Strength & Conditioning For Taekwondo & MMA + Week Training Structure w/ James Langford (SSOF Ep 16)

James de Lacey2:13

Oh yeah, I've been through that before.

James Langford2:27

Yeah, everyone has. And you'll know yourself, rugby's quite an enclosed culture. Usually there's interns or placement students who get bumped up into the academy role and they might go to assistant first team, etc., etc. So yeah, I was looking at it going, I don't really want to do another two years not earning. I need to start earning now.

So there was an opportunity came up at the English Institute of Sport. They were looking for an intern. And at the time I felt like it was a little bit of a step back because, although I was an intern at Huddersfield, I was responsible for the scholarship program. I was coaching, I was programming, I was taking a lead on that program.

So I owned it for a little bit, but ultimately made the decision that, well, if I get into an organization like the English Institute of Sport, there isn't three S&C coaches above me. There's probably 13, 16, maybe even more. So I just thought my chances are better of someone leaving and a job coming up there than they are in this club.

So joined the English Institute of Sport in 2017 on a placement with, primarily, GB Boxing. Loved it, really enjoyed it. And then in 2018, I think it was the February or March time of 2018, there was a job advertised at GB Taekwondo, a sport which I don't think I'd watched before, probably couldn't even spell it at the time.

Job came up and I just applied for it, went through the process, got offered the job. And then, yeah, I spent the past four years there, up until January this year, where I made the decision to, initially, my plan was to step back fully and I was going to go fully self-employed.

I'd sort of started to work privately with a few MMA fighters towards the back end of 2021, and that was going quite well. So initially made the decision to step back fully from employed life and go fully self-employed. And then, just as I was about to do so, another opportunity at the English Institute of Sport came up that was two days a week with GB Triathlon.

And it just fitted really nicely. I wanted to go self-employed, I wanted the freedom of that, but I still liked my idea of keeping my foot in the door in an organization because I think you get some really good CPD, I think, working as part of a multi-disciplinary team. It gives you something that being self-employed just doesn't.

So, yeah, now I love it. I work Monday-Friday for the English Institute of Sport, still with the British Triathlon team, based up in Leeds. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturdays sometimes, I do all my self-employed work, which is primarily with professional and amateur MMA fighters, some professional boxers, I've got a couple of karate athletes, a variety of combat sports and martial arts now. And I love it. It's great.

James de Lacey5:13

Yeah, I know what you mean about having your foot in an organization. I've got that coaching itch after being out of the game for a couple of years in terms of being in an organized setup. So, that's definitely something I've got my eye on, too.

But I wanted to come back to Taekwondo specifically, at least to start. Because I guess when we talk about strength and conditioning for combat sports, it's usually related to boxing, MMA, jujitsu, pretty much those three, really. They're the main things that everyone's always talking about. So I want to touch on Taekwondo in the beginning.

And I wanted to start with what you see as the physical determinants for Taekwondo performance, and then we'll go further down the line once we cover that.

James Langford5:41

Yeah, sure. I think, you know, for anyone that's watched Taekwondo, it's a really, quite a high intensity, really quite dynamic sport to watch. So I think it's really easy when you go in to look at it and go, right, these guys need to be fast, they need to be powerful, they need to be fit, they need to have good reactive strength through their ankles. They need all these really dynamic characteristics, which is all true.

But this was the real eye-opening moment for me when I was really trying to figure out, right, well, what do these guys need from me as an S&C coach? I was sat in a meeting with one of the coaches and one of the athletes talking about what this athlete needed for their to progress in their technical side of training.

And we were talking about these really, really fine qualities. They didn't quite have the internal rotation just at the end of a stab, you know. We were really getting into these fine qualities, but I was sat there thinking, all this is great. What we're talking about now is great, but this athlete can't string together three days of training without getting injured.

They're never on the mat. So I feel like we're wasting our time a little bit having all these really fine conversations about all these little things. Actually, Taekwondo's such a technical sport that they just need to be able to train. Really, that's going to be the biggest determinant.

And then I think it just so happened that I listened to a podcast by Ben Rosenblatt, I think it might have been a couple of days after that, from when he was with GB Hockey. Well, I'm sure it was hockey when he was with hockey. He broke down his approach to S&C into three areas, which is training to train, training to compete, and training to perform. So it's almost this idea that you have to earn the right to actually train to perform.

So when we're talking about all these finite skills in this meeting of having greater hip internal rotation, or if you're talking about being a little bit stiffer through your ankles, so you've got that ability to react and move quicker, that's all great. But ultimately the foundation of that is just being able to get on the mat and train. I think in any sport that is a combat sport, and you're kicking people for a living, you're always going to have injuries. It's just part and parcel of what you do.

But I think ultimately, the way that we started to break it down was, are these guys on the mat training consistently? If the answer to that question is no, then there's no real point at diving into anything else until we get that done, because the amount of training that they need to do sort of week in, week out, I mean, they might do, varies at the time of the year, but anywhere from 12 to 16 hours of technical work a week, and it's always quite a high intensity. So first off, they just need to be able to do that.

Once they can do that, and they've shown us that they can bank that training for a few weeks consistently, then we'd move into that train to compete section, which is, "Okay, now what are you like at competition? Are you fit enough to be able to go out and perform your technical game? Are you strong enough to be able to go out and deal with the opponents in the weight class you are?"

And really, only when you've ticked that train to perform, train to compete box, do you then move on to the higher end of the pyramid, which is that, "Okay, now let's really talk about how we as S&C coaches can contribute to improving your technical game."

And then from there, that gave us the base to go, "Okay, well, we need to go away and establish what supports training. What is actually the important factors that are going to keep people on the mat?" And that was a little bit of a project I did.

So, at the same time as I started at Taekwondo, we took delivery of a brand new force plate. So, one of the first things that we did was we just started to begin to collect a lot of data, really. We started to do some drop jumps, countermovement jumps, mid-thigh pulls, isometric peak plantar flexion, so just looking at force output around the foot and ankle. Diving into loads of metrics through that.

We also began to do, or they're already doing before I got there, but a lot of conditioning testing as well. So, we looked like a VO2 max, a peak power on like a 6-second sprint.

And after having collected the data for a period of time, we then started to dive into the numbers a little bit and I suppose for most S&C coaches listening, it's no surprise that when we started to run the numbers, similar to what Tim Gabbett talks a lot about in his research, actually our guys who had the highest relative peak force in the mid-thigh pull, so I suppose our stronger pound-for-pound Taekwondo players, and our fitter guys, the guys who had that higher VO2 max, they were the ones who ultimately ended up having the least training days missed.

So, we got that data from our performance analysis team, ran some of the numbers, and although it wasn't a perfect correlation, nothing ever's going to be, those were the highest influences of time on the mat.

So, that then at least gave us a little bit of clarity in that when new guys coming through or when someone's coming back from an injury, the first thing we need to make sure is actually just do you have a good base of relative strength? Are you aerobically fit enough to deal with the demands of training? And then when we start to get some of those characteristics and we can talk about, "Okay, what are you like in competition? What are you like in training? Now where do we go?"

And yeah, those were our big rocks that we came back to just because we sort of had the data to suggest to us that it worked essentially.

James de Lacey12:03

Yeah, there's some great research backing that too, isn't there, on basically being stronger and fitter means you can handle higher or heavier training loads throughout the week keeping you relatively, reduces your risk of injury. So obviously the data you found backs that up too and it provides a platform for you guys to train off like, "Hey, if you can't do this basic stuff now, we don't need to go doing your I don't know, explosive isometrics and other reactive strength work yet."

James Langford12:29

Yeah, absolutely and it's one of the things that I think obviously a lot of the research is done in AFL, rugby, football. So when you, as an S&C coach, I was pretty confident going in that, you know, if actually we just focus on getting these guys a bit stronger, a bit fitter, they'll probably be able to tolerate more training.

Sometimes the pushback you might get from coaches or performance directors is that, "Well, yeah, but that's in football. Or that's in rugby. We don't know that in this sport." So it was quite important for us to go, "That's fair and that is right. So let's run the numbers ourselves and let's see in our sport is the same thing true." And I don't think by any means the thresholds are probably as big as they are in some of the other sports, but it still rang true for us.

James de Lacey13:22

So then how do you determine I guess what a Taekwondo athlete needs in terms of their training. So, I'm assuming you might have some testing battery with some of those with their force plate data. But then, how do you determine, I guess, the physical qualities you want to train in that upcoming training cycle?

James Langford13:42

Yeah, so the first thing is always speaking to or you have that initial meeting with the athlete and coach around, "Okay, well, one, what are the big things you're focusing on in training right now? But also, two, how does this person fight?" Because it'll vary if they're a minus 58 male compared to if they're a plus 73 heavyweight female. The fighting styles and the kind of fight you're going to see are going to be very, very different.

So, the way that we would approach it is, "Okay, well, what are your big long-term goals that you're trying to focus on?" And that might be a bit of a mixture really between the coach and the athlete and us as an S&C team.

If we've recognized that X athlete doesn't have the relative strength suggested that we think they need to be able to tolerate the training loads, that will always form a part of the program. That will be a long-term goal.

But also, we can't neglect what the coach and athlete are trying to work on. And ultimately, I think a big part of an S&C's job in Taekwondo, and this for me goes across all combat sports anyways, primarily just trying to make improvements without getting in the way of the sport. Really, without causing any impact into that technical tactical training.

I always use the example that we had a girl who in our Manchester, the Manchester, yeah, it was Manchester 2019 World Championships. She went out and got a bronze medal and she was 16.

So, she wasn't actually on our senior team yet. She was on our development team. She was 16 years old, but she was technically tactically good enough to go out and get a bronze medal at worlds. But, as soon as she joined the senior team, I think she lasted about 9 days before she went out injured.

And it was just that she was technically good enough to be at the highest level, but then when you try to, I suppose when her and her coach then decided to start to try and push her game to develop, the amount of training that she needed to do that, she just couldn't tolerate it.

That's then where you try to find that blend of, okay, well, long-term what are you trying to focus on? What type of fighter are you trying to be? And then long-term for us, what are the physical characteristics that we're trying to improve? And you just try your best to amalgamate that into a program.

In the, for anyone who doesn't know Taekwondo, it's quite a tricky sport because there is no clear off-season. The competitions really do run January to December. So, the guys might get a week off at Christmas, sometimes two. They might get a week off in the summer, but really you're going all year round.

And because it's a points-based system, so the way that you qualify for the Olympic Games is basically by accruing X amount of points over the course of 4 years. If you're in the top six by January 1st of that Olympic year, you automatically qualify.

So, you can also end up in some situations where you'll sit down at the start of the year, you'll write a beautiful training cycle in line with what the coach has put down as to what competitions his athletes are attending, where they're going to go. But, if that athlete or that fighter has a terrible start to the year and doesn't get the points that they thought they were going to get in the first few competitions, they then might fly off somewhere else on a week's notice.

I think in 2019 we had one of our female athletes fly off to Australia on I'm pretty sure it was 8 days notice just to fight in a low-level competition because she hadn't got the 10 points from a competition she thought she was going to get. And you just can't account for that. No amount of programming is going to account for a coach tapping on the shoulder going, "Oh, in 8 days we fly to Oz."

So, it's quite a tricky sport to navigate, but the way that we really went about trying to do it was sitting down and getting real clarity on what are the big focuses for this athlete both technically and physically and just very, very slowly trying to move the needle along in those. And but not sacrificing the technical aspect of the training.

James de Lacey18:02

Yeah, so for any I guess any Taekwondo athletes listening to this now, how are you then balancing their strength conditioning so it doesn't interfere with the technical tactical training? Yes, we always push the message of, you know, make your hard days hard and your easy days easy.

James Langford18:27

Something now, not being involved with GB Taekwondo, and I have a few private Taekwondo clients that I work with, the majority of the time the first thing you always see when you sit down with them and go through their program is they go, "Right, well, I've got a hard session on Monday. So actually I'm going to do my S&C on Tuesday and then I've got a hard session on Wednesday, so I'll do my S&C Thursday." And it all, when you look at it, you go, "Makes sense." But really there's no time in that week for recovery.

So the thing that we used to sit down and do was, again, in line with the coach, to go, "Right, what are the sessions in the week that you need want to protect the most?" So quite often it might be sparring and then one of the other harder technical sessions. And then what we would try and do is we would put our physical S&C work after those sessions on the same day.

So although as an S&C coach and as an athlete, really, you're probably sacrificing some of the physical improvements you can make, you've just really not taken away from any of the technical aspect. So you do your hard morning sparring and then you go in the gym and you do your S&C work. And yeah, you might be a little bit sore and tired the next day, but the next day is an easy day where you might just be doing some lighter conditioning work and a little bit of light technical work. But then you're recovered for the next time you have a day that you're really required to push on.

Particularly because I think if you sit and watch some of the kicks these guys throw and some of the movements that they do, the last thing you want is them to go in a session with some tight hammies or some kind of DOMS through their hammies and calves, because the joint angles and the stress they're putting on their musculature is insane. So particularly from a just keep them on the map perspective, you don't really want to do anything that might sacrifice that. So it was always for us, yeah, S&C tending to be after the Taekwondo session.

And it was always, right, your hard days S&C might come after sparring. Your slightly easier days conditioning or mobility work might come after a slightly more technical day, whatever it might be. But that was the main thing that we tried to do.

James de Lacey20:50

Got you. Yeah, if anyone's listening and wants to learn more about that kind of high-low strategy throughout the week, if you just Google how to schedule your MMA training or balancing BJJ and weight training, I've written a whole bunch on that, too. But before I come back to Taekwondo, would you run a similar strategy in MMA where you would do S&C after MMA sparring?

James Langford21:13

Yeah, generally I try to. It's, I mean, the world that I'm in now with MMA is quite different in that in Taekwondo the guys would come in, because I was employed as an S&C and we had a big gym, the guys would come in as a group. So it's very easy to look at the schedule and go, "Right, you're doing sparring at 10:00, so let's get you in as a group at 2:00."

But now in the private sector, although I work primarily with a lot of MMA guys from the same gym, really, to put this a bit variation, I only see them one-to-one. So it's not quite as easy to go right after sparring, everybody in, because they're paying me one-to-one. So I still try and follow a similar process.

I also try and do a little bit more microdosing, so give them actually little bits to do after every session instead of a big, bigger strength and conditioning session to do. Because although they're both combat sports and you've one group is professional Taekwondo players, one group is professional MMA fighters, the actual training is very different.

I'm still, the gym that I work at, Manchester Top Team, the coaches there have probably got one of the best kind of high day, low day type models I've seen from across MMA gyms. They do it really well. But it's still not quite as clear as a Taekwondo high-low week system, purely because you've got striking elements, you've got wrestling elements, you've got jiu-jitsu. It is harder to do.

So I do still try and follow that same high-low model, but it's, yeah, it's probably not quite as clear. And I think if you try to make it quite as clear in MMA, you'll just be banging yourself, hitting the wall.

James de Lacey23:03

Yeah, I think you're going to struggle to a degree. For sure. It's similar in rugby. But I'm a big fan of microdosing as well. You used it often within international rugby. You've got short camps and you need to get high-intensity work in and you have games coming up. It makes sense. Throw some medicine balls, do some jumps before you get on the field and stuff like that. And, same thing, as you mentioned, you play in at the end of the training session. So that works.

James Langford23:26

Yeah, and I think some athletes really like it, particularly your more kind of fast twitch, more powerful, explosive guys who can do probably do more damage to themselves in training, and could probably do more damage to themselves, damage in terms of muscular structural damage, not literally injuring themselves.

But if they do a sparring session and then you come out and you do a little bit of maybe some kind of strength endurance work that marries up with what they did in sparring, a little bit more sort of structural damage, they'll blend to that really quite well, because it means that they spar, they do a little bit of S&C, and then that's it. They're out the gym.

Next day it might be, I don't know, a high velocity striking day. So actually, before they go on the mats, you just do some med ball throws with them, some med ball throws, some jumps, kind of prime the nervous system a little bit, and then send them into sparring.

So I try to do that with probably more the professional guys at the higher level. Whereas I think the amateurs and your lower level pros who have a low training age, I don't think they benefit quite the same from microdosing, because I don't, my belief is that they just don't have the outputs to be able to microdose properly. You almost need that base of being able to express yourself in certain exercises to get the adaptation from it. So yeah, it really varies, really varies.

James de Lacey24:39

Yeah, I like the idea at the end of the session too. I know Vern Gambetta has gone on for a long time, basically his idea is your body remembers the last thing that you did. So if you do a session, whatever it may be, it's a slower technical pad session, but you finish with some high-intensity or explosive training, that's the last thing your body remembers.

I know Joel Smith in his speed strength book has kind of done similar where he talks about ending sessions doing bounding and stuff like that, too. So it kind of marries into that idea of if you are microdosing these high-level, especially, as you mentioned, with fast-twitch guys who are explosive, you can kind of maintain that regardless of the sessions that are happening, and you can do it such low volumes, it's not going to impact anything else outside of that.

James Langford25:34

Sure. And I think that, I think some purists would go, "Well, but you're mixing physical qualities that you're trying to develop. You've got some aerobic stuff here and some speed strength of here." And I think unless you work in really black or white sports, you're always mixing that anyway, because the sport has such an array of different qualities that, really, I don't, you're never going to get it perfect. So yeah, I really agree with that. I tried to, yeah, as I said, tried to adopt a similar approach just with some of the pros that I work with.

James de Lacey26:06

Nice. I want to come back to Taekwondo. I've one more question at Taekwondo. How do you balance then, for example, obviously Taekwondo requires a huge amount of reactive strength, especially around the ankles? The sport itself is heavily dominated by essentially bouncing on the ankles. So then how do you balance that with, if you, for example, you need to develop reactive strength around the ankles in strength conditioning, without doing too much, without getting on the mat and they're either blunted from doing that or getting injured from doing so many ground contacts?

James Langford26:23

Yeah, it's a good question, and it's something that I think over the, this is probably the thing that over the course of the four years at Taekwondo, my mindset changed to the most. So I think, I've got no problem with saying, earlier on when I started at Taekwondo, I did, extensive plyometrics were a big part of my program.

I did a lot of, some of our conditioning sessions, we might do some aerobic plyos as a recovery modality. Did a lot of kind of your, four sets of 12, 15 calf raises, because I was like, "Right, I want to build up muscular endurance in these calves because they're hopping all the time." And that was probably a big part of what I did for 12, 18 months.

And then I think there was just one day, I can't remember what brought on the thought process, I was sat in the Taekwondo gym and I was watching them train.

And I was thinking about the session that I had in the afternoon. I was watching the girls group train. I was thinking about the session that I had in the afternoon with them, which was some aerobic power efforts on a Wattbike, and the recovery period was some aerobic plyometrics, trying to keep their heart rate around the 130 point.

And I was watching them do the session, and it was a very heavy movement session, very reactive, lots of movement, lots of hopping and traveling around. And I was just thinking, they've done a lot of hopping today and my session later was a lot of hopping. Like, am I feeding into the problem? What is my session going to give them that they're actually not getting here?

And then you start to go down this, not rabbit hole, but this thing of like, right, well, if you spend 12 to 16 hours a day on your toes hopping and moving around, does four sets of 12, 15 calf raises, does it do anything? Like, am I actually, I'm doing this because I want you to have more durable calves. I want to improve the capacity of your calf, but what is this doing? If you can already tolerate that, what is this doing?

So yeah, that's how we got down a big rabbit hole, and then ultimately the approach that I came out with was I went for a really polarized approach to preparing that foot and ankle for the demands of one extensive hop, basically, which is what Taekwondo training is. You know, 2 hours just hopping on your toes.

So the approach I went for was we're either going to do tasks that I believe exceed the demands of what you're going to do in training. So we're not going to really do any extensive hopping. We're just going to do some real intensive drop jumps, some intensive hops, very minimal dose, but ideally try and expose that foot and ankle to forces and loads that they're not getting in their training.

We're going to do some real, like Alex Natera type—I think he calls them pushing isos? I call them yield overcoming isometrics, but just real intense calf raise isos where you're exploding into the bar, relaxing, really trying to cause that tendon to contract very, very quickly.

And then on the other side of things, hopefully that's going to give me the stiffness qualities to improve the performance metrics of that foot and ankle. And then on the other end, when we talk about health of the musculature and just trying to keep their calves healthy and increase some capacity, just do some real long, long duration isometric holds, maybe do a lot of occluded work, where we're doing loads and loads of occluded calf raises to failure, again at the right time in the week, so it's not impacting the session.

James de Lacey30:21

Yeah, almost going, well, now I'm trying to train much below the demands of the sport, but of a really, really high volume to try and increase that capacity of the muscle.

James Langford30:39

And that was the approach that I went for. And to be honest, although the sports of triathlon, where I am now, and Taekwondo are very different, my approach to prepping the foot and ankle is the same because, like, triathlon, they might do 12 hours of running a week. So it's not too dissimilar.

I think for a lot of people, if you really sat down and went, "Okay, what does the sport look like and how am I preparing?" Particularly the calf, Achilles, foot and ankle complex, I think if a lot of people are quite critical, we'd probably just add fuel to the fire. We probably just give athletes more of what they already have. And that's where I came with this polarized approach from. You just try and expose them to demands above and below the sport and let the sport do the rest.

James de Lacey31:28

Yeah, I'm with you with that. I think a lot of maybe Taekwondo players potentially listen to this and do a lot of extra hopping because that's what they do in their sport. So they think, if I just mimic what I'm doing in my sport, I'm going to get better at it. But again, you're just adding more stress on top of your technical training when you could be doing something like you mentioned, where you can increase output capacity, all that stuff, that's going to complement what you're doing in there instead.

James Langford31:49

Yeah, absolutely. I think whenever, part of my role with GB Taekwondo was working with the Olympic and Paralympic team, but also the more developmental guys that were coming through. And whenever you speak to them about any S&C that they would be doing in their clubs, it was always things like lots of cone drills, ladder drills, things like that. And then you watch their training and it's lots of movement, moving in and around codes. It's just everything looks the same.

So I think you really need to take a step back and go, "Okay, well, if what I'm doing to try and prepare myself for my sport looks exactly like my sport, is it the best option?"

James de Lacey32:38

For sure. I just wanted to touch on some Taekwondo conditioning. So myself, I'm a big fan of keeping conditioning specific to the sport because obviously adaptations you occur aerobically and anaerobically, whatever that can be, around essentially to do with efficiency of movement, muscular adaptations, things like that.

But obviously in a professional environment where you're training multiple hours a day of your sport, you're doing a lot of that already. Adding more technical stuff on top of it might not be the greatest thing to do just from a monotony standpoint, injury standpoint, whatever.

So how does, I guess, how does your conditioning look for your professional Taekwondo athletes or the Olympic ones there, in terms of maybe mode of conditioning, so what they're doing, and maybe in terms of prescription? And then would that differ with someone who's maybe an amateur or can only train Taekwondo two, three, four times a week?

James Langford33:32

Yeah, sure. So I suppose I'll start by doing, giving a bit of a run down of what we did with the Olympic guys. So coming back to what I mentioned before, which was there's no off-season, that makes the conditioning approach a little bit challenging because they never really get a period in the year where they just get to allow their bodies to recover. They're always trying to do something.

So the first thing that we used to do is the technical coaches would map out the year and they would do, similar to what we would do as S&Cs, a general prep phase, transition phase, and then competition phase. They'd name it slightly differently, but ultimately that was what they'd do. They'd just break that down into little cycles throughout the year.

What we would then do is during the general phases, or the technical phases that coaches called them, we would do all of our conditioning off-feet. We'd just do everything on watt bikes. Ultimately, if whenever we're in a technical phase, we're there because we've come off the back of some more intensive training where there's probably been a slightly busier competition period, and we just felt it was quite important for our guys to get a little bit of a rest from just load and contact through their feet.

So all of our conditioning went onto wattbike, and a lot of that stuff was primarily aerobic. Again, we just wanted to try and pull some intensity out. So that might be, again, it varied athlete to athlete depending on where that athlete was at, but it could be some steady state work, it could be some threshold work. But we just tried to pull some of the intensity out a little bit and try and keep all the conditioning quite aerobic.

Then as we started to progress through that training block and we started to move into some more alactic power work or some maybe lactate power work, we start to, similar to how you might periodize some exercises in the gym and go from more general prep to some more specific, we did the same with the conditioning. So we actually used to periodize the time. We'd start to transition from the wattbikes into Taekwondo and then into a competition.

So it would almost, if you laid it out across a training block, it might almost look like the initial phases of a technical block were all wattbike, all off feet, nothing was done on feet. We then might move into periods where the more intensive intervals, so let's say if you were doing, I use Joel Jameson's phrasing quite a lot, so if you were doing an aerobic power type session, that would maybe, you know, a minute's work, two minutes active recovery.

The minute's work, so the intensive part of the conditioning, might be on a wattbike. But the recovery period might actually be in front of a mirror just doing some shadowing, just doing some movement, so that the recovery period became a little bit more specific to the movements you might see in the sport.

And then what would happen is as we progress through that period, you'd see a little bit of a switch. So then the intensive periods might become more of the Taekwondo. So if we were doing a lactate power type session, it might be 30 seconds of just really intense pad work, and it was pre-planned. Recovery period might then be on a bike. And then ultimately by the time you get to the comp or a few weeks out from the comp, you're just doing some specific rounds.

I was a big believer of if a Taekwondo competition is 2 minutes on, 1 minute off, I'd like to build the guys up to like 2 and a half minutes on, 1 minute off, just so—and we might have to go through that once or twice—but just so they had been to a point that was beyond the demands of what they were going to be able to do on the competition day. And also, probably at an intensity that was a little bit greater than what they might be asked to do on the day of a competition.

And that was really how we looked to kind of periodize the modality. So you'd go completely off the intensive work on—off feet—and then start to switch it as you got closer to the competition.

James de Lacey37:22

Oh, I love that. That's awesome. So I'm assuming then you would have to have a pretty good relationship with the coach then to be able to do your lactic power work on the pads, cuz that would be within their technical training then, or is that still a separate session?

James Langford37:34

No, so sometimes we do it as little—going back to what we said about the MMA about little microdosing afterwards—we try and put it on the end of some of the technical sessions. Sometimes it might be a separate one, but yeah, so the relationship with the coach would be when it was the more technical periods like our general prep, they just kind of, we'd lead the sessions.

And the more we started to progress through, when it came to doing the recovery periods as their Taekwondo, we'd kind of go to them and say, "Look, so-and-so's got a 2-minute rest period in their session today. I want them to do something quite low intensity, but that's going to be relative to them technically. Is there anything you'd suggest?" Sometimes they might, sometimes they'd say, "No, you've already done it."

But then when we got to them close to the competition and the work periods actually became Taekwondo specific, quote unquote, that was actually then the reverse—I'd go to the coach and just say, "Look, these guys need to do 40 seconds at a really high intensity, super high intensity with the heart rate monitors on," so I could sit there and kind of gauge push a bit more or even pull back a little bit and sometimes they have.

But then it was very much on the coach and the athlete to go, "Right, this is what we're going to do." And I think this is ultimately it—you have to then have that trust in the coach a little bit as well. And I think sometimes we got it right, sometimes we got it wrong, but that was the approach that we went for.

The best thing is as well, coaches absolutely love it when you tell them you can go balls out. And they're like—you can see the face, the athlete drop a little bit, and you're like, "Right, we're doing some lactic power work. I want 40 seconds on, really, really high intensity, and then we're going to rest till your heart rate drops below about 120. And then we're going to go again." And you can see the coach go, "Right. Sweet."

But then I'm supposed to flip that, and then to answer your second question is, what would I suggest for someone who's not in a professional setup, maybe an amateur? If you're only doing two, three sessions a week, I'm similar to you—I think you should be trying to do most of your conditioning probably through some kind of technical skill expression.

Because, yeah, I think you'll get a physiological benefit from doing it on a bike or running. But so long as your body can tolerate it, actually you're going to get so much more of a benefit from a coordinative timing perspective doing it through your Taekwondo training in this instance. I think that's more beneficial.

This is kind of a bit of a segue, but one of the head coaches at Top Team, Carl, me and him have been talking at the minute about doing some—we're trying to get our guys in the gym to do more steady state work. We want them just to do some more aerobic capacity steady state work.

So we're at the minute turning around with this idea of, well, can we structure a skill-based session in a manner that means they're doing some steady state? So it might just be 5 minutes of kind of light shadow boxing in the mirror. Another one might be 5 minutes of just a little bit of some shrimp it, whatever it might be, but trying to set up the session in a way that you're almost ticking both boxes.

Now what I—I think when you get to a professional level, I never like the wording of, "Oh, we're ticking both boxes at once," cuz my hesitancy tends to go, "Well, are we actually ticking them both then? Or are we kind of getting neither?" Whereas I think as the lower down the sport you go, I don't think you have to worry about that so much. I think you can kind of get away with doing a bit of both.

James de Lacey40:56

Yeah. No, I agree with you. If anyone's interested further on that too, I've got my underground MMA conditioning system you can check on the website, and I actually cover pretty much each exact circuit like that. Specifically for the lower-level fighters that don't have access to full-time training cuz of that. You can kind of play plug and play that stuff.

But you mentioned as well, I guess, at Manchester Top Team that was your—that's kind of the best high-low system or setup that you've seen within combat sports. Do you want to maybe, if you can, share maybe how that looks within a training week?

James Langford41:37

Yeah, sure. So the way it's set up at the minute is we basically, when the guys come in, they'll do a striking session on a Monday. They'll spar Tuesday. Wednesday's more of a relaxed jits type session. Thursday's a little bit varied. Sometimes they might do a bit of stand-up, sometimes they might do a bit of wrestle, sometimes might do a bit of jits, but again, it's kind of a lower intensity. And then Friday's a hard wrestle.

And then Saturday's again, it's a little bit varied, but you basically get this kind of Monday probably a medium tight low day. Tuesday you spar, so it's high. Wednesday, a low day. You know, a very technical jits. Thursday, low to medium tight day. Friday is a hard wrestle, and again Saturday is a slightly lower day.

But yeah, the reason why I kind of chose to coach out of Top Team was after I had a few meetings with the coaches. I think sometimes when you speak to—when you start in a new sport and you speak to coaches about stuff—understandably they're hesitant to your ideas cuz it's that, well, you've been in the sport 5 minutes. You don't know anything yet. And to a degree that's true.

But I just had a conversation with Carl, our head coach, one day, and it used to be there was—they always sparred Wednesday and the hard wrestle was Friday. And I think I literally just mentioned in a passing comment, I was like, "You know, you might get more out of the guys if you moved sparring to Tuesday and made Wednesday a bit easier, cuz the Thursday session always used to be a bit dead. People wouldn't come in because, you know, you're wrestling Friday."

And then before I knew it, the timetable went out and it was like, "Guys, I've made a change. We're sparring Tuesday." I was like, "Whoa. Cool."

James de Lacey43:12

Oh, that's an open-minded coach.

James Langford43:26

But yeah, so that's kind of the main sessions, and then in the afternoon—this is for the professional, the competition squad anyway—in the afternoon at 3:30 every day there are just some very, very technical sessions which are super low intensity. Literally like flowing for everything, but they give the guys a real ability to focus just on the technical skill set.

And it means that when you have those kind of two things to pull from, when someone's off camp, it's great because there's, you know, they can get in the key sessions of the day. They can do a variety of some kind of low and hard training sessions. But then when people get into camp, there's also lots of additional sessions. It really just allows you to have a bit of variability in your week anyway.

There's some real low intensity sessions that just allow them to focus on improving technically, but without the risk of picking up any injuries, cuz I think that's the ideal for me anyway. I think if you're one of these fighters that kind of dips into gyms, dips in and out of gyms, I think that's great because you get exposed to a lot of different sessions and a lot of different bodies.

But ultimately, I think then it's very easy to just train hard five, six days a week all the time because you're just going in and out of sessions. Really, for me, the kind of the next step for MMA gyms in particular is to start to try and get some of that setup that you might see in a football club, a rugby club, like one of my examples, where there's a structure to the week and it kind of stays that way.

James de Lacey44:59

Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, that's probably one of the biggest mistakes combat sports athletes make is every guy is just a sweat sesh. If you're working hard, you're not getting better Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday throughout the whole week, and then they sit in this middle intensity where you can't really express anything super high output.

You're never really hitting the low end because it's just balls out 2 hours a day every day, sometimes multiple times that. I mean, you see it even at the UFC level, you know? Even some of the Instagram posts you see, you're just like, "What the hell is going on here?"

James Langford45:32

And I think sometimes as S&C coaches in combat sports, we feed into that because it does take quite a lot when you have a professional fighter walk through the door and go like, "Right, I want to do these circuits. I want to do this. I want to do this." And then you turn around and go, "No."

I mean, funnily enough, I think that was the way that I actually got introduced to the guys at Top Team was one of our Taekwondo coaches. He was doing some striking sessions with a UFC fighter called Lerone Murphy who's based in Manchester. And Lerone was prepping for an upcoming camp and they were just having a team meeting and just wanted some input from an S&C.

So I just went and sat in and was just really sat outside the group like I don't know much about the program but just giving a few my advice really. And it came to the question about conditioning. And Lerone, I think he was like, "I do sprints like a sprint. I'm going to do sprints. I'm going to do sprints. I'm going to do sprints."

And I was like, "Yeah, my advice I wouldn't sprint." But that's I just wouldn't do it and went into what I've said to you about like if a lot of your MMA sessions are hard, which they are because of the amount of different bodies and the stress you get from doing those sessions and doing two a days at this point because you're in camp, like actually you should walk in and walk out of your S&C session feeling pretty fresh in my eyes anyway.

I think off camp is very different. Like off camp you can afford to push yourself a little bit more but particularly when you're in camp you want to walk in and walk out of the gym almost ready to be able to do a session off the back of it because we're trying to improve some physical qualities but really you need to fight. So your fight camp isn't the time to try and really push your fitness levels really high. Like if you haven't done it already by that point we'll do what we can but it's going to be minimal.

James de Lacey47:16

I like to call it like you should be able you should feel like you want to do more.

James Langford47:32

And I think that sometimes that could be the hard thing when there's fighters in the gym who because I find that although I work at Top Team there's no expectation on all the guys there to work with me and to be fair with the amount of fighters we've got there I couldn't work with them all anyway. So I work with a few who want to work with me. Some work with others and that can be a hard management at times I think but I think definitely that the standard of S&C in combat sports is hugely growing.

So, I think it's definitely more to the benefit of fighters than just come in big lactic baths and do all the circuits and stuff. Let's see if we can make it throw up and then I'll send you home.

James de Lacey48:13

Unfortunately that's still very prevalent and it's usually that kind of training that's the televised training, you know, when you see on maybe you have some YouTube build-up to whatever even after be MMA like most combat sports even jujitsu as well and then obviously you know, UFC countdowns and boxing all access, you know, kind of shows. You don't it's not fun to show someone sitting on a bike for 20-30 minutes.

James Langford48:34

But we had with one of our Taekwondo athletes who came in to film. I can't remember which brand it was. I won't name names. It was a big brand. They came in to film one of our guys and they're like what's the session we're doing?

And I walked them through the session and you know, they were competing in a few weeks. It's not the most exciting session in the world like sure if you want to film some step-ups, film some dead bugs, perfect session. But it's not that And then when the video actually went out, I think they'd waited for me to leave that gym with the session and then they'd done a circuit and filmed that and that was the media that went out.

Like because they admittedly like yeah, the session that I went through probably does not look very good on camera, but I don't need it to.

James de Lacey49:14

That's not the point.

James Langford49:14

But that cracked me up because I was like okay, that wasn't what we did, but fine.

James de Lacey49:29

So they staged a circuit with that athlete just to do some burpees.

James Langford49:29

A little bit of ropes, yeah, standard stuff ropes, kettlebell swings, ski erg, film a bit of that. Okay, we're good to go.

James de Lacey49:29

Oh, that's funny. Do you want to quickly run me through them for maybe the amateur MMA fighters listening? How you fit your strength sessions and conditioning sessions into that training week? So essentially the number of sessions and maybe do you general idea of what that look like, in terms of how that differs between out of camp and in camp.

James Langford49:46

Sure. So, generally, what I try to suggest to start off with is out of camp, you want to be doing more strength and conditioning sessions than you do in camp. Like, I will always suggest to my guys to do two, let's call it strength sessions in camp and two out of camp.

But, really, what tends to fluctuate a little bit for me is then the conditioning. Like, I'm still a big advocate of getting most of your conditioning from the technical sessions you're doing, but I think there's certain qualities you don't get that I think is important, particularly when you're out of camp and you have a little bit more flexibility and you've probably got higher energy levels because you're eating more to do.

So, if you're an amateur off camp, I generally tend to go, yeah, two strength days and two conditioning sessions. Where possible, I try to avoid mixing the two, just because although it is hard, you'll never get that purest, okay, well, this was an aerobic day. This was a glycolytic day. This was a strength day. Like, but I still want to try and minimize that crossover effect where I can.

So, yeah, there'll be two strength days where, out of camp, I might focus more on a little bit of strength endurance work capacity, higher rep ranges. Essentially, I'm trying to prepare the body for the more intensive work that's coming in camp.

And then, the conditioning that I do out of camp tends to be either some real short, sharp, high intensity efforts, like 6 to 10 seconds max effort, like alactic power type stuff. Just really improving the overall output of the central nervous system. Usually, use the recovery period based off heart rate. Or some aerobic power type work. So, 60 to 90 seconds, quite intense. Again, sometimes use heart rate as a recovery, sometimes not.

And then when they start to get in camp, it just switches to two strength sessions a week. Like I don't really then begin to prescribe much conditioning on top. The only thing I will do is give them some steady state work to do. So, I might give them two, three steady state sessions that are between 20 to 30 minutes with the idea that it will help promote some blood flow and hopefully help promote some recovery because the intensity is not so high, but also it's just going to ensure that their aerobic system continues to build.

Because I think if you were to look at most fighters' programs, particularly in amateurs, they do a lot of high intensity work. Like a lot of on the mats, it's all high intensity. It's all very short rest. It's all really high intensity. And in the gym as well, tends to be a lot of circuits, like very little rest, very high intensity.

But I think a lot of people forget that that almost boring aerobic work you do dictates how effectively you recover from that high intensity, then dictates how intense you can go again in the subsequent efforts and so on and so forth.

So, yeah, in camp, two strength sessions where the focus shifts a little bit more to some max force work, a little bit more high velocity speed and power work. And then conditioning goes purely steady state. And then about two weeks out, we'll start to pull the volume back a little bit.

I've really started to incorporate a lot of velocity tracking like barbell velocity tracking in the sessions.

James de Lacey53:10

Just to drive you using to track that? Just GymAware or something else?

James Langford53:10

No, so I use a device called the Vmax Pro.

James de Lacey53:26

Oh, I've got that, too.

James Langford53:26

Yeah, yeah. It's called, so I was hesitant to start with. Like I wanted something that tracked velocity. I was like, I'm not buying a GymAware. Like I can't afford Well, no, I'm not buying I can't afford to buy a GymAware. So, I did a lot of research, read a few articles, read a few papers, and it seemed to have really good reliability.

James de Lacey53:38

Before you dive into that, do you have an issue where if you do like a squat jump, that it counts the eccentric dip, and then the jump, and then also the landing, and then your peak velocity values are funny because it takes the landing as like that peak velocity?

James Langford54:02

Yeah, I don't tend to... Or any other time? I don't tend to have the... So, let's say if you're doing a jump, I don't tend to have the landing problem very often where it counts that velocity, but definitely I know there's a little setting where you can go, right, what's the threshold it's not going to measure.

But quite often I'll get the eccentric velocity and then the concentric, which sometimes I might actually try and utilize, sometimes I might try and ignore that a little bit. But it's still, I mean, what, it was probably 1,500 lb cheaper than GymAware. I'll take that. That little eccentric velocity, I'll just take every time. It's fine.

But yeah, so I've started to use that quite a bit. One, just to drive a little bit of intent, but then with some of the professional guys could also look to just cut off some sets in camp when they start to get a bit fatigued really as well. But that's that's a little side project for me at the minute that I'm doing a little bit more of.

But yeah, generally just just to recap, I go to two strength, two conditioning sessions out of camp. And then in camp replace those two conditioning sessions with probably some technical sessions, some lower level technical stuff that you need to work on. And just sprinkle a few 20-30 minute steady states in throughout the week.

James de Lacey55:11

Do you ever provide maybe higher intensity options in camp if maybe an athlete feels like they need it at all? Or you just get everything from your skills and just trust the process?

James Langford55:30

Yeah, I don't do unless they ask for it. If they come and say, and it has happened a couple of times, someone comes in and is like, "I don't think I'm doing enough." As much as I, the S&C, I'm pretty confident to stand there and my answer could be, "You are." My answer then isn't going to help the psychology of that athlete who still thinks they're not doing enough.

So my go-to then tends to be some of those alactic power type efforts again, purely because it's a 6 to 10 second real high intensity effort. I tend to get them to do them on an assault bike or a wattbike. Just try and minimize the load again. But that feeling of doing something really hard... It's a long rest period. So although it's quite fatiguing on the central nervous system, overall, I don't think it's going to have too much impact on the following day so long as I program it right.

And also with the other type of work that I try to do in camp which is a slightly higher focus on force expression, slightly higher focus on more speed and power work. That alactic power I think contributes quite nicely to that and works quite well with that.

So that tends to be my go-to. If someone comes to me and says, "I'm not doing enough," I'll give them a little bit of alactic power work to do. And most times that tends to leave people pretty comfortable. They feel like they're doing that real high intensity effort. And I'm comfortable then not just going out and doing loads of repeat hill sprints, big lactic sessions that are taking them two, three days to recover from and ultimately impacting the training a little bit.

James de Lacey57:17

Well, coming up to an hour now, James. This has been an awesome podcast so far. Is there anything else you want to add to the conversation? And if not, maybe do you want to give where people can follow your work and what you're doing?

James Langford57:28

Yeah, sure. No, I don't, I've got too much to add really. I don't think I've got too much to add. I just, my advice for any whether you're amateur taekwondo player or amateur MMA player is when it comes to looking at your training, just always start with your technical stuff in mind and then try to put everything else in around that.

So, just go back to what we spoke about before, make your hard days hard, make your easy days easy. Don't make your life any harder than it needs to be, really. In terms of other stuff going on, yeah, you can... My, I mainly put a lot of stuff on Instagram right now because everyone does. It's a good place to try and grab some attention, try to build a little bit of a supposed business following. So, yeah, my Instagram name is @JLPerformanceCoach.

So, I put a lot of stuff on there at the minute and actually myself and one of the physios that I used to work with at taekwondo, we're just in the process of launching a little side project called Fight Ready. The concept is basically what we're trying to offer professional fighters a, I suppose more of a professional sport type support in what we do.

So, we've both recently been working with this MMA fighter who came back from Thailand, had his fight. He was in Atlanta last weekend, actually. And he'd injured his knee the last training, the last fight before, sorry, his last training session before he went out to his fight. So, he was doing his next camp in Manchester and he phoned me and said, "James, I'd like to work with you for this next camp, but my knee is not feeling quite right, but I'm pretty sure we're good." And I said to him, I was like, "Sweet, but I don't want to accept pretty sure. I'm not comfortable as a necessity with pretty sure. I want to know where we're at."

So, I recommended him to the physio Ben Harper that I work with quite a lot at Taekwondo who I refer all my guys to. Anyway, this athlete went there. Saw Ben for some rehab and then would come see me in the gym. So, Ben would give me some bits to put into his gym session. I had feedback for Ben about how he was getting on.

And almost one of the athletes we see at Taekwondo was we gave him this integrated physio S&C approach which I think is quite rare. Anyone who does any private work knows sometimes it can be quite hard work having physio here, S&C here, and not necessarily collaborate as much as we probably should.

And the feedback from this fighter was phenomenal. He was like, "This, you know, I've never had this before. I've always had my physio here, my S&C here, but to have both of you collaborating and working together is great. I've never really had this." So, that was a bit of a light bulb moment for both of us where we went, "Maybe there's something in this. Maybe and it's probably not accessible to your low-level amateurs or your low-level pros. We're talking your quite established fighters."

But yeah, that's just a little side project we're running at the minute which is fight_ready_performance on Instagram. And yeah, those are probably the two main places to find me, really.

James de Lacey1:00:36

I'll link those up in the description anyway of the YouTube and Spotify and whatever other podcast platform people are listening on. But thanks for coming on, James. Really appreciate you sharing your knowledge to the audience as well. And we'll hopefully chat soon.

James Langford1:00:52

Yeah, no worries, man. It's been great. Thanks for having me on. Cheers.