Strength & Conditioning For MMA w/ UFC PI's Gavin Pratt (SSOF Ep. #7)

Gavin Pratt1:28

If we look at strength and conditioning, it's like the standard and the things that have held up over time are still all there. We're not reinventing the wheel, but it's much like MMA itself. If you look at back in the days, you'd have a brawler versus a jiu-jitsu guy. In the first ones, there was even sumo wrestlers against karate guys. So now it's morphed into this—it's still mixed martial arts, but now we're thinking, well, they still throw strikes, they still grapple, they still do takedowns, but now the low leg kick is starting to rear its head in the sport. So that's still effectively a kick.

Long story long, what I'm trying to say from that is we're looking at the basics of strength and conditioning, but how they mirror the sport. From a strength and conditioning perspective, there's not too many changes. It's just about suiting the athlete.

So some of the other studies we're doing is we're looking at the aqua bag and looking at the reliability of that when compared to, say, a landmine punch throw. So that landmine punch throw has been a big part of our testing battery for upper body power or force velocity profiling. And I personally found that there was quite a mix in the results we were getting. We would test that every three weeks as part of the deload, so we had a lot of numbers, and there were just some weeks where it didn't make any sense.

So we then went, all right, well, let's change the position, because we know that the GymAware doesn't like a curvilinear sort of approach, which you can change, but it still doesn't—it's not as accurate as, say, a linear-based movement. So we magnetized it against the wall and then created that movement, and then we also compared it with the aqua bag. And so those details will be coming out pretty soon and having a look at the differences in reliability. Maybe we can start shifting to a more specific test with the aqua bag. So that's another one.

And then this isn't so much research as in, it's more of a data collection that we're doing. Obviously, concussion is a massive part of combat sports, and there's, to be honest, for what it is, not much been done in regards to testing and training from a strength and conditioning perspective. So I think we can do better.

And what we've been trying to do is collect data on the Vald ForceFrame, look at ratio differences, and then look at the standard deviation based on what our squat is, and start looking at whether flexion, extension, or lateral flexion should be our targeted neck training based on what our normative data is. And obviously we're in that process now of collecting that normative data.

So it's not like we're going to say, 'Hey, you guys should be targeting this.' We don't know yet, but the process has started, and I'm really excited by it because it can give us very specific targets as strength and conditioning coaches to help prevent concussion as well.

James de Lacey5:23

I'd say that's exciting. Is that—are those neck measures going to be somehow correlated to, I don't know, concussion symptoms or something like that to be like, 'Hey, potentially if you're this strong, you could maybe reduce your risk,' or is it kind of like a Z-score through what you have there and like, 'Okay, this is kind of where you need to be?'

Gavin Pratt5:51

Yeah, it's going to be more the latter at the moment, because the problem is when people get concussed, it's very hard to then almost immediately put them into isometric maximal strength. But we might be able to pair it up with some data, baseline data, from C3 Logix, because you can do C3 Logix concussion screen immediately after.

So we've also got the opportunity potentially to do sports vision training, like using Synaptec or something like that. Maybe we can mirror that in. We don't know yet, but this is definitely where we're thinking.

And then so at the moment it's just going to be Z-scores and sort of more about ratios. So you can really see, like, your left lateral flexion is a bit lower than where it should be. Maybe we need to do a 2:1 ratio in your rotational work.

And we've actually been utilizing Hit IQ mouthguards as well and looking at the forces that go into that and then trying to pair that up with their neck strength as well and sort of see—it looks like you need half the amount of rotational forces to create a knockout versus, say, a jab-cross straight down the pipe. You can accept or absorb like two times the amount of force straight on that you can in a rotational force. So all of a sudden, our lateral flexors and rotators become really important in the neck.

James de Lacey7:19

That's interesting. Do you have any, I guess, for the listeners that probably won't have access to, for example, these mouthguards or be able to test necks, do you have any go-to neck exercises then that you like to use?

Gavin Pratt7:47

Yeah, plenty. And one of the things that we've been trying to implement in Shanghai is a progression that mirrors fight camps and off camps. And that might be something that practitioners who don't have access to technology could use.

So if we look at our processes in MMA fight camps, we might have return to training, which is where they come back after a bit of time off. Maybe they had a fight, went home, enjoyed themselves, and they come back. Return to training phase, we'll start looking at basic isometrics. So we might use bands and just develop all angles. We're just going to get some nice base strength from a band perspective—lateral flexion, extension, and start building on that.

Then in the general prep phase, we're going to start looking at maybe isotonic movements, particularly for flexion-extension, but it might be lateral depending if you have the ability to test or not. So things like Iron Necks, things like neck harnesses, maybe even partner-based work, which is still isometric. But often they'll do that in their technical training as well. So if they're doing that in their technical training, we'll get additional loads put in there through like neck harnesses and things.

And you can attach a neck harness to a cable. You can put a plate on it. You might put them on a GHD machine, so we increase the posterior chain activation there, get them to hold in that position, and then start doing their flexion-extension.

As well, as we progress into specific prep, we might bring the Iron Neck in for a heavier loaded rotational movement. And then as soon as we get into fight camp, we've sort of termed it an oscillation drift.

So it's like we want that on-off switch of the muscles to be going. And so we might get them instead of an isometric with a band around the head, they'll step out into it and then step back. Or maybe they'll put a band around their head and they'll do a push-up movement at the same time with a shoulder tap and there's a bit of drifting oscillations there, that on-off.

Finally we're going to late fight camp and now we actually want to make it a bit more specific. So one of the drills that we've done is put an iron neck on them with a bungee cord on the back and then we add an agility drill into that as well. So maybe there's three points, different colors, and we'll, as they come out at us, they're going to listen to the call. So maybe it's red, yellow, black—go out to yellow and they've just got to throw a two-punch combination and then they go back.

But at that end point is where the neck flexors really engage, which is what's going to happen when you go into a contact situation and you might actually get a jab down the middle or a cross down the middle. And so those flexors have to be really strong and reactive to that. And so we're trying to make it a bit more appropriate, I guess.

James de Lacey10:33

I love that. That's, if anyone's actually after an iron neck, in the description there's a discount code for 15% off for anyone. Yeah, that's the one. And then I love the idea of the reactive neck stuff because obviously the ability to switch that, I guess that braking force on is important.

I mean, I guess for one I quite like for that as well is to have a partner almost stand behind them and push on their head different ways, just because you can't see where it's coming from. And it's, I guess, another cheap way for anyone at home that maybe wants to jump into a bit of that reactive network as well.

So let's jump straight into, since we're talking about strength training I guess, for the neck, let's talk about strength training for MMA in general. So how do you look to devise a plan? It's a general question from off-camp out of camp through to fight camp. So how does it change essentially from when you're out of camp going into in-camp? And is there anything we'll cover as well maybe, because you always get asked things like best exercises or maybe exercises you're really fond of?

Gavin Pratt11:55

Okay, cool. So I guess to do a dot point in my head, some of the things I think about are decay rates of physiology, say from strength to speed and power. Also, are they wanting to work on their strengths or their weaknesses? Often there's a tactical component to that. Say in Shanghai, we often worked on their weaknesses in off-camp and strengths in fight camp. Third, injury mitigation.

So obviously training load increases in technical training as they go into fight camp, so how do we back off or mirror what they're doing? Fourth, we've got to incorporate the weight cut factor and how much energy they have to actually give us at maximal effort and neural components and things like that. So they would be a lot of the factors that I'd be thinking of. Can definitely dive into that a little bit more.

In terms of the decay rates, obviously it's, we're looking at maybe around 30 days without training strength and you can maintain it. Sometimes more, actually. I think I just read the other day. So we would tend to try and build that base. And I mean, it's standard periodization in strength a lot of the time. But we'll look at the power speed work towards the end of fight camp just because of that decay rate.

Then that actually suits really nicely with the increase in tactical training or technical training. We can back it off in terms of just look at that power speed-based work component so they're feeling really good. And there's a mental capacity there as well, right? They're feeling fast, they're feeling powerful, they're feeling strong. The mental components are a huge part of fighting.

So that sort of ties in nicely. And then where are they at with injury mitigation? We're trying to minimize that obviously. But if you're in a calorie deficit and training your ass off in an extremely intense sport, then that injury risk significantly goes up. So exercise selection based on minimizing that risk but also maximizing performance is the balance that we look for.

James de Lacey14:01

Nice. But regarding, I guess, exercise specificity, how specific do you get? Obviously people always asking best exercises, so I'm going to dive into this a little. How specific do you get? And do you have, I guess, a continuum where you go from more general to more specific? Or is it because of the technical load, is it flipped on its head? We kind of going from a little more specific coming into more general during the fight camp?

Gavin Pratt14:34

No, I definitely would say that I would go general to specific still. And a lot of the exercises that I would select are based on testing. So where is that athlete? So that's a big discussion in terms of how we approach it. We want to make sure that the athlete has a solid level of strength first, and then we would do a force-velocity profile to then decide what is their weakness. And then we would train that for at least 6 weeks. And then in the late fight camp phase, look at just pure power speed. But that's all based on testing.

So an example of that might be, all the way through again from return to training to late fight camp, if we look at a trap bar, we might do a trap bar deadlift just for volume and hypertrophy in the first phase of return to training. Get them back, groove the movement, get a little bit of lean muscle back on, try and get a bit of body fat down. And then that's our opportunity because obviously we need to be aware of the weight gain as well in these fighters. So that return of training, general prep phase is probably a really good time to get that in.

So we might go from a trap bar just with volume to a trap bar with load, focus on the strength. If we stick with the same exercise in specific prep, we can go trap bar high-volume power training with accommodating resistance. So step on the band, let's do five reps, 5 to 10 second rest, five reps, 5 to 10 second rest, five reps. So we're getting that eccentric to concentric muscular action, getting faster and faster. Then maybe we do high-volume power training with the trap bar but with jumps. So we've turned it ballistic, still the 5-5-5.

And then by the time we get into say early fight camp or late fight camp, depending on where they're at, we can now either decide to unload it and turn it into 10-5 pogos. Test them on the force decks and see what the reactive strength is and give them a target. Or maybe we could just completely unload the bar, instead of having no weight, and look at shorter clusters of like 3 and 3 and that's it, sort of move on.

The reason that sort of come about is because in Shanghai, I'm not sure if yourself or the listeners are aware, but in Shanghai that's an academy program so we train like a team there. So we've got say 20 athletes in the gym at one time. So to have a range of different exercises at once is really logistically a nightmare. So I've had to think, all right, if we're all using the trap bar, how are we actually doing that? Because that needs to make a lot of sense to the S&C coaches.

Here in Vegas it's a little different. We sort of work more one-on-one or one-on-two to three, but they've all got their individual programs. And we can, they might all be at different time points. So a little bit different from that. But that's a nice little example of how we might do it through the whole sort of fight phase.

James de Lacey17:08

Yeah, that's a great example. And yeah, when you're working individually it's nice to be able to test and then you know exactly how your plan's going to be because you're addressing whatever it is. Whereas when you're in that team environment, there's only so much individualization you can do.

Gavin Pratt17:32

Exactly, mate. And again, that's sort of where, why we test every deload week. It sort of gives us an idea of where they're at. It's more of a training max than a 1RM, like a monitoring tool.

James de Lacey17:32

Yeah, exactly. Just is our program working? How are you feeling?

Gavin Pratt17:32

And we can use technology for that or just a standard lift. Let's go for an estimated 1RM using a calculation rather than an actual 1RM. So that, and then we can load the next phase based on what you were and adjust it accordingly.

James de Lacey17:57

Yeah. So you mentioned the high-volume power training, so that you're taking that from Alex Natera's work there?

Gavin Pratt17:57

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big maybe.

James de Lacey17:57

Yeah, that's I, I gave a, I tried to cycle myself with jumps and I was trying to measure with the V-Max Pro. But the V-Max Pro, I don't know, I think it was counting velocity from the dip and the jump and the land. So my data was skewed. But with the high-volume power training then, how have you employed that within fight camp? Because that's a taxing, I guess, set and rep scheme.

Gavin Pratt18:28

It's killer. I was absolutely [expletive] after doing—

James de Lacey18:57

My sets, so how did you organize that within a training week? Is that done on a day maybe they don't have much technical training, or I guess within overall when the technical training load isn't at its peak yet?

Gavin Pratt18:57

We build it up obviously, and I think once we get to fight camp a lot of the time that is monitored a lot more. So for example, if we were to do it, it would only be in the first three weeks of early fight camp. But prior to that it would definitely be in specific prep where we don't mind so much about fatiguing them.

But obviously it's essential for MMA. It's not about peak power, one hit wonder. It's about being able to repeat those efforts, so that's why it's so crucial for us. And what we would do is put them on the ForceDecks and get them to jump, say with a trap bar, let's use that again. And if we look at mean propulsive power, it's usually reached at 1 meter per second with a velocity.

So if you have a gym where you could use 1 meter per second for each jump, but that also coincides with the 20 centimeter jump height. So we would set them a range of between 18 and 22 centimeters, and if they got below that then that load was too heavy for them on that day, so it's like an auto-regulation tool. And same thing if they jumped above it, we'd put more load. So that was one of the ways that we tried to auto-regulate in a large group setting.

James de Lacey20:20

Nice. I really like that, just ability to repeat high-intensity efforts over and over.

Gavin Pratt20:20

Everything. You guys might have heard this stat, I know Duncan has talked about it, and if you've read the UFC PI journals, it's like 77% of fights are won in 6 to 36 seconds of high-intensity output. It's essential for the sport. So the more you can repeat that time frame of high-intensity efforts across three to five rounds, the more chance you got of winning.

And this is one of the things that Dunk has done so well for us, is that we adopted the sort of 'what it takes to win' mantra, I guess. And we're starting to change that to another one which I don't know if I can say it yet, so I'll not do it. Give away the trademark, copyright. It's coming, it's coming in hot, guys, hang out for it.

But basically, it's saying 'what it takes to win.' Well, if we look at that, it's saying if we do this, we will win. Well, that's not the case with MMA. I've had fighters that I feel have been in the best shape of their life and they got knocked out because they made a technical error, and that's just the way that the sport goes. So we can't really say this makes an MMA fighter.

Ultimately, we're going to stop you from losing. We're not potentially going to help you win, we're just going to stop you from losing. You just got to be good at fighting to win.

James de Lacey21:44

Just like all sports, people tend to forget, strength and conditioning is great, but if it's taking a lot of time away from what you're doing with your sport training, nothing's going to help you. It doesn't matter how many hills you run or whatever you do, so fully agree there, absolutely.

With your strength training then, how are you organizing a training? I don't know, because obviously you guys work I guess closely with the fighters themselves, but they obviously do their technical training outside. I'm assuming a lot of them do their technical training outside of the UFC PI with their own coaches?

Gavin Pratt22:10

In Vegas they do. In Shanghai they do it in-house.

James de Lacey22:10

Okay. So then how do you I guess schedule a training week then when they are doing the technical training outside of the UFC PI? Because obviously you need to try to fit X amount of strength, maybe extra conditioning, who knows, sessions in there. Do you have like best places or best practices that you'd like to have where you have those sessions?

Gavin Pratt22:10

Yes. That's the tricky one. So Shanghai is like the perfect laboratory, right? Like we set the timetable how we want it to look.

James de Lacey22:38

Do you want to give us your best-case scenario timetable?

Gavin Pratt23:12

Yes. So the way it works at the moment is sparring is on Wednesday and Saturdays. And I say sparring first because it's the most important part of their sport. So Wednesday and Saturdays are sparring and they're only half days, so they're structured depending on where you are in camp, and it's prioritized based on where you're at.

James de Lacey23:12

Is that intensity kind of modulated based on where that's at?

Gavin Pratt23:12

Yeah, okay. So Dean Amasinger, our head coach there, has got a fantastic system and he just obviously has a numerical system of how he wants them to fight at or spar at. And that will depend on the loading of that particular week and where they're at in their camp status and stuff, so it's really well thought out.

So that's on Wednesday and Saturdays. Then on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are our S&C sessions. And then there's obviously technical training every day on the side of that. But in terms of S&C coaches, this might interest them: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.

So if we look at it from a perspective, all right, well Wednesday and Saturday are our sparring days. We've got a session on Tuesday. We want that Tuesday to be our power-speed day because we don't want to affect their sparring on Wednesday morning. We actually want to almost potentiate it, so that's when our power and speed session goes on the Tuesday.

On the Monday we'll try and work like a deficiency. So if they've tested in their force-velocity profile and we know that they're, say, force-deficient or velocity-deficient, that'll go on the Monday with a bit more of a focus on that. And then on the Thursday we'll tend to work max strength because it gives us 48 hours before they spar again on the Saturday. So that's kind of how we've structured that.

And then in Vegas it's like, yeah, whatever the athlete tells us, wherever they can come in. But to be honest, so this is how it sort of works: if the athlete lives in Vegas, there's a couple of different MMA clubs here, there's two major ones. And those major ones will spar on Tuesday and Thursday, and then they'll do their shark tank, or what do they call it? Psycho Saturdays or Spiders, whatever it is that you call it.

They'll tend to do that Saturdays, but they'll only do that if they're in fight camp. So if they're not in fight camp they won't do that. So what we know is on Tuesday and Thursday the athlete is going to be sparring, so we can still work off that same factor.

The problem is they'll go, 'I want three sessions a week and that's going to be Monday and Wednesday and Friday.' So all of a sudden Monday and Wednesday, I'm like, 'What part of camp are you in? We're going to have to do some strength because your testing says you need to work on maximal strength. So your sparring might be a little bit affected while you're in off-camp, but as soon as you go into fight camp we'll change that.

But hey, we've done the base work on your strength anyway and we'd probably change it to power-speed, so no harm, no foul.' That's sort of how we have to look at it.

James de Lacey26:12

Do the athletes buy into that, or do you have any pushback I guess from people like, 'Oh, I don't want to feel sore or tired going into their sparring or technical sessions?'

Gavin Pratt26:34

I mean, I've only been in this role for two months, and so I'll get back to you on that one. I would say that my preparation for that when it does happen, because no doubt it will, is my go-to for strength then would turn to things like isometrics and strongman training. Because neither of them have got that eccentric component to it, so therefore they'll feel like they're getting that strength.

And it also has that nice application to MMA as well, obviously with their grappling and their uncooperative sort of based strength that we need to work on with the strongman. It kind of ties in, and so they get that feel. And as long as we get that buy-in from them, I think after that you can probably have great discussions with them about 'Maybe we should start trying this.' But there's nothing wrong with isometrics and strongman training either, like I think it's strength.

Another good one actually is flywheel training. It doesn't seem to be that same, you don't need that same muscle soreness.

James de Lacey27:31

I'll do, we actually have an Exerfly in the garage here, and it's just like you can do delayed braking action squats and do sets of eight to even 15. You get a huge pump, I mean if you want to go that many reps, but you don't get up the next day like can't walk. So it's an interesting application.

Gavin Pratt27:31

People don't have to stick with just the barbell. There's more to it. Well, especially with the flywheel, you've taken that load off the axial skeleton as well.

James de Lacey27:56

Exactly. Happy days. They're already getting wrestled around and put in all sorts of positions, so take a little bit of load.

Do you have a time of day that you prefer to do that strength training session, morning before the training or afternoon after technical training in the morning?

Gavin Pratt28:21

Well, in Shanghai we set it in afternoons. So we'll always prioritize technical. Technical is only mornings, as in it's the only thing in the morning. So technical is always first thing in the morning because that's the priority, and then by the afternoon we'll throw in a split session. So there'll be another technical training session at the same time, and then the groups will just change over. That's how it works in Shanghai where we have a little bit more control. Here it's just whenever.

We probably, one of the things we might look at is the athletes get onboarded with aura rings and we get that data so we can get flags on HRV or their stress responses throughout the day. And if we get a flag on that, we can potentially have that discussion with the athlete. The problem is a lot of the fighters are pretty mentally strong, so it's like 'I'm fine, let's go.'

James de Lacey29:17

So you might have to cheeky decrease the load or the volume a little bit here and there, but all things, they need to do the work as well, right?

Gavin Pratt29:17

I think I was having this discussion the other day, there seems to be a little bit of a leaning towards load monitoring, but at what point do we say 'hey, are we actually progressing the athlete?' Our job's to keep pushing that envelope forward, right? Not to say we got to stick below the line, we got to keep edging it forward. That's the balance, I guess.

James de Lacey29:45

For sure. Oh [expletive], what was I gonna say now? I literally had a question on the top of my head and I completely forgot it just as I was about to ask you.

Gavin Pratt30:16

Love it, as it always goes, right? It was a great question too.

James de Lacey30:16

I remember, it was actually a really damn good question. I'll come back to it. Let's move on to... actually, this was the question. Most of the listeners, I guess, are hobbyists, maybe compete locally amateur, some on the pro side. Maybe their schedule is hampered by they work full-time, maybe they only have classes in the evening. What advice would you give them then if they have to do their strength or conditioning in the morning? How can they balance that with the evening trainings?

Gavin Pratt30:42

Yeah, I'd say match it up. So if you know you have an intense day, then that's probably a day to get after it, unless it's sparring. But let's say you've got live goes in your wrestling that afternoon, and you know it's like we're going to do eight three-minute or five-minute rounds of live goes on our wrestling, that's a damn intense session, right? So if you're in off-camp I would say match and mirror that intensity in your strength and conditioning. Maybe it's a max strength day, particularly in off-camp, but you just need to make sure that the next day is a low.

So often in Shanghai we'll look at Monday moderate, Tuesday green, Wednesday red, and then repeat that. So you kind of get those days of recovery. That's what I think the simplest thing is to look at, because otherwise you'll just end up redlining every day. You know, I'll do a moderate and a moderate and a moderate and a moderate and a moderate and a moderate, it's like you're gonna break.

James de Lacey31:44

So where's your ebb and flow, I guess? Look at that, and that would be a really good way to picture it. I think from my own experience as well within grappling sports, lifting beforehand doesn't have that same fatiguing or detrimental effect as it does when you're lifting before, say, striking. If you're not doing crazy bodybuilding [expletive], blasting 15 sets of chest or some [expletive] before going to grapple, and you're doing maybe a lower volume full-body program, going to grapple feels quite good.

Gavin Pratt32:18

That's a great point though, mate. It's not just strength and conditioning programs, it's got to be... 'right' is not the best word, but it's got to be effective and specific. It can't be bodybuilding, you will tire out. You can't just go and give yourself metabolic conditioning every time you go to the gym, you're missing the point. And if you're unsure of what to do, if you're an amateur fighter and you're unsure of what to do, there are plenty of professionals offering programs online or offering discussions, or maybe there's a strength coach that trains martial artists particularly in your area.

James de Lacey32:45

They could buy my programs on sweetscienceoffighting.com.

Gavin Pratt33:14

Oh man, that's nice. That was just straight in there. How we do it.

James de Lacey33:14

That's how we do it.

Gavin Pratt33:14

But exactly, though. If there's someone out there that's doing these things, follow it up and get the right advice. If you actually want to move from an amateur to professional, then do everything in your power to do that.

James de Lacey33:36

Yeah, it's a big mistake. I see it often. I mean, you see it on Instagram too, and I've written about it a lot as well, people going to CrossFit gyms doing CrossFit as their preparation. Redlining these hard circuits for hours, and that's what they do each day of the week on top of what they're doing. It's just a mishmash of just extra fatigue for what?

Gavin Pratt34:04

Well, it suits the mindset, right? It feels right, it feels like 'this is what I should feel like.' This is hard, fighting is hard. I don't want to leave anything unturned when I get in the cage because that's intense. And so now it's, I guess, about educating and saying we can still do that without blowing your joints out, making you neurally fatigued, making you get poor sleep.

All these things, we can still make it hard for you. That's the easy bit. The hard bit, as we all know, is making it specific to your needs and making sure you can continue to do that. That's the tricky part.

James de Lacey34:36

Yeah, it comes down to consistency. People do all sorts and one niggle shows up and then they have to kind of back off again. And they come back, another niggle, and they kind of just go back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes they don't back off because 'I don't want to back off, I got to keep pushing through.' And that niggle turns into a proper injury and now you're out for six months.

Gavin Pratt35:08

And yeah, issues. That's the story, right? So it's that education of going, 'well let me show you how we can make you feel like a fight but we haven't destroyed you in the process.'

James de Lacey35:33

Let's touch on that conditioning aspect, because I don't know how much input you have on the conditioning side. Because a lot of them train out at their gyms and things, and maybe their coaches put them through things there. So I guess, how much input do you have into the conditioning side? And let's start there and we'll see what comes up.

Gavin Pratt35:33

No, we have a lot to do with the conditioning side, absolutely. A lot of the places here will focus on technical training, and obviously they'll get conditioning as part of that. They'll have a conditioning session and things like that, but I want to make sure that each energy system is developed. And I think that's probably the difference, right? You can make your cardiovascular aerobic energy system improve, and they're definitely going to be getting that at their club.

What's happening with the alactic energy system? Probably not a great deal. Glycolytic? Yeah sure, that'll be happening as well, but I think we can still develop it. And it's definitely been something I've noticed here when we do give them the energy system work, that it's a step above. And that's great, that's exactly what we want.

So Roman, our sports scientist here at the Vegas PI, has created three energy system tests on the assault bike. And they are genius, I love them.

James de Lacey36:25

Can you share them or they trade secret?

Gavin Pratt36:25

Yeah, we're starting to get normative data on it now. So what I can basically say is he's got one for the alactic, the glycolytic, and the VO2 max, and they're all on the assault bike. So the alactic one is 6x6 seconds, peak power is the focus. The glycolytic one is a minute test, and we're looking for average power. And then the VO2 max, obviously we need the gas analysis. Well, we do gas analysis for all of them as well, but we get such great data from that.

And we're able to now look at their energy system protocols and see: was it their central or their peripheral system that was letting them down? And now let's attack that, because if it was the peripheral system, then I'm going to be starting to look at... we've got two options. We can look at mechanical loading, where that's what we term it, a stress on the joints in the system, say running or sled work and things like that.

We can do it mechanically, or we can do it physiologically, which is more just focusing on the central adaptations or the off-feet. So we can combine all of those terms, start going which is the most specific.

We'll often again have to mirror that up with when sparring is, so if they've got sparring the next day we'll tend to look at their alactic and not their glycolytic, maybe some long or short intervals for an aerobic capacity, but it's not going to blow them up for sparring again. We'll look at those scores on those three tests and relate it back to the weight class that that athlete is in and whether they're above or below the average, and then we can work out which energy system is going to be the one that we need to target and develop the most. So it's a really cool system and then we've got different descriptions we can use based on that.

James de Lacey38:52

Oh, that's cool. So even the conditioning side then, down to the individual prescription then, where they test, we had that deficiency early on and then come through?

Gavin Pratt38:52

Yeah, and I think it's important to note that we don't just focus on heart rates. Obviously we have things like peak heart rate, vent thresholds one and two, and that's great for targeting if that's the issue, but there's so many other factors such as efficiency, capacity, power, time to activation. These are some of the terms we're starting to look at now as well.

And so we might just have a power output like duration at peak power: how long can we go for, how quick can you get to peak power, how much can you repeat efforts at peak power? Things like that, we're trying to look a little bit differently at our energy system development and get a bit more specific with it.

James de Lacey39:18

Nice. I've got a couple of questions. Let's start with this one then, regarding the peripheral and your central adaptation side. So if you're... I could say how do you see general versus specific conditioning in regards to say peripheral adaptation? When we're talking about peripheral adaptation for the... let's just say it's just the muscles being able to use that oxygen.

So for example, if you spent months on a bike and then you went to go to a swimming race, you're not going to see that transfer just because of different muscles, different movements, etc. So how do you see then, I guess the balance general specific? Would you ever prescribe say shadow boxing, whatever else, as part of that peripheral conditioning adaptation to make those adaptations, or you leave that completely to okay, you're getting that within your training, we're just going to touch mainly more on the physiology than worrying about the actual mode of the exercise?

Gavin Pratt40:45

Yeah, absolutely. So in conversations with a lot of the fighters, they often talk about if they spar, stand-up sparring, they could go all day. They're able to regulate their movement and their flow of it, and so that doesn't really tire them. And if you look at the literature, the highest amount of blood lactate in MMA is usually created from takedowns, and that's defense and offense and if it's successful or not. So that's where we're generating the most blood lactate. That's what our bodies will need to start improving their buffering capacity on.

Obviously, there's a lot of each of those things in there in terms of upper body, lower body, that sort of thing. So one of the things we might do is repeat sled pushes. We can look at either light or heavy loads depending if the athlete is force or velocity deficient too. We can look at things such as in the gym doing like eccentric quasi isometrics on chinups.

So load up a chinup with 20 kilos, get them to hold down maximally, as soon as they can't hold anymore it's an 8-second eccentric tempo to finish off that one rep. Maybe you repeat it, but now we're starting to get that sort of peripheral ability to resist fatigue as well.

So it's a bit blurring the lines with muscular endurance and energy system. But another one we might do is on the bike: if it's a leg, if we're going to try and focus on the peripheral leg fatigue, let's load up the bike and put it on a high resistance and get them doing sort of 30 and 30 intervals if it's glycolytic/aerobic, or maybe we do long intervals, so targeting watts at a heavier resistance, so it's actually the legs that blow out versus the central system that blows out. So couple of different ideas there anyway.

James de Lacey42:12

Nice. And then I guess for the listeners that I guess they don't have access to be able to figure out what their weakness is regarding central, peripheral, whatever energy systems. Is there, I guess, like a general best practice that you like to follow regarding what they're focusing on within conditioning? Say maybe from out of camp to in camp, are you focusing more on the lower end earlier or aerobic, alactic, and then moving differently as you go in camp, or is there something else you got going on there?

Gavin Pratt43:10

Yeah, we would sort of look at it, yes, is the easy answer. But I guess we've still got to mirror that up with what's going on in the technical training. So if, for example, if we go back to that Shanghai system where we had Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, S&C, we've got attack on, we might have 15 to 20 minutes max to do energy system development work with them, so we've got to be really targeted, really clever with it, and in a big group.

So if we look at Tuesday, well we've got sparring the next day, so what energy system do we think we're going to work on? It's got to be alactic, right? It's got to be that short burst. And we might need to develop that in the off-camp because sparring is not as important, so we might need to look at repeat... so obviously their alactic system is going to go more glycolytic, potentially even aerobic, if we look at one-to-one recoveries or one-to-two recoveries. It's going to tire them out.

That's okay. We just want the focus to be on trying to generate that peak power. Repeat, repeat, repeat. But as soon as they start getting closer to fight camp, we do give them those recoveries and we do want them to go for more that time to activation, like how quickly can you get up to peak power, rest, do it again, and look at clusters. So maybe you do three bursts, two minutes rest, come back, do three.

Because if you look at the literature, they're like five-minute break, or the alactic energy system can take up to 8 to 10 minutes to recover. We've got 8 to 10 minutes to sit there and do one rep, right? It doesn't work. So let's get realistic about it. It's appropriate to this sport anyway. So again, if we go back to return of training, we'll tend to look at ratios across the week as well, so maybe two of them are aerobic development, one of them is more your alactic to glycolytic development, and then we'll just progress through the camps like that to the point where by the end we'll profile them just before they go to early fight camp.

If we've got some really flagrant deficiencies then we're going to attack that specific deficiency and try and bring that up.

James de Lacey44:59

Gotcha. Okay. So then if I was someone, again maybe another listener that doesn't have whatever access to whatever during fight camp, is there anything particular that you would, I guess, recommend for them to work on or I guess target? It's a very general question because obviously it's individuals, what's going on. But maybe there's some kind of, let's just say energy system or quality that you're looking to target within that fight camp compared to say what you're doing in the off-camp?

Gavin Pratt45:32

Sure. I mean, if we go back to that stat before, repeat power is key, right? So we should have already done the development of the aerobic system, and they would have definitely been doing that as part of their technical training. So we've got to look at the things that they're not doing or maybe they're not so good at. And so even if you don't have the ability to test and you don't know, then I would say repeat power would be a real key.

So, say for example, if you have an assault bike, then you can look at doing little clusters on that. And it might be one of the ones we do earlier on, not so much fight camp, is we might do a 12, 10, 8, 6 seconds, and that's a one-for-one work-to-rest ratio, and we're going to give them a target of peak power. Now obviously by the 8 and the 6 that's no longer peak power, dying, right? But that's the ability to repeat power, repeat power. But then we'll give them a three-minute rest and then we'll come back and we'll try it again.

And so that's the way that we're, I guess, we're only sort of delving into two. That might be certainly not alactic there, but the first two we should be able to put in that effort. Now can you repeat it after a good rest? We'd also be looking at things like one-minute recovery rates, so looking at say aiming for a 20% heart rate decrease in that one minute post-workout. That's another thing, looking at breathing cadence and things like that.

But one of the main factors I would say is because their technical training is priority and there's a lot of impact in that, I would try and keep it off-feet or what we deem physiological, so there's less stress on the joints. Like running, sprinting? No. I wouldn't be doing that so much as I would be doing assault bikes, bike work, VersaClimbers, those things where you've got a little less loading on the joints, I would say would be taking my priority.

James de Lacey47:20

Yeah, I have a personal vendetta against sprints for fighters. I mean, injury risk is just outweighs what you're...

Going to get there in my opinion. But yeah, with the... I had more questions again that I completely forgot. I had like three because I had so many in my damn head. Well, we were talking about alactic on the bike and the intervals and the clusters. And say for us as well, I guess that's another good way to be able to monitor your own progress as well. If you did that, say that 12, 10, 8, 6, measured your power output, and just kind of did that every month, you could, you know, easy way to track your progress without having to do anything crazy.

Gavin Pratt48:17

Absolutely. And you've got a metric, you've got a target, right? We all need targets. You just don't want to aimlessly get on something and go, just do two minutes of that as best you can. It's like, what am I shooting for? And that's why you can test, right? Like you can always do, you could do those 6 by 6 second tests on the assault bike because you can still read what the power output says on it.

James de Lacey48:17

So just what kind of rest are you doing between those 6-second intervals?

Gavin Pratt48:42

It's every minute on the minute. I'll give a minute. And so, you can assess what the power output is, and maybe if you're doing, say, like that 12, 10, 8, 6, you know, you're not going to get peak power except for maybe on the first one. So you set that target at 75% or 85% of peak power, and every single one you got to shoot for that. Now that's a realistic target that'll get the athlete or yourself really trying to hit that number, and so therefore you get that maximal intent when you're coming from that repeat power.

James de Lacey49:05

Nice. The other question I had was on heart rate, using heart rate as a, I guess, an intensity tool during training. Obviously one, we know estimating max heart rate isn't very accurate. I guess heart rate in general is variable between individuals. For example, someone's, you know, whatever it is, percentage might have a different ratio of different energy systems, etc.

So I guess what is your... you mentioned about heart rate, you don't use so much within conditioning because you've got power and things like that to measure. But do you, what is your take on using heart rate to, I guess, measure intensity within training for someone who doesn't have other things? And is there any advice or metrics that you like to follow doing it, like you mentioned that heart rate recovery?

Gavin Pratt50:07

Well, we do use heart rates a lot. We use, but we have the advantage of gas analysis where we can actually see where thresholds are, so it is quite targeted. And obviously that's the gold standard if you have that option. If you don't have that option, I don't see why not because it's a target still and something.

At least something. Absolutely. Like what's the other option? You know, you're either going to look at a metric that's on the bike, speed, power, anything along those lines. You're going to look at that, or you're going to look at heart rate. And if you're hitting a bag, you don't have any other options there you go, right? It's like, what was your RPE? Maybe that's about it.

But in terms of right here, right now, I think it's a great option and I would definitely recommend for people to use it, even if it's not gold standard and super accurate. Hey, it's better than nothing, so go for it and start using it. Just be smart about what we're talking about with the loading. Like if it's a high day, what are we trying to get? Your high and your low days shouldn't look the same in terms of heart rate percentages.

And so that would just be that one warning. If you're working glycolytic, you definitely want to be sort of up the higher end, up towards the 85%. That's actually what we've seen with a lot of vent threshold two. We're sort of ranging anywhere from around 87 to 92% max heart rate as a vent threshold two. And for vent threshold one, that's a bit broader, but we're sort of looking anywhere from 72 to 77 is what we sort of saw, so you can use that.

One of the things I've really noticed actually is if you do steady state, nasal only breathing, that's really highly related to VT1. Particularly for those that haven't done nasal breathing before, probably go straight up to VT2. But yeah, nasal breathing is a really good way to actually monitor your intensity.

So if you wanted to, say, do a 2 to 4K run and that's what you consider to be your road run or your steady state, then just do it all through your nose, your breathing, and let that guide the speed. So if you can no longer breathe through your nose, you got to slow down. If you can continue to breathe through your nose, go faster and see how much you can maintain that. That's an easy way then, without the heart rate monitor, then just to monitor your low-end work.

James de Lacey52:00

Nose only, anything else?

Gavin Pratt52:28

Yeah, breath gets to the point where you can't breathe through your nose. Exactly. And it might even be nose in, mouth out, and then once you get to mouth, mouth, you know you're more towards VT2.

James de Lacey52:28

That's nice. Is there anything else regarding nose breathing? Because I know that was obviously a big, I guess you could say, a big craze, what, five, six years ago maybe, when it kind of hit. And you saw even the Aussie rugby team doing their, I think they're doing sand dunes or something with tape over their mouths and stuff like that.

Gavin Pratt52:56

Absolutely, plenty actually. And so we've done mouth taping before because one of the reasons we do that is I don't speak Mandarin very well, so that was a very easy way to not let them cheat. And so that helped them understand what we were trying to get at. So that was more what it is. And once we got that through to them, they didn't have to do it, but they actually kind of liked it. So they took a lot of videos, you know. Hey, they're bought in. That's great. That's what we want.

But in terms of nasal only breathing, you have nitric oxide that's actually stored up behind the nasal cavity. But if you breathe in through your nose, it will take it along into your bloodstream and will help circulate that oxygen better. You don't get that in when you breathe through your mouth. It misses that point.

Also, when you breathe through your nose, it's supposedly able to go into the lower lobes of your lungs where there is more blood vessels, which help circulate oxygen easier as well. So there's a couple of different things.

From an asthmatic's point of view, which is what I have been most my life, there's a technique called Buteyko, which I've done for many years. And their principle was, as soon as you start breathing through your nose, you actually decrease your breathing rate. So everyone has a breathing rate, how many times they breathe in and out per minute. And asthmatics tend to breathe too much, and the body's natural reaction to that is to shut down the airways and say, hey mate, you're breathing too much, you don't need to do that.

But what happens when our airways start constricting? What do we do as humans? We go, I got to breathe more. So they keep going smaller and smaller and smaller, and you breathe less. So counterintuitively, if you do start having asthma, you've actually supposed to try and hold your breath a little bit and decrease the amount that you breathe. But it's very counterintuitive when you're having an asthma attack, for sure.

However, I have noticed an extremely big difference, even from the age of 16 from doing these techniques. And techniques are aimed to decrease your breathing rate, the amount that you breathe per minute, and there you don't over-breathe, and therefore your airways stay nice and open, help you circulate oxygen more.

James de Lacey55:09

Nice. Are there any resources that people can read or anything like that cover a lot of the stuff?

Gavin Pratt55:09

Yeah, so you put me on the spot. Patrick McKeown, The Oxygen Advantage, right? Brilliant book. Yeah, and he's really good. And he speaks a lot about the Buteyko method as well. And there's a couple of really cool tests that we implement as well.

So we can get a baseline. You know how we talk about if you got a test, then you can assess and go from there? Well, there's a couple of different tests that you can do that actually assess whether or not you're over-breathing or whether you have an ability to tolerate carbon dioxide in the system, which that's why you would over-breathe as well.

So there's a bunch of that information in that book. It's really good. And I would also recommend looking into the Buteyko method as well, which is spelled B-U-T-E-Y-K-O.

James de Lacey56:05

Nice. Russian method from the '50s, I believe?

Gavin Pratt56:05

I think everything comes from Russia in the end when it comes to sport science.

James de Lacey56:41

Oh, perfect. Well, I don't want to take too much of your time. Think it's been a little, been about an hour now. I know you're busy man there now. You're in Vegas, you got a few parties to go to too, I'm sure, on the strip.

Gavin Pratt56:41

No mate, not me. Don't worry about me.

James de Lacey56:41

Oh, thanks for coming on, Gavin. Is there any ways people can follow you, maybe to keep up with what's happening?

Gavin Pratt56:41

Sure, so just on Instagram, it's Gav_Pratt, and that's P-R-A-T-T.

On Twitter I think I am gcp fit. So I've got an online, much like yourself, got an online program writing that have been there for about 10 years and that's gcp Fitness. So you can follow me there as well. I don't do much except write programs on that website, but the Twitter account's gcp fit I believe.

James de Lacey57:09

Sweet, I'll link it all up in the description anyway. So if anyone wants to get in touch with their programs, whatever it is, then they can get straight to you.

But thanks for coming on Gavin, really appreciate it.

Gavin Pratt57:37

Thank you very much James, it's great to chat to you mate. Appreciate all your time, cheers.