Archive for Strength & Conditioning
The 7 Conditioning Secrets of Highly Successful Combat Athletes
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It never ceases to amaze me that there are still combat athletes out there using the same outdated conditioning methods that have been long been proven ineffective and useless. The methods I speak of include hours and hours of long distance running and other unproductive forms of aerobic activity.
Folks, please understand this: neither wrestling nor any form of mixed martial arts are aerobic sports. Therefore, aerobic training of any kind is a complete waste of your time.
Yet every single high school or college wrestler I have ever come across is still running each and every day like they are training for a marathon instead of a six or seven minute bout of high intensity grappling. How is thirty to sixty minutes of low intensity jogging going to prepare you for six to seven minutes of absolute hellacious combat?
It isn’t.
It makes about as much sense as trying to become a world champion skateboarder by practicing your golf swing for eight hours a day while never even touching a skateboard.
Well then if that’s not the approach to take then what is, you ask? To answer that question let’s briefly take a look at what occurs in a wrestling match. At the high school level there are three periods consisting of two minutes each. At the collegiate level, there are three periods as well; the first consisting of three minutes and the final two consisting of two minutes each. At the Olympic level there is one five minute period and a three minute overtime period, if needed. In ultimate fighting athletes compete for 3-5, five minute rounds.
During these two to five minute bouts you will find yourself squatting, pressing, pulling, lunging, twisting and bridging. You will make explosive movements, slow grinding strength based movements and you will hold isometric contractions a lot longer than you can comfortably stand. For your off the mat training to have any carryover whatsoever, you need to be sure you are doing all of these things in your conditioning program. The exact same holds true for any kind of martial arts or no holds barred fighting. While some of the time periods and rounds may be different from one organization or sport to the next, the same general principle applies.
With that being said, let’s get right into my top seven conditioning methods for combat athletes.
1. Strongman Training- Strongman training incorporates the use of odd objects such as stones, logs, tractor tires, sandbags, kegs, sledgehammers, anvils and just about anything else you can think of. The basics of strongman training are to lift and carry or drag heavy shit; that’s basically the gist of it. Strongman training can be used as a conditioning day all on its own or at the end of a regular resistance training workout. There are endless amounts of exercises and events to choose from when putting together a strongman workout.
Those who are new to strongman training will have extreme difficulty with many of the exercises and will be winded quite quickly. Eventually after getting used to this type of training the goal will be to lower your rest periods and do more work in a given time period.
If you opt to have an entire training day dedicated to strongman training, I recommend that you pick five or six exercises that offer as much variety as possible. Below is an example of a good sequence of exercises for a strongman workout:
1) Car Push or Tire Flip
2) Keg Clean & Press
3) Sledgehammer Swing
4) Hand Over Hand Row with Thick Diameter Rope
5) Farmers Walk
You can do the exercises for straight sets or in a circuit fashion. Eventually when your conditioning improves and you continue to try to get more “sport specific” with your training, you could aim for up to five straight minutes of continuous work (or whatever length of time the rounds or periods last in your chosen combat sport) of work followed by a brief rest period.
If you choose to do use strongman training as a finisher to your normal weight training workouts, you would be best served to pick one or two exercises and perform them for five to ten minutes straight with a brief rest period every 30-90 seconds.
2. Bodyweight Circuits- Using your own bodyweight in a way that will resemble what you do in a wrestling match or no holds barred fight is an outstanding way of improving your conditioning. I usually like to go outside in the fresh air, to a park and perform these.
Grouping together four to six bodyweight exercises such as bear crawls, grasshoppers, sit outs, squat thrusts, crab walks and mountain climbers and doing them in a circuit will get you in great shape in no time. Again, try to eventually work your way down to using work to rest ratios similar to that which you will face in competition.
3. Sled Combos- A dragging sled is one of the most valuable tools any hard training combat athlete could have in his arsenal. The possibilities are limitless with the sled. To choose an effective sled combo, try to pick movements that will work the body from as many different angles and in as many different ways as possible. An example of a highly effective sled combo is below:
1a) Forward Sled Drag- 30 seconds
1b) Face Pull- 30 seconds
1c) Backward Sled Drag- 30 seconds
1d) Chest Press- 30 seconds
Repeat for two to five minutes straight followed by a brief rest period similar to what you will face in competition.
4. Sprints- While jogging is completely worthless; sprinting is tremendous for combat athletes looking to get in kick ass shape. I like to use a variety of sprint workouts with combat athletes including hill sprints, stadium stair sprints, shuttle runs, sled sprints and agility circuits. Before commencing your sprint workouts, be sure to complete a full dynamic warm up in order to reduce the possibility of injury. To further reduce the risk of injury, and basically eliminate and concern of pulled hamstrings stick with hill sprints or do most of your sprint work with an empty sled dragging behind you. Just the weight of the empty sled is enough to slow you down slightly which greatly decreases the risk of injury.
5. Medicine Ball Throw and Retrieve- This is a great way for the combat athlete to mix explosive movements in with their conditioning. For this method you will need a medicine ball which is not so light that you can throw it fifty yards but not so heavy that it only goes two feet when you release it. You need to find something in the middle. Most athletes will use a ball somewhere between twelve and twenty pounds for this drill. I like to mix up the direction and kinds of throws when using this method. For example we will start with a backwards overhead scoop throw, sprint to the ball, do an overhead forward throw, sprint to the ball, side rotation throw, sprint, chest pass, sprint, forward scoop throw, side rotation throw in the opposite direction, sprint, etc. This can be done for two to three minutes straight followed by a brief rest period.
6. Barbell Complexes- For those of you have never done complexes; get ready for a whole new in-the-gym experience. Barbell complexes consist of doing several exercises in a row without ever putting the bar down. This usually consists of six to ten exercises and each exercise is usually done for six reps. The reps are performed as explosively as possible and you move from one exercise to the next without ever taking a break or letting go of the bar. Most athletes will begin with just a 45 pound Olympic bar. Below is an example of a barbell complex:
1) Deadlift
2) Hang Clean
3) Front Squat
4) Hang Snatch
5) Overhead Squat
6) Front Press
7) Bent Over Barbell Row
8] Romanian Deadlift
Over time the goal is to be able to complete the entire complex faster than the previous workout. As I mentioned above, you should start with just the bar the first time you do complexes, but quickly work up to a more challenging weight in subsequent weeks. Ninety five pounds will be absolute hell for even the strongest and most well conditioned of warriors.
7. The Whole Kit ‘N Caboodle- This method basically involves combining any two or all of the above methods into one conditioning session. These types of workouts can be grueling and are only for those with the heart of champion. For example, you may start your workout inside with a few rounds of barbell complexes. After that you may proceed outside and pick up the medicine ball for a few rounds of throw and retrieve. When you have completed the throws, you might grab the sled and perform a few combos followed immediately by a car push, a sprint, and a farmers walk until you drop. There really are no rules as to how you structure this. You can intermix whatever method you like and do straight sets or circuits. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
There you have it the best ways to get in ass kicking shape and outlast any opponent you will ever face. As far as the work to rest ratios go, you will notice that for most methods I have suggested that over time you try to work toward matching these up with what you will actually face in competition. This is an eventual goal but is not of the utmost importance. Do the best you can and keep that goal in mind but don’t be overly concerned if you can not achieve those numbers.
One final note is that you must be careful not to overdo any of these methods. While most combat athletes have the attitude that more is better, that is not always the case. Too much of a good thing is actually a bad thing. Too much conditioning will lead to losses in strength, size and speed and a decrease in your overall performance.
The key is to find the optimal level; the amount that gets you in the best condition possible, and do exactly that amount and no more. How much is that? No one can know for sure but you. My recommendation is two to three, 20-40 minute sessions per week. On top of your classes, practices and other skill work sessions, most combat athletes won’t be able to handle more than two strength sessions per week and two conditioning sessions. My advice is to blend these into the same workout on at least one of your training days, so at most, you are doing no more than four strength and conditioning workouts. If you are doing a lot of specialized training then two to three sessions might be even better.
Be sure to utilize all of the methods listed in this article, bust your ass and make constant improvements, and victory will be yours.
Jason Ferruggia
My Top 5 Training Tips
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I was interviewed for a big name fitness magazine recently and they asked for my top five training tips. Here’s what I told them…
Train like an athlete- You should be training for enhanced performance and your strength work and conditioning/ cardio should be hard, heavy and fast. None of the light weight, slow motion nonsense, and no medium intensity, steady state cardio that drowns your fast twich fibers in lactic acid, making them take on the characteristics of slow twitch fibers.
Use big, full body exercises and add in some throws, jumps or strongman training whenever appropriate. Always strive to increase your performance from one workout to the next by lifting more weight, doing more reps, jumping higher, running faster or getting done in less time. Everybody wants to look like Georges St. Pierre or Gabrielle Reece so why not start training like them?
Use exercises that allow you to move your body through space- When you move your own bodyweight (or bodyweight plus resistance) like you do in a chin up, pushup, squat, etc. you activate more muscle fibers, thus you will get bigger, stronger and leaner a whole lot faster. As far as conditioning and cardio goes, you have to realize that the human body wasn’t designed for repetitive steady state activity but rather short bursts with a wide variety of different movements. This is exactly what you do when you play most sports. When you pump away on a machine for 30 minutes you are fighting evolution.
So focus on bodyweight and free weight exercises like chins, dips and sprints, play as many sports as possible, and avoid all strength or cardio machines like the plague.
Less is more- When training for size, strength and speed, quality is always more important than quantity. If you undertrain you will make some progress, albeit slowly. If you overtrain you will make zero progress. When in doubt, do less.
Eat only organic, anti inflammatory, plant based whole foods- If a caveman couldn’t eat it you shouldn’t eat it. Nothing that comes in a box or plastic wrapper or that contains any artificial ingredients whatsoever should ever touch your lips. Focus on getting the majority of your calories from vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and legumes. Add in extra protein where you need it and drink nothing but pure water. Also, try to avoid dairy, corn, wheat, sugar and saturated fat as these cause inflammation throughout the body leading to pain and disease.
Sleep- Getting 8-10 hours per day of high quality sleep is simply the best thing you can do for recovery, building lean muscle, burning bodyfat, improving insulin sensitivity, enhancing immune system function, repairing damaged tissues/injuries, improving brain function, etc, etc, etc. If you are not sleeping you have a major problem and it needs to be addressed with high priority.
Train smart,
Jason Ferruggia
The Unmaking of an Athlete
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By Jason Ferruggia
I sometimes wonder if there are any prerequisites at all to getting a job as college strength and conditioning coach. As the owner of my private athletic training company (Renegade Strength & Conditioning) I have had the opportunity to work with athletes from numerous colleges and universities across the country and have witnessed their disgust with their schools strength and conditioning programs. Some athletes, such as those attending Arizona State, are fortunate enough to have outstanding strength coaches and tremendous programs that they need not look elsewhere for help. Others are not so lucky.
Every August I try to send my athletes back to their respective schools as one of the strongest, fastest, and most well conditioned players on their team. Come December I see the unlucky one’s come back to me weaker, smaller and slower. These athletes have the misfortune of training under some Neanderthal strength coach who hasn’t learned anything new about weight training since the release of Pumping Iron. There have been countless advances in the field of strength and conditioning over the last ten years, yet very few people seem to take advantage of them. It is inexcusable that, in 2004, a college strength and conditioning coach does not have a thorough knowledge of exercise and nutrition and can not properly prepare their teams for competition. If your athletes are losing size and strength, slowing down, and becoming more injury prone I think it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Every college athlete that hires me as their strength coach brings me their schools workout to look at before we get started. Some of the things I see in those programs are absolutely unfathomable.
One such example of the insanity is the baseball player I train whose school conditioning program includes running three miles through the city of Philadelphia ala Rocky Balboa every morning at 6am before lifting. Long distance running is useless for nearly every sport, especially baseball. Baseball players will normally run no more than 90 feet at any one particular time. That 90 foot sprint usually comes only once every half hour or so and only if the player gets a hit. So how, I ask, does running three miles each morning improve your ability to play the game of baseball? The only player on the field who needs real endurance is the pitcher. Baseball is a game of skill and hand-eye coordination and the players need to develop strength and speed. The major leagues are filled with pumped up monsters that hit 500 foot home runs and can bench press a car, yet many college coaches continue to run their players into the ground. Endless distance running will only cause the athletes to lose size, strength and most importantly…games. To get a few more wins this season, ditch the counterproductive marathon training and get your baseball players doing sprints and lifting heavy weights.
Another one of my athletes is a Division 1 field hockey player whose conditioning test on the first day of camp consists of running from New York to Los Angeles and back in under an hour. I am, of course, exaggerating but not by much. The test involves more running in one morning than the girls will run in a seasons worth of games. Field hockey players must be highly conditioned, no doubt, but the best way to achieve that high level of conditioning is not through an outdated approach of long distance running. Coaches who implement this kind of training are preparing their athletes for a marathon, not a stop and go sport such as field hockey. While the athlete’s may be able to run a faster time in the mile, the question is, how does that equate to better performance on the field? The answer is obvious, it doesn’t. There is no sport that consists of running miles at a time.
Most sports involve a combination of sprinting, jogging and even walking. Field hockey is no different and as such, these athletes would be best served to do a mix of interval sprint training and longer 200-400 meter sprints. A colleague of mine who works with several NHL players, arguably the most highly conditioned of all athletes, has found that 400 meter sprints performed three times weekly works wonders for conditioning while avoiding muscle and strength losses.
I once trained a football player whose team workout consisted of no work for the lower back or hamstrings, the most important muscles for sprint speed. I have another athlete whose school training program is 100% machine based. One of my standout football players, who I began training in eighth grade lost nearly forty pounds in his first year at college because the team workout consisted of full body circuit training of 15-20 reps with 30 seconds rest, three days a week, year round! There must have been some strong guys in that lineup. Another amazing training program was the one that had EVERY kid on the team do the exact same weight regardless of bodyweight, strength level or position! The reasoning behind it was they had 50 kids to train and didn’t have time to change the weights.
To those with a good deal of strength training knowledge the above stories may sound like fiction. But trust me they are all true, you can’t make that kind of stuff up. Unfortunately, I have dozens more and could go on forever with similar stories. There are endless mistakes made by strength coaches and head coaches on a daily basis but here are some of the biggest ones and some ways to improve upon them:
1) Excessive endurance training- Nearly every athlete I work with gets run into the ground on a daily basis. This is counterproductive and is usually done because the coaches don’t have the necessary understanding of the body’s different energy systems and how to train them properly. Most sports require speed. Speed can only be improved through proper training of the nervous system and by avoiding excessive endurance work. Too much distance work can convert fast twitch muscle fibers into slow twitch fibers and can actually decrease an athlete’s speed over time.
Unfortunately I’ve seen this happen more times than I care to remember and have watched great athletes have their careers ruined by improper training techniques. If coaches kept in mind the requirements of the sport they are preparing their athletes for, maybe this would not be such a problem. For example, in training an offensive lineman, why would you ever have him run miles at a time or sprint more than ten to twenty yards in practice when you know that he will never run that distance in a game? Unless I am missing something, the point of practice is to get ready for what you will do in a game. The problem, much of the time lies in the fact that head coaches dictate how their team’s running is implemented. Most of the time a head coach does not have a degree in anatomy or physiology or even a general understanding of either. The head coach is required to know the sport inside and out but is rarely an expert in energy system training. If head coaches could check their egos and let a qualified speed and conditioning coach handle this aspect of training they just might add a few more victories to their record.
2) Overtraining- Most coaches have an old school military attitude of “more is better,” and usually end up overtraining their athletes. Spending more than an hour in the weight room is a classic mistake. Performing extra sprints at the end of practice as a form or punishment is another one. By forcing the athletes to run in such a fatigued state, you increase their risk of injury and teach them to adopt improper sprint technique. This combined with three-a-day practices, limited rest times, insufficient nutrition and hydration all leads to a severe state of overtraining.
3) Improper speed training- Anyone who understands how the body works knows that to improve speed you must target the central nervous system (CNS). Proper neural training requires the appropriate amount of recovery time between sprints. The CNS takes five to six times longer than the muscles to recover, a fact which seem to escape most coaches. Running ten forty yard sprints with a fifteen second rest is not speed training, it is time wasting and nauseating. The frequency of high intensity speed training is also too great. Most athletes are forced to perform maximal sprints every day of the week. The great Olympic sprint coach, Charlie Francis, has his athletes perform no more than three max effort sprint days per week and finds anything more than that to be detrimental in speed development.
4) Too many reps in the weight room- Most of the college weight training programs I see focus on sets of 10-15 reps, even for Olympic lifts. Any strength coach who has yet to learn that Olympic lifts are never to be performed for more than five reps should not be working at the college level. Where is the strength work in these programs? With all of the other endurance work the kids are doing the last thing you want to do is turn the time in the weight room into another endurance session. Focus on strength and speed which is best accomplished by using multiple sets of 1-5 reps and heavy weight.
5) Using the wrong exercises- Triceps kickbacks, leg extensions, and pec deck flyes are all exercises that I have actually seen in the programs of Division 1 schools. These exercises are completely useless for any athlete. Strength is built using basic compound movements and heavy weight. Focus on squats, deadlifts, bench presses, military presses, rows, dips, and chins and throw out the machines and isolation movements.
Another mistake is taking kids who have little to no training experience and having them perform power cleans or some other complex lift. By the time most male athletes reach college they have done a decent amount of weight training but that is not usually the case for females. I have heard of schools taking freshman girls and throwing them right into a workout consisting of snatches and split jerks. Just because a girl may be superstar Division 1 athlete does not mean she is ready to start doing Olympic complexes. Beginners should always train like beginners regardless of the situation.
6) Improper exercise form- Even if you utilize the proper rep scheme, and train heavy on the compound exercises listed above it is all a waste if your exercise form is horrendous. In the college weight rooms I’ve been in, I’ve seen people bench press with their asses a foot and a half off the bench and have seen more varieties of a hang clean than I ever knew existed. As a strength coach it is your job, above all else, to at least be able to teach your athletes proper exercise form and help them avoid injury.
7) Doing conditioning work before weight training- The point of lifting weights is to get stronger. To do so you should be as fresh as possible upon entering the weight room so you can train at your maximal capacity. Running and doing conditioning drills immediately before lifting drains your glycogen stores and saps your energy, leaving you weak and unmotivated, not exactly the way you want to feel before a heavy workout. Completing an exhausting two hour practice and then going straight to the weight room for some heavy squats is also a great way to get injured.
8] Training the whole team with the same workout- You would be amazed at how many schools use the exact same program for every player on the team regardless of position. Why would a quarterback train exactly like an offensive lineman? Why would a pitcher do the exact same workout as the designated hitter? It makes no sense. Even though all athletes share a common need for improved strength, the needs for each player can sometimes be very different, especially when it comes to conditioning and speed work, and the training programs should reflect that. When it really gets to be appalling is when the weights to be used on a certain exercise are already written in ahead of time. Some workout sheets will say something like: Bench Press- 3 sets x 10 reps x 225 pounds. So the 150 pound kicker who has never lifted before and the 375 pound nose tackle who has spent his life in the gym are supposed to do the same exact weight. It will staple one of them to the bench and be a joke for the other; even a first grader could tell you that. This is one glaring mistake I will never understand.
9) Never changing the workout- Too many schools use the same workout month after month and year after year. They have an in season program and an off season program and the workouts NEVER change. Every year, for a good laugh, a Division 1 baseball player I train brings me his teams’ workout book at the start of each season. For four years straight, it was the exact same three-day-a-week workout, fifty two weeks a year! Talk about boredom and burn out. I would go absolutely insane if I did the same workout for more than a few weeks straight, never mind four years. If you are getting paid to write workouts for a team, the least you could do is put a little thought into them and add some variety.
10) Constant negativity- After many years working as a strength and conditioning coach I know that most athletes do not respond well to constantly being verbally berated. It is, of course, part of the job, you have to toughen the kids up and earn their respect. But when they hate you and no longer enjoy coming to practice or the weight room, you have ruined what should have been a great experience for them and you have just lowered the performance output of your athletes. I appreciate a hardcore, militant attitude and train most of my athletes in this manner. However we do have fun and lighten up when the work is done. At the end of the day, everyone needs positive reinforcement once in a while or they will just give up or lose interest. It’s human nature. Look into it.
The intention of this article was not to bash all college strength coaches and head coaches, because, as I stated earlier there are many great ones. It was simply a way of trying to get through to those that have been stuck in their outdated ways for far too long. Hopefully it opened some eyes and will cause at least a few people to take a step back and rethink their strength and conditioning programs. Properly trained athletes win more games, which as a coach, is always your goal. More importantly, when an 18 year old kid puts his or her athletic future in your hands, it is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The training you give them over the next four years could literally make or break their careers and shape the rest of their lives. Think about that before heading for the copy machine to rehash the same useless workouts you’ve been using forever.
