William Wayland Triphasic Training For Fighters & A Case Against The Landmine Punch (SSOF EP. 26)

William Wayland0:00

And yeah, with Cory and with Arnold, they're both great examples of like long-term athletic development process. So guys who started out in their mid-teens and just kind of got everything right from day one, whereas a lot of MMA fighters, they perhaps try and add, they find that they've got a talent for fighting and then try and add S&C in sort of a later date. And some of them struggle with that approach, whereas if you can build from the ground up as their skill development's taking place, their physical development's taking place as well.

And I find that if you want a formula there for a success athlete, like any other sport, if they start developing everything kind of early on enough, it becomes less of a hassle to try to plug that stuff in later on.

So yeah, just working with those guys for a while. Just keeping busy, working with a few Jiu-Jitsu athletes as well. I've shifted away a little bit from fighting kind of recently, working more with pro golf. And I work for the DP World Tour for their Performance Institute. But still kind of dabbling those two sports, so mixing up golf and MMA. But it works well, I enjoy the contrast for me.

And there's some lessons I carry across from one sport to the other, even though outwardly they look very, very different. Golfers are trying to produce a lot of power from a standing start, and trying to knock someone out, it's not so different. So there's that, but hopefully that's a pretty good roundup of what I've been doing just recently.

James de Lacey4:08

Yeah, for sure. I don't know if you have met Arnold Allen's dad. My wife's dad or father sent me a video from his YouTube channel of his dad.

William Wayland4:31

Rusty G, or Rusty, out to a gym.

James de Lacey4:31

Yeah, yeah, he was looking the rust.

William Wayland4:31

That's Pacer, that's Pacer's gym. Hopefully I'm going to go down with Arnold and we might do a little video maybe after the Kattar fight now, but some training at Pacer's gym. Yeah, he's a he's a legend in his own right. And he was an MMA fighter too. You can look up Pacer Allen's MMA fights. Not only was he a strongman, he also fought heavyweight MMA.

So he's been there and done it. And Pacer's a lovely guy as well. He's got some terrific stories from like the old days of strongman in like the 80s and 90s and stuff and some of the crazy things those guys were doing. So he's an interesting character. He's great to have around.

And he's been great to Arnold and his brother, because people don't realize Arnold's brother as well is an under 90 kilo strongman and is one of the best in the country. So Arnold's brother does strongman as well. So if you ever want like a genetic lottery of sorts to hit you, that's Arnold. He's not done too badly.

He's kind of handed a good one there when he stepped into the gym. And one thing we've always emphasized as part of Arnold's training is physical strength, and it shows in his fights. He's able to manhandle people, which is which is great. He's obviously had a good influence from his parents as well in that regard.

James de Lacey5:47

Starting, as you mentioned, starting earlier as a teen, I guess for anyone listening who's maybe in their teens that are fighting, or maybe parents that have kids that are coming through, what are the things that you're focusing on at that age when they're starting to prepare them for when they potentially become professionals older?

William Wayland6:11

Yeah, the key emphasis fundamentally, and this goes through from like the amateur level all the way to the highest level, is that provided your strength training is fundamental and simplistic and well-planned, it'll carry you through for a long time. And basically, quite often when you get amateur or junior level fighters in, quite often they don't really know what to focus on.

And it sounds kind of obvious. People listening to this might, I'll be interested in strength training in general or strength conditioning, and it seems like, of course, get stronger. But fighters don't always think that way. Their narrative isn't always that way rooted. They want to do stuff that they feel will perhaps help them with fighting.

And when they look at traditional strength training, we're talking basic stuff here. Squatting, deadlifting, loaded jumps, stuff like that, simple things. Particularly the guys who now, we've got a generation of fighters now raised on TikTok and Instagram, who gravitate towards the idea that their training still has to be specific. There seems to need to be a level of specificity. Whereas when you watch what a lot of the best fighters are doing a lot of the time, it's very, very fundamental, very, very basic. And that's something we push juniors towards.

And I can use Arnold as an example for instance. His training pretty much in the off-season consists of heavy trap bar deads, some heavy squatting, we do a lot of overhead pressing, push press, a few jumps, and then a little bit of accessory work. And it's a workout maybe twice a week, and it's no more complicated than that. People see his training and they're like, this stuff looks far too simple. And I think they're looking for like a silver bullet or something.

And I do do a few special methods with him, but 80, 90% of what we do is fundamentals. And trying to get juniors and even recreational or amateur fighters into that mindset that their strength training doesn't need to be particularly complicated, because you've got enough complexity coming through the sport that you don't need to add to that with your strength and conditioning.

So quite often, if you reduce your strength and conditioning down to simplistic components, I need to improve my force capabilities, I need to improve my ballistic capabilities, and one or two of those focuses with your training, you probably can't go wrong. But it's when people try and have the gym work resemble the fighting in any way, shape, or form, I'm pretty down on things like, I know landmine punches and stuff like that, I'm not fond

Those types of exercise selections, because I feel that the land mine punch is a good one. I have a lot of discussions with Terence kennel about this one. The land mine punch doesn't really resemble a punch. If you've ever actually thrown a punch, you'll know that a landmine punch or a land mine throw is nothing like actually throwing a punch. The mechanics are all wrong. So why are we using this as some sort of metric of the potential transfer to punching power?

I have real problem with that because obviously there's a level of specificity when it comes to throwing punches that we have to respect. I'm digressing, but you get my point. Basically, amateurs and juniors get too wrapped up in specificity initially and don't focus on just getting generally stronger.

Something I caused a bit of a fuss on Twitter, I think it was one of the UFC refs, I can't remember his name now, the one from Birmingham UK guy. Marc Goddard, wasn't it? Marc Goddard, that's it. Sorry, no disrespect to Marc. He inquired as to why they made the point MMA fighters kind of trend weak.

If we do look at the UFC data for instance, we can see that those guys have DSIs that are generally quite high, between sort of 0.8 and 1. If you don't know, DSI score is the ratio between your ability to produce a lot of force and your ability to express it quickly, between a mid thigh pull and a jump typically. For those who don't know what those tests are, you can quickly look it up, it's not complicated.

But the point I'm making is that quite often, fighters have explosive strength that's pretty close to their absolute maximum strength, which means the ceiling could always be higher for their maximum strength. A lot of the fighters, particularly the females, come in needing more strength. This is based off the UFCPI numbers and generally what I see as we go down the ranks and I test a lot of amateur fighters fighting on local shows.

We do some of the same tests. Generally, strength is always at a deficit. These guys may be technical, which is what's got them as far as they have. But obviously as they go up the ranks, they're going to come against guys who are technical and strong and explosive and have all those other qualities. That's a gap you need to bridge.

Again, I digress, which is something I'm very good at. But hopefully you get my point.

James de Lacey11:08

No, it's good. It's a podcast and you're the guest, so I want you to talk anything that comes to your head, go for. But it's an interesting point you make about the landmine punch. If anyone's listening, William mentioned Terence kennel. He was on the podcast a couple of episodes ago, or maybe a few episodes ago now, so you can check that out after this as well.

But the landmine punch is interesting because obviously the UFCPI uses that as one of their tests there. Now I think they're publishing a paper soon showing very strong correlations with I think rear hand punching power as well, between the land mine punch and that. So yeah, it's interesting. Obviously you got kind of two trends of thought. It correlates well to the punch, but then at the same time, does that mean that it's going to transfer to the power of the punch as well?

William Wayland11:59

Do you know what else correlates well to punching power? Back squat. Go. Yeah. Back squat, bench press, lower body strength, lower body power. Yeah. So I think just you being generally strong and explosive correlates well to punching power. I guess you could also correlate back squat lower body strength and power to the land mine punch, and you'd probably see a positive correlation there too. And that could be your causal effects as well.

And that's where you can't hang out on any one exercise as being a predictor of anything particularly, because that's what correlates are for, right? You've got a decent .8 correlation, so you're probably looking pretty good to implement whatever that is. But with the land mine punch, I know fighters who've never done land mine punches before and have great punches. That's obviously a subjective observation.

Arnold, for instance, doesn't bench press. He doesn't like bench pressing. He prefers overhead press, so we all do push press jerk variations for him, and he hits like a freight train. As we saw in his last fight, he can knock people out. But he doesn't bench press at a personal preference. He doesn't like doing that. He doesn't like the way it makes him feel.

And this is another thing that people perhaps struggle with. Sometimes I let athletes dictate exercise selection. Sometimes there's stuff they need to do which is important, but it's a case of balancing that and asking the questions. And in that case, that is personal preference. Because at the end of the day, if he's doing a push press or a jerk or something, he's still getting the stimulus I'm after, which is connection between the ground and his hands and then full body organization. Stiffness in the right places, whether he's doing a push press or whatever. And he likes that movement.

I could bench press him. I could force him to bench press, I guess, but his dad would certainly like that. But in my case, we get him push pressing because he just prefers the movement. And that's where you kind of let the athlete dictate. Whereas other fighters, we'd have in bench press. I've written articles on a lot of the pressing variations I like for fighters. We do a lot of close grip incline pressing because I feel that has decent positive transfer. Lot of open-handed pressing as well, things like that.

So yeah, it's interesting how your attachments to a specific exercise due to its perceived potential for transfer, because once you think you've got a good idea, your impulses to run with it quite often. So I'm not sure who came up with a land mine punch, but I'd like to know.

James de Lacey14:31

Instagram.

William Wayland15:02

Yeah. I have always felt that the landmine punch is inherently unstable, for instance. I've done them myself. I've used them extensively, experimenting personally and with athletes. I've always found the Jammer press more useful from a ballistic standpoint. Because with the jam press, because it's mounted on a hinge, you can really blast it and not worry about where it's going to go.

Whereas I always find with a landmine, you've got to have someone on the other side and there's sort of a hesitancy to really go after it because there's a risk that the barbell may swing out. You can minimize that, but from a just a feel and an implementation standpoint, I do like the Jammer punch more than the landmine punch.

I've got both in my gym and we just seem to have gravitated towards the Jammer punch, because particularly when we're tracking velocities, I find that obviously with the Jammer, we can achieve decent velocities, ballistic velocities with that. Whereas your land mine punch is always going to be stuck to the fact that you're using a 20 kilo barbell. And then you get the question of, well, at what point is the land mine punch going to become redundant? And if I want to use lighter implements, do I start integrating like medball throws, single-hand medball throws, stuff like that?

And again, it's kind of part of the art of coaching, right? It's hard to say when or where we should implement that stuff.

James de Lacey15:58

No, I love the little crusade yourself and Jeff Jeffrey Chu was on against the landmine punch stuff. It's really good because you get both perspectives of obviously the UFCPI doing it, and people look to UFCPI as leading the way on the strength conditioning side for MMA. And then you got you guys also doing really, like honestly, your guys' stuff I find resonates even with myself a lot and I think with a lot of other people, in terms of just overall strength conditioning.

Keeping things basic, focusing really on the technical tactical is the most important part of your training and S&C is there to support what you're doing. And as you mentioned with the ballistic there, but if someone's listening and maybe they're in that situation that you mentioned, they've been fighting, they figured out they're pretty okay at fighting, but they haven't actually dabbled in the strength conditioning side that much.

But they're a little older now. Where do they start? Do they start similar to how you mentioned there, where you had with potentially like Arnold Allen and his teens, where they start with those very basic programs and kind of continue?

William Wayland17:11

Yeah, it's kind of a case of meeting them where they are, which is what's important. Have they strength trained in the past? That's a question we'll always ask. And quite often, if they're older, they probably have, or they've at least dabbled.

In some sense, their entry point is going to be kind of where and what they need. For instance, I'll often throw some GPP work at them to use that as a sort of jumping off point to see what they need. Depending on what they want, we can sometimes test them, do a proper performance assessment. I run a private gym so some athletes, they can't afford that, so we'll have them come in and we'll just sort of look at how they move, look at where their numbers come up from a strength training standpoint. It's kind of again, it's about meeting where they are and trying to figure out what they need.

One thing I do find, if guys who are a bit long in the tooth who've been doing it a while generally will gravitate towards intensity based approaches instead of volume based approaches. Because quite often what I find is a lot of the guys who come to me for strength and conditioning, they've probably already tried to give it a go quite often off their own backs, quite often based on their own research.

We have an abundance of information that's available now and quite often what these guys have done is they've gravitated towards sort of higher volume approaches. They're dabbling things like kettlebells, circuit training, stuff that isn't inherently bad but perhaps isn't what they need at that point in time.

If you're an older athlete and you've got a lot of miles on your joints, and let's say your expenditure physically for the week is limited, when you're young you can do three days and bounce back and still do your S&C. As you get older, quickly towards into your 30s, you're going to struggle to do that type of volume of training, particularly if you're a normal person with a job and then you're trying to fit in say two, three hours of training a day on top of that.

There are guys who can make that work, but then perhaps your strength training is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back because you've integrated it poorly or improperly. That's where obviously having a sensible measured smart approach is useful.

And again for a lot of these guys what I find is, for instance, let's say someone gravitates towards a traditional 5x5 strength training plan and they come to me and they go, "Look, I've tried to integrate this plan that's got a lot of heavy 5x5 training," that's a classic rep range right, people do 5 by 5 all the time, and they go, "Look, I'm doing this, I'm trying to do my Jiu-Jitsu and MMA and stuff on top of that, but it's like I'm sore, I'm tired." And it's like, "Well, have you considered perhaps just cutting the volume down?

Have you thought of doing 5x3 at the same loading? Have you thought of doing 5x2 at the same loading? You're get most of the same benefits more than likely." And you see the light bulb go off and they're like, "So you're saying that I can get potentially most of the same benefits but I have to do less work?" Because there's this connection between work and outcome they don't understand that less is more.

And it's that message, that less is more message, is what really underpins a lot of the S&C work I do, which is kind of why I like the triphasic training approach, particularly during offseason, is because it helps me get more from less when it comes to a training standpoint. For instance, Cory McKenna fought this year and historically every fight she's had in the UFC up until this point she's carried something into that fight, be an injury or something.

This time, we had a frank conversation before her most recent fight in the UFC. She's young, right, and young fighters quite often want to do everything possible to be the best they can be. They'll sneak in extra workouts, they'll try and get as much extra working as possible because they feel they need it.

And this psychology, older fighters have it too. They want to do as much as they can to be the best because you hear all these stories about Type A athletes who just do everything under the sun, every waking moment. They're focused on being the best, this whole hustle grind set stuff. It's terrible. I think it's actually bad for athletes because some of the best guys I've met do manage to make so much out of so little. And that's where when your S&C training, if you can condense it down to the very minimum of things that you need, and with Corey for instance we took this approach, it's like, "Well, she used to do a lot of road running, maybe we back off the road running.

We keep your sessions to two lifting sessions a week. If we do some stand-up conditioning, let's try and keep it somewhat sport specific, maybe shadow boxing or bag work for low-level aerobic work instead of pounding the pavements like she used to do historically." And she performed probably the best she's ever performed.

And we had a conversation afterwards and she's like, "Yeah, I see what you were saying now. Less is definitely more." And just getting fighters' heads around that. I was the same when I used to compete. I was always trying to do extra, always try to do extra because you're always constantly told you have to go that extra mile, you have to do that extra workout.

You're a coward or weak if you're not on the mats for whatever reason. And some people can make it survive that stuff. It's a meat grinder. Some people will survive that stuff, and I guess you're familiar with the concept of survivorship bias, right?

So they're the guys that potentially end up then sticking into the sport, they become coaches, and they make the gross assumption that everybody should follow their pattern of training and their arc of improvement.

James de Lacey23:01

Basically rugby in a nutshell too, pretty much.

William Wayland23:28

A lot of these guys end up becoming coaches and they're under the assumption that everyone else should train exactly the same way, at the same volume, at the same intensities that they used to, and they can't handle it, then they don't make the grade. But different people obviously have different capacities for recovery, for training. I'm 40 next year and I always joke that hopefully next year I'll be able to start doing over 40 fitness content because suddenly that allows me to.

My training hasn't really changed much in the past couple of years, but the big thing that has changed in my own training, because I'm a Jiu-Jitsu black belt as well and I love strength training personally, is that I do so little in my lifting sessions now where I'm focusing on maybe only two, three exercises with any real intensity.

And I think back to my early 20s when I used to do sessions that would last nearly two hours in the gym and I'm like, "I have no idea how I managed those types of training volumes." And you do have this sense of indestructibility when you're young, but that can come around and bite you in the butt eventually.

So it's just that idea of just being, just trying to do, focus on the bare minimum, but figuring out what you need to focus on is the hard part I guess, which is why people hire strength and conditioning coaches, right? Because that dissemination of all that information is tough.

And we do live in this age where there's so much information out there, but our job as an S&C coach is to disseminate that. Because let's say you need to get your car fixed. Unless you've got all the time in the world, you're not going to sit down and read, does anybody actually read their car's user manual?

James de Lacey25:06

No, they take it to the garage.

William Wayland25:06

Exactly. They take it to the garage and let the mechanic fix it because that's his job. The same thing, when someone gets sick, you get like an awful disease, let's say cancer or something, you become an overnight oncology expert, right? You didn't care before until it was a problem because most people don't really understand their own bodies either when it comes to wellness, illness, whatever it is, because obviously we've only got a very limited scope of information we can take in and understand.

So people are always surprised that sometimes some of the worst fitness advice comes from professional athletes, and it's because most of the time they've never had to manage their own training. Some of them have a passion for it, yes, and they take that and run with it. But a lot of athletes, there was that great video I think just recently, I think it was an NFL player talking about his workouts or something, and basically it's like a minute of gobbledygook. He's just like, and it's just like nobody can sus out what this guy's saying.

Key point that sometimes when you talk to the pros and they're jumping off points for training perhaps they're not the best. And if you're an amateur athlete or a recreational athlete perhaps don't follow their lead and meet, again we talk about meeting athletes where they are, you have to control your expectations and meet yourself where you are. And that's where a lot of people mess up is that something I like that Dan John always used to say is that everybody thinks they're Elite, right?

And well of course I want to do the conjugate supramaximal French contrast workout because that's the training stimulus I need because I'm Elite, whereas most people you have to bring them way way way way back because they're just not ready or in any position to do that type of stuff.

Big one for me is like people message me all the time about French contrast because it's something I've helped popularize I'd like to think. Lots of people sort of took my, followed my lead on that and I started using a lot of French contrast with fighters. And I always make the point and I've made it in other podcasts and in articles is that why would you integrate French contrast?

Let's say, for those of you who don't know, French contrast is basically a pairing of plyometrics, strength, and ballistic work in a sequence that one potentiates the next, potentiates the next, usually typically four exercises. And you'll see guys jumping with bands and stuff. That's the flourish, that's what everyone pays attention to, is the banded jumping that people do. It looks cool.

That's the engagement. Yeah, that's what gets people viewing your videos, right? So people care about that stuff. So why would you pair four of those exercises together if you're only technically competent at say one component of that? Because usually that say a typical French contrast is a squat, a plyometric, some sort of loaded jump, and then some sort of accelerator jump.

If you're not practiced at any one of those components the whole thing's pointless. So perhaps take the time to get good at those individual components, then merge them together. But again, people want to rush to the end, right? Want to go straight to the flourish. They want to do the band jumps, they want to do the plyometrics.

But if you can barely squat and if you can barely jump, French contrast is going to give you nothing. It's a waste of your time. But I still see people doing this stuff in an effort to try and, they want to try and, they feel it's a silver bullet or some sort of secret technique in order to improve their power or explosiveness or something. And yeah, they again they want to jump to the end. Again, I digress, but hopefully that makes my point of where we are with recreational guys just wanting to train like pros, which is a massive mistake.

James de Lacey28:54

And I guess the issue is when people jump straight to French contrast or whatever advanced thing they're doing, then what do you do after a few weeks of that? That's at the end and they go okay we'll just keep doing the same thing.

William Wayland28:54

Well you played your ace card, right? Like it's where do you go from here if you're lucky, if you're not hurt. But at the same time, you're not going to get the same benefit out of doing French contrast that you would if you take time to get good at the requisite components of that. So again, it's people wanted to rush to the end. And it just doesn't work for most guys or that extra training load is far too much on top of everything else you're trying to do.

Because people are surprised, like for instance I usually only give two sort of snc intensive snc sessions a week to most pros. And some pros have turned around and gone two weeks, that can't be enough. And it's like well because we're going to aim for like a high intensity low volume approach, trust me once you're in it you'll appreciate why that is enough.

And it's just again appreciating elements like that as well. And that's where sort of focusing on correctly applied intensity over just junk volume training, which is what a lot of MMA has been historically is junk volume training. If you can implement a qualitative approach you're part of the way there.

James de Lacey30:04

How do you cycle your intensity and volume there? Because obviously you mentioned you do a high intensity low volume and obviously that spans over probably most of the year. So then how do you cycle that intensity so it's not always, hey we're always I don't know close to whatever the ax is?

William Wayland30:32

So intensity, there's intensity scalability, just trying to think of a way to put it eloquently would be, obviously if you're doing intensive training, intensity can come from both load, it can come from velocity of barbell movement for instance, and it can come from intent.

We think of high force actions like a heavy squat or a heavy deadlift, yes there is intensity there. We think of let's say qualitative movements that involve like jumping, loaded jumping or weights lifted quick, there's high intensity there. Again the volume will be low but the effort will be maximum and the bar speed will be maximum, but the actual loading on the bar might be low. And then the other thing is when it comes to say ballistic movements like throws and jumps, again we can have intensity there, but the intensity will come via your intent to move whatever it is quickly.

So when we say intensity we just have to qualify what we mean by that. And intensity comes in a number of varieties, but most of the time the key thing there is always intent. And I talk about intent quite a lot because you ask athletes when they're lifting are they actually trying to put the most effort they can into every single rep, into every single lift that they're doing?

And that same intent to do the movement as qualitatively and as quickly as possible works for the high force stuff, it works for the high force high velocity stuff, and it works for the ballistic stuff as well.

And that's what I guess I mean when I talk about intensity is that even though there's variation in the loading, the mechanical loading varies, the intent to perform the movement as ballistically and as quickly as possible is always high. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey32:18

Yep, that makes sense. I guess that's take a principle just from CAT training, compensatory. I wanted to take it back a little bit because you mentioned triphasic training. So people listening to this may have heard of it as relatively I guess popular now from Cal Dietz. Do you want to maybe dive into how you incorporate triphasic training into that kind of off-season period?

William Wayland32:49

Sure. So what I do now is the traditional triphasic plan focuses on eccentrics, so high forces moved at low velocities particularly during the yielding portion of the movement, and then isometrics, which is high forces during a moment of not moving, so the movement is static, and then usually a focus on rapid concentric component. And those three married together because historically before triphasic training I used to dabble with isometrics and eccentrics, but it was never really done in a particularly organized fashion.

It used to be okay we're going to do a cycle of eccentric, okay we're just do a cycle of isometrics or whatever, kind of influenced somewhat by the sort of Poliquin stuff because he was one of the first guys to turn around and say maybe we can get more out of training using these methods. So all Cal Dietz did is he organized it in a systemic fashion. You spend three week, you usually do a GPP phase of some sort, it's been a couple of weeks.

Historically the old method was three, then you deload a week, you do three weeks of isometric and then you deload a week, and then you do a sort of conventional concentric style training. But what we've found now is that we can get more training done in a condensed period if we start using implementing elements of what we call supramaximal training.

So we know that for instance for heavy eccentrics, heavy eccentric training at like 90% plus is where the kind of money is on that eccentric. Either have to be performed extremely hard, high intensities or extreme speeds involving it to deceleration, that's the two ways to get the most out of your eccentric training.

What we know now is that eccentric training performed at like anywhere between 40 to 80% of your 1RM, apart from it potentially having like motor learning potential, so if you need to learn the skill of a lift doing slow control movements can be useful in that regard, but in terms of meaningful change structurally to the muscle you want to go supramaximal.

And people see this stuff and they see guys doing like weights in excess of their 1RM being lifted very very slowly, typically sort of 7 to 10 seconds, and they look at me and go why the hell are you getting to do that, you look like you're going to break them. And it's like well—

The point is if I can get a really strong training stimulus from just two weeks of supramaximal eccentric that have long training residuals, so we know the benefits of that will last a long time, and I can do the same thing with isometrics and the benefits of that will last a long time because the residuals from supramaximal training, so the benefit carried across time is way longer with supramaximal work, I'm going to use that stuff because it's exploitable.

I only need say four weeks of the athlete's time. During those four weeks they'll be sore for sure because it's hard, and yes you need to have the right equipment and stuff, so you need to have safety bars work really well. You can do partner based one with trap bar. If you look on my Instagram or any of Cal Dietz's stuff you can see this stuff in action.

And that supramaximal work then basically gives a really really big foundation of capacity for everything else you're going to do because we know for instance that supramaximal eccentric change the muscle structurally very significantly. What we know now about the way Titin works and other things that occur on a structural level, that supramaximal eccentrics are very useful for building tendinous muscular strength. Isometrics very useful for tendinous strength as well.

We know that for instance that doing supramaximal movements in general has a peripheral blood pressure effect. So what's weird is we see effect when people do supramaximal training blocks of like lowered heart rate and lowered blood pressure post, because obviously when you're stressing that stuff really highly there's obviously still going to be an adaptation there. An underappreciated one, but it's one sort of random side benefit of doing that stuff.

And then once we do that and I've done those supramaximal triphasic blocks, then we're free for the next couple of months to focus on ballistics, high force high velocity work, your sort of type training, or what we do is some instances we'll implement sort of oscillatory or AFSM type strength training as well.

James de Lacey37:50

Nice. So let's start with I guess when you would implement this. How far away from a fight then would you be using the supramaximal blocks? Obviously you don't want to have someone on this thing and they go yeah four weeks out, I'll nail it now.

William Wayland38:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So typically it's always done post-fight in a reacquisition sense. So the fighters will fight, I'll give them a couple of weeks off, we'll do a very brief GPP block and straight into supramaximal or just conventional triphasic. It doesn't have to be supramaximal, just conventional triphasic work maybe where we can focus on eccentrics and isometrics for a little while because I know their chance of getting another fight is lowest if that makes sense.

But in some instances we do get a fight, they'll get like one at four or eight weeks or something, but that way I can then just quick shift back into what we were doing before and this is what I call kind of like the agile approach to this problem. Because I know basically I'm safe that if in the weeks post a fight I can implement this type of method, the chance of getting another fight they're at their lowest. And that's just me being flexible with my planning structure.

And then once we get the announcement, like we were doing some off-season stuff with Arnold, he got the Qatari matchup for instance with six weeks to go. So we've had to switch his training on, I'd had to turn on a dime and change his training to more peaking focused type of training. But because we'd spent time kind of working on stuff while he was after his last fight, I know that he's good to just make that switch suddenly.

Whereas perhaps with guys who aren't as advanced you can't get away with that switching about as much and you want to integrate strength work and keep it kind of integrated as close to fight as you can get away with. And again it depends on the ability level. If they're still very novice you probably keep doing some sort of high force work pretty close up into the fight, provided it doesn't leave them feeling too tired or too fatigued.

But again it's all about meeting the athlete where they are and what specific qualities they need to focus on. And I think again because we know that a lot of fighters generally are in deficit when it comes to strength, we should probably hang on to the heavy intensive strength work longer when we come to approaching a fight. Whereas people are very keen to drop it because it perhaps is deleterious, but I think that's because a lot of time it's not managed properly.

Because oh, the heavy strength work makes me feel tired when I'm doing my sparring and stuff. And it's like, well perhaps we need to take a strength training approach that is very very qualitative, even if it means going in doing doubles or singles as a sort of an intensive load and then getting out. And not throwing like a [expletive] or something ridiculous.

And I do see some of the strength training volumes some of these guys try and handle while they're doing their most intensive sparring. Because at the end of the day the sparring and the simulated rounds and stuff is what matters most, and as long as we're not impinging on that, that's what matters. As long as we're not doing anything that's deleterious to their ability to handle all that allostatic load of the stress of getting ready for a fight, then we're good.

As soon as there's an interference effect that's when we've got to back down, because at the end of the day it's techniques and tactics that win fights, not necessarily being the strongest.

James de Lacey41:31

Sure. You obviously had, you made a good segue before talking about the oscillatory isometrics or AFSM stuff. And I've had Greg Morris I think on the second podcast of this, we touched on that, had a couple of other guests we touch on oscillatory isometrics as well. It seems to be quite a few people using them for peaking. Obviously I guess made popular by KD as well.

I guess he was the one who kind of brought it to light and then guys like yourself have implemented and applied it, I guess made it a little more mainstream again. So do want to maybe dive into what it actually is, what you're trying to get out of it, and then how you use it with your fighters.

William Wayland41:56

Yeah. So the revelation I had was this. I was doing a lot of typical sort of what you call conventional peaking work with fighters. So typically like a lot of plyometrics, a lot of ballistics. And when we get fighters jumping and doing a lot of sort of jump work, bounds, hops, that type of stuff, you appreciate the fact that fighters, particularly when I started doing a lot of RSI testing which tests their ability to use the floor effectively and how spring-like can the athlete be, you find that fighters generally do pretty badly.

I think it's for two reasons. One is that combat sports and the kinetic sequencing they use to generate power in their hands or in their feet isn't like doing a jump or doing a sprint or anything like that, because they basically use the floor. And the lower, the ankle complex for instance, like kind of like a spring. So there's the storing and then dispersion of elastic energy.

And efficient runners and sprinters are very good at using the ground that way. When it comes to fighting, if you think about it, it's stick and then produce force. So you're not using the ground like a trampoline of sorts. You're sticking, you're then producing lots of force through the low body, there's a relaxation and then a stiffening on contact with your opponent. And that's fun enough, where I find that golf probably has more similarities with fighting than it does with other sports.

And you find that the limiting factor for a lot of fighters when it comes to trying to do plyos and things like that is their ankle complex sucks. Like a lot of them have like a navicular drop, so their ability to maintain a good arch and a good ankle position doing plyos and stuff isn't great.

And the other thing is because they're training most of the time on mats unshod, means that quite often their footplay is very relaxed. Their way they contact the ground is very relaxed because obviously training on mats and stuff, it's not like training on a hard surface. So you adapt to the surface you train on.

So in this instance that's where I started thinking, well, because initially I looked at Cal Dietz's oscillatory stuff and like a lot of guys I was like, I'm not so sure about this. These guys are like shaking like a [expletive] dog, so to speak, and doing like lots of movements with they're shaking around. And it's perhaps because I was, this was probably 10 years ago when I first saw it and perhaps in my arrogance I discarded it a little bit. And then as I came across this...

Revelation that oh wait a minute, what really matters for fighters is that ability to generate tension, relax rapidly, and generate tension again, that tension relaxation coupling sort of sequence. The way I guess Cal Dietz always put it is like trying to flick on and off a light switch as quickly as you can, and that rapid contract-relax mechanism. If the ankle structure isn't what is a limiting factor, then perhaps we need to train that contract-relax mechanism in a fashion that takes the ankle out of the sequence.

So that's where like oscillatory movements where you focus on pushing and pulling yourself in and out of, say, a quarter squat, or you can see lots of examples in this, or a hinge or something. And that focus on that rapid contract-relax, contract-relax, push-pull, push-pull, push-pull, potentially may have better transfer for these guys. Again, this is based largely on sort of gym dabbling and anecdote and what we see, observe from the fighters.

Again, that's the only problem with the oscillatory method is that at the moment it's still somewhat speculative. We don't have a lot of research that backs the approach. But the only way I can suggest is that when fighters do do it, they feel like they're hitting harder. And then the only other thing is I get decent improvements in our ballistic measures, so when it comes to jumping and throwing, I see that the velocities that they're jumping and throwing out seem to improve even though we may not be doing any jumping and throwing. The intervention seems to make jumping and throwing better, so there's perhaps something there.

Until someone—maybe if I get the time I decide to pony up and do a PhD at some point—I could maybe look at this stuff. But right now, again, it's based on sort of speculative reasoning and then what we see happening in terms of positive transfer. But that's the beauty of this type of stuff is that if 80 to 90% of my stuff is based on convention, I can perhaps play with that 10%.

Because don't get me wrong, we're still doing jumps, we're still doing throws, but then we're also adding in this oscillatory stuff and it seems to be making a benefit. But again, it's that point I made about French contrast: people focus on the banded jumps, we're doing the throwing, we're doing the jumping, we're also doing the oscillatory work, but people just focus on the quacky-looking exercises because they look kind of silly, right?

And that's where you have to look at the oscillatory stuff and try and extract out what movements may be useful for your specific population. Because if you look up oscillatory training and go on Cal's YouTube channel, for instance, there's more oscillatory exercises than you could ever perform in a lifetime. You can't do them all, so that's where you have to be smart as a coach and figure out, perhaps if you're training a baseball player then oscillatory exercise for the shoulder, where you're doing sort of a, you look like you're jerking someone off in the air, so to speak, if I can be crude.

And that stuff looks silly, but if you're working with a baseball player or a pitcher, that stuff could be useful for the rotator cuff. Is it going to be as useful for a rugby player, the guy that needs sort of different qualities in the shoulder? I don't know. But that's where you as an S&C coach have to disseminate what you think may be useful, what may not be useful.

And again, people see the flourish, they worry about just the oscillatory stuff, and it's like, well, there's a ton of work we've done before we get to that point before we do the funky-looking exercises that we can pull from. So it's a case of us just trying to eke what little more we can out of some of the athletes, and don't get too hung up on exercise selection and stuff. But the oscillatory work is interesting.

The other thing is novel, so the athletes some of them like doing it because it's different. And that has value to some extent as well. But the biggest thing with the oscillatory stuff, and then coming back to my previous point, oscillatory stuff drives intent. You give them that cue to push and pull as rapidly as they can for 10 seconds and give it everything.

That intent carries value going forwards, so then when you do get them do their throws, when you do get them do their pad work, that same intent to do the whole thing, rapid contract-relax, keep that value at the heart of what it is you're trying to do, that has value as well.

And this is where that sort of intent is kind of a nebulous idea, but having intent when you do these things is super important. And funny enough, coming backwards from golf is where the intent thing started being important, because what I found is a lot of golfers were obsessing over trying to hit the ball as fast as they could on their driver. Because golf is a super technical sport, these guys have learned to do beautiful swings that look great, have real finesse to them.

And you actually say to the golfer, are you hitting that as hard as you can, and they're like no. And they're like, well, why don't you try? Like, what do you mean? It's like, try and hit it as hard as you can, go at it with maximum intent.

And it's like, because their coaches are so worried about technical breakdown, they never encouraged them to come at it with maximum intent. And I was like, well, working backwards, there's something maybe we can pull from that that applies to maybe S&C in general and to golf. Are we actually trying to do everything with maximum intention when we do it? Are we or are we just coasting? And the beauty of certain exercises do help drive intent.

So when you give someone a 10-second, 7-second time frame to push-pull as rapidly as they can with maximum effort, something kind of clicks and then they realize that that intent is a really important part of what they're trying to achieve.

James de Lacey51:11

I've got a billion more questions and thoughts on this now, but I'm going to try synthesize it all down. But first, I guess an easy way to describe oscillatory would be almost like a plyometric for the hip or shoulder, whatever it is, without having the ground contacts?

William Wayland51:11

Yes. So, I know it's a peaking modality. I've actually been waiting to ask you this specific question for a couple of weeks now since we booked this podcast, and it's around, I guess, the older athlete.

James de Lacey51:36

So I'm going to take myself or my wife—my wife's a professional weightlifter—as an example. She's had some injuries, she hasn't done as much weightlifting recently. Eventually, after the baby stuff, we'll get her back in there to potentially have another run. But as an older body or someone who may be carrying some injuries, loaded jumps, other plyometrics like your pogos or whatever else it is, might not be viable in terms of developing their speed or whatever those adaptations are.

Even though oscillatory isometrics might be a peaking method, could it then be used as a replacement for other plyometrics and still develop, I guess, those qualities that you want? And be used almost like a year-round thing, as like in place of traditional plyometrics?

William Wayland52:03

Perhaps underappreciated, because obviously that high-intensity oscillatory movements do have value in that regard, and they definitely have a potentiation effect, which is something I've found. But there's a subcategory of oscillatory movements which are basically advantaged and disadvantaged oscillatory movements.

So let's say we do a disadvantaged oscillatory bench press. So we bench press, we bring the bar down to our chest, we perform a short up movement, back down, back up again, back down, and then we finish our press movements. Movements like that have value in that regard, teaching that on-off, on-off approach, the way we need to get our muscles to contract and relax, contract and relax. And we can do those with sort of submaximal loads and get a decent training effect from that type of stuff.

And I find that for quite often the people who've lost touch with their ability to—particular guys who've been strength training a long time—quite often they lose qualitative relaxation. You can see it in guys, for instance, you've been squatting or benching. Have you ever like tried to lower a barbell, like done a bench press, tried to lower the bar down to your chest as quickly as you can, but for some reason you just hit the brakes?

And I get that myself sometimes. Like, I'll go to bench press, particularly if I've had a tough week of jiu-jitsu, and I'll go to bench and I try and think about trying to pull the bar down quickly, but for some reason I just hit the brakes. And again, it's just that lack of qualitative relaxation, particularly if you've trained a long time in a particularly—if you're very grindy, so if you're a very grindy type of lifter—basically you lose that ability to qualitatively relax.

And if you take a guy who's been lifting for a long time and hasn't done much else and suddenly get them throwing, they quite often find that they're super sore afterwards because they've lacked the—

Antagonistic inhibition they get is so bad that suddenly their ability to do anything ballistically is utterly compromised because the antagonist muscle—let's say if you do a bench throw or something, it's horrible. If you do a med ball chest pass or something, it's horrible because basically they're carrying so much tonis and tension that they can't get that decent relaxation that they need in order to be able to perform the movement ballistically. I quite often feel it occasionally when I'm out with my dog. I'm trying to throw a ball for her and I just feel my posterior shoulder suddenly light up because basically it's saying, "No, you're not allowed to throw that as hard as you can." And it's just that lack of qualitative relaxation is something that people do lose, particularly if you're a lifter and you've been lifting a long time.

You've taught your body how to generate stiffness and maintain tonis and tension. Suddenly your qualitative ability to relax, your ability to establish a relaxed tonus, is somewhat compromised.

And this is a discussion I have sometimes with our physios and stuff about this. Because we have a big population of powerlifters that train at our gym, and because powerlifting's become super popular, all of a sudden we've got guys who've been in it since they were teenagers who are now in their mid-20s presenting with injuries I've only ever seen in like 40-year-old, 50-year-old powerlifters. And a lot of it comes from the fact that their tonus is all messed up. They're super tight, they're super tense all the time, and their ability to relax is utterly compromised.

And we see this sometimes in fighters. They carry a lot of tonus, they're very tight. You see them claw the ground with their feet. You see them clench their hands subconsciously. That's where like breathing drills and other relaxation stuff could come in useful, just trying to get them to drop some of that tension that they're hanging on to. But that's the nature of playing a contact sport where the demand is you have to be tight, you have to maintain a certain amount of rigidity to avoid deformation or alteration by your opponent or whatever. Again, I got into a digression. I hopefully that makes sense.

James de Lacey56:13

Yeah, yeah. So I guess you could say then, so instead of doing pure—I guess like the split squat one with the band—you would then do it say with a bench press and you do it in between your reps instead to start developing if you're going to do it more often?

William Wayland56:41

That's a good entry point for most people is add in oscillatory work on top of their conventional strength training. So you would take a submaximal load. You go to either advantaged or disadvantaged. So disadvantage would be the bottom of the movement, advantage would be in an advantage position at the top of the movement, let's say. And you can toy with that to help enhance the tolerance for relaxation in what we would call a compromised position—the bottom of a squat, the bottom of a bench press, those types of positions.

James de Lacey57:04

Gotcha. You got time for another quick question?

William Wayland57:04

Yeah, sure, no problem.

James de Lacey57:04

Yeah, I want to ask you about your own training because, especially with Jiu-Jitsu, a lot of guys might train four, five, six times a week, some a little less. But it's always a struggle for people to be able to balance what they do in the gym and then what they're doing on the mat. So obviously I've heard from people that they don't lift weights anymore because they get too sore and then it hinders their time on the mats when they're rolling, things like that.

So how do you balance your strength training? Obviously you have to layer your strength training with your time on the mat so you don't have this huge interference between them?

William Wayland57:52

So basically it's a big part of it is picking your battles, so to speak. So for instance, now, whereas before I was trying to get stronger at everything all at once—now I pick maybe, well, when you start out that's how it works, right? You just want to get stronger generally. Now there are things that I kind of put on the back burner and then things that I pull forwards in order to focus on specifically.

And I pick movements now, particularly as I've gotten older, that are technically simplistic. So as much as I used to enjoy Olympic lifting in my 20s, I do a lot less now in my late 30s. There, I still do some high pulls and stuff like that because I like the ballistic nature of those movements. But in terms of that catching things and having to decelerate those things suddenly overhead or in a front rack position, that's very hard for me to do now.

My hands are completely jacked up. My hands and stuff are wrecked like a lot of Jitsu guys. My hand on the other side as well, my little finger doesn't straighten proper anymore, so my hands are ruined.

So as much as I enjoy front squatting—I'm known for loving a front squat—like catching a clean is another kettle of fish because my hands and wrists can't take that type of load. So one thing with Jiu-Jitsu that you'll find is that you pick up what we call I guess micro-trauma. And it's not out-and-out injury, it's low-grade soft tissue irritation, let's put it that way, compounded over a period of time.

So I meet lots of guys who have been doing Jiu-Jitsu as long as me. I'm lucky. I don't think I've had it as bad as some, but you see their hands and they've got Heberden's nodes. So all their small joints are very swollen. They've got like low-grade osteoarthritis in their ankles, toes, hands, elbows. And that compounding small joint irritation, they just have to learn to manage that. So you pick and choose your movements carefully. You pick your grip exercises carefully. You pick your barbell movements carefully.

And then another thing, another point I make is always have accessories to hand or alternative movements to hand, sorry, that you can swap out. So a great example is this week, just this Wednesday we were doing a reverse Kimura, obviously. And if you're doing reverse Kimura and working on that, you're going to be really cranking the crap out of your rotator cuff. Anybody who's ever had a reverse Kimura done to them, it's a Kimura but worse.

And I came in the next day and I was like, "My shoulders are really sore. I'm going to bench. I've got bench plans to do." So I've got a couple of choices here. I did a warm-up set or two, was like, "Okay, this isn't going to work." I then basically made a small modification because I figured out that that say at the bottom of my bench press was what seemed to be sorest.

All I did was grab a fat grip, one of our big fat grips, put it in the middle of the bar. I've killed my ROM on my bench press by about an inch. I can bench pain-free now. It doesn't cause me any discomfort.

Another situation I might have switched to say a Swiss bar or neutral bar. If that was still painful, then I may have just ditched bench press entirely and maybe do a movement that doesn't pin the scapula, like a ring push-up or something or just a push-up. So it's always about being, having a plan B or C or whatever, and not being so beholden to your strength training plan that you can't adapt it in some way, shape, or form.

It's part of the reason why safety bars exist. It's why belt squats exist. Don't be so attached to conventional barbell exercises that you feel that you can't adapt your training in some way. Again, all that matters for you is stimulus. It doesn't really matter how that comes to you, as long as you're seeing long-term meaningful adaptations that keep you healthy, well, and keep your strength at a respectable level for whatever your age may be.

So I'm very aware that I'm 40 next year and I just—my training keeps adapting around what it is that I'm doing. Like I do, I train Jitsu typically three times a week. I lift three times a week. And that sort of setup works really well. If I were to be competing again, I'd probably drop a strength training session and up the amount of Jiu-Jitsu I do. But right now, based on my work-life balance, that setup seems to work super well.

And the other thing is, taking my own ideas to heart is that I train intensively but at very low volumes, but I repeat that sometimes monotonously for long periods, which allows me to maintain decent strength levels. I do pretty well for someone my age, I like to think, given all the other mileages I've got going on.

James de Lacey1:03:10

Yeah, it sounds like you're doing a good job there with balancing and making sure you're not [expletive] up.

William Wayland1:03:10

Yeah, I try. I try to, like, well, occasionally just the point that sometimes I walk in and go, "No, not today." Sometimes I just walk away entirely, go have a sauna or something or—

Or go focus on doing something else for a little bit. And it's having the maturity to do that. It's a grown-up thing, let's put it that way.

I always find it's the immature athlete or the one that doesn't appreciate the ebb and flow of things, the one that gets very retentive about having to do their workout as it's written down and following it to the letter. And then, because the Jiu-Jitsu manner is kind of go with the flow, right? Well, why not take that approach with your strength and conditioning? Just be adaptable.

James de Lacey1:04:03

They got to grind, though. Got to grind.

William Wayland1:04:03

Yeah, it's great if you're doing ADCC or something, but 99% of people who do Jiu-Jitsu are never going to do that stuff. But they use those guys as a jumping-off point, which is always the mistake in my opinion.

James de Lacey1:04:28

Yeah, and they also forget about the extra supplements that go on at that level too.

William Wayland1:04:28

Oh yes. Yeah, don't get me started on some of the extra supplements that get involved in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. My good friend Kev quite often makes that point about some of the best guys in the world. They talk about all this stuff that comes with it—the respect and working hard and doing your technique—but then why is there such a prevalence of PED usage?

And it's because the sport is so rough on the body. I'm 12 years in and things hurt. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't hurt if I didn't do it, but you love the sport and you want to carry on doing it for as long as possible. And I guess some people are just willing to do what it takes to carry on.

James de Lacey1:05:12

Yeah, for sure. I could have this podcast go for another two hours, but obviously you've had a long day.

William Wayland1:05:12

Yeah, that's all right, that's fine, man.

James de Lacey1:05:12

So hopefully this was insightful for people listening.

William Wayland1:05:12

Oh, for sure, for sure.

James de Lacey1:05:12

This is great information on here for anyone listening as well. But if anyone wants to follow you and see what you're up to, where can they find you?

William Wayland1:05:12

They can find me at Powering Through. It's kind of my page, but it's also my gym's page as well, so there'll be gym-related content but also content related to the type of stuff I'm doing.

If you want to find me on Twitter, I'm WS Wayland. You can find me there. I have a TikTok that I barely use because I don't understand TikTok because I'm super old. So if you want to go there, that's at Powering Through as well. Yeah, those are the three places you'll find me.

James de Lacey1:06:00

If you want to see William twerking on camera, TikTok is where you're going to find him.

William Wayland1:06:00

Yeah, I'm not resorted to dancing just yet, but if I get desperate I might go that route.

James de Lacey1:06:00

Fair enough. All right, thanks for coming, William. Really appreciate it.

William Wayland1:06:00

Thanks for having me.