No More Landmine Punches? And How UFC Fighters Train At The UFC PI w/ Rebecca Summers (SSOF Ep 94)

James de Lacey2:25

Gotcha. So, all those metrics then, as you mentioned, you're comparing to, say, benchmarks within that weight class, and you're basically seeing where maybe the athlete is deficient in some of these, I guess, force, power, etc., and you're programming based on that?

Rebecca Summers2:52

Yeah, 100%. So, we have four tier ones. We do a countermovement jump loaded profile, isometric mid-thigh pull, a jammer punch profile similar to the loaded countermovement jump, and then we do a neck assessment.

So, based off of those four tests, we get a lot of information. When you think about the outputs, and then again breaking it down from absolute relative to endurance, that's a lot of information. But ultimately, if they're in a weight class, we would say, "Here's the min, the average, the max." And we would compare them from their mid-thigh pull, their countermovement jump, or their jammer punch to say where they lie, and then again, look at those deficiencies.

James de Lacey3:27

Gotcha. Do you find maybe there are some fighters that, I guess, maybe don't have the training background, don't have many of these, I guess, minimum or even just like average efficiencies in some of these things, but they're awesome fighters, maybe ranked top five, whatever it is. Is there something Does that change the way maybe you approach the program then?

Rebecca Summers3:46

Absolutely, right? I mean, there's obviously strengths in what they do and what got them to the UFC. So, we always got to take that into consideration. I've worked with many fighters where it's like, I feel so strong in these positions, and then they do the mid-thigh pull and then they're below the average.

So, I always tell them I'd rather have it that way where you feel strong on the mat and maybe it doesn't show on the mid-thigh pull than the opposite. So, we have that happen all the time and it's just keeping that human aspect of it all and making sure you're having that conversation with the athlete and getting an idea of what they want to improve upon and what they feel and not just going solely off of all the tests.

James de Lacey4:25

Nice. With that mid-thigh pull as well, I think cuz a lot of listeners maybe wondering what the hell that even is. So, maybe just describe what the isometric mid-thigh pull is and then maybe to make it even more practical, if there is a way, I don't know if there is or not, so you can just bend that question, but is there a way to maybe translate some of these benchmarks into maybe, I don't know, deadlift numbers relative to body weight just for the average person?

Rebecca Summers4:47

Yeah, absolutely. So, isometric mid-thigh pull is think about getting into almost a power position in a clean. You're a little bit more vertical versus shoulders over the bar, and you're pulling the bar against an immovable object. So, the goal is to look at the maximum force capabilities of the muscle.

So, it's definitely a learning curve for a lot of our athletes if you've never done it before, but it is a pretty safe test overall. We do have force plates, we're very fortunate to have that. Let's say the next level down could be like a strength gauge. If you have any strength gauges, you can hook it on to something on the ground, hook it on to a belt, and it'll be more like a belt squat pull. But again, you can get maximum force capabilities.

One thing since Gavin Pratt has been the director here, he's done a great job of making sure we're grabbing normative data. And so, that's exactly what we're doing. So, if you don't have force plates or if you don't have a strength gauge, what's the next box we can tick as far as to say if our athlete is strong enough? And that's our compound movement.

So, like you said, a trap bar deadlift, safety bar box squat, we do a bench press, and we do a chin-up as our big four main movers. And throughout the last year and a half, I would say, we've been really trying to collect that data to say, "What is good for MMA?" Cuz when you look at football or American football, right, you can see that they're doing three times body weight. Is that what target for MMA? The answer is no, right?

So, I think for trapbar, again, dependent on a weight class, we can really target that, too. We can break it down to each weight class, but I think we're looking anywhere between two to 2.5, three if they're really strong. Bench press, we're usually around that one, maybe 1.5, maybe 0.9 for females. Chin-ups, we're definitely hitting that 1.2 to 1.3, 1.5 again if they're getting crazy of kilos per body weight. Back squat, probably again closer towards that two.

So, this is information that we've definitely been building up, and we hope to release something here soon where we can bring it out to the masses.

James de Lacey6:44

Oh, awesome, awesome. And hopefully the listeners can maybe take some of that as well. So, you mentioned obviously by weight class it changes a bit. I'm assuming a kind of a relative difference since it's relative to body weight, you probably have higher numbers at the lower and middle weight classes, then as you get to the heavyweights, you maybe start to drop off.

Rebecca Summers6:57

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we have some really strong heavyweights, and usually those are guys that kind of have a little bit more background in, let's say, a sport like football. But for the most part, yes, that's correct.

James de Lacey7:17

What about cuz you obviously mentioned like the jammer press for I guess as a proxy for punching power, punching velocity, etc. that you measured there. Is there a field test Are you collecting anything field test-wise for that that you'll be releasing?

Rebecca Summers7:34

We really haven't a whole lot yet. I know personally I've thought about putting, let's say, a speedometer on a med ball and punching into the wall or any wearable like a push band or output that you can have a different med ball size and kind of work up and see if your hand speed falls down from there.

So, I can definitely see where that could be a nice little field or a nice middle ground between having the gym aware and the jammer. But, yeah, haven't really quite gone down that rabbit hole yet. I think mainly because we're still perfecting our jammer punch. So, once we kind of nail those things down, I think it'll be a lot easier to make sure that we can think of tier two type of test for that.

James de Lacey8:10

Nice. Actually, I actually tried the med ball punch with some boxers 6-7 years ago, but with like the original push band, like V1, like very first model. And it was the shittiest information that I ever got cuz it was like

Rebecca Summers8:27

It's harder, right?

James de Lacey8:27

You had to like map the movement, and then because the way they said the punch instead of I typically would like a shot put, so you would just kind of leave the arm out there, so you just get that one movement, but they'll bring the arm back.

Rebecca Summers8:47

And so you get that, to you like, "Fuck." Like, it's so hard to get the right information from some of these devices.

And, again, we're trying to figure it out. We're trying to push it forward, but we run into the same thing as like, "All right, what's our target? What are we looking for?" If it's that concentric only piece, then we'll run with that for now.

Because we did do that landmine punch or that landmine throw for the first like 5 to 6 years that the PI was open. And then we know that fighters don't punch overhead, they punch more horizontal. So we wanted to transition to more of a vector that's similar to fighting.

James de Lacey9:14

Interesting. Okay, so the landmine punch that you did is kind of I guess been sidelined and replaced by the jammer press, or the jammer press is kind of used in conjunction with it?

Rebecca Summers9:34

Sidelining the landmine press and now transitioning over to the jammer.

James de Lacey9:34

Is that purely for testing or is that also within I guess actual training, too?

Rebecca Summers9:34

I would say within actual training since we started the jammer punch, we're definitely using the jammers more. I do find myself still using that landmine punch or throw or anything that kind of gets a little bit more of a stimulus or a different look. I definitely still use that landmine, but the main reason was with the landmine, right?

When we especially when we got that heavy weight, it was like a huge dip. They were using their legs, they were using everything, they were throwing it. So, and we were calling that our upper body assessment. And that wasn't upper body, that ended up being a total body.

So we go into a half-kneeling position now, like you said, kind of like a shot put throw, and now we can say, all right, we cut out the lower body just a bit. Now we can really say that this is a truly upper body assessment.

James de Lacey10:27

Got you. Got you. Okay, yeah, that makes sense now. Is there any other profiling you're doing with the upper body there? I think, what was, must have been a while ago now, a while ago now. Is there some kind of I guess upper body load velocity or force velocity profiling you're doing with that with that jammer punch, and is that influencing programming somehow?

Rebecca Summers10:46

Yeah, it's a relatively new test. Again, we're kind of ironing out a lot of kinks, but that is the goal. So we would have like an unloaded jammer with just a pin in it. Essentially just 2 kilos on there is the additional load.

And then we look to add 10, 20, 30% of their body weight. And we're looking for that, 20% velocity drop to stick, kind of that this is a load velocity profile. Again, we've kind of run into some hiccups here and there.

So for right now, we haven't really used it a whole lot to guide our programming, but more as in a sense to kind of say, all right, you have some pretty good hand speed at the unloaded. And let's say they drop from, instead of 20% drop-off, it was like a 50% drop-off.

All right, maybe we got to work on these heavier moderate to heavy loads and moving that with some intent behind it. So I definitely look at it as like, "Okay, a marker or to see maybe between right and left hand what we're seeing." But, yeah, it's a relatively new test for us and again, ironing out a lot of kinks.

So once we kind of nail that down, I'm sure it'll be similar to any load velocity profile where you can see why is power deficient and hopefully look to see if it's speed or velocity or force.

James de Lacey11:42

Got you. Are you doing something similar with the lower body as well then?

Rebecca Summers11:57

Yeah, so we do a loaded CMJ countermovement jump. So we do it with dumbbells on either side making sure to cue them to keep their arms straight as they jump up. We do unloaded with body weight and then we do 20, 30, 40, 50 for females and 60% of body weight for males.

And yeah, we found some really good numbers with this and again, it just really highlights of how I can target within my programming. Power is good or bad because your force at the jumps or your fast dynamic strength with the jumps is below the average, but your speed is good.

So now we have a direct target to work on or it could be vice versa. And then to complicate it even more, we can look at the lighter, we can look at the lighter end of the spectrum, so 0 to 20%, the middle end of the spectrum, 30 to 40%, and then the higher, and then we can look at things like speed power, absolute power, strength power, and then really dial down again in our prescriptions.

James de Lacey12:52

Awesome. And I know I think it must be kind of recently that the new neck assessments you've got going on because you mentioned neck as being one of your primary I guess testing tools. Yeah, don't you run through that entire thing protocol, how you use it, what it's giving you, etc.

Rebecca Summers13:07

Oh, yeah, exactly. So we're looking at four different strength vectors in the neck. So flexion, left and right lateral, and extension. So we're using the Vald force frame to assess the neck. We started in a quad plate position and then we found that our fighters were kind of like really leaning into it and we couldn't really quite call it a true neck because it just turned into a total body again.

So we went into a lying position and again just looking at pure flexion, extension, lateral and lateral. We did put some EMGs on to make sure to see like, okay, how much of the neck is actually contributing to the force. And what we found is that it's actually like more of a trunk neck head coupling.

So when you think about extension, right, the erectors were actually contributing to a significant amount of force within that. So again, not 100% a neck test. We're going to still call it the neck test, but we understand that there's a coupling mechanism going on between the trunk, the neck, and the head.

As far as what we look for, we look for absolute force, right? Just as in any strength and conditioning program, strength is the prerequisite to anything else that you want to do within your body. So we take that into the same way with the neck.

We look to make sure that they can hit those absolute numbers. And again, we're comparing them to their weight class. And then secondly, we look at ratios. So we'll look at a flexion to extension. Where we want 80% of our flexion strength should be to one of the extensors.

And then on the laterals, we're looking for a one to one. When you look at flexion to lateral, we would like a one to one, but we are kind of looking at the data that we've collected and we found that that's absolutely not the case purely because our fighters, they're manipulating their opponent by pushing in laterally.

So they're pretty well built or have a lot of strength within their laterals already. So that's another 80 to one is kind of what we're seeing within our population. But yeah, I mean, I can probably keep going with that, but again, we're just making sure that they can hit their strength targets first.

Looking at the ratios second. And then that's our ticks and then we can kind of progress from there, move on to things like fast dynamic strength, slow dynamic strength, reactive.

James de Lacey15:13

So you, is that same test giving you then rate of force development, is it?

Rebecca Summers15:28

It is. So I would say within maybe the last 5 months, our first protocol was just like a build. So they would engage with the pad and then it'll be a build, build, build. Once they hit their peak, hopefully within 5 seconds, all right, we stop that rep and then we do another one within the next 20 seconds.

So recently we changed the protocol to engage with the pad, stay below the threshold so it doesn't count, and then 3, 2, 1, now as high as you can, as fast as you can, try to engage that flexion, let's say. So yes, we're looking into that because we know punches are coming in at about 100 to 150 milliseconds.

So our ability to contract quickly is going to be really, really important. So we'll hopefully again start to build that data and see what that looks like for our fighters.

James de Lacey16:04

Nice. And so then how does the neck training program look after an assessment like that? Do you have a progression that you work through or do you, or is it kind of like I'm going to say they just jump into kind of exactly what they need at that point? Or do many of them just kind of start at the very beginning like, "Hey, here's some very basic neck exercises to start."

Rebecca Summers16:17

Yeah, I mean, we definitely want to meet the athlete where they're at. So if they're, if their neck strengths are through the roof and then their ratios are like a green tick, let's progress to the next step and jump right ahead to like a fast dynamic neck movement, which would be like a if we're looking at rotation, it'll be like, pulling the head really quick, working on that concentric.

So, yeah, I've had very few fighters that have had those ticks to start off. For the most part, it is yeah, we need to work on static strength to build up the stability within your neck. And then after maybe a block, I can progress to a slow dynamic, so still working on that strength, but maybe more on the hypertrophy side.

And then let's retest and see where we're at. If we're able to get the ratios and the force up, all right, and then we can move to our next step, which is fast dynamic strength. And then once we get closer to fight, and once we feel like again, we're ticking all those boxes, we can get into fun more reactive drills.

But that's kind of like our progression and our strength matrix we kind of look at. Definitely static, slow dynamic, fast dynamic, and then into more reaction as that's very much like fight-like.

James de Lacey17:31

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What are the common ratio weaknesses that you see with most fighters that come through? Do you find them most deficient in one movement than the other?

Rebecca Summers19:12

Yeah, I would say from recent tests, I would say the flexion is usually the one that points out to me. I would say we get every and all in between, but again, when we're looking at that flexion to extension ratio and we're looking for that 80% or 0.8, a lot of times we're seeing like that even 59 or 58. And so that's kind of like a big standout.

All right, let's make sure we build up the strength in the flexion to make it 80% strength of the extension. And depending on who we're working with, it might just be as simple as I'm going to show you this exercise. I want you to build up your time at it. So start with 10 seconds for three rounds, 20 seconds for three rounds, 30 seconds for three rounds. Now we accumulated a minute and a half of really good posture and really good strength. And then go from there.

Start with slow dynamic strength, nothing fast yet. And then hopefully they come back into town or hopefully if they're local, we can retest them and kind of see if we move the needle at all in improving that ratio. Again, we're trying to mitigate any cervical neck injuries and potentially any neck or head accelerations that might cause any type of concussion symptoms.

So at the end of the day, if we can't get them strong enough and we can't get those ratios right, we got to make sure we stick to our system of get that neck strong enough before we get up to all the fun stuff.

James de Lacey20:37

Nice. And we've touched a little bit on the strength stuff. What about the conditioning side? Is there anything I'll say new, but maybe not new, but anything you got going on there in the conditioning side, test-wise, training-wise, etc. that maybe listeners haven't heard of come out of the PI yet?

Rebecca Summers20:55

Yeah, so our sports scientist, our director of sports science, Roman Fomin, he's done a brilliant job, obviously. He's probably the smartest guy I've ever talked to, but he's created our energy system test on the air dyne bike. So we do our maximum alactic power test. So it's a 6 second all out. We look at the peak watts that they produce.

Then we do a maximum glycolytic power test. So it's like a minute all out and we can look at a couple different things. We can look at the overall power average within that 1 minute and then we can break it down. Was it the first 30 seconds that was the worst or the second? If they're doing the test correctly, usually it's the second. But sometimes we can see that flip a little bit and then that's another discussion to be had. And then we also do a VO2 ramp test on it as well.

I would say besides the normal numbers of getting the average watts and the VO2 and the exchange rate, the thing that's the newest here is we got some train reds. So we can look at blood oxygen levels depletion. So we put them on their legs or we put them on their arms and then we can kind of idea of what's failing them. Is it the heart? Is it the cardio system, the cardiac system, or is it the musculature that's kind of failing within those tests?

So that's part of the reason why we like doing it on the air dyne versus on a treadmill, right? You get a slight resistance against it. So just much like fighting, right? We have an opponent to manipulate. So we want to make sure that we have that little external load to it. So that attacks the muscles just a little bit more than something on the treadmill.

So I really like that about our tests is that we're trying to relate it back again to MMA and what the sport is and the air dyne is a total body. It's arms, legs with a little bit of external resistance and so we get to mimic that and really dive deep into the fighters.

Let's see. Another fun one we got going on is a repeat sled sprint. Same idea. We look at the output as far as the distance of the sled that it's pushed in 6 seconds. We have the train reds on. We have a heart rate on and we're just kind of seeing again what's failing them. Is it the 1 minute recovery, so their cardiac system is not able to replenish? Is it the output? Did they do a great output and then it cost them a lot?

There's so many different directions and we can look at things in a very global, right, a whole body perspective, or we can get really localized to say, "Yeah, it's the legs that we need to focus on in more of a peripheral aspect."

James de Lacey23:06

Got you. So do you find from some of these tests same question as the neck one. Do you find like there's a common thread among fighters that come in that tend to maybe lack or maybe I'm going to say fail, let's just say fail more first at centrally at the heart or more so peripherally at the muscle level in some of these tests?

Rebecca Summers23:43

Yeah, I think I couldn't off the top of my head say an exact number. I think it just really is dependent on the fighter. Originally, you know, we would say that a wrestler with a wrestler background, it would probably be more heart. They're so used to having that grind and that external load on them that they're pretty good with that type of stimulus.

And then opposite side, striker, they're usually pretty good cardiac, but when it comes to either the legs or repeat takedown ability or repeat defense on a takedown, then that's when they start to see that muscular fatigue. But since martial arts has become truly a mixed martial arts, now we can kind of say, "All right, you might have a wrestling background, but they've been doing still a whole body MMA forever."

So it's really hard to kind of pinpoint which fight style produces which type of deficiencies as of yet. But hopefully in the future we can say that a little bit more clearly.

James de Lacey24:43

Awesome. So they go through I guess these three main tests just to get an idea of the three different energy systems. So do you just get that data? Do you talk through it? I guess how does that influence the athlete's program?

Rebecca Summers24:57

Yeah, so Roman does a great job of making sure that the athletes understand what we're looking at. It's all fun and games when we're talking to each other and we can really use all these technical terms. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that the fighter understands what we're talking about.

So what we look at is your immediate power, your alactic, right? Your scrambles, your glycolytic, and then your ability to endure. So we look at our Ferrari and we look at our, let's say, Tesla at the very other spectrum. And we always use the conversation of energy versus cost of energy.

So let's say they were able to hit a high amount of peak watts on the alactic test, but it cost them a lot of money, right? And they weren't able to recover. And so when we look at that, it's like, all right, we don't have to work on your absolute immediate power. Now we can transition your training into more of a recovery emphasis. So either dropping to 1 minute rest in between some high-intensity intervals, or maybe you're dropping it down to 45, whatever it is, the target is recovery.

So those are the types of conversations that we're trying to have and definitely based off of his recommendation and also what the fighter wants to work on and kind of what they feel like they're deficient in within their fights is something that we kind of try to bring together and put together within their program.

So we'll use specific heart rate training zones, or we might say, "Hey, we're trying to target 80% of your alactic power, and we're trying to hold that for 20 seconds, let's say." So we're definitely using every bit of information we can to affect their training program.

And again, you can go any which way and around, but at the end of the day, we want to make sure that it's more of a sniper shot versus a shotgun effect, right? Shotgun, just trying to get everything. Sniper is, what does this fighter specifically need?

James de Lacey27:02

Nice. So, you mentioned you have the that NIRS device on the muscles during some of these tests, just to see muscle oxygen saturation and desaturation there. So, obviously, you mentioned looking at peripheral and some central I guess fatigue deficiencies or failure points.

How are you— Well, do you want me to provide some examples for the listeners of how you maybe structure some training sessions that are more maybe peripherally targeted versus more heart centrally targeted?

Rebecca Summers27:19

For sure. So, we have to add that external load whenever time we're trying to focus on the peripheral. So, sleds are always a great example. You push a sled, you're definitely going to feel it in your legs if you have the right load on there with the right intent behind it. And then, it could be something as simple as, "Hey, we're going to push this sled on every 15 seconds." So, push it for 10 yards, turn it back around, you're going again, and you can cluster those together with let's say we'll do four, rest a minute or two, and then another four.

That's one way to really attack the periphery system. But, other than that, for the upper body, we've played around with putting the BFR cuffs to get that oxygen saturation out, and then we're doing ropes, we're doing maybe like a med ball carry to really fatigue the arms, and then ending off with some egg weight shadow boxing.

James de Lacey28:19

Oh, that's all—

Rebecca Summers28:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we can take it on either spectrum. Again, we try to look at upper body or lower body. You know, the feedback we get from our fighters is that after they wrestle or after they've been fast wrestling, they've been holding their opponent, and then they come up to strike, now they feel like they can't. So, we're really trying to target that to see can we affect this within their fighting, and can we do just how I said within our training?

James de Lacey28:37

Is that an interesting study on that on the BFR cuffs? There's I think there's only one of them in wrestling. I think it was out of Egypt. And they had the BFR cuffs. And I think it was like six must have been six weeks. And essentially they did their wrestling drills with them on. And they showed like increased arm size, increased arm endurance, like all sorts of benefits just from doing something like that. It's a pretty interesting area that's relatively unexplored.

Rebecca Summers29:05

Yeah. I want to definitely get a dose of some kind of case study on something like that. But yeah, super interesting and has some interesting applications definitely for fighters.

James de Lacey29:05

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. And then I'd love to just dive into a little bit of I guess some we'll call it quote unquote fight camp. Cuz I think most people relate to that. So like, you know, 6 to 12 weeks or whatever away from a fight.

Maybe some of your personal philosophies around that, maybe how you're currently training fighters in there or how even the PI likes to train fighters throughout that period. How does that look as a fighter maybe transitions from their general, I guess, out of camp training. And then they have a fight coming up and maybe let's just say eight weeks. How does that training change or not change or what happens there?

Rebecca Summers29:42

Yeah. So even within the fight camp, I think we break it down further from early fight camp and then late fight camp. So if it's again eight weeks out, it could be a four and a four or six weeks out a three and a three. So we like to break that up just a little bit more because as they get closer to that fight date, they're usually ramping up their shark tanks, they're ramping up their sparring.

So we know that they're getting a certain amount of glycolytic stimulus within those type of rounds. So I would say the biggest shift that we have going from a GPP or specific prep into a fight camp is making sure that we know their schedule and how they're ramping up technically so that we can match it within the S&C floor.

Other than that, it might be a shift from working on their deficiencies to now shifting to working on their strengths. We know, you know, looking at the literature, the decay rate of specific attributes like strength is the slowest decay rate, right? Power is the next one, and then speed has like a 7-day decay rate within training. So, we kind of play onto that a little bit more. If we spend, you know, let's say two phases working on maximum strength, and then we have 6 weeks or 8 weeks until the fight, we know we can maintain that strength quality throughout the rest of the fight.

So, what can we work on that will build a little bit of confidence within our fighters and also improve their performance. So, that's usually like a power in that early fight camp. And then as we transition into late fight camp, it might be more speed and reactive training.

And that can look very different depending on the fighter, depending on who they're fighting, depending on their goals. But yeah, that transition definitely happens. We're a little bit more cautious about what they're doing technically. We try to match it. We look at to see what they worked on in the off camp, and then how can we transition that into the in camp whilst working on strengths.

James de Lacey31:37

Do you get or do you have much insight into the fighters' technical training? Cuz obviously the technical training often isn't done with the PI, right? It's done at the whichever gyms around around Vegas. So, do you get direct insight into their schedules and things?

Rebecca Summers31:49

It's usually just, you know, how we do. We ask athlete how they're doing. We ask what they did for that day. Sometimes I'll get athletes that lay out a whole fight camp schedule, and I'm like, all right, cool. We do this whole thing, and then the next day that schedule's completely changed.

So, it's like, yeah, we get the ball rolling, and then, you know, as as you know, whatever it be, a new training partners in town for the next week, and they really want to train with that person, and now their whole schedule's changed to that person just to make sure they can get some good partners.

So, it's really tough in the fact that we have to always be adaptable to to what they're doing for the week. But at the end of the day, it's being a S&C coach and just making sure you're asking the right questions and seeing how they're feeling.

If I do get an opportunity, let's say they're sparring upstairs, I do try to pop in and watch what they're doing or if they're hitting some mitts, I always try to watch, but for the most part, I'm just asking questions. Yeah, what did you do today? How are you feeling? Anything that you feel like you want to target within these next 3 weeks? And then usually I'll ask that before I transition into the next phase of their program.

James de Lacey32:43

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How do you— This would be a a good one for I think for the listeners, too. But, how do you decide what days they should be doing say coming in to do their strength and or conditioning with you?

Rebecca Summers34:03

So, with our athletes, they have a lot of autonomy. So, honestly, it's them telling me kind of what fits into their schedule. And you know, sometimes we get the the athletes that are like, "Yeah, you tell me. I'll listen to you guys." And that's always fun because then we can really have some good influence. Other times it's like, "Yeah, I can only do Monday and Friday." And that's what I can do. And then we just roll with that.

So, depending again what days they come in and you know, what days they have sparring or wrestling or whatever going on, will affect the training program a a little bit to the extent, but again, if I only got 2 days with you and we got to work on X, Y, and Z, yeah, we're going to have to have maybe one day slightly lighter day and then especially if they come in on a Friday at the end of the week, let's push it on that Friday.

James de Lacey34:50

It'd be provide a very very general question. Maybe I'll provide like what an example training day would look like in that first say 4-week of the camp where you mentioned was a little more power base. Maybe an example day of the more speed base just so the listeners can get an idea of maybe how those two sessions might look different.

Rebecca Summers35:03

Yeah, definitely. So, if I was on let's say early fight camp, they do a MMA warm-up so we're looking at movement, mobility, and activation.

Our activation piece is always really fun before the session because we're really trying to get their mind locked into what they're about to do. So I'll start with the activation. The activation usually involves some type of hopping, med ball throwing, or even neuro cognitive training like the Senaptec where we're trying to really wake up the mind a little bit, especially if they're coming in for the first session of the day.

So that can look like an early fight camp, it could be like a countermovement jump, a big loaded med ball punch, and again, just reactive training where they're trying to touch, let's say, as many dots as they can as quickly and accurately as they can.

And then, let's say their session we're working on squats, maybe I'll do banded safety bar squat and we're trying to hit—if we're, I'm going off of velocity based training, maybe they're hitting like a .7 and .75. And then that's kind of their main session is hitting that strength power emphasis for both lower body and upper body.

Conditioning in that early fight might, again, it's totally dependent on the athlete, but I might hit them just a little bit harder early on so that later on it could be a little bit more detailed. So it might be more glycolytic based, and then as we transition into late fight camp it might be more alactic because that doesn't have as much residual fatigue later on in the week.

James de Lacey36:37

So maybe just give a quick example of what that glycolytic conditioning looks like as well?

Rebecca Summers36:37

I mean, one of my go-tos would be, 30 seconds on the rower. We're trying to hit a specific targeted average watts for those 30 seconds. Rest. And then we can do clusters of three, four, five, even up to six. Rest another 2 minutes and then hit another three, four, five or six. Again, depending on the athlete, the time, and what they got going on for that day.

So usually a good 30 on 30 off is a good way to go and get some good stimulus. Again, with the row machine or the air dyne or a skierg, whatever you're using, we're trying to get those watt targets. Because with glycolytic system it's about that output, not so much about the heart. We want to have that fatigue more in the muscle. So that's why I kind of always like using the average watts within those 30 seconds.

James de Lacey37:19

Are you using the benchmark average watts from the initial test?

Rebecca Summers37:36

If I'm on the air bike, yes. If I'm on the rower or the skierg, it might be based off of a MAS, maximum aerobic speed that they did in the off camp.

James de Lacey37:36

Got you. Perfect. And then how does the speed based session look in that second half of the camp?

Rebecca Summers37:54

So if we're looking at that first activation series, it might be like a single leg plate hop where we're trying to be really short on our contact time. And then the med ball might be more of a partner toss where as soon as it hits their hands they're throwing it or something along those lines that adds a little bit more of an oscillation within their movements.

And then on the Senaptec screen we're going to add in yellow and red dots so there's more reaction to it. Don't touch the red, touch the yellow. It, that thought process going a little bit more. Again, if I use my example before of using the banded safety bar box squat targeting that strength power, now we might transition to something that's a little bit more of an absolute jump.

Whether that be the loaded dumbbells from our CMJ where they, let's say 30% of their body weight was their peak power within that test. I'm going to use those dumbbells and say jump with these because we're trying to produce peak power here.

So those are just some examples. We like the band usually in the early fight camp. We like to have full ballistic movements in the late fight camp. And then the conditioning will turn into usually more of like an alactic or repeat power ability.

So 6 seconds on, 20-second rest. Again, you can cluster those how you see fit. Five rest five rest five, however you want to. And then targeting again if I'm on the watt bike, that MAP test that we did early on.

James de Lacey39:00

Hopefully that's given the listeners just some ideas of maybe how they can structure some of their training as well. One more question for you as well, Rebecca. For someone who maybe has a short notice fight—so say they get a call up two to three weeks out, they're going to be fighting someone. They've been training regularly, but obviously haven't done anything maybe specific towards whatever it is. So what advice would you have for someone in that scenario and how could they potentially change or not change their training for those two to three weeks leading up to a short notice fight?

Rebecca Summers39:32

If they've been training in regular, I guess the thing is is just add some more reactive components into your training. And remember that the job you've been doing is the job that will transfer over into the fight. So there's no need to add additional stress onto your body. Two to three weeks out is not a lot of time. So more is not more at that point.

Be a sniper in that aspect. Get what you need in the gym and get out. Just got to tweak some things up and make it more reactive, more speed-based than the other side around. Your technical training's going to do most of the work for you at that point.

James de Lacey40:19

That's a real mental battle though with the fighter too, right? Like you're in some of camp, you think you just need to do more and more to be prepared and you don't feel like you're prepared. At some point it's going to almost battle themselves into doing less. Then you sit there and you go, "Shit, but I should be doing more technical stuff. I need to do this. I need to do that." Is there a way you break through to fighters like that?

Rebecca Summers40:32

For sure. Like if I were to say, "No, we don't do anything. You got to rest. You got to recover," I'm doing myself an injustice to the UFC Performance Institute where we say we're here to help you. And mental-wise, I don't want them to feel like they're not ready, they're not in condition enough.

So that's why I do like those repeat power abilities on the air bike. I think it's off the feet. Again, we get this really high spike of power output and then minimal recovery. But at the end of the day, usually when I sprinkle in those type of repeat power abilities, just like a little sprinkle of, "All right, I died a little bit today," that usually gives just a little bit of boost of confidence in, all right, I'm ready for this fight.

On top of that, I know I safely did it and I'm not going to give them too much residual fatigue for the next training session or throughout the next week or so on and so forth.

So we definitely try to find ways to just sprinkle in those little bits with some strong purpose behind it. But again, at the end of the day, they're like, "Yeah, that was a really great finisher. Like I enjoyed that and now I'm ready to fight."

James de Lacey41:45

There's definitely something to that there about getting like pushing to that point just to know almost what it feels like and how you feel now doing it so you can almost compare it to how maybe it felt before where you can be like, "Okay, that didn't feel as hard as maybe the last time I did it." Or just getting to know that you can push at that level like, "Okay, if I feel like this during the fight, I know I at least got a little bit more." It's almost, I mean, we can talk about targeting certain things whatever, but it's almost like you can just do it just to do it at that point just as a mental thing.

Rebecca Summers42:08

Exactly, right. I mean, that's kind of shark tanks. Shark tanks, you got a new partner on top of you, right? That's never going to happen in a fight. But we got to train just a little bit harder outside the fight so that when you get into it, you've been there before and you feel confident in your skills to push through that.

James de Lacey42:32

That's perfect. I love it. Rebecca, I think that's everything I have for you today. Where can people find you and follow what you're doing and all the stuff you're sharing?

Rebecca Summers42:32

I'm not much of a social media person, but I'll do my best, but it is @bcky and then sum for Becky Summers. Other than that, we have our UFC Performance Institute Instagram, so @ufcpi on Instagram as well. They do a pretty good job of updating things that are going on within the Performance Institute. So myself, Gavin Pratt, UFC PI, and then you can find all our other great departments and leads within the PI as well.

James de Lacey43:08

Perfect. I'll link up your Instagram anyway in the description there so people can follow you and see what you guys are up to. But thanks for coming on, Rebecca. I really appreciate it.

Rebecca Summers43:08

James, nice to chat with you and hope to chat to you again soon.