Advanced Strength & Conditioning For Strikers w/ Anthony Turner (SSOF Ep 143)

James de Lacey2:31

It would be interesting to kind of just maybe go through some of the, I don't know if you can remember back that far, but even just some of the general findings. And I guess your general philosophy. I think it'd be easy to go general philosophy around strength and conditioning. It doesn't just have to be for fighters because I mean it kind of transcends sports. Kind of your general philosophy around strength and we can just dive deeper as we go through that.

Anthony Turner3:05

Yeah, absolutely. I guess my philosophy, obviously I've worked in lots of different teams and lots of different clubs and what have you. And when I go in now, I think, and sometimes people aren't into it right, they don't see it as a particularly, they might not believe it as a valuable part of training.

But actually my philosophy is all about the S&C being something that supports your longevity within the sport. It supports your robustness and your resilience to injury, which keeps you in the fighting sense, or it keeps you on the mats or it keeps you on the field. And I think that's the main, that to me is the selling point of S&C, which can be a bit of a surprise for some people.

But then you've also got to realize that the things that make you more robust and resilient and increase your longevity and life after sport are the same things that improve performance anyway. It's like two for one. But it's far more powerful for me to tell you that look, let's get you strong and you'll be training far more often. You'll always be available for selection. You turn up, you'll recover quicker.

When you look at some papers and various papers try to say, what's the key? Let's run all these different correlations between fitness and different performance metrics and winning a sport. And it's impossible really. In fact, probably the only things that are ever found to have any relationship between winning teams is the squad you have to choose from. So it comes back to availability.

There's some work, some research by Dr. Rich Belgrove and he done it in running for example. Do you do an S&C program? Yes. And you see more doing it and what, why do you do it? And the number one reason by quite some distance was injury prevention. So I think that my philosophy plays into the beliefs, but I believe that as well.

I think that the stronger you are, the more robust you are, especially around the joints, the more muscle symmetry you have and so on. But I think you get stronger anyway. So that would be part of it. But there's certainly going to be, if you're stronger and more powerful, I think you have more tools to support your technical and tactical advantages that you might have as well.

James de Lacey5:26

I love that. I've just run in here. Podcast co-host here. That's it. This is what people are tuning in for. This is it.

Perfect. Yeah, no, I really like that. And yeah, as you mentioned, the things you're doing to help reduce the risk of injury end up being performance enhancing anyway and you're more available, you can train more consistently. I mean, there's a whole host of things that happen from that.

So it would be interesting to dive down into specifically, we can dive down to Muay Thai just because of that paper you wrote and a lot of different things on, I guess you say, referencing the old paper about the contribution from the legs for punching, I guess, power quote unquote. You got stretch shortening cycle stuff you had in there and whatnot.

So it'd be interesting to kind of go. Actually, I might even go, there's actually a listener question here on the chat I'll throw to you, we can go from there. What do you think is the most underrated element or methods for increasing punching, elbow, and or kicking strike power if you think it's significantly trainable?

Anthony Turner6:30

Yeah, of course I think it's trainable. Look, certainly trainable. Nothing is more important than the technical side of it. I just say as well, I did Thai boxing as well for a long time and I trained out in Thailand and things like that. So I got good, this idea around the technical side of it.

Look, nothing's ever going to compare to being technically and tactically sound in terms of making the right decisions. But again, I guess if you imagine putting two similar fighters against each other, right? Imagine identical fighters, but you made one really strong. All right, identical except for one was super strong, and you had to say, right, who you going to put your money on to win the fight? The only thing you knew was one was way stronger than the other. Then you're going to go, all right, I'd probably back the stronger one.

And part of the reason for that is as you get stronger, you quite simply apply more force. All right? That's the long and short of it. And if you train to get strong, you do your squats or whatever it is you do, and then you train to move fast, so you do your power exercises, then you're training your capacity to produce force quickly.

Now that's what Thai boxing, that's what striking is about. Striking happens in less than 50 milliseconds, in some 100 milliseconds, 150 milliseconds. So it's not just about how much force you can produce, it's how quickly you can produce that force.

And so the part of the S&C programming will do is almost supercharge the nervous system. So it isn't necessarily making the muscles, increasing the cross-sectional area, because we don't really want that if you're going to climb another division anyway. We just want to supercharge. We want to amp up the nervous system so it delivers more force within a really short period of time.

And that's what any training will do, any power-based training. But you want to get strong and then you want to get powerful, and you train that capacity. I guess if you imagine then, for us to produce our maximum force in whatever exercise it might be, we ramp up the force and it might take 600 milliseconds to get to our peak, to get to the force output that our nervous system and the coordination of our muscular system can produce. In Thai boxing you got 200 milliseconds.

So the peak force is up there and you can only produce this much. So what training is about is increasing that amount that you can produce within 200 milliseconds and the way you do that is increase your maximum force and then you increase the rate at which you can develop that force. So strength training, power training is fundamental from that point of view.

James de Lacey9:22

If you're anything like me, you're short on time. Kids, family, work, training, and having to cook meals on top of that. It's just not going to happen. So, I'm happy to announce Trifecta Nutrition are sponsoring the podcast.

You get epic meals like these ones. Turkey taco bowl, Texas barbecue protein plate. These are a couple of my favorites. But, it means you don't have to prepare all your own meals in a mind and good nutrition. Relatively easy. I've tried other meal delivery companies.

Most of them are too high fat, not enough carbohydrates. Or if you're getting kits where you have to cook it yourself, the portions for two is actually for one, especially if you are like me and you're training often. So, if you want to take something off your plate and have meals like this delivered to your door, go down the description, there's a link there where you can order Trifecta meals. This is the performance line, which are higher protein and higher carbohydrate, and you can use code Lift Big 40. You'll get 40% off your first order.

I think the best paper that illustrates that is Newton and Kramer's one in 2001. I can't remember what it's called, but they have that exact graph and they're showing like strength trained, power trained, and then untrained and they show that exact thing, right? The power trained has that really nice sharp uptick in that rate of force development. Strength trained, yeah, they have high maximum force at 500 milliseconds, but they take longer to get there. So that's just a really simple illustration for anyone who's maybe listening and wants to dive in there.

But I want to take that even further and get your take on specificity then, cuz you talked about okay we can improve general force or we can improve force capabilities through maybe whatever exercises we're doing. How much does maybe theoretical transfer to the exercises matter to you when you're looking at maybe exercise selection on what you're doing in the gym?

Anthony Turner11:17

Honestly, not much. Not much at all. The goal when you're in the gym is to be able to produce force and you're trying to work through the relevant muscles. You know, if you look at when you punch, you've got this sort of triple extension, right, this ground up where you produce the force ground up, you extend at the knee and at the hip and then you rotate through.

But that's just about every single sport has that movement, that weight transfer. Let's say when you strike and you go forward, or baseball, whatever it is, you step forward and you have that stiff landing and you transfer the force all the way up through the torso and then you release through.

So all these sports look the same. And that's what we're after. So as long as you're putting a lot of force through your lower body and then you're trying to move fast, then the rest of it is you then apply that when in your practice.

And actually there's probably an argument to say you shouldn't be too specific because if there's too much specificity, maybe there's too much cross talk where it's like, oh, is this how I actually move now? But they're so, where they're so independent, you're just saying, I'm just getting strong and when I go to train in the ring, that's when I'm going to improve my transfer from one to the other.

So I would say I wouldn't chase it. Equally, training should be about this lifelong journey that you take. Remember, this isn't just about so you can punch someone hard. If I go back to my philosophy or kick someone hard, if I go back to my philosophy, it's so you can carry on doing this for as long as you want.

And you want life after the sport as well. So, you're going to be doing this. So, you're going to be squatting forever. Until the day that you drop, you're going to be lifting until the day that you drop. So, it's not like I can go, ah, it's a, let's say I said it's a back squat as an example. Does that mean you're only ever going to back squat now for the rest of your life until the day you drop because you want a really strong kick? Of course not.

So, you work your way through because they all do the same thing in an ever so slightly different way. Some load back a little bit more, some loads the knees a little bit more, and some loads the hips a bit more. So, keep rotating through it and then all of that detail can be saved for some of the academic stuff that we do in the lab, which is just academic knowledge half the time.

So just work through it. And I have my own little system that I work through as well. And I have an order that I travel around the squats. And do you know once you complete the order, do you know what you do? You start again. And then when do you stop? The day you drop, because it's a lifelong journey, right? And it just so happens it will make you punch harder and kick harder as well and what have you.

So I don't see that there needs to be any specificity whatsoever. In fact, maybe it's not the time. Another reason why we don't need to be over specific is because you go closer to overtraining. Lots of people that are into martial arts train a lot.

And so sometimes if we want to keep training, want to train a lot, we have to do different things, right? And so even if you're trying to do conditioning for example, not that I mean if you're doing conditioning in Muay Thai, but I don't think there is a better form of conditioning than the actual doing combat sports basically, but I would say do your conditioning on a bike or something like that for example. So because it's different muscles that you're using but getting the same stimulus.

James de Lacey14:40

Are you able to share that little squat cycle progression that you got going on there with the different exercises that you run through?

Anthony Turner14:40

I can. Let me try to do the top of my head, but I'll give you a reference to it. So, I do write about the stuff anyway. So, I like to go through this progression. So, if you're not trained before and what I would say is people can make mistakes when they're training. People talk about can you get injured, this, that, the other, absolutely you can but that's because you go too fast.

So, if you start training with me, I'm thinking we're going to make you great, but we're going to make you great progressively and gradually. Now, this is a journey. Let's not come work in the gym to think that in 3 months time we're going to be double body weight back squatting, right? That's the wrong attitude and that's the attitude you're going to get injured with.

Equally, think how strong your legs are relative to your lower back, your core, and all those. So, when people max out on the legs, but the lower back's like, I ain't got this. I can't lift this much weight cuz we've just gone head first. So the progression that you do has to give a chance for everything to catch up. So when you decide to lift heavy with your legs, your trunk's going, yeah, cool. Let's do this. Cuz you've trained me to the point where I can keep up with your legs.

But most injuries will happen because we'll just focus on the legs and forget everything else. The trunk's got to move with it. So if you leave that behind, you're going to feel something at some point. So it's got to be progressive. Anyway, I digress.

I would go from a goblet squat, because it's going to help you to sit back as well. So, you can help, encourage you to have an upright torso, be proud when you squat from that position there. Then we can start to look at split squats. And with the split squats, when you're going down, you're driving through your heel again. You're staying upright. You're being proud. It's really driving the weight through to your hips.

Then you've got box squats. You're sitting back to a box. Again, you see everything initially for me is about teaching you to sit back and getting your weight back and using your hips more and staying more upright, because in today's society, people fall forwards. Everything's anteriorly dominant. Everything that you can see in the mirror is the stuff that gets most of the stimulus for the most part. This part's about moving back.

And then from there you can go on to trap bar deadlift. You go on to deadlift and you can go back around the cycle where you had goblet squats. We can now go to front squats and so on really. So we just have this.

So for me what's important is that you have the mobility to do it. You have the capacity to sit back and almost shift your center of mass from everything being in front of you to in the center of you so you can sit back and not feel like you're going to fall forwards. And then once we've done that, now we can load you right now.

Get your deadlift out and start going for it. So I'd have that sort of circle going and we're on that journey forever now. And you might spend less time on certain parts of it, or you might not bother to go squats ever again because only hold 40 kilos or whatever it goes up to. So you're like, forget that now. Let's go to front squats and so on.

James de Lacey18:08

How long are you typically spending on each exercise then of maybe someone's further more advanced or someone who's just a beginner?

Anthony Turner18:08

It's very much so about how much they can—we do the goblet squat. So I like doing blocks of five weeks, sometimes six weeks. It just depends. That's a personal preference. I'm not suggesting that's the best way. But I might do five and then just keep changing every five.

But at the same time I might extend to six or even seven if the person's not getting it. But for the most part, people can do those movements. So I'll probably just stick on a five-week cycle or even a six-week cycle and just keep changing. It's enough to get good at it, but not so long as to get bored as it move on.

But I don't think it matters that again. That's the devil's in the detail there. As long as the person feels—if the numbers are going up, then you're doing a good job, as long as the form is following it and everything else is. But that can be sometimes where people get caught out: the numbers are going up but not evenly. Again, the lower body's doing—getting a great job, but the upper body's not quite keeping up in there, and so we just need to stay on top of it really.

James de Lacey19:23

I like that. So I guess there's a simple rubric just for even for anyone listening who's maybe newer to strength training or just trying to figure out a way that they can continually progress but have some variations as you mentioned you do the same thing all the time over and over. You can run into overuse issues is one of them.

Anthony Turner19:38

Exactly. Exactly that. Yeah, I mean even just changing like grip widths—for example doing pull-ups, doing chin-up variations, pull-up variations, rings, anything other than just doing the same grip, same stuff all the time.

I agree. I mean look, there's a decent argument for every session you go to. Just check, become more well-rounded. Everything gets a good workout. But for the most part, as long as everything's in balance, as long as you do a bit of squats, you look after your hamstrings, there's a bit of rotation in there, and you do some upper body front and back, I don't think you can go too wrong. Really, I really don't. And again, I've put a link through to some stuff I've done in and around that area that explains that philosophy as well.

James de Lacey20:22

Perfect.

Anthony Turner20:22

And even most people can't move. I would say that when you start working with people, they're not always the greatest movers. They don't always have the greatest mobility. So the first thing you've got to do really is start to address that so that they don't start to take any shortcuts.

Again, if we go in with an approach of right, I'm starting today, not because I think I'm going to be good in three months time, but because I'm going to do this forever more, now with that mindset, you're like, all right, let's take my time. In two years I'm still going to be doing this. In three years, in 10 years. But people start, they go 100 miles an hour, they get injured, they stop, they take some time out, then they come back into it, and they get injured and they come back.

There's a terrible cycle that they get caught into it because they want a quick fix. And I don't know there's anything that turns out well when you take a quick fix approach or you try to cut corners. They're trying to build a house without laying a foundation. At some point that thing will come down, and that foundation is very much about the mobility, muscle symmetry, the capacity to move well and everything moving together in harmony. That's it.

James de Lacey21:29

And I mean you've published a lot of papers I guess as a supervisor and as first author as well. I was just looking through some of the Google Scholar stuff as well now because man, you've got—for anyone who's listening and wants to see Anthony's papers, you can just search Anthony Turner on Google Scholar and you'll get a ton of them.

But one of the I guess one of the more interesting ones as well, at least for me, is around inter-limb asymmetries. That seems actually one of your more popular ones as well. I want to kind of go into that area because there's kind of two schools of thought around asymmetries. Whereas one is say okay, asymmetries are part of sport. Everyone has these asymmetries. I'm not going to worry about them too much if they're not causing any pain or any I guess real dysfunction.

It's the school of thought of hey, we have maybe some arbitrary thresholds between limbs, maybe 10% difference, and we want to try and keep them as close as possible. And we just need to kind of hear your take on where you sit on the idea of correcting or not correcting inter-limb asymmetries. When should you or shouldn't you, and just general thoughts around that?

Anthony Turner22:16

Yeah, no problem. Yeah, there's—look, we've done loads on this. And me and my colleague Chris Bishop, who was my PhD student before as well, who's really led the show on this. You're right.

So everyone will have asymmetries. And okay, so here's maybe a take on it. And so people go, look, what's the difference? Is it 10%, 20% and so on? I could put an argument to you that there's someone with a 3% or 4% or 5% difference who's far more likely to get injured than someone with a 20%, 30% difference, right? Because it can be very complicated.

But if I try to give that in the sense is that it depends on what you're doing. Your body is built for what you do on average, right? So for as long as you're always doing what you've always done, you're going to be fine, right? Because your body has adapted to that. It's when you try to do something that you've not done in a while and then you're asking your body to keep up with it, and it will do for the first while, but soon it might go.

So for me one of the biggest things is, all right, you might have a—someone might have a 20% difference, but are they strong? How strong are they to be able to tolerate the loads and what they're trying to put the body through? Someone might have a 3% difference but they're weak as anything.

So as an example, let's say you've got a 20% difference between the limbs. Now, right, let's get rid of the asymmetry. The asymmetry is the problem. I could get the strong limb and drain it. So it gets weaker and weaker. And now there's a 0% asymmetry. So now do you think you're more likely or less likely to get injured, right? You're way more likely now because you're weak.

So the problem isn't really necessarily the asymmetry because it's just a ratio between the numbers. Actually, it's how strong are you. So the weaker limb might be more likely to be injured because it's weak relative to the other. But it actually might be strong enough, absolutely strong enough to do the task that you've asked it to do.

Now that said, having muscle symmetry makes sense, right? It makes sense to have it. So providing you do enough variety in the gym. So the gym is where we clean up everything, all right? It's such a great place for that because you can focus on different elements.

So don't just squat, do single leg squats, do single leg jumps, do single leg hurdle jumps. And the thing is is that when new people go to the gym and everything they touch, they just get better. They have this awesome learning curve. Well, that's your weaker leg relative to your stronger leg. So your stronger leg is getting better, but not at the same rate that your weaker leg is getting better at. So it will catch up a bit quicker. There'll always be an imbalance, but it's strong enough to handle whatever you throw at it anyway.

So I think that's a long answer for me. Just be strong enough to do what you want it to do. The asymmetry isn't necessarily the problem because again, we can make you weak and with zero. It's being weak that's the problem. So get the weak leg strong enough to do whatever you want it to do, or the arm or whatever side it is.

The other way of thinking of it is—because that's between limb, right? That's a between limb—within limb asymmetry might be the quads and the hamstrings. That might be a different argument. If you go from sprints, you might have super strong quads, and you see this all the time. People don't train hamstrings, which is that's an invitation, right? And that's on them. That's on them. They go, well I do deadlift. That's a hamstring. It's not a hamstring exercise. It barely, it does work it in as much, but if you want to train hamstrings, train the hamstrings.

So when you got a within limb asymmetry like that now, that you should start to look at addressing again because it's saying one side is weak and it probably can't tolerate.

To that person that goes out for a sprint all of a sudden, which might be atypical now, they could be in a bit of trouble because the quad will fly the leg forward and extend the leg, and the hamstring's job will be to try to arrest that and stop it. Because it can't hold on to it.

Same might be in the upper body. If you think about everything you do, especially when you're taking a guard, you're rounded, everything's getting shorter here, loads more work here, much stronger here. The muscles on the back at some point are just like, "Listen, we need to start working."

But you go to the gym, right, and everything should be a one-for-one ratio. If you do the front, you got to do the back. If you do the quads, you got to do the hamstrings. So most of the programs I put together would look like that. If there's a quad exercise in my plan, there's a hamstring exercise. If there's a chest exercise, there's a back exercise, and so on.

The problem is we only train what we see in the mirror, and that's the weakness. So I'd put a lot of things down to a weakness issue. Be strong enough, which is another way of saying being robust enough to handle it. And if you go into something weak, you've got less in the tank. So there's even a conditioning and a fitness element attached to that as well, because everything taxes you a lot more than it should.

James de Lacey28:06

How much does maybe what you measure play into that? Because we can say, okay, intimb asymmetry, maybe one leg is stronger than the other, maybe by peak force or whatever, but obviously there could be underlying things: eccentric rate of force development, eccentric strength, even just general concentric rate of force development as well, maybe asymmetries. Do any of those change that at all, or is it just, as you mentioned, you're kind of just adapted to whatever you're doing anyway, so it's not going to matter?

Anthony Turner28:24

I think, again, probably the devil's in the detail there. I'm sure that stuff does change, and it would be hard to suggest exactly how it does change. But again, if you have a well-rounded enough program, you're going to improve the concentric or propulsive phase, the braking phase of different jumps. It's going to change how your center of mass drops during the different movements. But all of these things might be affected by how tired you are as well, and how you reorientate yourself to get the same output.

So I don't think that there'd be necessarily, "Your asymmetry is in this, is in the eccentric part, but not in the concentric part." Weakness is weakness, and how it decides to show itself will just depend on the strategy that you take at the time, which might be based on several other factors. But I don't know that you could pin it down to one thing. But again, a well-rounded training program: train to move, lift some heavy weight, move fast sometimes, do some unilateral work. Train what you—do some concentric or eccentric work, some snap downs, plyo.

It just needs to be a holistic program. You want to train athleticism. That's the goal, is athleticism. And if you train for that, you'll take care of most parts.

James de Lacey29:46

For sure. I like the holistic approach to that. I actually have a question in the chat for you as well. What types of differences do you suggest? For example, Thai boxing versus boxing. What you do with one that you don't do with the other? I frequently see combat sports done one-size-fits-all. When and how should you adjust to the specific discipline?

Anthony Turner30:00

You mean, so, in the gym, what would you do for Thai boxing that you wouldn't do for boxing?

James de Lacey30:00

Yeah, we can go gym or we can go conditioning, both of them even.

Anthony Turner30:19

Okay, so here's my whole thing, all right? And I'll go even more abstract than that, and then we'll come back to these two, right? So, if I gave you a training program that I wrote for a judo athlete, a footballer, a rugby player, a baseball player, I'm not convinced you could tell me who's is who. Because they all require the same qualities, which is to produce force and produce force quickly, normally from the ground up.

All right? Now there might be some elements of some of the movements where there's more of it, right? So there might be great conditioning in some of the sports compared to the others. There might be not as much in baseball or something like that. So everyone probably does the same thing. It's the piece of the pie, the size of the slice that often differs between them.

So if I took boxing and Thai boxing now, which are very similar, then there's almost going to be your answer. I don't think that there is that much difference between the two, because you might say, "Well, one kicks and the other one doesn't." So all right, so you need to get strong legs for Thai boxing. But you don't kick in boxing, but you still punch. And where's the force from the punch come from? Well, that still comes from the legs.

So you still got to do your ground-up work to get strong, to produce that force to ultimately deliver the punch. The more that you step into it, the more you can load through the legs and the ground up, the better that punch is going to be. Well, the leg—obviously we train the legs to do that for the punch. It's the same exercise as we do for the kicks. So I don't know that there's that much difference between the two.

Then if we come up to conditioning, again, I would do similar. So for the conditioning, I would do it in this way: I would make it dissimilar to the event because I want you to be able to train regular. I want you to be able to train often. So I'd put both of them on a bike, both on a rower, both on battle ropes, for example, because I want to chase down a stimulus. It's the stimulus I want that will generate an adaptation that you will transfer when you do your own training.

So when it comes to conditioning, for example, we'll do some 30-second sprints, and then we might have 30 seconds off or 4 minutes off. It depends what enzymes we're trying to chase down and what energy systems we want. We might do the same on the rower or the skier and things like that. I'll get you to fix your legs because I just want to focus in on the arms. I'll get you to fix your legs and we just do the battle ropes. Really, I think it's all the same.

I think that, again, I probably said it a couple of times now—I don't know why I hardly ever use this phrase—but the devil is in the detail here. It's actually very simple. And I think it's just that holistic program. And if you can do the conditioning, then I would do some of the sprint interval-based training and high-intensity interval training, the different energy systems that you want to focus in on.

You're targeting certain things. You're either trying to target how quickly you break down glucose to get into the cell to be explosive. The way that the body does that—the body has no idea whether you're boxing, whether you're playing rugby or football. It doesn't know, it doesn't care. It just says, "Train me and I'll break this thing down quick." So we'll do some 30 seconds on and we'll take 4 minutes off.

And then another time it says, "Look, we get flooded with lactate"—and more specifically, the hydrogen ions that come with it. And as soon as that comes, we start to cramp up and we can't do anything. I say, "All right, fine. So what's the stimulus then to help us break down or to use that, convert that lactate, so that it doesn't build up and the hydrogen ions come?"

All right, so let's do 30 seconds on with 30 seconds rest. Let's build it up and let's train different enzymes to step in and take over from there. So again, it's the stimulus—that's what I want. I don't care how you achieve it. Now I could just get you to do different boxing bits or different Thai boxing bits, but then it starts to interfere with what you're doing in the ring with a coach when you want to start working on your craft.

So let's go to the gym, let's get on there. Only take you 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and I could give you a stimulus you couldn't even imagine. And you'll be ready to go again because it's a different—you're taxing different muscles, but you're getting the stimulus that you want.

James de Lacey34:50

I love that. And Joshua asked that question. He says he's asking if you're one of the authors/editors of Advanced Strength and Conditioning, which you are. So he says, "That's absolutely one of my favorite books. He's referred to it a lot working on his master's, and if so, great work." So there's your kudos on the podcast. You have a fan.

Anthony Turner35:07

I appreciate that. Thanks ever so much. It's always nice when you get that feedback, and I don't get tired of it. Because, look, I've not got—it's dark outside, but I'm not going to pan out and show you a Porsche I've got parked on the drive because I've written that.

But I wish that was the case and it won't ever be the case. But why do I do it? Because actually, there's nothing more rewarding than someone saying, "I read your work and I really enjoy it," and actually the opportunities from that. So, I'm very grateful to hear that. So, thank you very much.

James de Lacey35:35

Well, if you want to get the Porsche, you got to start writing books on functional pattern stuff and hyper... the real key to athletic success.

Anthony Turner35:35

This is what most people say to me, and the problem is I keep saying actually it's not that hard. It's just do the basics well and be holistic. But that doesn't sell. That doesn't really make me a lot of money unfortunately. It means that the uni are happy to keep me employed with them because I remain objective and don't come up with pseudoscience.

James de Lacey36:08

Yeah, I do need to do that at some point. Sell yourself out. Get the Porsche.

Anthony Turner36:08

Sell my soul. I need to sell my soul and say the answer to that question should have been absolutely. They're totally different. There's a system that I've written that you need to do, this system for this, and it's one thing.

James de Lacey36:28

Yeah. It's not that at all unfortunately. We talked about conditioning. We've talked a lot on this podcast on sprint interval training. Some of the new research around that is really interesting. I'll be interested to hear your take on, I guess newish, ramming down the throats of zone 2 training. I guess coming more from the longevity health, I guess, podcasts and health influences there. It's obviously made its way more into sport now where it's kind of gone that way too.

It's interesting to hear, obviously you talked about training for the adaptation or training for the stimulus that you want. Does zone 2 fit into maybe your model there of training for a Muay Thai athlete or boxer or anything like that?

Anthony Turner37:01

So zone 2, long steady state type work. I think it's another option and I think that some people love running and love going out and the well-being side of it and what have you. I think it's fantastic. I think, maybe do I think you have to do it? I'm not convinced. But why not? I think you can chase down those adaptations that you're after in other ways.

So even if you come back to the sprint interval and high intensity interval training, and I've written a chapter on that with Professor David Bishop, brilliant. We can cheat the system a little bit here, because you might do that... I mean part of it is for lactate, to bring that into the mitochondria. You want to try and convert that into a fuel source. Part of it is to get more mitochondria as well, is why you might do that. But the sprint interval, high intensity interval training I think can do that.

So, you know, maybe the more controversial thing that I think of is, you know, do we need, do they need to run so much? I'm not convinced that the answer to that question is yes. I think that everyone does it and everyone has always done it. There's a maintaining weight thing attached to it as well. But do I think that if someone stopped doing it and there was no issue regarding weight and what have you, and they did other methods, do I think there'd be a disadvantage? No, not really.

But it's a tough sell that, right? Something so traditional and historic around it. I don't think it's necessarily doing any harm. But if you come back to the beginning when we talked about your rate of force development, we're talking about how much force, your maximum force, how much of that you can access in a short period of time is your rate of force development.

The way to flatten that out, to make it worse, would be to do more long distance running because you have competing demands. Do you want to produce a lot of force and quickly, or do you want to produce less force but over a prolonged period of time is what you're asking yourself.

You know, imagine if you're watching football or something like that, it's like getting your striker who needs to be fast and powerful converting him into a center midfield so they can just cover more distance but they're not as fast, they're not as powerful. So there's a trade-off there. But I don't know that from a health perspective, a well-being perspective, of course I think it's super valuable. From a performance perspective, in a combat sport, in martial arts, is it that necessary beyond the health, well-being, and maybe weight? Not so much.

James de Lacey39:59

I tend to agree with you there as well. And we actually have another, chat's on fire today. You're obviously a popular guest, Anthony. So Jonathan Drummond says he's enjoying the convo and he's asking how would you focus on building explosiveness or acceleration? So force equals mass times acceleration through range of motion. What place do you see for plyometrics going back to the work of Verkhoshansky for example, or use of bands and chains, etc.?

Okay. So how do you work on acceleration? Right. So yeah, basically how do you build explosiveness or acceleration through range of motion?

Anthony Turner40:16

Through range of motion...

James de Lacey40:16

I'm not sure. Yeah, maybe clarify that one, Jonathan. I'm assuming just like, for example, like a full range back squat or something.

Anthony Turner40:36

Yeah. Okay. I mean, you got to train through the range of motion to get good at it. Otherwise, if you only ever train to quarter squats, then you're strong in that range, but you might not be so strong as you move lower down. So, you've got to train in the range that you want to be strong in would probably be my answer for that.

In terms of improving acceleration, I think we said force is mass times acceleration, so acceleration therefore is force divided by mass, right? So how do you increase acceleration? Well, you've got two options: you increase force or you reduce mass. So get strong would be the answer to that one. And if you're carrying any excess weight, then you can drop the mass there.

If you come outside of sport, in Muay Thai, boxing, and whatever, it's just your body weight. So you just get leaner, because then there's less of you to move. Therefore, your acceleration is going to go up really. But if you look in other sports, then obviously... that's why people spend all that money on bikes. The way of getting the mass down is to ride a lighter bike, right? So acceleration can go up. Not because you're pedaling faster, because you got a lighter bike.

James de Lacey41:57

Although, ironically, but then they've got guts hanging out of their Lycra.

Anthony Turner41:57

Exactly. So 10 grand on that, but then their gut's hanging out the other side and they stop for a coffee and a fry after, you know? You get the point. In the running, now people wear lighter shoes. So that's one way to cheat the system, is to chase it down through mass. But the other one, of course, is to get strong.

But what I would say is that in terms of increasing acceleration, okay, you can get strong through the squats, but you still need to train the power exercises. You still need to train to ramp up the nervous system to fire quickly. So you want to do the power exercises. You want to do some body weight jumps and some loaded jumps really.

Even if you jumped your body weight and then you held a bar and you just jumped whilst holding a bar, and then you put a bit more weight and then jumped again, or did trap bar jumps and things like that just in different, with different loads, would be fantastic.

So that would be how you improve the acceleration. And if you want to through the range of motion, I guess my interpretation of the question at least is just train in the range of motion that you want to make the improvement in.

James de Lacey43:08

What's your take on the use of bands and chains for that?

Anthony Turner43:08

Yeah, great. Why not? Because obviously otherwise the only thing that ever gets trained is the sticking point, right? What determines the load is the sticking point. And you could almost argue that up to the sticking point and either side of the sticking point is easy. So the idea behind chains and bands is that everything's a sticking point now. So the opportunity to train through the full range of motion in that respect. Maybe that's where the question is going. So yeah, very good question, is very effective. I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think that my other take on it, so acknowledging I think they're excellent, is I don't want to make going to the gym too onerous. I don't want to put too many obstacles in the way. If I got to go to the gym and right now I got to put a band on, then I got a chain on on the other side, and then I've got to do this and I've got to do that... just go and lift the weights. And sometimes lift heavy and sometimes lift fast and it doesn't need to be complicated any more than that. I think you'll clear up most things.

There was a plyometric bit in that as well actually, there was just part of that same thing. What place do you see for plyometrics going back to the work of Verkhoshansky for example, or use of bands and chains? I see plyometrics as pivotal. Remember I said to you I don't think anyone does hamstrings. I don't think people do plyometrics, and I think they miss out on just some real magic that happens with plyometric training.

The capacity again to produce force quickly, to use the stretch shortening cycle and the elastic energy. That's free energy and that stuff stored in your tendons and you recoil when you let that thing go and it's unbelievable. So to not be training plyometrics would be a crime against your performance, I would say. But again, you got to build it up progressively, right?

And again, so how I work with my own philosophy and my own training is everything works in a different loop. And I think that there are certain things that train certain elements. I think it's best if it's trained in a certain order, a certain organization of that. Actually, I have a YouTube channel and on there's a progression of drills and plyometrics and things like that as well for people to look at.

James de Lacey45:30

But I've also, I'll try and plug some of my own stuff towards the end. I don't know if that's okay.

Anthony Turner45:30

Yeah, I always feel bad doing that.

James de Lacey45:30

No, no, you have to because I'm going to put in the description anyway for everyone to check out. So I appreciate that. Like I said, it's rest assured, it's not like it's going to put another car on. It's purely because so that someone could see it and one day go, "Oh, I like that. Oh, thank you." With the plyometric progression then, without having seen the video, how are you liking to progress? Are you progressing from a maybe more higher volume extensive plyometrics into more intensive, or you just doing straight the intensive plyometrics but lower voluming and making them more intense as they go through?

Anthony Turner46:04

I mean, the key initially is always less volume because you kind of got to get used to it and the volume can increase. And of course, that sort of trade-off as intensity goes up, you need a little bit less volume at that point. So I just like working starting from the ankle really. I mean, that's where the power is, but people don't use it.

People jump, do the drop jumps, and they do the plyometrics from the knees. The Achilles tendon, I mean, we feel the back of that Achilles tendon is massive. I mean, there's so much energy can be stored in there. And we need to teach you how to do that.

And if you can do that, it's not just power and propulsion that you get. It's economy of movement. It costs you less energy because it's free energy, right? So if you're stepping from a box or whatever, you're free falling in the air for whatever reason, then you get to turn what is that potential energy, right, or gravitational energy, you can turn that into elastic energy and then into mechanical energy.

So that's all come from that potential energy as opposed to you landing, dissipating that energy, and then using chemical energy to produce it, which is going to be your energy ATP, your glucose, and so on and so forth. No, that does make you tired, that does tax you.

So if you can just make slight adjustments where a small improvement in the percentage of energy that you produce through gravitational energy, potential energy, ultimately elastic energy, you're going to feel that as well. You're going to feel that power propulsion. You're going to feel that in economy of movement.

So start with the ankle. There's some good pogo exercises, low hurdles, and you can go into your drop jumps and so on. The world's your oyster from there. Really, again, it's just making sure you have the technique so that you can feel the effortlessness of the movement. You can see when someone lands and they go again, and what you don't see is their center of mass or their head sort of sink and their knees flex and their hips flex. They almost, they're just a stiff spring.

So they land and then they're gone again. And it's, you know when you've watched someone do it and you could feel it and it just takes time. I think you see big improvements after say 3 months of plyometric training, but again don't see that as a magic number. Just start incorporating a little bit of a slight peppering of plyometric training in your programming now. You go from none to some and if it's 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, remember this is a lifelong journey. It will make a huge difference.

James de Lacey48:44

Yeah, for sure. And if you go too hard too fast, that Achilles will not be happy. Won't be happy. The tendon in your knees won't be happy. The muscles, nothing's going to be happy except for the physio.

Anthony Turner49:03

They love you. Love you. They love the cycle that you get caught in as well. The psychologist as well, because then you start beating yourself up and then you start chasing the numbers back because then you get injured and you come back, you don't want to start all over again and you think, well, I was doing that before I got injured. Let me do that now. Then you get injured again and then it's just, you're stuck in this cycle really.

There is no shortcut to this. If you don't do it progressively and you don't lay the foundations, if you don't see this as a long-term project, you're in for a bit of a rough ride really, unless you're really young and then you can take anything. You keep pulling from your pension. Basically, that's all you're doing. You're drawing down immediately and you get old, you're like, "Oh, I wish I hadn't done that." So take your time now and see it as an investment into the future version of yourself, the much older, greater version. He's going to thank you later for it.

James de Lacey49:50

I have a question here from Jonathan again, but it's one we just answered actually around your thoughts on getting the cardio conditioning via methods other than jogging and running. He's thinking of example of Rich Franklin when he fought MMA, making use of circuit training with lighter weights for intense 30 plus minute sessions. Actually, let's go into that one because it's slightly different on circuit training with lighter weights for intense 30 plus minute sessions.

Anthony Turner50:09

So yeah, I don't mind so much that with lighter weights. So I kind of partition. I want to train all the time, right? I don't want to overtrain, okay? And I don't want to overstress certain movements. So I'd probably partition them.

So if I'm going to use weights, it's because I want to lift heavy and I want to lift fast, all right? Because let's say I do loads of circuit training using light weights or whatever it is, loads of squats. Let's do loads of squats as my conditioning exercise. That means I can't now for the next two days do any heavy squats because I've burnt it out, right?

All so that I could put a certain stimulus in my legs I could have done on a bike, or I could have done on a rower, and then I could train again the next day. In fact, I could train, I could train in the evening.

It's about how savvy you are in terms of splitting up. And again, we work with athletes, and they're training 11 times a week, twice a day sessions, sometimes three times a day sessions. What you don't see is anyone doing weight-based circuit training or things like that that look like the thing that they need to do to get strong or look like the thing they need to do to compete in training where it looks like that thing. You're going to generate overtraining.

So I'm not saying it doesn't work, and I'm saying as a way to improve the probability, and this is quite a nice way of thinking about things, is that there are no certainties, right? Everything's about probability. You have an understanding of something and you hedge the bets in your favor. So I think that you could do that and I think you could get away with it, but I think eventually you'd start to tire out and you start to, but you might not want to question that because I had some really good, cracking improvements off the back of it. You did, but now you're going to pay the price, whereas if you keep it separate.

So my idea again, and I'll give you the reference to another book that I put together, is basically what I'm going to try and plug at the end, is it's different conditioning. So I would do it on a bike. I would do it on a rower. I would do off-feet conditioning where there's less load. And then you can train to your heart's content. It only takes five, six minutes to do this, and then go and train again in the afternoon if you want, or do that and then do some sparring in a fatigue state to train your cognitive capacity when you're tired.

So for example, if you wanted to train that capacity to how do you think when you're tired and the technical or tactical side of that, don't spar yourself into that position because it's a waste. You're not learning from it. You're just getting tired for the sake of getting tired. Tire yourself out on the bike, the rower, the battle ropes, then put yourself in that position and now you've had the conditioning plus you get the cognitive overload that comes with that.

So partition it, partition it all out. Lift weights to get strong and powerful for no other reason. Don't do conditioning with it. Do your off-feet conditioning, do it fast, do it sharp, do HIIT, do SIT. In six minutes, I'll give you the same adaptations. There's loads of research done in it, and again I can call you out on it that shows that for 3 minutes on the bike with a certain stimulus is the same as a 45-minute, an hour run, or on the bike, 2 hours on the bike.

It's not saying that 2 hours on the bike isn't bringing the stimulus. It's saying you can get the same thing for 5 minutes. But if you love cycling for 2 hours, of course you should do that. Or if you want to get good at cycling, then what you got to do? We got to cycle. We'll never beat that.

But if you're not, if you're cycling for an hour to be good in the ring for 3 minute rounds, I think that we might have a better solution for you if, again, that's your only purpose for doing it.

James de Lacey54:06

I like that. It's actually a really good paper. I think it's that synre Mullman. I probably said that name so wrong. That review of endurance training versus high intensity training versus sprint interval training and just mentioning the exact same things you mentioned there around the adaptations.

Anthony Turner54:17

Professor Mabala and those guys and David Bishop does, I mean incredible, Professor Stu Phillips, cracking stuff in this area. And it's like, "That can't be true." And then they have to repeat the same study. They're doing muscle biopsies here. People on the bike are taking muscle out, grinding it down, looking in the lab to go, "No, these are the changes we're seeing. These are the changes that we're seeing."

And we repeated it and they're like, and then when you add it up, you're like, "Oh, I get it. This is why." When you go for a long run or long cycle, you create an energy deficit, right? And the body says we need to be careful here. We need to start creating energy. And so you start to generate some of the adaptations around the mitochondria that we spoke about.

If you do sprints, you also create an energy problem, just in a different way, but it's still a problem. And so the body still has to respond in the same way. And it's ingenious really. It's that deeper understanding.

So that's probably where maybe I would have some other thoughts which aren't quite so intuitive that would be like, actually I would train like this. So I would say as an example, if someone came to train with me, I think I would compartmentalize it. But I reckon over a 5 year or 3 year period, I reckon they'd complete more training sessions with me than training sessions with you.

You might, for example, have far more success than me in the first 6 months because you've gone out. But I'd then own, I'd own the next 2 and a half years, 3 years, 4 years, and you're stuck in that cycle. As an example, I'm being obviously very crude. But hopefully you get that point that comes across.

James de Lacey55:58

Yeah, we've done a lot because Dr. Dash and Dr. John Babry have been on the podcast quite a few times talking about the sprint interval training research. And Dr. John Bry's last 20 plus years of body sprint interval and high intensity training research. It's interesting stuff for anyone who's interested.

But Anthony, where can people find and follow you? Keep up with what you're doing. You've got a ton of resources out there. So plug which ones you want.

Anthony Turner56:28

So I'm on X and Instagram, which is Anthony Turner UK. So you can follow there. Obviously on Research Gate you can grab the papers as well. And then I've started to put more resources together and I put together a website that's linked to a book. Can I show you the book?

James de Lacey56:57

Yeah, of course.

Anthony Turner56:57

It's that I finished that book that's coming up.

James de Lacey56:57

Very nice. The Fitness Formula for anyone who's just listening.

Anthony Turner56:57

This is it, The Fitness Formula. It goes through everything we just said and it will go through the plyometrics. And there's a link to the website, the accompanying website, which is the fitness formula dot training. And there you'll get the resources.

So I've started to put all the papers that I talk about and everything I've just said there, that squat loop, the volumetrics loop, the sit training, the interval training. So the idea behind it is I've tried to get a lot of academic research that I've been involved in and my colleagues have been involved in and try to write it into more usable text that's about a journey that you go on. And it has a training program at the end.

And I think I said to you, so if you look at my training programs, it's typically along the lines of strength, power, plyo, hamstrings. That's like the core of it for the lower body. And then you might have a rehab and a conditioning at the end.

And it has an upper body version, which is the push, pull, vertical, horizontal, and rotation core and iso on the other side. So imagine there the boxes and there are certain exercises that go within that box, right? And just imagine each one's like a goal.

As long as you shoot within that goal, doesn't matter where it goes, you score. It doesn't matter what you do. We overthink it. But if you did want to follow a certain route, you could do this. You could go squats, blah blah blah blah blah. You could do this, blah blah blah blah blah, and so on really.

So it's sort of the everything that we've gone through now. And then it sort of concludes with, this is how you should train.

James de Lacey58:51

Awesome. And Jonathan says, "Thank you on the book." He'll definitely read it. So you've sold one already.

Anthony Turner58:51

Oh man. There you go. Thank you very much. Right, pennies towards the new Porsche.

James de Lacey58:51

Perfect. That's it.

Anthony Turner58:51

So I might be trading in for a Lambo at this stage.

James de Lacey58:51

There we go. Perfect.

Well, I appreciate you coming on, Anthony, and sharing everything. I'll link all those up in the comments of the podcast. So on the description of the podcast, on YouTube and Spotify, wherever you're listening, so you can check those down below. And I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on.

Anthony Turner59:21

Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me, James. Really delighted with that.