Finding Transfer From Training To Fight Night w/ Reiss Silva (SSOF Ep 153)

Reiss Silva2:10

All in rugby. Rugby and rugby league.

James de Lacey2:23

I just keep this all in the podcast. We'll make this the intro for anyone listening. And then... I was interested. So I guess other people listening will probably like to hear a bit more about it.

Reiss Silva2:23

All rugby rugby league. Started back home with our rugby league team interning and picked, you just say yes to everything that comes up at that time. Then moved overseas, worked in professional rugby union. Moved back to New Zealand, was our women's rugby league team. Went back overseas to America to work in the major league rugby when it first started.

And then moved back to Romania again to work with their national team for the World Cup and the sevens for the Olympic cycle. And then COVID and all that happened, and then moved online and then the rest is this. Rest is history. That's the short version.

James de Lacey3:03

I lived in New Zealand for two years. I lived in Wellington. So that was actually the start of me starting my own thing was that I was in a career job, we'll call it. And I remember sitting down and having a chat with my granddad and he was like, "Oh, it's amazing the career job you're in." It was Thames Water.

He said, "That's exactly what I did at your age, and then you can go on to this and then this, then this, and this, and you could be where I am in 50 years time." And I just almost I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I thought, I don't know what I want to do with my life, but it's definitely not that.

And so within about two months, I booked a flight to New Zealand to go traveling and just camper van around for three months. Ended up staying for like two and a half years, living in Wellington for most of that. And then once I done with that and came back I was like okay I know what I want to do now, it's the coaching thing, it's my hobby, let me just dive into it.

So I was from London living there but I went to uni Leeds. But when I came back I kind of just thought you know what, let me get out of London away from family away from friends and just dive into this thing properly. And it was kind of good as well because boxing was picking up in Leeds and Sheffield and I knew if I located myself there I would have a good kind of reach to local fighters and things like that. So that's kind of where it started.

Reiss Silva4:27

That's awesome. That's such a good little intro for yourself, too. Funnily enough, my only job has been coaching since I was 14. I was coaching tennis. That's my first job. Coaching tennis at my local tennis club, and I did that for like almost 10 years.

James de Lacey4:41

I guess it's very rare. It's very rare you hear someone who hasn't done something before, right? Like most coaches come on and say, "Oh yeah, I was playing sports. I didn't quite make it and, I'd always into it, so I wanted to go down that." Very rarely hear especially at a younger age getting into coaching.

Reiss Silva4:41

Like I was doing bits and bobs with football teams and things like that, coaching my mates, going to the gym but not paid for it. And then you get a few of your friends like, "Oh I'm having knee issues, do you mind just giving me some exercises to do?" and all that stuff. Taking, well quote unquote, S&C at my boxing gym which wasn't S&C it was just all the stuff I hate now, just loads of volume and loads of circuits and stuff.

James de Lacey5:06

You got to start somewhere. Let's dive into that. Let's just start there. Let's start there with traditional approach.

So, I guess that would be like a really traditional approach in most gyms. I mean, understandable. The coaches aren't, they don't have that background. It's kind of just like just do work to do work. So, want to maybe just describe okay what usually goes on and then maybe your thoughts around that and what your kind of, I guess your kind of philosophy is around that, conditioning for fighters.

Reiss Silva5:46

I think the circuits is a big one, isn't it? I think if you go into most boxing gyms, they're doing some form of circuit training, press-ups, pull-ups, maybe some med stuff. Burpees. A lot of burpees. It's everything's really hard. So I think there's a lot of circuits going on. A lot of fighters do running as well, a lot of road running, a lot of 10Ks, a lot of 5Ks, a lot of sprints as well.

And I've done this as a fighter as well, right? Yeah, I have. I would say I've been trained for fights and done things completely wrong. So I kind of understand why fighters do it because you're brought up on it and it's all you see. You go to the boxing gym, there's circuits, press-ups, so you fall into it.

But it's just not the optimal thing. And I think it's a reason why a lot of fighters are gassing out. That's the reason I gassed out in fights. I used to train so hard, but when it came to sparring or it came to fight night, something wasn't adding up. And I guess most my coaching now is learning from my own mistakes as I think most good coaches do. I hold my hands up and say I've done some terrible things in prep for fights. We've done terrible things as coaches.

There was something really that stood out for me in terms of condition was that I was like, man, I'm doing these circuits. I'm doing these sprints. I'm running 5, 10K. My times are getting better. But on fight night, two rounds in, I'm done. Like, I'm done. I can't throw shots. And now all of a sudden, I'm thinking like, okay, how do I just survive? How do I just get through this fight now?

So, I think that's typically what fighters tend to do. It's the old school of just working hard. My philosophy now as a coach is very much, and it changes over time. It's probably changed a lot in the last 6 to 12 months as well, but it's very much sport first. That's my approach is that the sport is the main thing, becoming a better fighter is the main thing and the S&C should just help you do that to a better standard and more effective really.

So yeah, I'd say that's my approach and that comes down to, and we can dive into this, like looking at what sort of skill sessions you're doing and what they're actually ticking off. What's your sparring like? Because I think, we tend to say sparring is the best form of conditioning, which it can be, but if you're the best fighter in your gym, is it really the best form of conditioning?

I'm not sure. Is the intensity high enough? Vice versa, if you're in a gym where maybe you're fighting guys that are heavier than you because that's all that's available, is the intensity enough there? So there's all these things we have to take into consideration when it comes to conditioning, but I think a sport first approach is essentially what I like to do and then we fill the blanks with the conditioning around that.

James de Lacey8:51

Perfect. I've got a bunch of questions to throw at you from that. I'll just throw it down. So, it sounds like then most of the stuff you're doing, I guess the traditional stuff you found that it didn't quite transfer from what you were doing on the road circuits to what you're doing in the ring.

So you mentioned I guess some of the things that you look at now with sports first regarding I'm assuming this is to help bring that transfer from what you're doing in training into sparring and fight. So you mentioned skill sessions like what that kind of makeup is and then I guess modifying sparring based on intensity.

So how are you then modifying or are you modifying some of these sessions to be able to bring more I guess conditioning adaptations that transfer better to fight night?

Reiss Silva9:23

Honest answer is it's a process. Because we've got the perfect scenario of what we'd love all fighters to do, right? But if you've just got a fighter coming in and you say to them, "Okay, I need you to cut down on your running. I need you to do XY Z," they probably haven't got the buy in or the trust to actually implement what you want them to do right away.

So, it's more of a process in over time changing one or two things and as you go camp on camp, they're seeing results, they're building trust in you, then you can start changing a few more bits. So definitely I mean perfect scenario is that you are in control of their week schedule.

You know what's going on. So boxing's a little bit more easy than MMA because there's so much going on. But you know the sort of intensity from wrestling sessions, jiu-jitsu sessions, Thai boxing sessions, and not just what you think the intensity is, but actually tracking that, let's just say with a heart rate monitor to see what it actually is.

Because again, we could assume wrestling's really hard, really fatiguing, but when they're going to the wrestling class, there's mixed abilities there and they're changing partners every so often. And so it's more capacity work than it is high intensity work. So yeah, we get a gauge of what sessions they're doing, what intensities they are. We can start grouping these and then start mapping out their week schedule to make sure they're getting everything in, but they're ticking off kind of all the things they need to in order to be well conditioned for the sport.

James de Lacey10:54

Nice. And then so you obviously mentioned about potentially cutting down running if they have to buy in and stuff. If you're cutting down running, what are you doing? Are you doing anything in place of that? Are you doing something else? Are you modifying the running? What's happening?

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Reiss Silva12:09

So, I'll be honest. I put a post out about this the other day about make running great again. Because I think it gets bashed a lot, right? Running, which I do understand because it's more aimed at people who are running three, four, five times a week and just doing 5ks or 10ks. That I understand that is a little bit tongue and cheek, but I actually quite like running.

And the reason I always keep it into my programs is one as almost just to kind of manage weight a little bit, slower, steady stuff, as like a recovery run, but also because I know if I've got a fighter, especially a boxer, they've probably been running their whole career or their whole life from a young age. And I know the mental side of running and what they get out of it.

And so if I take it completely out, that can have a lot of friction between the relationship for the fighter first and foremost because if they say they're not going to run when they've run all their life, they probably are still running and not telling you. That's just the honest truth of it.

So, I'd rather meet them halfway and say, "Look, okay, running's probably not the most optimal, especially doing it every single day, but why don't we dose it in here this style, slower, longer duration, and have that on a Wednesday when it's more recovery type stuff. Keep it nice and slow. And then over here, we're going to do our more high intensity stuff."

So, I do keep running in. I do like it, but we just manage the training loads because too much running can really cause some serious issues.

James de Lacey13:46

What's some examples of maybe some higher intensity running? And then do you also have other I guess modalities you like to use for your high intensity conditioning?

Reiss Silva13:46

Yeah. And I mean like if we're looking at energy systems in the most basic form, right? People will probably understand you got your alactic, lactic, and your aerobic system. Now we know that you can't train them independently, but let's say we're training them independently. It depends on the athlete when they come in for sort of assessments just to see where they're weaker.

What I tend to find just through experience is that a lot of fighters have a good aerobic base anyway. So they don't need a lot in order to tick off that box. And if you look at their sport sessions, a lot of the pad work, even the bag work is kind of ticking off enough to do that.

So if they want to run slow and steady, we'll put half an hour in on a Saturday maybe just to finish off the week. So they kind of feel like they're getting a little bit of that good stuff as well. But then we're really focusing on what's holding back their performance.

And again from just for experience what I found is it's the real high intensity stuff. And when people listening to this when they think they're doing high intensity stuff, go up another two levels. And that's what I'm talking about as high intensity because a lot of fighters would say that they're pushing hard, but they need to be pushing harder than they've pushed in any other session of the week in order to tick off what we're doing.

So, an example of that is I love the assault bike for this kind of stuff because it's easy to use, low risk of injury, and they can actually go all out. So something that we might use here is if we're say doing more alactic stuff, it might be 6 to 8 seconds absolutely all out and then resting for a good 2 minutes and doing that four, five, six times just to work on that quote unquote power type stuff.

But the one that I find really effective at the minute and where a lot of the guys struggle with, we do this in testing actually just to sort of see where they're at, is 20 seconds all out maximal. Go balls to the wall, hold nothing back. You should be getting off thinking, "[expletive], I don't want to do that again."

And then resting for like a good minute and a half, I'd say, and then going again and again. So, three times just to see how well they're able to maintain that absolute maximum effort. They usually can't. They usually can't. There's normally a big drop off in wattage.

So, in answer to your question, yeah, we do do a lot of the sort of lower longer intensity stuff, but a lot of their sports going to be ticking that off. So where I tend to focus is that real high intensity stuff which we can tag on to the end of their strength sessions or even end of their MMA sessions sometimes if they got the equipment.

And then outside of that depending on where they're at, we might do some more kind of like high intensity longer duration stuff. So sort of 3 to 5 minute intervals working more at the red zone. And I like to sort of pre-camp, maybe do a little bit more kind of threshold things just to kind of set them up a little bit for the work to come.

James de Lacey17:00

What the 20 second test you mentioned there, what are you taking or how does that influence then what you prescribe them conditioning wise?

Reiss Silva17:00

So again, so I'm online now, right? So this is where we have to live in the real world.

There's loads of stuff. There's some you've had some brilliant guests on your podcast as well who do some real crazy smart stuff, right? People way smarter than me. And so they're doing work in the lab where they can really monitor stuff down to a tea, maybe even muscle oxygen levels and all this kind of great stuff.

I'm online so I have to keep it realistic in terms of what I can track and what the athlete's going to do. I would say my testing isn't directly kind of changing everything I'll do from a programming standpoint, but it's just kind of giving me a little bit of information to know, okay, they struggle to do X, so I need to feed a little bit more of that stuff in.

But essentially, what I'm looking at there is, and we use watts because it's the easiest one. It's the thing you can engage from the assault bike when you're doing it from distance, is just to see, okay, if they're going all out. So what I normally get them to do is to film the screen so I can see it in time and how it's dropping at what points.

But just are they able to go absolutely pull, ATP completely out of them and then are they able to regenerate, recover and do that again. Because that's going to tell us a lot about where they're at in terms of their conditioning because typically that is going to be quite similar or as close to being similar as a fight's going to be because, what it's like when you're fighting.

It's that I've got nothing left. That's when people gas out. And so just for experience, that's the closest that I can get to seeing how they're probably going to respond to their sparring. And then off the back of that, if let's say there is really big drop-offs, they're not able to maintain that.

It's like, okay, this real high intensity stuff, we need to be scattering in your program somewhere because the chances are they've been running a lot. They got a good base. They're doing high intensity stuff for longer durations, 3 minutes pad work, bag work, all that kind of stuff.

They're doing repeated power type stuff where bag work might be, 10 seconds on, 20 seconds light, 10, all that kind of stuff. So, they're ticking off a lot of the stuff they need, but that real leave it all out there, go maximal maximal tends to be the area that they're not really getting elsewhere.

James de Lacey19:40

Do you have a little guideline for the listeners maybe of how often you're looking to do that per week or where you typically like to place it? Best case scenario or maybe realistic case scenario where it fits.

Reiss Silva19:52

Yeah, to be honest. So I would keep it in definitely throughout most of the program, to be honest, but just in different doses. So for example, we might do something like a, like I just mentioned there, 20 seconds on. We might give them longer rest times in order to just kind of get peak wattage up a little bit and as we progress through start playing around with the rest times and make them shorter and I'd keep that pretty much through the whole time because it's the thing they need to work on.

As they're getting closer to fight night, especially that last three weeks, things tend to step up a notch in their sparring and that kind of stuff. So, ideally, we would track sparring and see where it's at.

And if they've had a hard spar, which you can tell from, let's say, heart rate data and them talking to you and saying, no, he was a good kid. It was a really good spar, all this kind of stuff, then we might just reduce it down a little bit and maybe only do one day a week on the same day they're doing a strength session.

But even on fight week, I like to have something maximal in maybe on the Tuesday, Wednesday because couple of reasons really. I feel like one it makes, it allows them to do something powerful before they're fighting and then that mentally is really good but it just almost keeps the system primed and firing and ready to go.

But on fight week that might be something like 6 seconds all out and then just take a good minute off and then do that six times. So they're only doing 36 seconds which isn't a lot of volume but it's a really high intensity.

So that's kind of how I would fill it in around camps. But main point is just making sure that you're just not overdoing it. You're taking into consideration what they're doing from other sessions, sparring and that kind of stuff. And then you can sort of pop it in when's best suitable.

James de Lacey21:44

So are you kind of modifying it depending on, if the sparring was, I guess, perceived as hard or the heart rate shows it's difficult or if it's easier, you're kind of doing a little more sprint volume? Is that kind of what you're looking at?

Reiss Silva21:58

Yeah, I would say so. And I'm big on teaching my guys to autoregulate. And I think that's one of the best tools as coaches we can teach an athlete is okay, you wake up one day, you've got a really hard day planned, but you're feeling absolutely fried.

What do you do? And maybe tomorrow you got sparring. So we know you can't just keep pushing through when you're feeling terrible. You need to be able to adjust and because schedule's changed all the time. So even as a coach, if you set up their training week and it's all good, you got high days, low days, recovery days, all these kind of things, it very rarely sticks to that schedule.

So one of the things that I'm really big on is just saying to the guys, look, and teaching them over time that if you come to a strength session or a conditioning session and you're feeling fried, you feel really sore, just adjust what you're doing a little bit.

Maybe you keep the intensity, but you drop a set. All right. So, instead of doing three sets, now you're only going to do two. Maybe when it comes to the assault bike, you're just going to see how it goes. When you get to the point after five reps and you're scheduled to do eight, but you're just going through the motions now, just cut it there because it's pointless.

It's just junk at that point. So, I kind of leave it to them to decide and we'll control stuff where we can. But because most of the time, especially online, I'm not there. They're going to be going to the gym before they've heard back from me.

So, it's important that they know how to adjust their sessions and how to move things around when they need it based on how they feel. And vice versa. I'll sometimes say to them, if you're feeling great and you've got three sets, you can pop another set out if you're feeling good.

Don't worry about that. We have to take advantage of those good days as well. So yeah, I think that's part of the coaching process where we'll schedule it in, we'll program it, but at the same time, we need to teach these guys how to actually adjust on the fly themselves.

James de Lacey23:56

Nice. I have a question in the live chat for you, too. And he's asking, what kind of performance on the sprints indicates to you that a fighter is elite or fight ready, being able to produce a certain power or being able to do a certain work to rest ratio?

Reiss Silva24:11

Okay. Yeah. So I would look at, watts per kilo of body weight would probably be again being online that's the easiest one that I can adjust or sorry, look at. So I would look at and you can, there's like world-class standards here right? So I think if you were looking at a world-class fighter it would be somewhere maybe between 15 times body weight or something like that. Sorry, 15 watts per kilo of body weight. That would probably be world class.

But again, when I get these guys in, you can have all, and this is something I've been guilty of myself. You've got all these kind of metrics that you're trying to get them to and you're comparing them to at the start, like this is where you are.

But I know most people that come in to see us, they're not hitting those metrics. They're probably in the bottom range of what we'd call maybe even intermediate or something like that. So, I'm not too interested about measuring that up against world level athletes or anything like that.

Some of the guys like to know just out of interest, but it's more over time is that wattage going up? Is the average for the sets going up? Is that watts per kilo of body weight going up? And these are all indications that the program is actually working.

That's the most important thing, right? Is what you're doing from a training standpoint actually working. But to answer the question, I would probably look at your watts per kilo of body weight and just see if that's going up to, 10, 15, 20 as unbelievable.

James de Lacey25:52

You could also have someone come and hit those numbers and they're a [expletive] fighter.

Reiss Silva25:52

Keep in mind, yeah, that's the fun and games of S&C, right? There's so many world champions who wouldn't hit numbers in the gym and vice versa.

There's so many that do and so there's a lot of variables with it. All we can do is just take the athlete, make him as athletic as possible and then let that transfer to them actually fighting. But yeah, there's so many variables.

Like you say, you can get a guy come in and absolutely smash it, but he can't slip a jab and then it's pointless.

James de Lacey26:24

You mentioned obviously making them athletic. Let's jump into some of the, I guess the strength side of the equation of strength and conditioning.

I'm going to make this very general, but just kind of the overarching kind of strength training philosophy that you have for your fighters.

Reiss Silva26:41

So, I'd say two areas really, right? I've never met a fighter who you just get them strong as possible and get them moving their body weight as quick as possible who hasn't performed better. I think they're the two low-hanging fruits for most fighters.

And then you got obviously the stuff in the middle which would be sort of like your power stuff that you can focus on. Definitely at the start, most fighters aren't strong enough. So just get them as strong as possible and get them moving their body weight as quick as possible, and that together, you got both ends of sort of like the force velocity curve there and that's going to, a lot of the middle stuff will take care of itself and that's going to be a solid start I would say.

But in terms of my philosophy, it's changed again because, you start and you have the prep phase, strength phase, power phase, and then you taper off, right? But again, being realistic, is that really applicable to the fighter today? And just through my own experience now, I would say no because we're living in a day and age now where opportunities come within a week or two notice now, an opportunity to change your life sometimes, to get paid a lot of money, to get a fight that's going to change your life, your family's life.

And so that sort of block periodization of going through all those different phases doesn't support or lend itself well to your fighter getting called up and saying, "Look, someone's injured. You got two weeks. Do you want this?" And so I've changed in what I'm doing.

And now we still, obviously have emphasis of what we're working on in terms of are we prepping them? Are we looking to develop strength? Are we working more speed? We've obviously got the main outcome for the block. But honestly, through my programs now we're working on everything at any one time, and depending on what the focus is, we just manipulate the volumes of each.

So, for example, my sessions now are pretty much prep work where you might do a little bit of if you got any rehab that you need to do, we get it done there because if you leave it to the end, they're not going to do it. So, we get some of that in and just prime them for the session.

We'll then do a jump, a throw, and a sprint of some kind. Now sprinting doesn't mean max effort sprinting because fighters don't really need to do that, but a sprint might be more around acceleration because that first three, four steps, the force production really important for fighting, shooting a takedown for example in MMA.

And then we go into our main lift. So whether that's strength, we go sort of heavy lower reps, or whether it's power, we might do some forms of Olympic weightlifting. If it's close to fight night, we might do some contrast training with isometrics into an explosive exercise, something like that.

So, we have the main lift and then we just finish off nicely with a little bit of accessory work, which tends to be core work, maybe a weakness area that they need to build up or anything that's prone to getting injured.

And depending on where we are in the block, we just go heavier on the strength work if that's the focus. If it's close to fight night, we drop off on the strength work and we go higher in the quick contact plyometrics and jumps and that kind of stuff.

But on the whole, we are training pretty much the same way regardless whether you're 10 weeks out or you're off camp because over the last three, four years, well, five years now since lockdown, fighters have to be ready. They have to be ready. And as an S&C coach, if you got a fighter who can't be at their best for a massive opportunity, that could be your job on the line.

James de Lacey30:22

For sure. I actually did a video actually [expletive] on block periodization a little while ago. If anyone's interested, just search Sweet Science of Fighting Russian, it should probably pop up. But yeah, I fully agree with you on the block stuff. It's massively, I want to, should I say overused? Maybe it's potentially, I think it's where most maybe people come in first when they look at training, especially fighters, because it's so easy to just think I'm doing this one thing then I'm going to do that one thing and it just makes it I guess easy to organize maybe for people in their head versus you can still train everything at once.

Reiss Silva31:01

I think so because as well, if you're looking at the blocks as well, realistically you need 16 weeks for a camp really if you're doing block periodization just to actually for it to be beneficial. And I've been in this game doing fight specifically now for eight years and I could probably count on one hand the times where I've had 16 weeks to take a fighter through, start a camp through to fight night. It even at the top level it doesn't happen.

You could have a world champion come in after fighting, take 2, 3 weeks holiday to really digest and switch off. They come back in, they're like, "Hey, I'm fighting in 10 weeks." Like 16 weeks for me, it's just not realistic. I've very rarely had it. I'd say average time is probably 10 weeks, 12 weeks max. So, I feel it just, yeah, I agree with you. It's just not optimal in terms of prepping a fighter.

James de Lacey31:44

I had a question in the chat just to go back to conditioning before we continue on. Best way to build anaerobic stamina with zero equipment which is not running. Oh, good question.

Reiss Silva31:57

So, this comes back to the whole debate of are our fighters training at the right intensity because you immediately think, oh, no body weights, let's hit Tabata circuits. If you do Tabata correctly, and I think I've actually heard you mention this in one of your podcasts before, if you do Tabata properly, that's not a nice thing to do. It is horrible, right? But most of the time when people are doing these kind of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, it becomes very 70% intensity, becomes very just going through the motions, right?

So it's not actually ticking off the high intensity stuff, the anaerobic stuff that we actually want. So I would say it's very hard to get that right stimulus with no equipment. It's why I love the assault bike because, and having the watts as well, because you can actually measure it. You can see the effort. You can go all out with body weight.

It's very hard when you're not trying to move something else to have that intensity and go absolutely all out. You could potentially try med ball slams, high knees maxed out, that kind of stuff, but I would say very quickly the intensity is going to drop and it's going to become, more aerobic anyway, 70%, and you're going to be going through the motions.

So, my best advice would be just sign up to a really low-cost gym, 15 quid a month, 20 quid a month, and get in there, push the sled, use the assault bike, use the watt bike because intensity is king when it comes to developing that part of your energy system.

James de Lacey33:49

Perfect. And to come back to the strength stuff, so you mentioned you like to do jump sprints, plyo, well jump sprints, throws initially, then you go into your heavy strength work. Is it typically a full body approach? You upper or lower? What are you looking at?

Reiss Silva34:03

Yeah, so typically full body. So when I program for my guys, it's normally two sessions a week. Some of them may potentially do a third, but 90% of people are just doing two because I feel recovery is so important. And at that point, it's how much am I getting out in the third session? You're probably better off just having that as recovery. So, two sessions, full body approach.

And what we try and tend to do over the two sessions is tick off our different sort of movement patterns. So even from our jumps, one jump for example might be vertical. So you might do something really simple like a countermovement jump and then in the other session you might have a horizontal force production. So a broad jump for example.

Same with med balls. We might go overhead toss so more vertical. We might go chest throw or something like that as a horizontal push. So we're ticking off everything within the two sessions. When it comes to strength, yeah, we do typically do upper body lift on the first day, lower body on the second day.

And again through the accessory movements and core, we're trying to get, vertical, horizontal push, pull, some rotation as well, which is obviously really important. And the same thing with the core, trying to tick off rotation, lateral flexion, and all that kind of jazz as well. So, through those two sessions, yeah, full body approach, but we'll tick off everything we need to.

James de Lacey35:20

You mentioned as well you typically like to to kind of be either end of kind of that load velocity spectrum. You like to be heavy or you like to be pretty much no load. Do you ever, I mean you mentioned some of the Olympic weightlifting stuff. So it sounds like you do, you might do a little bit in the middle but is there much that you like to do lightly or moderately loaded ballistic wise or weightlifting wise?

Reiss Silva35:44

So I do like Olympic lifting variations. What I found through experience is the time it takes to teach these guys how to do a full Olympic lift, it just, it takes too long. And then there's obviously injury risks that come with it.

And also intent. When we're doing these exercises, intent and moving the bar fast is the priority. And so if the lifts get too complicated, you're immediately losing the purpose of that exercise. So I like to keep it simple, things like maybe some trap bar high pulls, hang cleans maybe or hang pulls. But I really like very lightly loaded med ball exercises, throws, tosses, punches, all these kind of things.

Love them. And this is something I've been thinking about recently is that I used to do a lot of, you know, as coaches we go through strength, speed, speed, strength, we were loading it with these different percentages. But I'm not sure now if that was really carrying over to their performance.

And I'm not sure, and I guess I'll figure this out over the coming months. And I'll be interested to hear your thoughts about this actually, mate. I'm not sure if, for example, like trap jump, let's take, because that's what a lot of people commonly do.

I don't know if that's training their power and developing their power or they're just displaying their power. They're just expressing it by doing the trap bar jump. I'm not entirely sure. I'm leaning towards that it's just expressing power as opposed to training it.

But I'm not entirely sure. And that's why at the moment I do tend to go either end of the scale and then scatter in some of those lighter, more explosive exercises to sort of tick off more type speed stuff. But what do you think on that out of interest?

James de Lacey37:41

To me, I think everything is an expression of force. So every exercise you do because it all has a coordinative component. I don't think just because something has load means that it's just expressing power because the intent behind it, you are developing qualities like rate of force development, kind of stuff that we often talk about.

So you're still getting a lot out of it just because it is loaded. And I know a lot of people will talk about, like, it's loaded so it's slower. So because it's slower it doesn't transfer as much. But it's like, even a jump isn't that fast.

If you're going to compare it to throwing strike where you're looking at under 250, 300 milliseconds to produce force, or if you're sprint cycling at over 120 RPMs you're looking at 250 milliseconds to produce force. You're not reaching that doing a countermovement jump as an example.

So yeah, I think there is benefits to doing it. I believe there was a paper that showed training across the different loads led to greater increases in, man I'm going to butcher it, some kind of outcomes compared to just training above and below. So I still like to train it. I think there's benefit to it, especially grapplers as well because you have to move other human beings. So moving, I think that's just my thoughts.

Reiss Silva38:48

Absolutely. And I think I've, you know, I go high and low a lot. But like I said, we do sprinkle in that, you know, Olympic lift variations, med balls, even moderate med balls and things like that as well. Because I never want to, when I'm unsure of something in particular, I never want to take things out when I'm not entirely sure where I'm at with it yet.

So, we definitely keep it in and yeah, I guess it's something that will definitely progress over the coming months.

James de Lacey39:21

I've got a ton of questions on the chat here for you now. So, first one, thoughts on using isometrics to build tendon stiffness for more force transfer.

Reiss Silva39:37

Yeah. So, I love isometrics. We use isometrics. We've got various types of isometrics. What I tend to do is use overcoming. So pushing into an immovable object in the last kind of 3 weeks of camp. Because we need that stimulus from it where it's muscle fiber recruitment, you know, getting the CNS fired up. We need that.

We need that strength stimulus, but when they're in their heaviest weeks of sparring and things like that, we don't really want to be overloading them in terms of lifting the weight. So I love isometrics, overcoming isometrics with that. I love pairing it with some explosive exercise doing more sort of contrast complex type training.

Love them. Love them for tendon health as well, which I think they're probably underused in. We hear a lot about the overcoming for strength maintenance and that kind of stuff, but I love it for tendon health. Isometrics are just beautiful.

They're really good. Slow eccentrics as well. But yielding. So, for example, if you've got an Achilles tendon injury, doing a calf raise, holding your heel off the floor and just holding that where you're stopping your heel from dropping, they're really good.

I think the great thing there from that, why they're so effective is because you can just control it a little bit more. You know the weight you're holding, you know the time you're doing, and you know the position you're in. So, it's a lot more controlled in terms of making each week similar and progressing it. So yeah, love isometrics for sure.

James de Lacey41:09

Do you have some examples of those complexes or contrasts you like to do with the isometrics?

Reiss Silva41:09

Yeah, so we would do typically, let's say, bench press in the mid-range where you're pushing up against an immovable object and then we might go into two or three reps each side, explosive med ball punches, sometimes with a countermovement.

We might do hinge position, rack pull where you can't move it, deadlift position almost, and then go into broad jump or something like that. That's really good.

I love in fight week actually, what we sometimes do on the Tuesday is we kind of combine the conditioning along with their strength stuff. So we'll do almost what I call like an alactic power circuit. Terrible name, but that's just where we're at.

Where we might do something like an isometric pull. So you're pulling, you can't move it, and then going into banded pulls as well. Bench press into med ball throws or med punches each body part. And they're doing that every minute on the minute and just moving between the stations for 15 minutes. I really like that.

James de Lacey42:14

Nice. Nice. Hopefully that's something listeners can take away. Got Andrew Usher in the chat too deciding to ask some physiology stuff. Is combat sports anaerobic or isn't more the case that combat sports physiologically is aerobic given intensity drives substrate utilization? Andrew much more smarter guy than I am. You could probably answer that way better than me.

Reiss Silva42:30

But I'd say, yeah, I'd say, so we often, I spoke to, I've completely forgotten his name now. It'll come back to me. But anyway, I would say aerobic to be honest because that's going to drive recovery. That's going to allow you to do what you need to do from an anaerobic standpoint to be honest. And that's why I like a lot of my guys having that real solid aerobic base.

Because I think it dictates a lot of what we do. And I think on the whole there's this whole, you know, anaerobic, aerobic divide. But when we're actually looking at anything, you know, after the first rep or two, everything's working at the same time.

So, are we ever really anaerobic or aerobic? Probably not. We're pretty much utilizing everything at the same time. Yeah, I'm not sure if that answered the question, but I think it does.

James de Lacey43:32

Oh, all good. All good. Have more questions in the chat. Any target numbers, standards for trap bar high pull or numbers you've seen KO artists hit?

Reiss Silva43:47

So this goes back to what we said, right? There's so many variables. I would love to say that you hit this number in the gym on my program that you're going to start KOing people because I could charge a [expletive] ton.

James de Lacey44:11

Oh, we would be rich, wouldn't we?

Reiss Silva44:11

But unfortunately, there's so many variables. I know some strong, strong guys who don't get any stoppages. Vice versa, I know some guys who come in the program early doors, numbers were okay, but they're one punch sleeping people.

When we're looking at, especially punching from a sports standpoint, and this is why I got kind of a little bit of an issue with coaches sometimes who say, you know, do this to improve, well, not improve punch, but to get knockout power. Because it's like, okay, but if you look at a knockout, most of the time it's going to be a counter punch.

It depends on the time of the round. It depends, you know, if it is a counter punch or not, where the punch lands, are they moving onto the shot? Are they riding it? There's so many variables away from the strength.

But in terms of trap bar high pull specifically, we normally just use percentages. So 40% if we're doing a little bit lighter in that sort of speed strength phase, going up to 60% if it's more strength speed. But in terms of the trap bar itself to get that numbers, I always say as a minimum the guys should be lifting double their body weight on the trap bar.

Trying to push that to two and a half times body weight and then three times body weight is elite. Where is probably diminishing returns after that point to keep trying to get stronger on that particular exercise.

James de Lacey45:21

Nice. You mentioned the trap bar high pull. I'm assuming he means like an actual high pull like when you're doing it.

Reiss Silva45:35

So, yeah. So, what we do, we do exactly the same. So, we do trap bar position where you're starting, you drive up onto your toes and go into almost like a shrug into that position there and then go back down.

James de Lacey45:53

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of pull variations over deadlifts for that one reason is that you accelerate it all the way up. Whereas the deadlift you're decelerating. More, I got more questions for you. People are keen to hear from you.

So how can you balance strength training, cardio, explosive training and skill training? That would be a good one just for overarching. Maybe what a typical training week would look like. I think that would be a good one. So just cover so he's condition. So basically strength, conditioning, and session, everything. Yeah. How we structure a week.

Reiss Silva46:22

So, first and foremost, I'd caveat it with if you're an amateur fighter and you're new to the sport, maybe you're not very good at the sport yet, right? So, in your first two years, just go and train your sport as much as you can because that's the main thing, skill level. You're also going to be getting a lot of your conditioning through the sport as well. That's what I say that.

But to give an idea of what a typical week would look like. So we tend to have two strength sessions and three conditioning for boxers. So we'll go for a boxer one first and then I'll show you what MMA is different. So two S&C sessions, recovery run as well.

So typically Monday to Friday they would box, let's say, in the morning and that might be pad work, it might be a spar, whatever it might be. So it might be Monday tech work, Monday afternoon strength. It might be Tuesday spar, let's say. Tuesday afternoon conditioning. It might be then lower intensity day on a Wednesday, maybe some tech work and then maybe a little bit of a recovery run in the afternoon. Thursday will be very similar to to Monday then. So they go tech work and strength session two.

Friday they spar again, finish off with some conditioning and then depending on the athlete, some of them rest the whole weekend. Some of them like to go in and do something on a Saturday. So that Saturday session becomes a little bit of what do they need now? They've done everything they need. What's the added bonus that they might need to work on? Is it a third strength session? Is it some more technical work? Whatever it might be.

The difference when it comes to MMA now is we got so much to fit in. There's so much to fit in that you have to get a little bit more clever, a little bit smarter with your scheduling. So two strength sessions. And what I do with conditioning, I have conditioning like a bolt-on. So, for example, it could be bolted on to the end of their strength session. They might do their assault bike there. Or it might be bolted on to the end of their MMA sessions, depending on what session it is.

So, something like aerobic power, high-intensity, long duration intervals, 4 minutes on, 2 minutes off, let's say, where they're getting their heart rate up. They could go and do a wrestling session. Heart rate's already up. Go straight on the treadmill and box off those two or three, four minutes on, two minutes off because it's not a lot of like muscular requirement to to run. Your heart rate's going to be up. You can get the stimulus at a lower intensity.

Would I ask them to go and do the assault bike straight after wrestling? Probably not, because they're going to be fatigued. And how good's that session going to be? If they've just done a jiu-jitsu or a light tech session, then by all means now you can jump on the assault bike straight away and get your conditioning in while you're at the gym.

So with MMA, that's kind of the slight differences because there's just so much to get in. A lot of the guys are going to be training three times a day as well. So you just have to be a little bit smarter. But making sure over the course of the week you're having three hard days, right?

So let's just say Monday, I played around before with having hard sessions. So first session hard, next one medium. Too confusing. Just have three days in the week which are hard. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Making sure in between they're light or medium. You've got one full rest day at least. That's the simple things you want to be ticking off.

James de Lacey49:47

Do you ever have issues with maybe fighters who who are at gyms where every day the session's hard?

Reiss Silva49:47

Oh, absolutely. And I'd say most of them, right? Most of them are. So in a certain extent your hands are tied as the S&C coach. So what you have to do is at the start you have to control what you're doing. You have to control their strength and their conditioning because that's just the way it is, right?

Then as time goes on and the athlete starts to get a little bit more trust in you and listening to what you're saying a bit more, you can start flirting with the idea of just, planting the seed that things can't be hard all the time. And then it's just making sure that you're educating the athlete as well. Okay, you've gone really hard today, but you're sparring first thing tomorrow. Like, how you feeling?

And what we always try and do is make sure that the the training week is set up for their two spars. Like, that's where they need to be at their absolute best. So, the intensity is high. That's the main thing. And then we just sort of reverse engineer all their training week. But yeah, very commonly you're going to get fighters that are training hard all the time.

And so off the bat I just ask them, look, can we get a Wednesday lighter day in before you go again Thursday, Friday? So typically Monday, Tuesday they'll train hard. Can we add in some lighter day on a Wednesday? Thursday, Friday, go ahead, train hard again.

And that way I find that they straight away they're going to be able to just recover a little bit and make sure that they're then able to push the back end of the week because very commonly what you'll hear from fighters is oh by Thursday I'm absolutely fried, can't, it's I'm just so tired. So if we can just add in at the start little active recovery day on a Wednesday that sets them up nicely and then they can train hard the rest of the week and over time obviously then you can get a little bit more in detail with it.

James de Lacey51:40

Perfect. Hopefully that answers your question. King uh Nadish in the comments there. And I want to finish this out as well. I looked at one of your reels a couple days ago. I think it was one of the when the trend of like almost like S&C propaganda you're not falling for. And you had one about GPP. I want to jump in on that.

We probably have similar thoughts on this as well because you obviously see a lot of people talk about GPP or I mean making all strength conditioning is GPP for the sport, et cetera. Do you want to maybe dive into maybe elaborate on that a little bit?

Reiss Silva52:06

Yeah, it's again it was probably similar to make running great again that it was a little bit tongue in cheek but also I do kind of believe that in that when we talk about and I understand GPP phases, we're prepping the body for the work that's to come, we're improving movement quality, we're building an endurance base, all of these kind of things, right? I get it.

But in my experience through working with fighters I just don't know how well it really applies. I don't know how well it actually fits into schedules, into time frames that we have and into other parts of the program. And what I mean by that is like again if a fighter is coming in, again I've spoken about my my programming style that we're just staying ready now. We're training everything at all the same time.

And so the things that you typically see a GPP phase looking to improve on, we're already doing that just by training a lot of the time. And look, I know phases go into other phases. But I just don't know how having a a block doing those things that we're already doing really works in in in reality and what what I found.

And so, everything kind of, when when we're doing a a strength block, you could argue then that's almost prep phase for the power block. And when we're doing a power block, that's prep phase for the speed block. And when we're doing a speed block, that's prep phase for for the fight. So, I think it's kind of, got its principles. We still use the principles for sure, but we're just kind of doing it all year round, to be honest. Does that does that make sense?

James de Lacey53:50

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think as well now, especially when it's individuals, you get to train where it's a little easier to to to I guess be more granular in the in the approach versus having 30 or 40 athletes is you can just each, we'll call it block, but each training phase you can just attack whatever it is that needs to be improved.

So, if you're just continuously doing that, there's no quote-unquote GPP. It's just literally improving whatever it is that needs to be improved and you move on to the next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. And that's kind of just how it goes.

Reiss Silva54:28

That that is exactly it, right? Because yeah, you're looking at the data, what needs to be improved, and then you're working on it. I feel like there's this, people kind of do it from what I see because that's just what's always been done. You do a prep phase before you go into a strength block. That's just the way it's always been done. But, if you're like you say, if you're just working on the improvements each time, that's it. It's just training at the end of the day for me. It's just, it's just continual improvements. It's just you're you're training.

James de Lacey54:52

Yeah. And actually for anyone listening, if you didn't listen to the podcast before this one with James Steel, we actually went through the myth of periodization, which was actually quite cool.

So for anyone listening, you can catch up with that one. But Reiss, I think that was everything I have for you. Where can people find and follow you?

Reiss Silva55:05

So Instagram is the best place. It's Reiss_S11. I've got my podcast as well, which you are going to be a guest on in the coming weeks, which is going to be super cool.

So that's called the Unrivaled podcast. You can check that out anywhere they get their podcasts from. So that's the two main places. I am going to be starting up a YouTube soon. But we'll get to that one thing at a time.

James de Lacey55:35

Do it, man. Just do it. Instagram and short form, if I didn't have to do short form, I wouldn't [expletive] do it.

Reiss Silva55:35

I agree, mate. The YouTube, it's funny, it's the thing that I've been wanting to do for a while. Got some really cool ideas. And so I'm just going to, like you said, I'm just going to do it now.

I just upgraded my phone, so I got a new phone to go film. Got the mics. Going to go dive into it and finally get it done because I enjoy that side of things. I enjoy the longer format. So it'll be good fun.

James de Lacey56:01

Perfect. I appreciate you coming on. I'll link all your stuff down in the description for people to find you. And thanks for coming on.

Reiss Silva56:01

Pleasure, mate.