What Separates World Class UFC Fighters From The Elite w/ Bill Smart (SSOF Ep. 158)

Bill Smart2:41

Yeah, it's—I think we can give a bit of context. One of the biggest issues that you have when it comes to using performance testing information often is that we don't have great comparisons. So, what you do is

James de Lacey3:30

your mic closer, too.

Bill Smart3:30

Oh, yeah. Was that better?

James de Lacey3:30

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's nice.

Bill Smart3:34

Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll go right here. So, what's really common is especially in a lab-based setting, you go and send that athlete to a lab and they do a VO2 max or whatever it is. Maybe they do some power profiling. You almost always end up getting these results that are then contrasted to normative data of general athlete populations.

And you're really comparing apples to oranges in that scenario. In which case, it's hard to then say from that information, well, you could say as a biking athlete term, this was good, but is it actually good for the application that you need to apply it? And that's more important, I think.

So, a big part of testing for me is even—This is a step further is that we have all this normative data, all this information from MMA specifically, but what we don't really have is what actually separates high performers from non-high performers.

And so, that's always a question that I've had, and I think that there's a lot of powerful information in that. So, basically, we went into this and it was off the back of talking to Gavin Pratt, actually. And he was discussing some of his observations in jump performance of athletes. Which made me think a little bit more around—There were a couple of points that came up that sounded quite similar to some of the experiences I've had.

So, basically, I went through a lot of our jump data. I using jumpers as a reference point. And separated UFC athletes from high-level professionals. So, not just talking professionals who have had a couple bouts. Most of them, I either have been on or are going to be on Contender Series, Road to UFC. All of them are highly ranked in terms of regions.

So, it was—It's definitely above what you would typically experience as like an elite group, I would say. So, you're kind of looking at this sort of, I guess, world class versus elite. And that's a space that is interesting and for me that holds a lot of answers to a lot of the questions that I want to look at.

So when we ran through that, that was my biggest question. Was, what's different? 'Cause when you look at normative data, if you were to compare UFC athletes to general sports, it's—for a counter movement jump, you're looking at jump height, it's quite bad. So, the average UFC fighter jumps, and this is across the UFC. This isn't I data. Through like 35 cm.

But we're talking on a force plate impulse momentum. As context around that as well, when you report jump data, it's hugely important to know the metric that you're reporting 'cause—and the method. So, for instance, I had one athlete, he's a BMXer, jumped 95 cm on a Vert tech. I think he jumped 80 cm on a contact mat. And he jumped like 59 cm on a force plate impulse momentum. So, that's really important. That's my context.

Is there anything you want to clarify context-wise before we keep going?

James de Lacey6:40

No, just for everyone—like you mentioned there, when you hear that number, you're like, only 35 cm? And then people probably think like NFL combine, where they have their whole context set up.

Bill Smart7:32

Yeah, so I think—I mean, to me, I mean, that already highlights, okay, obviously if my athlete's more oxidative than we probably give credit to at some phases, but yeah. So what we did was went through a few. We used about four flight fuse valve—there's a lot of metrics. And a lot of them aren't the best metrics. So did some quality checks.

Basically, what I wanted to look at was different phases of the jump opposed to just, typically what we would report is jump height, impulse momentum, power, watts per kg, and looking at maybe peak velocity, peak force. So we kind of broke that down a little bit more, looked at the eccentric phase. So looked at the eccentric peak velocity.

Looked at the deceleration point from eccentric peak velocity, which was eccentric deceleration impulse. Looked at force at zero velocity, which is essentially the turnaround at the bottom of the jump. Looked at rate of power development, different rate of force development, so a lot better from a reliability standpoint. It's not perfect, but probably the best in terms of something that's a bit more force time related on the concentric element. And then looked at the normal stuff as well.

And what was quite interesting was in terms of effect size, the metrics that correlated the least—the metric that correlated the least was jump height to performance.

James de Lacey8:27

But by performance, you mean well like speed and competition level, is that okay?

Bill Smart8:27

Yeah. But yeah, we'll come back around to that, 'cause that doesn't mean—I think what's really important is outlining that doesn't mean the jump height isn't important.

Which it can come across that way. As well as peak power. And basically what we found with the eccentric variables came out with the highest effect sizes. So, eccentric peak velocity, eccentric deceleration impulse, followed by forces and velocities.

So, really that ability to rapidly decelerate, rapidly put the brakes on and turn around the contraction really became the primary differentiator between groups, which I thought was very interesting. And also, it's different to a lot of maybe what we think and what we know regarding physiology, but it's also not. And when you start going through some of the research, there's bits and pieces of that, but yeah, it's interesting.

James de Lacey10:36

The first question that comes to my mind is because MMA—I mean it's changing now, but MMA strength and conditioning hasn't exactly been in the forefront in terms of strength and conditioning for sports. So, my question would be, why do these world-class athletes then possess this quality over the elite athletes?

Because I'm assuming it's not down to their training leading up to that. I have a feeling that might be somewhat genetic or is there something else going on, do you—

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Yeah, that's the question.

Bill Smart11:20

There's always going to be genetic elements to it. And you could bucket that in the sense of certain types of athletes maybe more predisposed to being high-level fighters, and I would say that is probably the case. It's not impossible to quantify. It's very hard to.

I think a lot of it comes down to efficiency. What you're really looking at is jump efficiency is greater in terms of how you produce power. And then when you translate that to competition, my efficiency is everything when it comes to producing power and technique and making it repeatable over a period of time. So I think we see a little bit of that.

I do think from a sports-specific standpoint, there's I think higher-level athletes often will have as a part of efficiency, some of those eccentric qualities from a loading perspective, they're able to quickly load, go. It's something that's quite common as well. So whether or not there's a transfer from that.

Interestingly, I was talking to Gus about this, and we talked around, you look at this and it's like, okay, cool. Concentric qualities didn't differentiate, but eccentric qualities did. And he was having a look through and he's found there's a paper that looks at world-class sprinters versus elite sprinters. And the differentiator for them, concentric time was basically the same. Eccentric time was shorter, so they spent less time on the ground between groups.

So there's something there in terms of qualities. We don't know exactly what it is, but it's definitely something I think that's of interest and valuable based on some of those findings.

James de Lacey13:11

Yeah, it's interesting. And if you're not familiar with who Gus is, Angus Ross who was on the podcast not too long ago. He actually talked a bit about that paper, too, which was actually quite interesting.

And with these eccentric qualities then with these world-class guys possessing this, I'm assuming then that has influenced a lot of maybe how you've gone and I guess prescribed training for some of these even male athletes. So I guess my first question there with this is what are you doing then? Or at least what has become more prevalent in your training programs because of this information? Or is it stuff you've already been doing?

Bill Smart14:06

Yeah, before we go to that, I think really really important is this is purely competition level based. I have looked at other I have run other metrics. Sorry, other analyses around some of this as well, but typically what you'd see with athletes as they move through training camp is you would see them move towards being more efficient with jumping.

So generally jump height goes up over training camp, and modified RSI goes up as well. So essentially they load less and get more, which again comes back to efficiency, but it is a little bit different to sort of what this highlights. And it also highlights that's quite important, too.

And as you start to look at athletes who have greater knockout rates and ability, you do start to see metrics like mod RSI, peak force, peak power start to go up as well. So it's really important to probably mention that those are still important and have their place. And that because jump height was a poor correlator in this scenario, it doesn't mean it's a metric that we're not interested in. It's just maybe the way that we view it is different. If that makes sense.

Maybe when we look at this, this becomes more of a baseline or a screening tool. And from a monitoring perspective or in terms of what we want to see from an ongoing training perspective, that's a little bit different.

James de Lacey16:04

Yeah. And it gives you the how and why for all the number that you're seeing of just jump height. Cuz as you mentioned two guys have similar jump heights but different strategies.

And I think for anyone who wants to kind of see this in action is if you just watch elite Olympic weightlifters jump and you see how deep they squat down and almost slow with little arm swing because they just have so much strength in their legs. They just use all that time and then they can just [expletive] frog leap onto plates over their head. Whereas as you see those skinny jumpers and you see how rapidly they descend and come up. It's two different jump strategies. Could be similar jump heights, you know?

Bill Smart16:51

100% and that's exactly that's exactly what that was probably something I missed when we were sort of prefacing it was, you see that when it comes to if you don't standardize jump if you don't standardize the jumping technique when you test, which is often hard cuz some athletes will just do as they do. You will see some people the method is generally short a dip, fast turnaround, big drive up. And then some athletes, they'll go all the way down real slow and then they'll sort of jump up and sometimes the height's similar, but the jump itself is completely different.

So what you are using to jump, what you get from the jump is so different. So when you see those, it's kind of for me it was pretty obvious that one of them was more likely to be someone who deals damage, has greater knockout potential, and the other wasn't. But you see similar jump heights and then that to me highlights that metric a lot like height alone isn't enough, especially from a screening perspective. We really need to look a little bit deeper.

So this was actually was my way of looking as deep as possible and then sort of working back from it a little bit. But yeah, it's a really good point.

James de Lacey17:40

So has this changed any of your strength programming then for your I guess elite MMA guys?

Bill Smart18:30

Yeah, so I mean, what it highlights is the eccentric eccentric is very important and eccentric velocity is important, which is kind of interesting cuz we don't really do a lot of we don't really put a lot of emphasis on the eccentric velocity component a lot of the times in training. We do a lot of fast eccentric work through various methods such as flywheel training and such, but it's not necessarily something that has crossed over into different areas from maybe even a traditional lift perspective or plyometric perspective in terms of queuing.

So and we talked a bit about we talked a bit about some of the eccentric stuff a bit later, but I think that's probably one of the areas that I've started to put a bit more emphasis on as the ability the actually queuing people to be fast on the way down. And to optimize that turnaround position.

So for instance, if it's an athlete who is more likely to be the athlete that sort of goes all the way down and slowly down drive up, now my priority in terms of changing that is quite high because it tells me there's some good qualities here. You're probably relying more on connective tissue in terms of that stretch drive in those deeper positions. I want to have a bit more emphasis on shorter position more I guess muscular based loading.

That's probably for that eccentric component in terms of velocity. The time between contractions is something that we've probably known as quite important for a while in terms of being able to couple efficiently between contractions. That's another one that we do a lot of fast eccentric work around changing.

James de Lacey20:32

Are you measuring that one too? Like eccentric concentric 200 milliseconds either side or something like that?

Bill Smart20:32

Not really. It's hard unless you're doing it on a force plate. You know what I mean? Or do you mean for contact time? Do you mean for plyometrics?

James de Lacey20:32

Yeah, for the vertical jump. Looking at the last 200 milliseconds of eccentric to the first 200 milliseconds concentric. I think they've named that it an actual name now or something, but for testing.

Bill Smart20:32

Yeah, yeah. No, not really. I haven't really looked at it to be honest. But maybe that's something I should look at.

James de Lacey21:02

I think a company's actually coined a name to it. I think so. But I think be interested in metric because it kind of gives you that turnaround time.

Bill Smart21:02

Yeah, well that makes sense and that would feed directly into some of this cuz essentially when you look at the eccentric deceleration impulse, you're kind of looking for the time period is from peak eccentric velocity essentially to force at zero velocity. So the more you can condense that highlights your eccentric braking abilities basically.

So which makes it and it's the same as from a technique of efficiency standpoint the faster you turn around, the faster you can move from deep into offense, faster you can move from offense to offense. So it's and when you consider how many times you do that over and over and over again, that's quite important.

So we probably have always spent time on that whether or not it's doing things like drop sticks, doing things like using the Axis and Whys. But yeah, that's sort of giving me a little bit more push in terms of trying to make sure that we really cover those qualities. So it's probably influenced things more from a screening perspective and then using that information from the screening in terms of, I wouldn't say bucketing athletes quite yet, but understanding how some of those phase qualities relate to a specific athlete and then using the intervention to sort of course correct that a little bit.

For athletes who already do that, it probably hasn't changed too much to be honest.

James de Lacey21:56

Interesting. I think where... Shoot, what was I going to say? I had literally had a question in my head that I was going to cover around the eccentric side of it. Ah, yes. In terms of recovery cuz a lot of I think a lot of the traditional thought is I can only do eccentrics for a few weeks because they're so intense, they're going to beat me up, etc., etc.

But obviously it depends on the eccentric and what you're doing, but also obviously you have the repeated bout effect, so that soreness and kind of fatigue kind of dissipates as you get more used to the stimulus. I believe there was a paper I just reviewed a paper last month on eccentric overload and they were recovering within 48 hours in terms of their jump metrics and things like that from heavy eccentric overload. And I believe there was another paper...

Bill Smart23:32

To me? No. This one was just last month, but I... Did I send you another one? Cuz I'm trying to figure out I remember reading another paper. I think it was... Was it the frequency of eccentric?

James de Lacey23:32

Yes. I did send you that one, but I reviewed another one I think that came out.

Bill Smart23:48

Cool.

James de Lacey23:48

Oh, no, no, that was the same one. That was the same one. I reviewed that one that I sent you. I'm just checking now. So, they looked at three times a week eccentrics on jump performance and recovery between sessions of 48 hours based on the jump performance and they found full recovery within 48 hours and they were doing three times a week eccentrics, which is interesting cuz you think personally it's once.

Bill Smart23:48

What was the overload on that one?

James de Lacey23:48

Oh, I'll double check. Yeah, I'd have to double check. I read it a little bit ago. If I can even pull it up here, but what's interesting is then are you using eccentrics for longer periods within training and kind of keeping them in most of the time?

Bill Smart24:16

Yeah, good question. Overload is a lot more sparing, honestly, and it's generally only in the off camp will we prioritize it. But even then, I think what's important is there's a lot of factors that will influence that. One of them is just the athlete and especially the type of athlete they are. You probably find that athletes are a bit more, a lower type two muscle would recover faster. If especially if you're quite a especially if you're quite a fast twitch athlete, the recovery time definitely changes.

James de Lacey25:10

But also I think the biggest factor is the training load at the time as well. And I think that's probably where what you don't get to see with those type studies. I'm not sure maybe they kept... Did they mention...

Bill Smart25:23

They do. It's going to have a load increased progressively on a weekly basis by approximately 2.5% of their previous 1RM basically. The previous 1RM.

James de Lacey25:36

Yeah, I just I think when you factor in just the general stress of training in terms of training load, it's yeah, it definitely tells a different story from a recoverability standpoint. But yeah, but then there's also other factors too and one of the big ones is just the how trained the athlete is. Of course, the stronger the athlete and more developed physically, the more recovery time they're going to need. So yeah, I suppose there's different ways to approach it. I generally don't like to use them for more than two to three weeks in a row.

Bill Smart26:16

But when I do do it, I would, you got to do it at least a couple times a week. Two, three times is probably good. It's just important to note that training quality does get a little bit [expletive]. So if you are doing it, for me I have the generally that's a conversation with the coach before it happens.

So, the qualities that we're chasing from a gym perspective in terms of some of those strength and power qualities, they need to outweigh anything else that needs developing. So, I think that's it's important in terms of making sure the coach is aligned with that process.

James de Lacey26:57

Otherwise, the coach will start to wonder why the athletes performing [expletive] and then not always buying in terms of programming and that's really bad. That's really bad. So, there's probably just one thing that I would I would mention around that and I think, best practice that you should do that anyways.

But yeah, there's a there's a difference in terms of what what that will affect outside of... Yeah. What's your experience then around eccentric overloads say on a flywheel fast eccentric there, drop catches so you got your typical fast eccentric versus I guess you could call slow eccentric where you say doing 105-110% 1 RM squat or bench press as an example cuz at least in my short experience the fly, the faster flywheel stuff and the drop catches don't have the same I'm going to say negative effects as the learning.

Bill Smart27:59

Yeah, definitely correct. I think it's definitely different in terms of stimulus perspective. My assumption is you get a bit more from a fascicle length perspective from some of the fast stuff as well and from a, we would translate it back to this, you're spending more time working on that force at zero velocity so that peak breaking sort of impulse.

Those I do keep in quite frequently. So, then what's quite important to note is what you're chasing. For combat athletes, we often don't chase fiber shifts from an A to X cuz that's, it's often the opposite. But from a if you're chasing if you're trying to change fascicle length, it's adaptable reasonably quickly.

James de Lacey28:53

But it's the same in reverse as well. So, if you use it for 4 weeks and then you get rid of it for the last 4 weeks, then you basically will lose everything you gained for the first 4 weeks. So, that's a bit different. That's from a dose and from a dose perspective, that changes a little bit. Yeah, I would separate those two differently in terms of overloaded from a force perspective versus a slow overloaded versus fast overloaded.

Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree there and then the last question I was going to go ahead and ask around I know MMA is kind of you don't really have the style differences anymore like pure grapplers, pure strikers, etc. But you kind of have a just a general MMA style now, but sometimes you have guys coming from different backgrounds.

Bill Smart29:39

Have you found that's somewhat influenced some of that jump data, too? Like maybe strikers being more of that eccentric...

James de Lacey29:39

Yeah, massively. Yeah, 100%. I think it is often the it is often grapplers that will, they just produce force over more time. Which for them that's, when you mention that that probably is generally the type of athletes that will have that slow load and go to a point anyways. It's not always the case. But it is often the case and yeah, so that's that's definitely from a I guess a polarized training perspective.

That's something I want to course correct reasonably well. Just being aware as well around, you still need people to perform in the areas they perform well in. So, there is a balance with that.

Bill Smart30:36

But they're the ones who actually benefit a lot and a lot faster out of some of those coaching cues.

James de Lacey30:36

Interesting. And I want to also go into I guess it's kind of a little follow on from this. I mean you talked a lot about efficiency and how important I guess efficiency is in fighting and I think most people listening would agree and understand what you mentioned there. And when you sent me the the cycling paper after our last podcast, the one with the cycling frequency and...

Yes, the strength the strength training is basically a replication study of the old was it Hennigan paper from the 80s where they took the exact same protocol but instead of comparing it to nothing they actually made an explosive training group.

And then it was what was it 20 something weeks of three times a week squatting versus 20 something weeks of drop jumps and all that kind of [expletive]. And then looked at one, two, and three hertz sprint cycling and then looked at positive negative work.

Bill Smart31:34

Oh, wait. That was on I think that was a reference paper in that paper you sent me. So that one there.

James de Lacey31:41

Yeah, yeah. I get them mixed up all the time because they're on some of the ones but regardless... Yeah, I know that. Where we get this idea of kind of efficiency, activation, relaxation with the new talked about how it's interesting with air bike. Now when we had a chat around the air bike with, is there a potential limitation around these kind of high frequencies and having power at these high frequencies because you're limited in terms of cadence on an air bike just because of the way it's set up versus I mean you've got fancy equipment, flywheel bikes and [expletive] like that which let you really nail that.

So it'd be interesting just to I don't know just to chat and hear your thoughts on on potential air bike limitations in terms of maybe something to do with some of that activation relaxation or efficiency and if it's something to even worry about and potentially what can be done or if there's something needs to be done to maybe help improve that kind of higher frequency power if that makes sense at all because that was a long question.

Bill Smart32:34

Yeah, 100%. I think it's an interesting topic and I mean when you look at some of those jumping results, you could also attribute relaxation kinetics to some of those findings.

And you go back a little bit. I know that there's a couple papers that look at countermovement jump for MMA fighters. There's the one by—there's two by Lockie and James. I think they're both by him, which you may have read, but that looked at high-level, low-level competitors and they found the jump height was similar and I think it was modified RSI was higher. So similar findings, which was quite cool in terms of the way that force was produced. Force time was more important than purely output.

And then there's another paper, it's like they look at—what was it?

James de Lacey33:37

Stuart McGill? With the double peak? You seen that one?

Bill Smart33:41

So that was that was force by correct?

James de Lacey33:44

I cannot remember.

Bill Smart33:45

Of striking. So they found the double peak and activation separating higher and lower level athletes. So it's sort of like there's a couple of interesting papers that sort of highlight the potential around the importance of that force time characteristic. And you can't really have that without relaxation and without rapid relaxation.

I remember when I first started, might have talked about it. When I first started looking into—well, maybe not when I first started looking into it, but I remember hearing this quote from Conor McGregor ages ago. He was talking about when he strikes, he's trying to disconnect the limb. He's trying to fire and then disconnect the limb, and then reconnect it on impact. I was like, that's awesome.

And that kind of couples into it as well, because when you consider that, one, you are significantly more efficient from an energy standpoint, in terms of you're not activating muscle that you don't need to.

But then two, from a transmission force transmission standpoint, there's an efficiency around being able to use more elastic energy and contribute into that sort of end position. So that was for me a starting point of like, this is pretty important.

Then you read that paper by Jamie Douglas, which was fantastic, that sort of looked into more some of those frequency kinetics. And to me, it probably highlights more around physiological qualities versus strictly high frequency actions. Of course, especially if you're in a lighter weight class, being able to strike rapidly in succession is important. So there is a direct contribution. But in terms of how we train that from a—whether or not it's a calcium utilization perspective, there's a lot there that we probably don't understand a lot about.

But one of the other things that we found—so, it's because we use, we talked a bit about the power bike that we test athletes on. And this power bike has actually the ability to not just take peak power, but to take peak power over different cadences. So it goes up to—it basically goes up to whatever the athlete can reach, but maybe most athletes get up to 170, 180, depending on the weight class, how much power they produce.

James de Lacey35:58

What's 180 RPMs you're saying?

Bill Smart35:58

RPMs, correct. So if you were to contrast an air bike, you may be getting 120? Maybe.

James de Lacey35:58

If you're lucky, yeah.

Bill Smart35:58

Probably. Maybe. I don't even know if you're 120. Might even be less. And this is—and we're—and I think it's just I haven't looked at my cadences when I've been doing it. I've just been dying.

Well, and we're talking absolute peak as well. So the fastest you get to. There's obviously quite a big difference, but what you find is—well, what we've found is a similar relationship in terms of the high-level athletes producing more power. Their power curve is significantly higher at the further end.

So maybe from a—peak power generally athletes might produce peak power around 120 RPM, whatever it is. But athletes are able to produce peak power at those higher cyclic rates—that's also separating competition levels, which is very interesting. Very very interesting.

So there's definitely something to it. And whether or not an Assault Bike has the ability to contribute to that, I don't know if it does, but it doesn't mean it isn't great in other areas.

So there's a bit of food for thought there in terms of use cases. High cyclic rate, how important does that become? And how do we train it? I don't think an Assault Bike has the ability to do that.

James de Lacey37:46

Do you think that at least provides some of the physiological change that you needed initially? So increased calcium sensitivity. Was that from the sprint intervals? Obviously, you have the mitochondria adaptations, too, if you're doing sprints on it as well. Do you think that—I mean it's not going to be the be all end all that you're doing, but do you think there is some carryover? Or just at some point it's just diminishing returns? You do it for a few days.

Bill Smart38:35

No, no, there's definitely going to be—yeah, no, you're right. There's definitely going to be carryover. It sort of becomes like is this the way—is there a way—is there a super maximal overload that's associated with some of that calcium handling? I don't know. It's probably not my area of expertise.

James de Lacey38:35

Yeah, we need Dr. John Abraham to jump in now.

Bill Smart38:35

Yeah, yeah, seriously. We need Dr. John in here. But yeah, it is interesting. I think what I—what I like about some of that as well is obviously the—I mean when you look at high frequency, the transition between contraction types is, we're saying it, we're saying it's important here. We see it's important competition. I think the ability to train it is quite valuable.

James de Lacey39:21

And we're not saying not to do air bike and air bike's not good. So just for anyone listening.

Bill Smart39:21

The air bike is great. It's a one off. But I think you've also got to understand that air bike is essentially a jack of all trades in some ways. You get a lot, you get a lot in different areas. But sometimes when it comes to dialing in in different areas as well, if you want to specialize then using equipment that has carryover makes sense.

James de Lacey39:21

And more on that frequency stuff or let's just say the activation relaxation stuff. I mean you've got traditional ways of that most people will know at least from the research around there, the sprint intervals we've talked about. I guess the general velocity power based training kind of stuff, your jumps and your throws, et cetera. You were doing something interesting with Kai Kara-France for his last camp as well with frequency.

So do you want to maybe just explain maybe what you were doing there and why and maybe if there's other maybe unique ways that you're looking at training kind of this power frequency relationship and really trying to shift that curve?

Bill Smart40:04

So we do pretty consistently at least a balance of frequency based training throughout competition period. One way that we do it is I quite like doing it in ways that are reasonably sports specific. But I also like to do it generally as well. So we do things like rolling upper cuts, which you might have seen.

And for me, if you want to look at it purely from a task specific standpoint, you do have the ability to rapidly overload successive strikes with that exercise. But what I really like about those is one, the frequency component to it that we get out of it. Two, it's highly complex from a neural perspective in terms of muscular intermuscular coordination.

And I think that is something that what I've noticed with athletes, generally good athletes and good strikers will be able to coordinate with that pattern quite well. And athletes that aren't won't. So I think there's a value point—I think we probably don't give enough credit to just trying to create change to some of those neuromuscular coordination adaptations because it is pretty damn important.

Whether or not it's from an efficiency standpoint or from a performance standpoint. And if we go back to why potentially is, we talk to the frequency stuff, we talk to the Conor McGregor example of disconnecting and reconnecting a punch. I mean, when we consider conditioning, the more I can utilize muscles at the exact time that they needed and for the exact duration they needed and then not use them, I mean, that is a huge benefit when it comes to conditioning.

And I think that's where there are potential limitations in conventional approaches. So this is—yeah, maybe there's a crossover from this perspective. A lot of that probably comes more from high quantity and high quality technical training. But yeah, this is more about one, creating some benefit to that pattern, to overloading it from a cyclic and frequency perspective.

James de Lacey43:17

What I really like about a lot of this and a lot of this chat is there's always—you always see over social media there's a lot of talk about everything is GPP, right? Everything is GPP for everything outside the sport is GPP and there's no such thing as specific training. Well, these are really good examples of what would be specific training. Even your eccentric stuff that you're doing based on the data you have would be specific to the sport of MMA. It's not general training. And yeah, you jump in. You have something to say.

Bill Smart43:17

Yeah, I think 90% of the time that's probably a good approach. When it comes to you're trying to get the last 5%, it needs to be specific. And I mean, I think when we talk about efficiency, the biggest aspect of efficiency is technical efficiency.

And the ability for the brain to activate the right muscle at the right time is something that is, you just can't put enough emphasis on how important that is. And it doesn't just happen and it doesn't happen because you spend time on an assault bike or you spend time running. It is a highly sport-specific task.

From a conditioning perspective, some of the biggest gains in conditioning that you'll see, that I've seen, is just when you throw an athlete into high-volume technical training. And you periodize it reasonably well, so they still have the ability to be present and still have good cognitive function.

James de Lacey44:08

You know what's funny? You mentioned that. When I was working in tier two rugby, the World Rugby kind of shares a lot of the stuff that I guess other nations do within the thing. And I think it was the build-up to the World Cup. Which one was it? Last one or the one before? I think it was the one beforehand.

And Georgia, I think it was Georgia, they were trying to rack up 50k, 50 km weeks as part of their build-up for building volume. Kind of what you're saying. I mean, I'm assuming that there's probably not all technical training. There's probably a lot of actual running in that, too. But spending a lot of time on the feet on the field doing the sport and building volume that way, as you mentioned, perhaps that's kind of what they were getting at with technical efficiency within the sport was just hammering volume at that time.

And then as you taper that off, you get rid of that fatigue, then you start to I guess flourish as you get more intense training in.

Bill Smart45:51

Yeah, 100%. I think all of the adaptations that we're trying to drive are very task-specific as well. From a conditioning standpoint, whether or not it's mitochondrial, whether or not it's some of those vascular pathways. A lot of that is, we talk about how we apply some of those different areas, when you consider the variability of MMA and all the different positions. You just, there's you almost can't get that outside of doing it.

And we often talk a lot about the sports-specific training taking care of a lot of those maybe more aerobic-based adaptations. I would agree with that, but it also is not something that is always the case and it often isn't the case. And I think that's something that's really important to be aware of as well because you do run into a lot of issues when that, when you don't have the ability to develop some of those adaptations in a sports-specific state because athletes don't do what, aren't doing what you think they're doing.

And that's where that connection to the sport is so important. Because I don't think we should ever take any of that as a given. I think we always need to know what are you doing from a technical perspective. What are the work-to-rest ratios? What are the intensities? What are the actions? And that gives us a lot more information around how we can best influence from that point onwards.

James de Lacey47:07

So what is it that you're typically not seeing out in MMA technical training that you're trying to address outside that with conditioning?

Bill Smart47:07

Well, I think it depends. A lot of the times the intensities, whether or not you're doing, I think there's, we make assumptions that athletes get a lot of low-intensity work, and often that is the case, but sometimes it isn't. I think sometimes we make assumptions around they get higher intensity, more sustained work. So if we sort of think of that as your longer intervals, things like that. Sometimes those are more intermittent.

I think the biggest thing to be aware of is that different gyms have quite different systems. And depending on what they do, for instance, some gyms it's quite common you see people doing a lot of, whether it's grind-based circuit work, or they do it in the skills work. And some gyms don't do any of it. In which case, you kind of have to consider what are the adaptations that are being left on the table? And what is available? Because those differences in system would completely change my approach in terms of what we do.

And maybe an example is sometimes athletes just don't get as much sports-specific training, or maybe they just do a certain type. Maybe they end up just doing the lower intensity sessions, or maybe they just end up doing rounds. In which case, from an S&C standpoint, I know that strength and power, unless it's a massive target for the specific athlete, is probably not as important as some of those conditioning-based adaptations. For me, that would influence then my distribution of training.

And sometimes if the sports-specific load is not as maybe is not as high or as less consistent than it could be, we might be doing more sports-specific training in the sense that maybe the conditioning becomes more bag-focused, as opposed to using some like an assault bike. But those things I'll fluctuate between a little bit.

James de Lacey49:53

Nice. So guys who are maybe getting more high-intensity work on the mats, you're doing some kind of low-intensity off the mats, and then vice versa. You're looking more high-intensities off the mats for the guys who are getting I guess enough low-intensity work within their technical training would be a little summary of that kind of framework.

Bill Smart49:53

Yeah, pretty much. I think and of course it comes down to the profiles of the athletes as well from a physiological standpoint. But yeah, there would always be little things. There would be physiological profile, what does the athlete need? Are they, what do we think that they're getting in terms of sports-specific training? Are they getting it? If they're not getting it, do we need to fill the gap? And if so, how do we alter the training that we're doing to fill that gap?

James de Lacey50:40

Do you find that the more skilled fighters are able to almost not coast through training? But I mean they don't get as much of their high-intensity work within their skills training?

Bill Smart50:40

Yes and no, depending on the sessions. Definitely depends on the sessions. It depends on, it definitely depends on training partners. So I think that's always going to be the case when you have better athletes who have less skilled training partners. If they're in an environment where they have skilled training partners, that's not necessarily the case. So it is still case by case, and I think that's, I mean it's one of the hardest things if you're in a performance role is knowing what that looks like in terms of what those, you can have the exact same session, and you can have two completely different outputs from it just based on something like training partners.

So I think that is something that is, it's good to be aware of if you can, whether or not it's through heart rate monitoring or if you have the ability to be in the sessions. But yeah, most gyms when it comes to anything that requires intent generally you would expect better athletes to be with better athletes to mitigate that. But yeah, it's not always a given.

James de Lacey51:40

Yeah, fair enough. And I wanted to cover to round this podcast out, kind of blends actually blends well into what we've been talking about on efficiency and everything else. But I know I think one of the areas that you're quite interested in, I think most of us are at least within MMA, is kind of the cost of going from grappling, whether it's on the ground or against the cage, into striking and then obviously the back and forth within that and the toll that it can take.

Any insights, new insights, or any kind of insights you have on that with maybe the cost of it and how fighters could better prepare for those situations.

Bill Smart52:32

Yeah, it's honestly the golden question and I like to think we get a little bit closer but it probably is the case.

James de Lacey52:52

It'll be very, I think it'll be very applicable this weekend too with DDP versus

Bill Smart52:56

Yes. I will completely agree. I think, one I think that if you were to look at how to maximize for that, it's a large approach. It requires a lot of time on task from a modality standpoint. When it comes to grappling and when it comes to striking.

I think what you often see is striking-based athletes engage in clinch cage work, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden, quality drops off and drops off more and drops off more. So how do we combat that?

I think that's where from a starting perspective, you can't really get around spending a lot of time in those positions from a technical perspective. And we're talking, we can break that down into multiple components. You can look at technical from a skill perspective and link that into motor unit and specific muscle coordination into those groupings and tie that back into efficiency.

But then you also can look at that from a physical, physiological muscular perspective where it comes to things like mitochondrial adaptation, when it comes to things like transport as well in terms of oxygen. I think that if you don't have the time on task to develop mitochondria from a specific standpoint and those specific movements, you're going to find it very very difficult later on to change that.

So when we talk about lower intensity training, if an athlete does, there's no way around it really. An athlete needs to do a reasonably high volume of grappling based training in those earlier time periods before they get into fight camp to create and maximize those more local adaptations as well as the technical and neuromuscular point as well.

It's very hard to make—it's very very hard to make up for that if you don't have it, if that makes sense. And it comes back to trying to make sure that you're coming to fight camp in the right position.

And then on top of that, obviously sprint training is important. One of my bigger—one of the bigger things we focused on a little bit is when it comes to using sprint training and when it comes to creating these changes mitochondria, we need to make changes to type two fiber standpoint. And we do need that to be reasonably specific as well. So modality-wise it's quite important to use things that use the same muscles and reach those super maximal intensities. That's something that's quite apparent.

James de Lacey56:14

So what would be an example of that?

Bill Smart56:14

Well, it could be things like—I think if you would shift, if you would think about say a stationary bike and then you would think about an assault bike and maybe you would think about an arm crank as those three examples, right? Even on a stationary bike you're still going to be—you're still using the arm. You know what I mean? You'll be surprised how much activation you still get in from a isometric perspective that you're still utilizing oxygen at those tissues.

Assault bike is the same but obviously much more local. And then you shift to an arm crank which is extremely local. So I think that you probably need to spend some time in those types of modalities with high intensity work to have maximal transfer.

And when you look at MMA athletes and how they fatigue, it is often the upper body, right? It's often the arms. And probably one thing that we've noticed is—I need to check to Andrew about this actually—is you have very different profiles from an oxygen kinetic standpoint from the arms and from the legs.

The arms always take a lot longer to recover. And you can probably attribute that back to the hardware is a little bit different. We walk around on our legs all the time. They're naturally built more oxidative. When it comes to the upper body, we just have a lot more glycolytic which accumulate more lactate. And that's something that we probably need to account for as well.

And that's where I think when you take that back to the high volume from a grappling perspective, I think that's where some of that starts to provide some really positive adaptations. And so essentially that's—we're addressing the weak link from a grappling standpoint.

And then you need to bring it together. So then it needs to become task specific. And that's when all of a sudden you're bringing your striking and your grappling together and playing around with those rest work to rest intervals in a way that's specific to the sport. That would probably be my consensus from a maximization at a higher level.

James de Lacey58:53

So basically quote unquote non-specific sprint interval stuff, mitochondrial density, lots of grappling initially and then to more quote unquote specific.

Bill Smart58:53

I guess I kind of—when I think about the transition, I don't know if in PE in school we had to do a duathlon in PE. Run bike run. And the hardest thing was the transition.

James de Lacey58:53

I used to be in all day you could do a run session, you could go for a bike session, whatever. But going from run to bike and then bike to run, literally I remember everyone in the class was walking or running backwards that last run because they're all cramping. Cuz he does not use the—he does not use the transition.

So I guess it's like how—are teams potentially adding a lot of this transition style training? Is there even room for it to be done in the week with everything else going on? I mean cuz it depends if it's a priority or not, right?

Bill Smart59:40

I think what's really important is that is a sport specific component. And you will find that most—I would say most if not all high-level teams are bringing those modalities together. It is quite common in different ways.

What it—from an adaptation perspective, if you want to maximize it, it needs to be specific, but you need to have the hardware behind it to allow for those adaptations.

James de Lacey59:40

Got you.

Bill Smart59:40

So does that make sense? And that was something we used with Kai and laid up to his last fight. And you're really just looking at those last 3 weeks even when you're putting more emphasis on bringing those components together.

So you develop all your pathways in terms of energy, develop mitochondria, develop technical aspects, and then—I mean it's not really different just to traditional periodization. And then you bring it together.

And I was quite impressed with the adaptability from that in terms of a near standpoint cuz we were able to run monitoring that for both sessions was actually quite quite impressive. So it's something that I think it's probably not applicable to most people in the settings that they're in. But it's something that's important to note and also you need to know the cost of those types of decisions and how that plays into the overall training as well. And that does need to be accounted for.

So maybe my message overall is integration is key. You can't have things like this without having a proper integrated approach within the sport and the system. But when you do, the power that you have to fine-tune and be specific is high. And I think that you can't maximize performance without that.

James de Lacey1:01:33

That's a perfect way to end this pod, bro. It's always good to chat and get updates of what's going on and everything and chat about it on the pod.

Where can people keep up with what you're doing? You posting on Instagram yet?

Bill Smart1:01:33

Not really. I posted one the other day last week, I think.

James de Lacey1:01:33

You did. All right, you did too.

Bill Smart1:02:11

But I will—at some stage I will post more, but smarter performance on Instagram. You can follow me, and that's probably the best contact point.

James de Lacey1:02:11

Sweet. I'll link it in the description, too. I'll collab with you on more some more stuff as well as I get more content out. That always helps. But yeah, we'll chat again soon, I'm sure, and we'll keep everyone updated.

Bill Smart1:02:11

Awesome. Cheers, James. I appreciate this.

James de Lacey1:02:11

Cheers, everybody. And we're—