Using Weight Training As A Conditioning Stimulus? w/ James Ramsey (SSOF Ep 125)

James de Lacey2:26

That would exhale sprint and then exhale again? No, they would exhale.

James Ramsey2:26

Yeah, hold their breath while sprinting.

James de Lacey2:26

Wait, they'll exhale and then all the air is out and then sprint with the air out?

James Ramsey2:26

Yeah, with their mouth shut.

James de Lacey2:26

I gotcha. And then when they get to the end of the sprint they would exhale again. Is that possible? I guess you don't get all the air out.

James Ramsey3:00

Well, it's been a while since I looked at the study, but yeah, that's essentially what they did. Exhale, they held their breath, they'd sprint, and then they exhaled again. I guarantee they were not running very fast.

So for anyone who has tried this, I actually got a YouTube video somewhere where I actually did it with a hill, and I sound like I'm getting ready to... Oh dude, so it's pretty brutal.

But what's significant with this study: in four weeks it significantly improved the repeat sprint ability in elite rugby players. What people don't understand is trying to improve sports performance in an elite level athlete is very difficult. If you get a lot of initial values, you get someone off the couch that hasn't done anything, it's really easy to improve their VO2 Max or repeat sprint ability because they haven't done anything. When you have elite level athletes that are trained all the time for their sport, trying to improve sports performance is very difficult.

James de Lacey3:27

Interesting. Okay, so what is the physiological reasoning then, do you see or that you've read or observed to account for these improvements in repeat sprint ability?

James Ramsey3:57

I remember when I was studying for my PhD comprehensive exams, you have to, in Canada, you have to take a qualifying exam to prove that you're worthy, then you can design your studies, which is a lot of fun. They give you three months, you read 10 hours a day, then you take a written exam, and a week later you got to stand in front of these high level researchers as they rip your answers apart, ask you questions. So it was a terrifying experience. Sometimes you need to wear Depends for it.

That's Jamnick 2020, and they discussed that it's been four years since I read the paper. They were talking about it's probably the lactate as the primary driver for eliciting mitochondrial adaptations. Jamnick 2020 cited some papers from, reference from papers in that 2020 publication, that it's the lactate. It's not that lactate causes fatigue, that's a myth. It's ejected with its co-transporter hydrogen.

But it all comes, real simple, it's that disruption to homeostasis. The body is 'oh, we got to adapt.'

I will have to say that sprint protocol, I remember how to spell the name, W-R-O-N-S 2018, at all. Just type in breath hold training rugby players. There's been a lot of blogs on it. I will say it's not for general populations. It's very, very, very miserable. Like I've wrestled 30 years, I've wrestled a lot of All Americans and people who wrestled internationally for medals, and it's on par in terms of misery. It's on par with that. It's not something if...

James de Lacey5:42

Yeah, that sounds horrible. You're not going to get a general population individual to have them do it.

James Ramsey6:15

Okay. It's miserable.

James de Lacey6:15

At what point would you apply some of this? Because you mentioned obviously if you're exhaling and then sprinting and exhaling again, quality of that is probably not going to be very good.

James Ramsey6:15

Yeah, you're not running that fast. It's just you're building up such an acidosis in the body that the body has to adapt. You're building up so much metabolic waste that the body wants to be more efficient, so it's going to elicit an adaptation.

James de Lacey6:46

So is that something, if your obviously, if your goal was to obviously maintain quality and speed you wouldn't use this, if your goal just, your goal was just like 'okay, this guy, he just needs the conditioning,' like fatigues quickly and fights, whatever it is, then you would implement something like this.

James Ramsey6:46

Yeah, like I said, I never used it in fight camp. I used it as like a general prep or specific prep, playing around, so on and so forth.

Of course, Caldas has that great breath hold circuit training with the dumbbells.

James de Lacey7:12

Is that the contralateral?

James Ramsey7:12

Yeah, the contralateral with the breath hold. I mean, you can also do it with an Airdyne or a rower. There's another study by that same group where they would, they had a metronome or a timer, and they would hold the, they would do a little mini breath hold, I believe it was every four seconds, every four or six seconds, and they saw significant disruptions to homeostasis. I don't remember what the metrics were because I haven't even looked at a breath hold paper in over two years.

But it's definitely, yeah, if you're a fighter you'd want to do it while hitting a heavy bag. You want to maintain your normal breathing or wrestling and stuff like that. You'd want to do it like rowing, Airdyne. I really like Caldas's approach, I've used that a lot.

James de Lacey8:06

So that's a good one. Do you want to give just some quick guidelines for anyone listening who wants to try it, like how long to... Okay, the protocol to do it. So say someone want to do on an Airdyne and a rower, like breathe out and then how long should you hold it for, how long?

James Ramsey8:06

I want to do the Rons one with the, I'm probably butchering the name.

James de Lacey8:34

Yeah. If he hears it he's probably gonna go... I butcher just so many researcher names when I'm talking.

James Ramsey8:34

Sashle with the Olympic weightlifting derivatives. Yeah, I can't get that right. I want to do the exhale, hold your breath, and then exhale again. That one is on a scale of 1 to 10, it's an 11 in terms of misery.

I've had some fighters text me, 'hey, [expletive], I just did that.' These guys fight professionally, they're like 'this sucks.' I'm like 'yeah, it sucks.' That's why the participants in that study were elite level rugby players. Those guys have no choice, those guys are beasts.

James de Lacey9:08

Those guys are beasts.

James Ramsey9:08

So I mean, maybe with an Airdyne or a rower, get a metronome timer. There's lots of apps, get it on your cell phone. And like every four seconds, just hold your breath briefly for like, hold your breath after you've breathed out?

James de Lacey9:36

No, just hold your breath.

James Ramsey9:36

Just, okay. For general populations, they're not going to want to do that one in the study where... Yeah, okay, gotcha, hold. There's different levels. There's different levels of misery. There's things you have general populations do that you want, that you want to do with athletes and vice versa. This is definitely one of them.

James de Lacey9:36

So every four seconds, how long you're holding your breath then? So every four to...

James Ramsey10:03

Six seconds you're holding your breath, just like a brief breath hold, just to disrupt your breathing while you're doing it. Someone in the cardiorespiratory lab where I'm studying, he went to dental school. He did a breath-hold study with regulated breathing, held the breath five seconds for five seconds every 30 seconds, various conditioning conditions. There was a continuous, a continuous with five-second breath hold, and then there was a continuous where every 25 seconds they did a sprint, and then there was a continuous where every 25 seconds they did a sprint with a breath hold with breath-by-breath and NIR. So yeah, just disrupting your breathing pattern can be enough.

I mean, everyone's different. There's so much individual variability. One individual will adapt to this, so it's something you got to play around with. Maybe a portable lactate tester, because you can use lactate as a proxy. It's like, okay, if your lactate is 17, yeah, you did something.

It's funny because I ended up doing resistance training to failure for my next three studies. And yeah, that's a perfect segue. I had some blood lactates over 7, 19, 8. One got 25 but wasn't able to finish the protocol. Got 25. It's like I'm not gonna give out the details on what I did other than resistance training to failure. Did some Wingates, did some sprint interval training with males and females comparing the responses in males and females. It was really interesting.

But what's really interesting though is every time I got a blood lactate, because blood lactate peaks three to seven minutes after exercise, so I standardized, took blood lactate at three minutes, every time I did blood lactate they always gave me their middle finger. I'm like a finger, alcohol, they always gave me their middle finger. I don't know if I should take that personal or because you just beasted them.

I mean, I had lactates, well one, someone, guy was shredded. I mean, his lactate was like an eight. He didn't have much of homeostatic interpretations.

James de Lacey12:19

What do you put that down to, those differences? Is it just general, like just how they train?

James Ramsey12:19

I mean, that's the thing with General populations, you don't know how they train. Is this person lifting weights and they're like, oh yeah, I do 30 minutes of cardio in the evening? Is that 30 minutes cardio they're running six miles? You just don't know. Guy could be a former Navy SEAL. You just don't know.

James de Lacey12:52

So regarding resistance training to failure, that's often talked about just in terms of bodybuilding, muscle hypertrophy. You're looking at it from a different stance, right?

James Ramsey12:52

Yeah, I looked at it from a cardiorespiratory response. I mean, there was an interesting publication that just came out in Nature Journals Reports and they did back squat. They only did 65% of one repetition maximum, and the strong males, they only had males, the strong males reached 98% of their VO2 Max at the fifth set. That's a significant. Well, it took five sets.

James de Lacey13:21

Yeah, five sets, yeah. Of how many reps?

James Ramsey13:21

10 reps.

James de Lacey13:21

What, to failure?

James Ramsey13:21

Oh, 10 reps, yeah, pretty close to failure. I mean, 65% of one RM for 10 reps. I mean, that's a thing like I posted about using one repetition maximum can be very inaccurate. Like 70% of one RM in the one study that I cited in the group, 70% of one RM, they did repetitions to failure. The range was someone could only do nine reps while someone else got 26 reps. That's why repetition to failure, it can be all over the place. That's why I stopped using it and I use the set-rep best method.

But yeah, I mean, the strong individuals 65% of one RM, they, I mean 98% of your VO2 Max, that's a significant. I mean, think about people that do German volume, the what is it, 10 by 10? Yeah, the 10 by 10. I mean, you do that with a two-minute rest period, man, you get to that fourth, fifth set, you're huffing and puffing. You're at VO2 Max. You gotta figure that's at least 30 seconds, 40 seconds of work. Then you do a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth set. What's the difference between that and doing Wingates?

I mean, we've known since 2004 with the McMaster research that repeated Wingates with those training studies, repeated cycle ergometer sprints, high intensity, the training studies, I think they did four to seven. During the training study started off at four, I think they went up to seven sprints, is just as effective as running continuously or performing continuous conditioning on a cycle ergometer for an hour. I mean, there's a power. I mean, there was a meta-analysis this year that was talking about VO2 Max and high-intensity exercise, how it's, I believe it was talking about the superior method.

I mean, I think a big problem is people, oh, HIT, sprint all that all the time. But like with General populations, if they don't have that capacity to work hard, they're better off with steady state exercise. And then later on, in order to cause disruptions in homeostasis, that's when they're going to have to include HIT. You're not gonna get some 50-year-old soccer mom off the couch and go have her do Tabatas. That's a good way to lose a client or make an enemy.

James de Lacey16:02

Yeah. So you talked about doing 10 by 10, say for example squats, similar potential outcome to say doing repeated Wingates. I mean, I can think of multiple negatives of doing 10 by 10 squats as part of a preparation: time, muscle, eccentric damage, all that kind.

James Ramsey16:29

Yeah, that much volume, you'd better. I mean, you could also instead of 10 by 10, do 10 by five, but you immediately switch to say like a jump and pull-up, a ballistic full-body movement that's going to recruit a lot of muscle mass. Because you're like right there in the squat room, a lot of times they have where you can reach, get the pull-ups and stuff like that. So that's a possibility. And it's high intensity when you're huffing and puffing like you're running from a grizzly bear.

James de Lacey17:01

Go.

James Ramsey17:01

I should post that video of me doing the, yeah, it was during the pandemic. There's a cemetery right by the woods in Ipswich where I hung out and I videotaped myself doing this, doing the sprints.

James de Lacey17:01

You held the camera in the cemetery?

James Ramsey17:29

Yeah, yeah, because I was looking for a place with hills. And I'm like, in Ipswich, there's like hills and dead bodies.

James de Lacey17:29

Yeah, yeah, and dead bodies, yeah.

James Ramsey17:29

The neighbors are really quiet there. No one really talked to me out there. So, but yeah, it's really beautiful because you got the woods and you got some really nice hills. And so I did, I held the camera, like you could see me going up, it was probably like a 50-degree angle. I would go, exhale, hold my breath, sprint up the hill while holding my breath. And upon completion, I exhaled again, and it sounded like I had bronchitis or something, asthma attack. It's like I'm saying it's not something you want to use with General populations.

But I mean, Kraemer in one of his books, I mean Dr. Kraemer, the legendary strength coach researcher, he discussed what a powerful stimulus circuit training is. There's a lot of different, there's all, I mean, if you do triceps, so I mean, if you're doing squats and then you're sprinting to a pull-up rack, then you're sprinting to do like dumbbell thrusters or sprinting to do bench press and you're doing that in a circuit, you're gonna be huffing and puffing.

James de Lacey18:58

That, say, ignoring general population, if we're talking to fighters, various athletes, would you use something, if you use something like that, say in replace of more traditional conditioning methods?

James Ramsey18:58

Probably not, no. I mean, there's a lot of really vicious, brutal things you can do on an Airdyne or a rower. Because you want, yeah, because General populations, it's like I'm going to be 51 years old, what am I going to get? I mean, like Masters, Masters, everything, just get on the gear and you got Masters see too.

James de Lacey18:58

Oh yeah, I just gotta get my Gordon Ryan supplements, yep, I can go, yeah.

James Ramsey19:34

But no, athletes, you always got to keep your separate training athletes and work with general population. They're two different things. You're focused on strength, power, and conditioning separate. You don't want to combine them because, I wouldn't do it. I mean, outside of fight camp, if you just, if they have issues with running, the contralateral circuits by Caldas are great to build an aerobic base and stuff like that. But circuits, but then again, if you're working on strength endurance, you do a 10-snatch pull in a row, you're gonna be huffing and puffing afterwards. You get a couple sets in, yeah, you get a yeah.

James de Lacey20:44

I don't think it'd ever replace conditioning for athletes. It's just an additive tool.

James Ramsey20:44

Yeah, that makes sense. Anything else in the realm of training to failure that you've been reading about implementing? Dr. Highed exercise drop sets. Yeah, drop sets, those can be fun.

So yeah, let me tell the story, might as well tell you the story on how we went from three breath-hold training studies to three resistance training studies. So me and some folks in the lab had a little bit of an argument. I was trying to say yeah, bodybuilding is a powerful aerobic stimulus.

So I remember a study from 1984 of Hakeem, Hakee et al. I'm not saying that right, I'm not going to try to butcher another name of another researcher who's published a lot. He tested bodybuilders and high level wrestlers. But what was interesting, the bodybuilders had VO2 maxes that were almost as high as the high level wrestlers.

There's a couple other studies. I was like, there's no way that it's not a powerful aerobic stimulus. So we got an argument, we're teaching assistant teaching classes and stuff like that, teaching the labs and everything. So we got key card access, so we got some weights, got the cart, got a deadlift bar, took it up to the lab.

Third set I got to VO2 max. My VO2 max is like 4.2 liters and I got to 4.2 liters. And I showed my supervisor the data and he's like, "Hey, can you design another three studies?" And I was like, "Yeah, because it's one thing."

So the original three studies with breath-hold physiology, that was more designed for a high impact journal for physiology and stuff like that. Whereas the stuff I'm doing now is more designed for sports performance, those type of sports performance journals and so forth. And that's what I want to do with my career anyways. I want to do Academia with the post-doc loop, you finish your PhD, do a post-doc for $30,000 a year and do another post-doc, do another post-doc until you eventually get a job.

I'm going back to athletes, being a UFC fighter who also was a striking and grappling coach for a long time. We're going to start producing some content.

James de Lacey22:49

Nice. That training to failure is interesting. I saw a paper, I think Eric Helms was on recently, that was comparing training to failure versus two reps shy of failure. But it was for muscle hypertrophy and strength purposes. But interesting conclusion on it was, if I remember correctly, the failure group had better fatigue resistance than the other group.

So there's, as you mentioned, there's some kind of peripheral conditioning effect to training to failure. That's not to say go squat deadlift to failure, but for maybe for grapplers if you're doing curls and triceps, the isolation stuff, maybe doing that stuff to failure now and then could help improve fatigue resistance for grappling.

James Ramsey23:16

Yeah, there's something to it. Yeah, we need some more research, do some muscle biopsies and stuff like that. I don't think people realize how difficult it is to recruit participants for high-intensity exercise. I had more than a few participants throw up. They cut the mask on and their eyes get all big. It's like, oh yeah, okay, we got to, obviously we disinfect everything in an acid and so forth, but it was kind of messy cleaning up some of the things that happened.

And then it's funny because they show up, "Oh yeah, I told my friends about your study and they're interested." And then you never hear from their friends. So yeah, I threw up, don't do it.

But yeah, especially the one, I tested this one participant, very strong powerlifting individual. And I had him do during pilot, playing around testing pilot testing, and I had him, okay, here's 75% of your one rep max, can you get this 12 repetitions? And he couldn't get it more than the first set. He got it eight, the second set he got it seven, and then third set he got seven and he vomited with this mask on.

Yeah, we took his blood lactate afterwards. His blood lactate was 25. And we did multiple strips with the lactate strips. You clean it, get a blood sample and then another one, which was kind of difficult with the lactate, with playing around with the deadlift straps and stuff like that, trying to get to it and stuff like that.

So yeah, that was a lot of fun. I've made a lot of friends in there in the lab.

James de Lacey25:25

Wasn't there a study you looked at recently around people who sit in a deadlift setup? But did you see a decrease in muscle oxygen saturation just from being in that setup?

James Ramsey25:52

Yeah, so that's something we noticed. Some people will kind of like stiff leg, they'll just bend over with the leg straight and put the deadlift straps. Because the near-infrared spectroscopy probe goes right on the vastus lateralis, right here on the side of the thigh, and they don't see much of a change. But some, and this is how I do it as well, I get in a deep squat. And they noticed that my oxygen saturation decreased, my blood flow decreased, my deoxyhemoglobin went up.

And the cool thing about NIRS is you see all this stuff in real time as it happens. The signal is instantaneous. So the practical application is don't squat down to put your straps on where you sit. I mean, it depends if you're doing high repetition. If you're trying to deadlift something like 15 repetitions and you squat down and you have your legs bent like this, where they get real deep squat, there's going to be a lot of desaturation.

So that may impair deadlift performance because once you start deadlifting anyways, there's a compression and there's a reduced blood flow temporarily anyways. So it could potentially have a negative effect, but we don't know. We've only done a couple studies on that.

James de Lacey26:54

Interesting. And I know we talked briefly about VO2 kinetics, I think on the first podcast. I'm interested to go into it again. So I feel like I have a bit of understanding now, so I could hopefully ask some good questions here.

James Ramsey27:26

So basically, VO2 kinetics, that's the dynamic VO2 response, volume oxygen uptake, to the onset and to the offset of exercise. The quicker, or the smaller, we use a time constant, it's called tau. It's just a number, that's all it is. And the smaller the number, right, the better it is because it's how long it takes to reach 63% of the amplitude, how long it takes you to get to a high point. I just call it a high point. And the smaller the number the better.

And it's really interesting. I remember Poole and Jones, they got a publication in Journal of Physiology 2012, discussing VO2 kinetics in some female endurance athletes. So the average person has a VO2 kinetics of 30 seconds. It takes 30 seconds to reach that certain amplitude, 63% of the amplitude. Well, 63.3, but we'll just say 63. And it takes us 2 minutes to reach steady state, steady state VO2.

These females in this one study at Roy Suck Out, they were elite level endurance. Their time constant was 10 seconds and they were able to reach a steady state in 30 seconds. Yeah, because they were able to turn on, turn their aerobic energy system on much quicker. It goes down to specificity.

James de Lacey28:30

So what, let's see if we can break this down further. So what practical implication does that have for someone listening to this? Okay, we talk maybe they have VO2 kinetics and VO2 max in.

James Ramsey29:10

So we talk about VO2, VO2 max. VO2 max is the maximal capacity of your body to deliver oxygen and the maximal capacity of your body, and this is key, to utilize that oxygen. How big your gas tank is, and that varies from sport to sport. There's a lot of standards for certain athletes.

But VO2 max, I don't focus on endurance, like marathons and stuff like that, but I have read that in some studies it's not always a predictor. I mean some will have a VO2 max of 84 relative, VO2 max of 84 milliliters per kilogram per minute, while others will be like 64.

And I don't think anyone's really established what VO2 max you should have if you're, for example, an MMA fighter. Because some of the UFC athletes had VO2 maxes that were off the chart. But also MMA, it's not just, it's not just a rub because of those explosive combinations.

So for example, you threw an explosive combination and you circle around for 10 seconds. That explosive combination is anaerobic, it's that first energy system, ATP-PC. And then it's replenished with the aerobic energy system. So you have to have a highly developed aerobic energy system. But how big?

Should that be? I don't think anyone's quantified that. I would have loved done research with MMA fighters in what... it's trying to get the participants in the lab. At home I don't think people realize how difficult it is to design a study, get the participants in the lab. It's off of the money you to pay them. Yeah, you gotta have that in your IRB. If your supervisor doesn't want to pay money, then yeah.

Or participants find out that their friends vomited in the lab because it's really the exercise. It's like good luck. You gotta wait till next semester till there's new students in the classroom that haven't heard about the study. So but I was fortunate. So I was able to get a large number of males and females for my studies, for my resistance training and my high-intensity exercise studies. I'm not going to give the details on it because I still got to publish it.

So I ran out of funding because I changed topics and had to get surgery, had to come back to Michigan, and then during the course of that I ran out of funding. So yeah, we hope we'll hope to get inter this publishing. We'll have to bring you back on as well. Once I get everything published, I'll come back on and discuss everything more in depth, but I don't want to tip my hat what it was because some of my might listen, they might be like Master student, student run down to IRB to Super. Yeah, I got a great idea.

But yeah, I'll never forget that day when I hit my VO2 Max doing drop sets with the deadlift. It was funny because I forgot to tell this part—right next to the cardio respiratory lab, our bathroom is literally five meters away, that's it. And it was funny because another PhD candidate who I worked with, who helped me with my research, he's like, "Oh James, keep the mask on that way we can see the..." I had to get it off and run to the restroom.

I think I started off while—I mean you've seen the videos of me bench, a couple years ago squat my apartment—I think I started is what I did for the deadlift. It was pulled F. I pulled 550 for a double, boom, we cut it to 500, pulled it for a double, boom, and then we cut it to like 315 and I did like 15, 20 reps as a burnout.

I was like standing around and the trick was how we were able to get the weights to pull off. I put the initial bumper plates on a thicker padding, that way we could just strip everything off. So I didn't get much of a recovery at all.

It was brutal. I thought it was more brutal than a VO2 Max because when you lift weights, heavy enough weight, your blood pressure goes up, that's true.

James de Lacey34:19

You talked about with the VO2 kinetics as well. So you could have there different VO2 Maxes, you and I, but our VO2 kinetics will be different depending on a multitude of factors. And the person with the better or faster VO2 kinetics likely is bit conditioned. Could I assume that they're able to turn on their aerobic energy system fast?

James Ramsey34:19

Raser, he's a famous researcher in the VO2 kinetics realm. My research isn't specializing on VO2 kinetics, but I have done analysis for the VO2 kinetics. It's a giant pain, trust me. It's a pain with the Origin Lab software. You're going to do the fits, time, the time constant and stuff like that. Roser said something—I haven't read this in four years and I'll never forget it—that when he was talking about VO2 kinetics and everything, the seeds of exercise and tolerance sewing at the onset of exercise, or along those lines something like... the seeds of fatigue or sown at exercise onset.

So if you don't, if you got a VO2 kinetics of like 60, which is really, really, really out of shape—an average healthy person has a VO2 kinetics like 25 to 30 seconds—I mean you're going to produce a lot of those fatiguing metabolites. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, someone has VO2 kinetics at 10 seconds, they're going to, they're still going to produce fatiguing metabolites, but it's not going to be as profound.

James de Lacey35:27

Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. So is there a certain type of training that...

James Ramsey35:57

Just endurance. I mean like that study—I should post it in the group—God, I haven't read this in like four years and I still remember that, with the females or VO2 kinetics for like 10 seconds and they were able to reach steady state in 30 seconds, which is shocking. I mean usually healthy general population can take like two minutes to reach that steady state VO2.

It's definitely interesting topic and it is funny because originally when you had to do this, you had to take Origin Lab software, this difficult software, and fit it, take like four hours. And not my supervisor, but Dr. Kier, who runs the lab, he's been a PhD since like 2015, he has like 120 publications or whatever, something crazy, like high impact journals.

He actually came up with an app for those that have metabolic heart and they get that Excel cell document that gives you everything. You just take that document, throw it in the app, and boom, gives you your kinetics. I was like, God, it's like wow, like saving every somebody four to six hours per participant.

So is... with VO2 kinetics as well. So I think with Andrew Asha's research, his first study looked at VO2. His first study on boxers that VO2 kinetics during spiring power and a bunch of other stuff, and they see that they see where the off or the on, the off kinetics are impaired for recovery over time, and that further impairs the on kinetics and delays that time for the on kinetics to work for their oxygen. Their latest study didn't show any changes in on and off kinetics. I think it was from the spral training.

So as a matter of... I mean you mentioned endurance, but even something like spral where you have that sharp desaturation of muscle oxygen, something like that is going to help you train that ability to turn it on faster. How? I just remembered a study that I read with sprinters. It was sprinters—they compared sprinters with endurance athletes—and I think it was like a three-minute run or something.

But it was interesting because sprinters had faster VO2 kinetics because if you deplete that first energy system, right, the ATP, the phosphagen system, whatever you want to call it. I don't know why it has so many names. I just came up with this: I just call ATPC, okay?

If you quickly deplete that, the faster you turn on the aerobic energy system. There were some research studies where they, you know, use pharmacological agents to impair the first energy system, and then the kinetics turned on faster. I believe it was animal.

James de Lacey39:19

That means you got to go harder to... Now, hold on. What was your question? You have to do what?

James Ramsey39:19

So you mentioned if you basically use up your resources, use up all the excess or floating around phospho creatine, et cetera, for that energy system, do—if you use that up faster—you're saying that your oxygen kinetics or VO2 kinetics kick in faster, so you're quote-unquote more aerobic in that instance, so that would mean then into the exercise...

James de Lacey39:55

I mean if you sprint really intensely, you you going to turn on the aerobic energy system faster based on this one study, but you're also gonna produce the fatigue and metabolites as well.

James Ramsey39:55

But yeah, there was also the animal study where they impaired—I think it was dogs, I can't remember—dogs they pharmacologically blocked the first energy system, and then the aerobic energy system turned out faster. Can't remember if those dogs... how it is after four years. I've read so many studies, especially designing three breath hold physiology studies for high impact journals and then designing three other studies. So yeah, I've read too many studies.

James de Lacey40:30

I do have a question for you in the chat here from Ayal, and in reference to lifting weights as a I guess like cardio stimula. So he's asking—so I guess that will be high rep, short rest—we kind of touched on that briefly, like with that circuit training example you gave. You're saying, isn't that too fatiguing for cardio work in terms of being muscularly fatigued?

James Ramsey41:03

It can be. I mean it's like, for example, like drop sets. I would probably only do like three drop sets for training. You're not going to do German volume training with drop sets unless you're on Gordon Ryan supplements. May I get a sponsorship with his supplement company, huh?

James de Lacey41:33

Yeah, that supplementation makes all the difference. Actually, funnily enough, I was looking for training videos to break down that I do each week, and I saw a Ryan Garcia video a couple years ago basically doing what you're talking about now as his as his condition model. So it was 10 exercises, 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 10 rounds. But the exercises weren't like—there was a couple of traditional cardio, VersaClimb modali—but then there was...

A machine squat, there was a pushup, there was just basic ab stuff and just stuff that you wouldn't consider traditional cardio training, but using stuff like that. And I was like holy [expletive], imagine doing 30 seconds of squats with load 10 rounds, there only 10 seconds of rest with everything else going on.

James Ramsey42:08

Yeah, that's a recipe for disaster. But I mean, we know he's on gear, so yeah. I mean you got to remember that. It's like I've been in MMA since, God, 1996 down in Florida when it started.

James de Lacey42:39

Damn.

James Ramsey42:39

Yeah, actually a little Florida history, 1986, 1987. Bobby Hughes, who's a third, probably a fourth degree black belt now with H Samora down there in Tampa, he was like the original one of the original guys with the MMA. He was telling everybody no, no, because back when it was style versus style, I can't remember the years, but he was like no, don't just do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He's like I've been a striker forever, also learn how to wrestle, and he did judo and stuff like that.

But the point is I've been around MMA for a very long time and every, it's like 90% of the elite level guys in MMA, probably 95%, are on stuff at some point in time. And plus you've seen those studies with muscle memory, your muscles have memory. So you take stuff and they remember. It's like who was the UFC fighter that took steroids for a couple years and retired? Oh, Cowboy, Cowboy Cerrone. I guess he wanted to come back, take, he want to come back, come clean, get clean and come back. Was like yeah, I only took TRT.

James de Lacey43:43

And I'm aware. Yeah, and physiological doses of TRT.

James Ramsey43:43

Yeah, if he was just taking TRT I'm a werewolf or something. It's like come on, it's like I hope people are not that gullible. No.

If you're going to do circuit training, circuit training with weights going from one exercise to another, that's fine. But I recommend Kia's approach, the contralateral. That would be best, that's what I would do. But you're not going to do like multiple, like probably three set to drop sets at most, because you're getting so much volume in one set. You're training to failure repeatedly in multiple sets, that's a recipe for disaster.

But for people who are busy, I mean do dumbbell thrusters, immediately sprint to pull-ups, immediately sprint to burpees. I mean, like Kramer said, along Dror Kramer said a long time ago, he has so much research experience and working with elite level athletes and stuff like that. He said, said in his book, I mean circuit training is a powerful aerobic stimulus. So you got to do it correct as well. You can't just pick a light weight and you're sitting there doing some dumbbell process going yeah, let's go to McDonald's after this.

James de Lacey45:26

Sounds like every pro boxing video that I've watched recently of their training is a circuit, light dumbbells, some other crap. That's the thing that doesn't make any sense, okay? If you're a professional boxer, you're getting enough conditioning sparring and everything else, focus on the strength power qualities never happening.

James Ramsey45:55

I got absolutely shredded on TikTok yesterday. I posted a reaction video to Deon Haney's sand hill sprints, dude, the comments are insane. I was like holy [expletive], this is crazy.

James de Lacey45:55

Oh man, so I'm gonna post more just to see.

James Ramsey45:55

God, yeah, it's shocking how many people don't know what they're doing. It's like remember seeing it somewhere with high school athletes, the stupid coach posted for the kids all right 10 sets of 10 squats, 100 burpees, 100 thrusters or something. Why? I wouldn't even do that with an adult.

It's shocking how many people there are out there giving advice and they have no clue what they're doing.

James de Lacey46:28

It's like V-Shred. Oh yeah, that's a big, that's a great marketing company, that one. He's just...

James Ramsey46:28

Yeah, I love that one cap. Harvard study show you lost twice as much fat, can not taking it. Well, such a tiny little amount of fat that they lost it wasn't even significant. So the fact that it was twice as much as something else that wasn't significant shows it's like, yeah, he has seven figures in his bank or eight figures in his bank account now, so hey man, he's happy. Hey, if the Liver King can get people to eat raw testicles and organs and have like a $20 million home.

James de Lacey47:01

You can tell.

James Ramsey47:01

I just, you're not going to see people at the UFC Performance Training Center or something like that, which you're friends with those guys, they're not going to be doing 10 set to 10 of drop sets. I mean, this is what they do. Do breath hold though, they do breath.

Yeah. Like I said, I mean, from disrupting homeostasis or shock the body, send a shocking signal, we use lame in simple terms that oh God, we got to adapt. It does have value. But I remember, can't remember the name of the coach, but the saying I will never forget from when I started my masters, my first masters in strength the conditioning in 2012: you want to stimulate, not obliterate the athlete.

James de Lacey48:01

Was that Christian Thibaudeau?

James Ramsey48:01

I don't know, I don't know. Sure. I'm 51, I've heard too much stuff over the years, so I...

James de Lacey48:01

I've got a final question for you from, you know, follow-up one. I think we pretty much answered it, but I'll throw it to you again anyway. Wouldn't doing strength work for lifting and conditioning with like and running more, basically is bike more effective than using waste for condition?

James Ramsey48:01

Depends. I mean it depends how intense. I mean, it all comes down to intensity and duration. You're have to be able to do squats at a high intensity for prolonged duration before your back is up. Yeah, your legs. I mean I just think of it as an additive thing. I mean you're doing conditioning with a cycle ergometer or an aerodyne, aerodyne is better because you're also using your arms, or rower.

And during that period of time, if you're doing strength endurance, doing sets of 10 to 12 repetitions with a snatch pull, that's going to be an additive effect. So the aerodyne would be like baking the cake, and the snatch poles, doing strength endurance work would be the icing on the cake. Every little bit helps, but you don't want to be like oh, you can get a powerful stimulus from lifting weights so I'm going to use that as an aerobic stimulus. No, not what you want to do.

I mean yeah, if you have to, you got 30 minutes at home just to work out, get some light dumbbells, you use, you do multiple dumbbell thrusters and do pull-ups, dumbbell thrusters, pull-ups, sprints, typical like CrossFit kind of stuff. But that's what you have to do, that's what you have to do. But no, world class athletes, a boxer shouldn't be doing things like this. They should be using the weights for maximizing peak strength to lay the foundation for the development of power. And that is a conditioning tool.

Okay? If you need, if you're a professional elite level boxer and you need to use weights or you are using weights for conditioning tool, you need to get a new coach because they don't know what they're doing.

James de Lacey50:39

That's all of them on YouTube. Yeah, it's crazy the stuff. Like yeah, let's do a bunch of farmer carries and really fatigue ourselves before we do power cleans and push. Like what? Funnily enough, I just watch a video that did exactly that, I just broke that down that got published last week. That Rage guy, he just competed in the UFC. He did farmers walk and then he did hang with PR.

James Ramsey50:39

Yeah. Others. I'm like maybe as a finisher if you gotta, fit in some residual training, but my God. Did he win his fight?

James de Lacey51:09

I don't know. I didn't get to, I didn't get to watch the whole, I only got to watch the main event fight. That was something, that that guy is, I can't pronounce his name.

James Ramsey51:09

Yeah, I wouldn't want to get hit by him. No one's knocked out [name unclear] but him, boom.

James de Lacey51:09

Yeah, to find out what his strength and conditioning coach has him do. I guarantee it's not...

James Ramsey51:43

I broke that down a little while ago. Back Hollow is actually pretty decent, just from the small clips that I've seen, compared to some of the others.

James de Lacey51:43

That Racket guy, he lost, he lost to the Russian, I can't even say his name. Yeah, that was madness. Yeah, actually it was your video I saw.

James Ramsey51:43

Yeah, he wasn't even, I mean he's a big guy and he wasn't even power cleaning that heavy of a weight. That 90 kilos, I think it was. What I think it was 90, 90 kilos wait?

James de Lacey52:14

Do you need pounds?

James Ramsey52:14

Yeah, pounds. 205. Yeah, that's not a lot of weight. I think... No stop, that's not a lot of weight. I do that like high school wrestlers to be able to do that. It's like well if you're fatiguing yourself... Well some high school wrestlers qualify. But if you're fatiguing yourself with farmer walk first...

And then you're going out, you're going to be burnt out. You're not going to be able to develop that quality of power. You have to separate. I think there's too much of a bodybuilding influence in sports performance.

It's two different things. First of all, it's not even power. There's no power. Power is force times velocity. There's no velocity component. You see these people pull 8, 900 pounds, they're not doing it in two, three seconds. It's taking a long time. It's maximal strength, and actions in combat sports do not happen that slowly. If they do, you're losing.

James de Lacey53:21

That's a good point, James. Let's wrap this up. Where can people follow you and see what you're up to?

James Ramsey53:21

My Facebook group. I'll link that up in the description. Let me just double check the name for anyone who's just sitting there. It is called, hang on—

James de Lacey53:52

Exercise and Nutrition Science for Health and Sports Performance. I'm pretty sure if you just search Exercise Nutrition Science. Funnily enough, I replied to it five hours ago. There's a question about German volume training.

James Ramsey53:52

Yeah, we were just talking about that. I mean, you can't—if I only had 30 minutes and I was going home, I only had 30 minutes at home to train, I might do squats superset with pull-ups. You can do German volume training like that, but combat athletes, I can't justify a reason for it.

James de Lacey54:21

Definitely not. Way too much volume. This is perfect, James. And once you get those studies published and everything, we'll bring you back on and we can cover all those findings.

James Ramsey54:21

Sounds good.

James de Lacey54:21

All right. Thank you for having me on. Cheers.