly. So there's a few things there.

Outside of that, I think that's everything. If there's something that I missed or something you want more clarification on, please post it in the comments. I can always make another video. I can reply there, yeah, it's relatively easy. Or if you want a more, I guess, quicker answer as well, you can join the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground. It's down in the description.

Again, you get access to everything, all the programs, online courses, the coaches, the private Discord Community. You can be on the podcast live in the audience here. We can do live Q&A at the end, and it's only going to get bigger and better. I'm still trying to expand, get more content up, get more content in there, more YouTube content. Yeah, I mean we're still growing.

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