The UFC's Cutting-Edge Strength Training - Dr Duncan French

Dr Duncan French is the Vice President of Performance at UFC's Performance Institute. The UFC has some of the world's top athletes, now backed by cutting edge data-driven interventions from some of the most advanced protocols and coaches on the planet. Duncan is using everything from diagnostic tools to recovery, VR training, psychedelic supplementation, scientifically-backed rep range protocols and peri-training nutrition. Expect to learn how Duncan navigates the politics between fighters' gyms and the UFC's central performance institute, how athletes manage the psychological strain of fight week, what key metrics Duncan's team analyse to judge athlete's health, how to maximise muscle growth from two sessions a week and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 10% discount on everything from BioOptimizers at https://magbreakthrough.com/modernwisdom (use code MW10) Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://bit.ly/cdwisdom (use code MW15) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out the UFC Performance Institute's Website - https://ufc-pi.webflow.io/ Follow The UFC PI on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ufcpi Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #ufc #strength #training - Join the Modern Wisdom Community on Locals - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Being able to internalise, what is your game plan? You know that you've done the work, you know that you're technically and tactically proficient in what you need to do. So how do you remove the white noise and pursue the signal of your mindfulness of being present in the moment? MMA is 90% mental, apart from the 60% that's physical.

• 0:20Chris Williamson?

  Dr Duncan French, welcome to the show.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Hi mate, how are you doing? Good to hear from you.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  I know, it's nice to hear a familiar north eastern voice while we're over in the States.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  I know, right? It's, there's nothing like home when it comes down to it.

• 0:35Chris Williamson?

  Harrogate City, right?

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Originally North Yorkshire, yeah, Harrogate and Ayrshire region, and then moved to Newcastle for college and I kind of call Newcastle home now.

• 0:44Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I'm an adopted Geordie, let's say.

• 0:46Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, the number of times that I get accused of being Australian while I'm over here, I was at a big meetup yesterday and I got accused of being Australian more times than I got accused of being British, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Oh mate, I get, I mean, what, I'm in my fifth year, well, four years for my PhD and then now five years since I came back to the States, I get everything from South Africa to Australian to New Zealand to Arkansas, you name it.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  Wow. So you've been working with, is it over 30 professional or Olympic sports since you started?

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think 37, I think was the last time I counted, so yeah, been blessed, it's been good, lots of, lots of variety and lots of opportunity, but yeah, whether it's pro sport or the Olympic movement, I've been around the block, let's say.

• 1:32Chris Williamson?

  And it was three full Olympic cycles with Team GB as well?

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, through the English Institute of Sport, which is obviously the high performance service provider to British Olympic programmes, as well as Commonwealth programmes like netball and things like that, but I was a strength and conditioning coach and, you know, sports scientist through the, through the English Institute for about 14 years, so as you say, a variety of different sporting backgrounds, so it's been, it's been a cool, cool ride right to now.

• 2:03Chris Williamson?

  What's the common thread between all of those? Have you moved into specialities since you've been there? Was it always strength and conditioning? Was it performance?

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I mean, I've always been a strength and conditioning, physical preparation coach. You know, that's, that's kind of what I would call my, you know, my, my primary area of expertise. And, you know, with, with some sports science weaved into there, you know, I, I, my degrees and things, PhDs are in sports science, but I certainly went around the coaching route. And, and then could call upon my strength and conditioning and my sports science throughout that. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, let's say many, many hats, many, many strings to the bow when you need it. You know, that's kind of part of the deal.

• 2:45Chris Williamson?

  So, given the fact that you've had over 30 sports that you've worked with, and then you've stepped into the UFC. What is particularly unique about the athletes that you work with there? You've got this broad base of experience in the past, but now you're working with a very broad ranging sport. What's different about the guys that you work with, their preparation, their training?

• 3:04Speaker 00

  I mean, listen, every sport's got its own culture and, and things that you really resonate to and things that you're like, whoa, why are they doing it like that, you know? And you kind of question some of the behaviours, but, you know, I think I'm not bold enough to say, you know, the success is because of me. It's, it's, you know, hopefully I play or my team, the teams that I'm involved with play a role in that. You know, athletes are successful before, you know, the service providers come online and they'll be successful long after we're gone. I think, you know, when you look at all the different sports, they all come with different cultural approaches and different kind of dogmatic mindsets in, in what is good and what is bad. Um, you know, I'm blessed right now to work with combat athletes and obviously MMA fighters here in the UFC.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  And I think this is the one sport in, in all of my career where the challenges and the different,

• 3:53Speaker 00

  variables that go into success are so complex. Um, you know, this, this community, this group of athletes are, you know, they want to win. And you, you can harness that motivation and that energy. And I think that's one thing which really differentiates combat athletes is just the commitment to the grind. Um, any, any elite athlete at the highest level is doing things that are. You know, are different to the normal Joe Blow walking down the street, right? But I think when you look at the rigors of what MMA is and what these guys go through on a day-to-day basis, it truly has a lot to behold. And I think that's what's fascinating about this community, you know, they are spitting sawdust and pretty honest as the day is long, but they are, you know, their commitment

• 4:37Speaker 00

  and their dedication to their craft and their ethic is unfounding, it's amazing.

• 4:42Chris Williamson?

  Would you say that the MMA fighters are about as ultimate of an athlete as you're going to get at the moment, coming out of sport?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, again, I'm biased, right, because I sit in this space right now. But again, you look at gymnasts or divers and the, you know, the skill and the artistry is amazing. You can take any sport and you can pull things from it, but just in terms of, you know, true athleticism and what an MMA fighter has to do by combining strength, power, conditioning, skill, the psychological component of being able to execute under what is, you know, truly severe and consequential outcomes, really differentiates them. And it's funny because I get a lot of other athletes or athletes I've worked with formerly reaching out to me and say, oh, you know, big fan of the UFC. Or I think that's kind of a measure when you have other pro athletes saying like, I

• 5:34Speaker 00

  love watching MMA and the UFC and those guys are unreal, what they can do. And, okay, well, if you're saying that, then there's obviously something in it, which is pretty cool to hear.

• 5:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's such an entertaining sport, you know, the guys have really, really got this format right, which is, it's two guys or two girls in an eight-sided ring, smashing seven shades of shit out of each other for a while. And then as someone's hand gets raised at the end of it, it's a fairly simple format, but it is so accessible, super entertaining. I think the build-up that they've got now, at first I wasn't much of a fan of the cleaning up of the branding, but I think that that also makes everything look a lot more cleaner and professional, which is great. Going back to what you said before about the fact that there has been an influence of your input, the Performance Institute, on the outcomes.

• 6:26Chris Williamson?

  That you're getting from the fighters, but because you are dealing with every fighter, the waterline of all of them gets raised up, right? Like, everybody has access to you guys. Now, not everybody's going to get the same sort of outcomes because not everybody's as coachable, not everybody responds as well. They might have more dogmatic ideologies within their own gym and such like. But how are you gauging the impact that you have across the board, across all fighters, when everybody has access? It's not like the UFC beat some other organisation in a big battle royale.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  It's a little bit different to any professional sporting organisation where you're judged on wins and losses, for all intents and purposes, right? We're kind of the league, let's say, and we'll only have a bat 500 because we might be working with both athletes that are in the octagon at the same time for a main event.

• 7:18Chris Williamson?

  But you've never lost a fight.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Right, we've never, we've never lost a fight. We've also won a lot as well, right? I've lost a lot, I've seen. I mean, I think, you know, our evaluation of our success is based on different kind of KPIs and objectives. It comes down to, you know, what you said at the head of your question. Yes, the Performance Institute is about raising the level across the whole fight community globally. That's a, that's a big ambition, right? But it's about slowly evolving the sport to embed, you know, better training science, better methodologies, better approaches for medicine or nutrition or whatever it may be. You know, the nature of injuries and the incidence of injuries and how they're happening around a wrestling practice

• 8:01Speaker 00

  that might have too many athletes on the mat at one time and, you know, wrestling scramble and someone might roll onto another pair working somewhere else on the mat and you cause a stupid injury that's completely preventable. You know, those type of things, we kind of try and keep an eye on, looking at how athletes are making weight and the status of their weight making exercises and is it done in a, in an optimised fashion? You know, ultimately, we're in a weight classification sport, which in itself is a cultural approach. Not every sport requires you to make weight. That brings with it a lot of nuance and a lot of tradition and approaches. So how do we kind of get the athletes into the octagon in the most optimal way possible? Around the parameters of making weight and the guys having to cut weight.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  And then other things like, you know, some of the performance metrics, like is the show entertaining? Technical skills that have been executed. We take a lot of interest in that as well. Because ultimately by association, whilst we're not necessarily the ones coaching those techniques or the technical tactical side of it. Giving people physical attributes or a mental status to go and try a technique in competition or. You know, as I say, optimizing someone's capability during competition. You you would say that the probability of of the fight being. At a higher level, at a higher standard is also got some influence by the work that we're doing as well.

• 9:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, one of the things that's interesting is if you look back to. The traditions of fighting, you know, your Bruce Lee's, the very much a sort of savant artistic interpretation. You had more eastern martial arts that would involve things like energy, cheese, such like. How are you finding the blend? Because I I'm presuming you can't have completely got rid and there's also. You know, the the sort of fighters that are very much flow and natural and and artistic in the way that they fight. How are you finding the blend between this artistic element and the data driven in in interventions that you need to make with people?

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think first and foremost, it's it's martial arts, right? It's mixed martial arts. And whilst you'd say it's a competitive fight and that, you know, that that's chaos often.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  You know, you'd be surprised the underpinning techniques and tactics that go into into the fight any moment in time. And again, I draw on, you know, something that's been brought into our ecosystem here at the Performance Institute through our. Head MMA coach over at our Shanghai Academy, Dean Amasinger. He talks about. The MFA, which is the martial artists, so the M, you know, the martial artists, they are fighters. And then there are also athletes, all right? So FMA, like we we look at that kind of trifecta of. An influence. So when it comes to, you know, the artistry, the tactics, the the technical skill set. You know, a lot of our guys still draw on Bruce Lee and, you know, some of those pure martial arts sets.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  And then yeah, athleticism, we can put a lot of data and objectivity around athleticism. So whether it is martial arts, being a fighter, which is more mental and some physical attributes, but then also the physical attributes of athleticism and being an athlete, we can start to really nail down each of these three factors that go into driving success in our sport.

• 11:20Chris Williamson?

  Talking about some other tensions that might be going on between the way that people typically see fighters, particularly those that do MMA and the new world or this sort of renaissance that you guys are getting with data-driven interventions and stuff and trying to professionalise all of this. How are you finding managing the relationship between your team and the guys that you look after and the interventions that they want and then the athletes, the fighters, coach and the gym that they go back to or the multiple gyms that they might go back to afterwards. They're going to have their ideas around how they should be preparing, how they should be training, their loading, et cetera, et cetera. Talk to me about the tension between those.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think you talk about tension. I think you've got to try and remove the tension and that's any sport, right? And again, I draw on my experiences and it doesn't matter what sport you go into. It comes down to the maturity of people to handle data and handle information. Now, for some sports that have got legacy and long-term history of using wearable technology or handling data, looking at statistics and measuring it. You know, you take a sport like basketball, everything's built or American football, everything's built around statistics. Baseball is probably the most classic one there. So they're really comfortable in using and talking about numbers and using numbers to direct strategy.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Other sports might not necessarily be as mature in handling data and be comfortable with that type of information. Mixed martial arts being one of them. So what we're trying to do is obviously elevate people's awareness and understanding of the types of information we're giving them. You can look to the recent kind of evolution of leg kicks or low calf kicks in MMA and how it's kind of revolutionising our sport as something that's really pivoted the sport and taken it down a different direction. I mean... Calf kicks have always been around, but they've not been used as much as they are now. And they're truly debilitating, right? So it's becoming a real tactic, an offensive tactic. You've also got to be defending against that. So, you know, out there in the community, the coaches are innovating at any moment in time.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  But what we're trying to do is, is kind of put evidence and evaluation against it to say, you know, how can we optimize it further? How can we give you competitive advantage? And try and come together and meet the rubber where it meets the road with the maturity of an athlete or a coach to handle information.

• 13:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How do you deal with the fact that typically you have a strength and conditioning or a coaching unit that is looking after one team and every athlete that works underneath them is being pushed forward, whereas you are doing opponent, fight around opponent? Now, obviously there'll be securities around data and such like. It's not like you're going to be telling each fighter what the other one's preparing and stuff like that. But that must be a very unique environment to work in, right? Where you are, like we said before, you win and lose every single fight that you've been involved in.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. I mean, we're agnostic to the whole roster. So you're absolutely right. You know, athlete, the model that we work to is that the UFC fighters are independent contractors. So we can't mandate that they engage with the Performance Institute and the services that we offer. It's very much an à la carte, take it or leave it, pick what you want type approach. And obviously that drives individuality from the very get go. Some athletes want all of our service provision. Some athletes want nothing to do with us because there's a lot of paranoia about what you're talking about in this question. Other athletes will pick and choose bits and pieces as and when they see fit. You know, if you've got a, some kind of injury or historical injury that we're working and treating with you, you know, obviously your opponent doesn't, you know, that's, that information is sacrosanct.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  If your opponent was to find that out, that could truly change the likelihood of your success in the event. So, yeah, we're very sensitive to how we handle information, how we handle data, knowing that we've got this really kind of wild and unique business model that we work to where we're potentially working with two fighters that are going to compete in a month's time. And we're strategising and working with their coaches, helping them on physical development, et cetera, et cetera. I think, you know, the thing that we do to distance ourselves completely for that is that we don't coach and teach technical and tactical work through the Performance Institute, which is obviously the secret sauce. You know, the MMA techniques. What we do is obviously support them with, you know, nutrition and body composition, with diagnostics,

• 15:42Speaker 00

  with physical preparation, with mental preparation, all those supplementary factors, not necessarily the true things which are going to influence the outcome of the fight, which is technical, tactical work. So we kind of align ourselves to that, but we don't deliver that specifically.

• 15:56Chris Williamson?

  What are the primary metrics that you're looking at over the weeks and months? So my housemate has just been given a promotion at Newcastle Falcons. He's now the junior physio of the first team. And since living with him for the last few years, I've been fascinated learning about chronic load and yardage. And I got to see the back end of one of the spreadsheets that they have these readouts and it's just an endless, endless stream of data. Who got up to the maximum velocity this week? Who's done the most yardage? All this stuff. So what's the equivalent in your world? What do you look at from the players?

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, welcome to the world of like world-class or elite level sport right now. I mean, there's more data than we all know what to do with because ultimately, technology has changed the game. And as soon as you start wearing technology in competition and training and you're aggregating all this information, I mean, just, just kind of processing that in a team setting can, can be overwhelming. But I think when we look at, you know, MMA, obviously, we're trying to get to the same questions. We're trying to understand how you optimise training load, the exposure to a training stimulus to maximise the effect of that training stimulus. So how, how do we do that? How do we measure people's exposure? And what's the right exposure? It's the Goldilocks effect, right? How much is too

• 17:12Speaker 00

  much? How much is too little? And oh, Goldilocks, that's just right? Exactly. That's what we need to be. There's a lot of research and literature out there that we know connection between the, the, the likelihood of injury or an injury incidence with overtraining versus undertraining versus, you know, where things sit. So that's an important conversation. But in the sport of MMA, it's a little bit different, right? Because

• 17:36Speaker 00

  We don't have really robust data insights around competition. Our fighters, not like they're wearing heart rate monitors, it's not like they're wearing GPS, it's not like they're wearing any kind of accelerometers or those types of things where we can really start to understand what competition is. We're kind of extrapolating a little bit and making insinuations based on what we, the data we can get in sparring or in training. So yeah, we look at training load, we look at, you know, vision assessments and reaction times, we look at cognitive function. Obviously, it's a, you know, a sport where you're getting hit in the head. So how do we monitor and manage those, those exposure loads? Whether it's through instrumented mouthpieces that have accelerometers in them where we can look at head impacts.

• 18:14Chris Williamson?

  No way. You can put something in the mouth that's going to measure everything?

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, yeah. That's, that's kind of the direction we're going now.

• 18:21Chris Williamson?

  That's wild.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  That's kind of already, yeah. In rugby and Australian Rules football, it's already happening a little bit. We're in, you know, we're pursuing that with MMA. And then you've obviously got other factors like, you know, do you see strength, power characteristics, heart rate for your conditioning, what's your training zone, what's your biological load with respect to lactate management, things like that. So, I mean, listen, to answer the question, it's, it's a lot of different things. But in the sport of MMA, we still haven't nailed down what competition truly is, so that we can reverse engineer everything from competition. So that's the north star for us right now is working with different partners and technology and academics to say, all right, how can we really nail down an understanding of what MMA is? Because we haven't got those insights. And obviously,

• 19:06Speaker 00

  there's the striking components, but there's grappling components where you're not really moving too much, but there's a huge metabolic demand through isometric hold or isometric contraction that it's really hard to classify what that looks like in terms of ultimately the athletic load that you have to, you know, form in the octagon.

• 19:24Chris Williamson?

  I went to this meetup that I said yesterday where I got accused of being an Australian and I met this guy who spends eight hours a day in virtual reality. So he's at the forefront of, of like developing.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Poor guy.

• 19:38Chris Williamson?

  Games. Yeah, he seemed to love it. But, and he was telling me that there is New VR technology that is able to track the body's position in space so that it can accurately represent it in the virtual reality world. I'm wondering whether you would be able to get to the stage in future where all of the different camera angles that you guys have around the octagon may be able to track stuff like trauma and movement and then be able to reverse engineer that to actually be able to give you some sort of metrics. But the fact that you've got whatever, a GPS mouthguard with an inbuilt HRV monitor or a heart rate sensor in it, that blows my mind. You could have something that you just knock into your mouth and it give you all of those solutions is crazy.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's cool, right? And again, that's one piece of equipment and technology that they wear in training and competition. So, you know, that's something that we're pursuing because it can be universal then. But yeah, I mean, you talk about VR, like anything that mitigates, you know, TBI or concussion or the risk of head trauma in our sport is going to be beneficial and advantageous. So we're actively pursuing those types of things. And yeah, VR, virtual reality, augmented reality in a combat environment, along with haptic technology where you look at vibration. So, you know, it's coming out of the gaming world, you know, World of Warcraft or whatever, or COD, you know, those types of things where you, you know, you're shooting your gun, but you're getting that feedback as well at the same time. How can we apply haptic technology in

• 21:08Speaker 00

  a augmented reality space where we're using VR and we're also getting haptic feedback to say you're suggesting you're getting hit or, you know, a punch or something, but you're actually not.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  You know, those are the types of training strategies kind of moving into the future that we're also exploring.

• 21:24Chris Williamson?

  Dude, this is your 3000 shit. It's so advanced. Did I hear you once mention that you guys were looking at some of the potential impacts of psychedelics as a performance enhancer?

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Not as a performance enhancer, but around traumatic brain injury.

• 21:41Chris Williamson?

  Oh, so like as a neuroprotective type thing?

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Correct, yeah. And, you know, there's been some good work, particularly out of John Hopkins University over in Maryland, where they're looking at, you know, terminal illness patients and patients with, you know, certain medical conditions that are going to be terminal at some point. So how do they use psychedelics to relieve pain or remove, you know, and again, in kind of combat populations where they looked at post-traumatic stress disorders and depression and some of these aspects on a very clinical level, how psychedelics have potentially an opportunity to influence that. Again, it's very early days for the UFC. It's not something

• 22:26Speaker 00

  that we're completely, you know, running down this avenue right now. But again, looking at working with partners to cover every avenue to see where, yes, we know that we operate in a combat sport, right? There are certain, you know, issues and factors related to combat sport within the parameters of the rules of the sport, where yes, it's a collision and it's a contact sport. It's going to lead to certain physical, psychological, social, emotional impacts that might have a detrimental effect. So whether it's a rule change, whether it's equipment that you wear, whether it's interventions like psychedelics or like nutritional interventions or neurotropics or whatever it may be. You know, I think we're just very

• 23:09Speaker 00

  engaged in trying to understand that and take them on so that we can do a better job of keeping athletes in the, you know, in the most safe and healthy space possible.

• 23:20Chris Williamson?

  How much do you deal with the psychological strain? So I'm fascinated by the fact that you're asking your athletes, and this is the same with every fight sport, I don't mean it's the same with every sport in general, but particularly with a fight sport where there's so much glory around success, there's so much not shame around defeat, but you can see in the player's body language or the fighter's body language right at the end of the fight. Plus, there is fight week leading up to it. There's press conferences, there's shit talking beforehand, there's weight cuts, there's, it's such a unique...

• 23:49Chris Williamson?

  Blend of psychological strain, which is precisely designed, at least by your opponent that way, right, to put you in a place where you're not actually all that confident. How much have you looked at strategies for how the guys can deal with this? And are there any lessons that people could take away into their own lives for in the build up to a stressful situation or something that they're perhaps a little bit anxious about?

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And again, listen, we're, remember, we're a promotion, right? And these guys are independent, independent contractors. So they're in the business of promoting themselves to get, you know, people to buy tickets to come and watch them. So whether it's shit talking or whether it's promotion, like they're trying to sell the event and get people interested in their fight. You know, you know, without letting you behind the curtain too much, you know, some of that's obviously real, some of it's bravado. But again, it makes for, it makes for an interesting build up to the fight itself. Yeah, I mean, from a psychological or sports psychology perspective, we're absolutely getting into that space because it's a, it's a pillar of performance. So how do athletes manage that?

• 24:57Speaker 00

  How do they use it to their advantage? How do they stay away from someone else doing it? And I think when we first started the Performance Institute back in 2017, we didn't have sports psychology as part of our portfolio of services. It's absolutely a critical core component now and we offer that to, to the athletes. But yeah, I think, you know, to answer it succinctly, you know, we do a lot of work around kind of mindfulness and being able to disassociate from all that white noise and being able to internalize what is your game plan? You know that you've done the work, you know that you're technically and tactically proficient in what you need to do. So how do you remove the white noise and pursue the signal of your mindfulness of

• 25:41Speaker 00

  being present in the moment? Now, present in the moment in the UFC can be someone kind of seven seconds from choking you out. So, you know, you've still got to be mindful and present in that moment. But again, it comes down to, right, what's the technique? What's the tactic I need to actually execute to remove this choke? There's so many pieces of white noise and chaos and so many factors. And I think to succinctly give you an answer, when we look at our psychologists and the work that they do with our athletes, it's very much around being present and being mindful and being able to process things effectively. Otherwise, those external signals just overwhelm.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's strange to think about the number of parameters that go into someone putting a good performance on in UFC. Like, it's so unbelievably intense to balance all of these different elements. And something that I've always thought about is the number of athletes out there in any domain who physiologically may have the characteristics to make them an unbelievably elite athlete. They may have the approach to training, they may have the genetics, they may have the work rate, the conscientiousness, the industriousness, the support system, everything. However, they are unable to deal with the stress of game day.

• 27:03Chris Williamson?

  And I wonder how many athletes throughout the years have got themselves to the stage where they could have been a world champion, they could have been the greatest that ever lived, and they were let down by their inability to kind of get out of their own head and allow themselves to perform on game day?

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the stakes are pretty high in this sport. Like I say, it's a sport of consequences, right? And every sport has got consequences, but in this sport, they can be pretty severe, right? So that just layers on the pressures and the stresses. We jest here at the PI, but we say, you know, MMA is 90% mental apart from the 60% that's physical. You know what I mean? It's just everything. You need everything in this sport. And again, coming back to one of your early questions, like, it's really hard to... There's so many variables, right? So it's really hard to say one is any more important than the other. But when it comes to mental fortitude, and that's even before you get into competition,

• 28:03Speaker 00

  like, the mental fortitude just to get through the rigors of training on a daily basis to, you know, hit the mitts and then do your strength and conditioning work on the side, like, just the mental fortitude to be compliant and...

• 28:15Speaker 00

  You know, adhere to a long-term approach to technical and tactical development as well as physical development, that alone is challenging in our sport. Now, you can liken that to things like, you know, rowing or rugby, or whatever it may be, which is also very physical. But then, yeah, you layer on that psychological piece of you walking into competition and there's millions watching on TV and you're potentially going to get knocked out and people are going to ridicule you and laugh at you whilst you lay unconscious on your back.

• 28:43Chris Williamson?

  Make memes about you on Twitter.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Right. Which is, you know, shocking, you know, these underpant, you know, internet warriors, it's easy to point fingers. So, you know, that's where I come back to like, our athletes are up there with the best of them when it comes to their ability to deal with all the variables that go into success. It's pretty, you know, it's truly a decathlon of combat sport and it's pretty crazy.

• 29:06Chris Williamson?

  Have you worked with rowing?

• 29:08Speaker 00

  I have, yeah, a lot.

• 29:10Chris Williamson?

  Well, one of the things that I think about there is the, I've done 2K row time tests before and the state of arousal that I get myself, or fear, basically, that I get myself into before having to do that. What were some of the lessons that you got out of the time that you worked with rowers? Because, you know, there's some of the events that they do, which are, and some of the training sessions that I've done, I always find the Oxford Cambridge rowing event, the lead up to that, you know, where they go through the training montages and they explain what everyone's going through, it looks up there with some of the most brutal training protocols that I've ever seen. Is that what it's actually like?

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, rowing can be, yeah, the physical demands of elite level rowing and the physical and physiological adaptations that you're trying to make to your body in training are massive, right? So, yeah, those guys push themselves to the absolute limit, you know, and I've been around some of those sessions and it's just terrifying and brutal to watch. You know, someone's not kind of stomping on your head then, or someone's not kind of coming trying to truly knock you out. Like I say, and I'm not playing down kind of rowing or anything, or any other sport, I'm just saying, I think when you look at all the respective factors and the outcome of our sport, what people are trying to do to you and inflict physical damage to you as well.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  It just makes, it just layers on another kind of level of intensity. I'm not using that as a physical intensity, just like intensity of everything. Because yeah, rowing is, the training for rowing to be an elite level rower is brutal. But yeah, these guys are doing it. And that, and they've got the psych...

• 30:51Chris Williamson?

  It's a 2K row test with someone trying to punch you in the face while you do it.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. I have, so I met a couple of guys who were recently on a reality TV programme for a grappling, an upcoming grappling competition that was going on. And it was kind of like an ultimate fighter style thing. So living in a fight house, and they were going out and doing their whatever, and they were playing pranks on each other in between and stuff like that. And they had, in order to get through to one of the next rounds, they had a no time limit grappling event, which I had never heard of before, but isn't unbelievably rare, apparently, in that world. And one of the fights that the dude that was travelling to this event in San Antonio

• 31:38Chris Williamson?

  with us had lasted for three hours and 55 minutes of grappling. Three hours and 55 minutes of grappling.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, think about that. Think about that. I mean, just processing that is ridiculous, right? You're essentially grappling and trying to submit or choke out an opponent the same duration it takes someone to run a marathon. You know what I mean? It's just almost unfathomable. But that's what these guys will do. And the warrior spirit will, you know, will take them through that.

• 32:09Chris Williamson?

  Dude, it's unbelievable. I was really, really impressed. But it's one of those things where you realise just how big of a delta there is between, everybody sits on the sidelines and talks about like, oh, well, you know, you should slip that punch, and you should do this in a different way. Because everybody feels like they have some sort of five pence to add into the discussion around things. You realise there is, it's a different universe. These people are completely different animals. So speaking of that, are there some fighters that you've worked with, or that you've seen in the Performance Institute, either sort of current roster or previous roster, that are just a total joy to coach? Or people that have come in with a very particular physiology that you found that's unique or different or impressive that you hadn't seen previously?

• 32:55Speaker 00

  I mean, talking in, well, I'll answer your question. Yes, it's funny, right? Because I've worked with all these different sports, but you know, there's one thing which the armchair expert always knows, and that's fighting and nutrition, right? And here we are, I'm working in a sport where there's, and the same thing, everyone seems to be an expert in how you win a fight, you know what I mean? So it's like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of noise and a lot of opinion in this, yeah, in this world, you know, you cut through that. I think, like I said, I come back to the clientele, the athlete population, like the, in my experience, you know, whilst there's different polarizing characters in our sport,

• 33:37Speaker 00

  talking generically, like, this is a group of athletes that I just love working with, that like, they want to get after it, they want to do the work, they're not scared of the work, they are committed to, you know, the cause and to the arts and all that type of stuff. And yeah, I mean, absolute pleasure to work with. Of course, they've got quirks and traits, you're like, come on, mate, what the fuck are you doing, like, why are you doing that? But, I mean, at the end of the day, as a group of athletes, I would work with combat athletes any day of the week. When I've looked at some of my other athletes, and again, whether it's, you know, Premier League soccer, or, you know, where athletes position in the pecking order and the hierarchy of things, but combat athletes are absolute joy and pleasure to work with, certainly on

• 34:21Speaker 00

  the physical preparation side, because you're not having to convince them to do the work usually. I mean, you're pulling the horses back and saying, you know, well, hold on, like, enough is enough, like, let's, let's just think about this strategically. So, yeah, I mean, I don't want to mention any particular names, but there's, there's lots of individuals on our roster who, like, absolute warriors, true first-class people, whether they've come from Olympic backgrounds through freestyle wrestling in the Olympic Games, or whether they come through collegiate programs, or whether they're talent transfers from football, like, American football.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Whether they're just guys that have been on the fight circuit and journeymen that have been knocking people out for year over year and just like, okay, this is a guy that might not be the best athlete, but is just a hard individual and a hard human being. It's just, even those guys, like, great to be around because you can learn so much from their mindset and their mentality of how they approach life, right? It's fascinating.

• 35:16Chris Williamson?

  So going into some of the training protocols and stuff that you use that people at home may be able to take on. I know that you've done a lot of research around optimal reps, set ranges, rest periods in order to maximize muscle growth and hypertrophy. What have you come to, what sort of conclusion have you come to at the moment with that?

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the irony is that we don't pursue a lot of hypertrophy training techniques in combat athletes because usually they're having to make weight. So, you know, we're not trying to put excessive amounts of muscle on an athlete. In the rare chance we do, if someone moves up a weight class or if someone's kind of still, you know, chronically underfueled or whatever it may be, we would try and pursue some of those types of things. But yeah, I mean, I think the key things to hypertrophy are obviously, you know, looking at muscle damage, how you induce muscle damage. You're kind of the three pillars of hypertrophy. So using different training approaches, whether it be cluster sets, whether it be drop sets, whether it be pause reps, whether it be eccentric, accentuated eccentric, whatever.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  There's a different way to do that. So there's no like perfect method for creating hypertrophy. But, you know, looking at time under tension is a volume conversation. It's how much tension can you put through a muscle within a working set? So, you know, larger rep ranges and set ranges, obviously, or the number of times within a week. So kind of looking at, you know, 12 to 30 sets for a given muscle group in a training week is where you're trying to pursue hypertrophy. Looking at how you damage tissue because then it can regrow and redevelop, you know, to a greater level. So rebuild larger. So how do you use techniques like eccentric that are going to promote some tissue damage to allow it to then regenerate and recover?

• 37:06Chris Williamson?

  When you say, when you say eccentric, are you talking about tempo movements basically there?

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, slow eccentric shortening actions versus eccentric lengthening actions, which we know damage the muscle more. And then also create a metabolic stimulus, like what's the internal environment, whether it's nitric oxide that you're trying to release and that's where some of this, you know, blood flow restriction is now quite vogue in hypertrophy training, you know, that's just trying to create a metabolic stress inside the cell. And then obviously, the critical thing in parallel to those three factors is nutrition, is protein and protein synthesis and looking at, you know, the protein synthetic rate of muscle, how muscle can turn over protein and are you fueling your button, excuse me, wrong term, are you providing kind of the building blocks and usually that is, you know,

• 37:57Speaker 00

  leucine is the key amino acid for muscle growth and muscle hypertrophy that we need to think about. But are you kind of putting your nutrition strategy in a very complimentary fashion with the training strategy and a training stimulus that is going to affect those three factors?

• 38:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, what are the big mistakes that people are making when it comes to that sort of peri-training nutrition strategy?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Well, I think a lot of the science, a lot of research, obviously, is around nutrient timing and, you know, I think particularly around a, around a training session, you try, you need to get the protein in as close to the cessation of the end of your workout as possible, right? Because that's when the, you know, protein synthetic rate is going to be at its highest and the resynthesis of protein and the rebuilding of the amino acids is going to be at its highest level. So providing those building blocks through a nutrition intervention is going to be critical. If you leave it too long, obviously, you're just negating or mitigating the extent of protein synthesis that's going to happen. So that's kind of the key thing.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  And yeah, anywhere between kind of point two five to point three of a gram per kilo of body weight per day is, is what you're looking at from a protein stimulus or a protein intake for hypertrophy strategies.

• 39:16Chris Williamson?

  Point two five to point three of a gram per kilo of body weight post, is that just around the workout?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Per day.

• 39:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm trying to work out because surely that would be whatever, 40 grams or 30 grams of protein per day.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 39:34Chris Williamson?

  But that's not total intake.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  No, no, not all intake.

• 39:37Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  In terms of supplementary protein.

• 39:40Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay, yeah. It's so funny that there was that sort of back in the day, the bro science around where you need to get your post-workout shake in as quickly after a training session as possible. And then again, you're talking to people that get their information from bodybuilding.com forums, right, and like meme pages from Reddit and stuff like that. But that was something that was, I think about five years ago, very widely dispelled as if it fits your macros, it doesn't really matter calories or calories. And then when we actually go and speak to somebody that's at the cutting edge of elite sport, it turns out that well, maybe the bros in the beginning were right all along.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Evidence-based research and research-based evidence, right? And I think it's, you know, a lot of sports techniques and sports training have been built on anecdotal insights and people trying out techniques. And then, you know, the science has followed and put efficacy against some of those, some of those original methods. And clearly, it's also, you know, made other approaches and other methods less than efficacious and they've been kind of phased out. So, yeah, it's what's leading the narrative, the science or the practice is always the question.

• 40:47Chris Williamson?

  Talking about something that I never ever considered during training, because it's just, it felt like something that was too complex and too sort of forward-thinking about the hormone release effect that you get from different types of training stimulus. And let's say that it's for somebody that's just trying to keep themselves fit and look good and, you know, be healthy and maybe gain a little bit of muscle and keep themselves at whatever body fat level or perhaps even try and recomp a little bit. I'd never considered the impact of different training methodologies on the hormone profile that's going in my body. And you hear about the fact that you get growth hormone release from heavy compound movements and you get testosterone release from such and such. What is, for the normal layperson that's just looking to train, what are the things that they should consider

• 41:30Chris Williamson?

  when it comes to optimizing hormone release through that training methodology?

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I think it's important to understand like this metabolic stimulus, right? As we've talked about time under tension, we've talked about muscle damage and then obviously the metabolic stimulus, the metabolic environment that's created within the muscle. So, you know, this is what my PhD work was around. So, you know, this is where kind of some of my messaging has come from in this space. But yeah, again, it comes back to how you stimulate intensities of volumes of workload to create that metabolic stimulus, of which endocrine cascade is part of the equation. It's not the whole equation, obviously.

• 42:13Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean when you say endocrine cascade?

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Well, just the release of hormones consequent to, you know, muscle stimulus or metabolic load. So how do the hormones get these types of stimulus? You do a training programme that is, you know, five sets of two with three minutes in between each set. It's going to be a very different metabolic stimulus to four sets of 12 with 60 seconds rest between, right? So, you know, that's the challenge of training and training strategies, understanding what is it of those three factors that you're trying to stimulate? I think metabolic stimulus and, you know, hormone responses is a part of that conversation. So when you're trying to maximise hypertrophy and you're trying

• 43:01Speaker 00

  to maximise those three particular factors, then potentially there's some legs to consider in what you do to stimulate hormone release as well.

• 43:09Chris Williamson?

  So you're looking at intensity as one of the key factors for this?

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Yes, intensity and volume. Yeah, intensity and volume. Because again, if you look at training intensity and how hard you're pushing a muscle or the contractual units of the muscle, that's going to have a certain stimulus. You know, you can play on that, those two factors by creating training strategies by the different workouts within a given week or within a specific workout where you're targeting those two things at the same time. Again, the end point is that you're trying to stimulate a stress response that might have or will have kind of some beneficial effects to promote muscle growth within the cell.

• 43:52Chris Williamson?

  I've heard you say, is it six sets of 10 at 80% with a couple of minutes rest in between as one of the protocols that you use?

• 43:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that was very much from my PhD research. Yeah, six sets of 10 with a minute's rest in between.

• 44:08Chris Williamson?

  One minute's rest.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Sorry, 90 seconds in between, excuse me, 90 seconds in between, but do that as drop sets. So you're always trying to retain the, you start a load of 80% of your 1RM, but the key thing is to hit the 10 repetition requirement of each set. So you essentially can do a drop set so that you can take the load. You might not be able to complete the set of 10, you rack it, you immediately unload and you finish off the remaining repetitions to complete your 10 sets. So yeah, it's a pretty challenging and brutal approach to a training stimulus.

• 44:43Chris Williamson?

  It's fucking absolutely possessed. Like it does, I can't think of a more disgusting training product. Cause what I hadn't heard, the first time that I heard you say that, I hadn't heard about the stripping of weights either like intracent or across sets. So I'm thinking, who can do six by 10 at 80%? Who can do 10, who can do one by 10 at 80%, especially with the short rest?

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Normally you get two sets out at 80% or so, but then yeah, into the potentially second or third or beyond sets, you're really starting to strip the bar back because then, again, like I say, that's now becomes the, the volume conversation. It's about using the drop sets of the load to complete the required volume.

• 45:31Chris Williamson?

  Am I guessing that if you were to do an RPE, you'd be looking at like an RPE 9.5 by the end of each set?

• 45:38Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah.

• 45:40Chris Williamson?

  Because it can't be a 10 or else you're not going to have made, oh, I guess it would be a 10, but you're not going to have gone above a 10 because otherwise you wouldn't have made those repetitions, right?

• 45:48Speaker 00

  I mean, a 10 on an RPA scale is maximal, right? So you would want maximum because if you only do four repetitions, you unload, you might get another two repetitions out, you unload again, you might get another three repetitions. Like that's how you work in the stimulus, right? So it's always trying to be maximal in nature.

• 46:05Chris Williamson?

  Okay. And with this, did you find that certain exercises engendered themselves to better hormone release? I'm going to guess larger movements, more muscle groups being recruited. What were the best exercises?

• 46:17Speaker 00

  I think that's the secret to all like hypertrophy type approaches is that yeah, multiple large compound exercises and more muscle activation.

• 46:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yes, I mean, I might, I might see if some of the lads in the gym fancy doing it tomorrow, but I, it's, they're going to take a little bit, I'll get them to listen to this first and I'll tell them about your credentials and we'll see, we'll see what they can say. Talking about recovery between sessions, and especially with your guys, right? Because you've got so many different domains that the fighters need to be able to move through. It's not just technique stuff, it's not just strength and conditioning, it's not just their cardio, all of these different bits and pieces. What have you found is an upper bound that you can get, say the average elite fighter, I'm aware that that person doesn't particularly exist, what's the upper bound in terms of a training volume, you know, duration per day that you can get people through?

• 47:09Speaker 00

  I mean, I'll say it a little bit differently. I mean, we recommend kind of anywhere between 10 and 14 training units a week, but there's guys that are absolutely doing upwards of 18 to 20 training units a week. You know, there's, there's a conversation on quality, right? It's a quality and quantity conversation. Some, you know, some sessions, you know, are going to be 60 to 90 minutes long, but there's also fighters that'll pull three hour long training sessions and think, you know, don't think twice about it. So it's, that's where we don't have the answers right now. We don't understand kind of what is the true optimal level, what's the true, you know, the true standard approach that, that we put in place. And we're still trying to figure that

• 47:53Speaker 00

  out through kind of monitoring and evaluating training, kind of loads and people's ability to tolerate that.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  I've got a bunch of friends who are chasing for a CrossFit Games or a CrossFit Regionals spot at the moment. And I think that there are some similarities probably between your guys' sports, just that they're very wide in terms of the different domains and the different stimulus is that you're trying to get out of all of the different training protocols that people do. And there, you know, I'll say, hey, man, send me, because I just like to be a sort of a voyeuristic torturer. And I'll say, but send me what your training week looks like. And you see, it's up at 7:00 AM for an hour and a half swim, it's back, I'll go, I'll have a nap until the morning time, we'll do some strength work and maybe some monoskeletal work, then I'll go back, have some more food, then I'll go. You're thinking like this is, you know, multiple days per week. And their active recovery days look like...

• 48:45Chris Williamson?

  Just a slightly lower intensity version of a longer workout that I might try and do. And yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, if you think of something like, if you think of something like CrossFit, which has got, you know, potentially many different components to it, whether you're working on your strength or your Olympic lifts, or whether you're working on handstand walks, or, you know, swimming, you know, bringing swimming into the CrossFit game, or like, so you don't, you don't know what's going to happen in the CrossFit Games, right? So you're always preparing for the unknown by just ticking every single box. That's the same as MMA. You've got lots of different variables that you need to kind of complete the training exposure in. So how do you distribute that? You're either stacking sessions on top of each other and making very long sessions and then having more prolonged, you know, rest periods, or you're doing, you know, distributing of training blocks throughout the day in a very sporadic nature to try

• 49:36Speaker 00

  and capture some recovery after each workout. It's, it's, you know, again, it's, we don't really have that figured out in its entirety right now.

• 49:43Chris Williamson?

  A lot of that down to personal preference at the moment?

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And also, you know, the, the personal lifestyles of, of the fighter, you know, the night hour, the morning hour.

• 49:53Chris Williamson?

  You've got to pick the kids up from, from school or something like that, yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Some fighters have full-time jobs as pipe layers or electricians or whatever, as well as doing all the training, you know? Demetrius Johnson, who was obviously, you know, 125 in the UFC for a long time, now fights in a different organisation, but he, you know, he holds the records for the most defenses in 125. He was a full-time contractor, you know, builder, and, and worked on a building site whilst at the same time doing his, his MMA training, so.

• 50:21Chris Williamson?

  What would you say, if you were to try and characterise some of the attributes between the guys that joined the UFC, who are, you know, obviously elite fighters, they've managed to get themselves an invite into the organisation, and the difference between the ones that come and go, and are unable to have that longevity, and unable to, unable to really make it to the absolute elite of the sport and become not necessarily champions, because that's beyond just their own internal training and approach to the sport, but between those guys and between the guys that do make it to the absolute top and then also have the longevity as well, in terms of characteristics, their approach to whatever it be, maybe training, coaching, all that sort of stuff?

• 51:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's one as well. If you're in the UFC, you're not training harder than anybody else. Everybody trains hard in this sport, right? I think if you look at the true elite guys, what they have the ability to do is get back on the mats every single day. So the thing that differentiates the people at the top versus everybody else is their ability to truly train at the highest, highest level from a technical tactical perspective, day after day after day after day, you know, for chronic periods of time, whereas everyone else might, you know, reduce their training capabilities and then rebound a little bit. Still training hard, obviously, but I think that's one thing which we look to in our kind of conversations here is something that truly is differentiating the top guys, just their ability to go again and again

• 51:49Speaker 00

  and again on a daily basis, or session to session, such that the technical input to their training and their skill development is that much greater than everybody else's.

• 52:00Chris Williamson?

  Have you had a look at motivation from what you guys do?

• 52:04Speaker 00

  We're getting into that a little bit, early days, if I'm honest. Yeah, we, and again, people are very motivated for different reasons to be fighters, right? So, you know, we all think that, you know, that people that just want to, you know, beat up other folk, but that's not always the case. You know, some people are using it as a very meditative type approach to like what, you know, physical pain and trauma allows them to release themselves. Other people are coming at it because, you know, they just love the martial arts and they're lifelong martial artists. Other people coming at it from, you know, just financials and I'm just providing money for my kids, right? So I think the motivation, again, is very, very complex. And we haven't, we're starting to look

• 52:48Speaker 00

  into that, but we haven't got that, you know. It's so diverse in the way people arrive at success in our sport.

• 52:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a question that I think a lot of other people want to have answered as well, let alone just UFC fighters. And it is interesting to think about the fact that a lot of different athletes can arrive in the same sport at the absolute elite of it, and yet be driven by completely different things. That you and me can both be fighting in the UFC and you're doing it because you just love to scrap and that's what you always did and that's your passion. And I'm doing it because it's a meditative experience and the next person that we're going to fight is doing it because he wants to provide for his family or whatever.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's another reason to be fascinated by our sport, like the diversity and the just the different variables that come into what makes, you know, to define what a world champion is in mixed martial arts is like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks because, you know, you could have like truly world class athletes that are coming out of Olympic programs or whatever. You could have a guy that's just been around the streets, you know, like knocking people out for a long time and is elevated to the to the top of small level promotions through to, you know, kids today at 18 years old are training MMA from the get go. And so they're just that

• 54:10Speaker 00

  I'm a mixed martial artist rather than I'm a kickboxer or I'm a wrestler. That's kind of the cool part of it is just the diversity and the complexity of people's backgrounds. And how do you say that this one route is any better than someone else's route to the top, you know?

• 54:24Chris Williamson?

  Have you got any idea? I think about this a lot to do with CrossFit because it's the sport that I'm most familiar with recently. But previously you had CrossFitters like Matt Fraser, most dominant CrossFitter basically ever. He came into the sport from weightlifting. So you have people that did analogous sports, transferred across, still had an unbelievable speciality within their original domain, but then broaden themselves out. And what you've identified here is that you have an equivalent with regards to MMA. Previously, people would have perhaps come from a very specialized background, be that wrestling or karate or boxing or Muay Thai. And now you're going to have people that are born

• 55:06Chris Williamson?

  and bred from the very, very beginning MMA fighters. Do you have any sense or do you find it particularly interesting that? And then also, have you got any sense around whether it is optimal to not specialize in one particular domain versus to become a generalist from the very beginning? Have you have you thought about this?

• 55:26Speaker 00

  Well, I think, you know, if you look at the statistics of our sport, I think we, you know, last time, I need to, this isn't an accurate number, so don't hold me to this, but last time I looked, we had about 87 different UFC champions in history, and something like 53 of them were from defined specialisms, right, whether they are wrestlers, or jiu-jitsu players, or a kickboxer. Those numbers obviously change now, it's kind of a couple of years since I saw those numbers, I just need to update those, but I think if you look at where the UFC has come from, and look at it as a whole, then, yeah, you can still say that there isn't a true generalist that's rising to the top, it's still a sport that is built on specialisms, and usually those specialisms are your X-factor. So if we take

• 56:10Speaker 00

  Israel Adesanya right now, obviously, he's as much reported as the best striker ever in the UFC, right, he's a clear kickboxer. Glow Tashara, obviously 40 years old, he's got to the top to be a champion of the jiu-jitsu guy, right. So, you know, there's still people that you can say, well, that's a specialist. But I think if you compartmentalize, let's say, the last three years, or the last five years of our sport, then you can start to see where, alright, that guy has come through purely an MMA training approach to success in our sport, because again, it's become more popular as a sport, it's defined as an individual sport, it's not come from all the individual styles themselves, so people

• 56:52Speaker 00

  just train in MMA now. So then, yeah, if you look at the history, it still leans towards specialisms, but if you look at more current day, and you compartmentalize some of the more recent success, you know, it's probably 50/50 is where the specialists are, to where the generic fighters or generalists are.

• 57:10Chris Williamson?

  One thing that's interesting, a difference between CrossFit and MMA that I've just thought of there, in CrossFit, your actual goal is to try and be just good at everything, the goal is to not lose any of the events, that's the way that you win, the way that you win is to be, whatever, top 5 to top 10 in every single different event, whereas in MMA, the goal is to be acceptable across everything, so that you don't have any weaknesses, and then to be able to peak within one particular domain that gives you an outsized ability to finish the fight, right, you're not going to win... You're going to be at more of a vulnerability if you are good at absolutely everything up

• 57:53Chris Williamson?

  against a fighter that's acceptable at everything and can push back most of your advances but has one absolute freak dimension to their game.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you can lose the Olympic Games in a decathlon by having a crappy javelin, right? And if you can't throw the javelin very far, you're going to be great at everything else, but that javelin is going to be the one reason why you lose a gold medal or even drop out of the medals. Same in our, in our sport, right? If you can't compete off your back in jiu-jitsu and someone takes you to the ground, like game over. You know, you have to have a level of generalism to be able to survive, right? Because the fight can go to anywhere. It can go against the fence. It can go to the ground. It can be stand up in the middle of octagon. You know, you can be in the clinch. You can be, you know, at distance, whatever. So, you know, you have to have some awareness of all of those different

• 58:44Speaker 00

  types of things. But yes, clearly people have got to the UFC because they have an X-factor, something that is like outstanding. Now, whether that is your takedown defense, whether it's your takedown offense, whether it's your striking, whether it's your grappling, whatever. There's something that is just getting you to the top, which you would need to maximize that potential. And that's an X-factor which becomes a competitive advantage. So philosophically, that's how we try and approach our, excuse me, our programming, is that ultimately, when you're off camp, when you're not in fight camp preparation, we tailor all of our energies and our efforts to minimizing your limitations, essentially to raising the lowest hanging fruit. Like what, like what are the things that potentially

• 59:25Speaker 00

  will lose you the fight? When we move into fight camp, and now it's peak and taper and optimizing your potential, we are sharpening the sword of your, like your, your X-factors. So we, we pursue a, as a strengths kind of strategy. What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? And when do we target those in the, in the distribution of your training plan?

• 59:46Chris Williamson?

  Dude, it's so fascinating to, to see a sport that didn't exist, what, 30 years ago? 30, like 31, 32 years ago, literally didn't exist. And now where you guys are taking it to is amazing.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it's cool. It's cool to be around. Like I say, it's 30 years as a professional sport in 2023, so next year. And I still think, you know, there's massive growth opportunities and learnings and professionalization of the sport and, you know, just taking it to the next level that is, it's a great sport to be around right now. It's still growing and still improving.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  If there's someone who has found the stuff that we're talking about here particularly interesting, what are some of your favorite resources to keep up to date with work that's in your region, that's in strength and conditioning, hypertrophy, you know, like good accessible places that people can read?

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, if there's any interest in, you know, MMA and the UFC, the UFC Performance Institute has released a digital journal which can be downloaded.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  Odi, there's a link for that on our Instagram pages and Twitter pages and things like that. Again, if you can't navigate that, just reach out through those channels and I'll let you know. But again, I think, you know, just looking at, you know, who are the players, who's making movements in the world of strength and conditioning right now? You know, there's some great people out there. Phil Derru is doing some good stuff. Obviously, Joe DeFranco has been doing it for a long time. Others, you know, so it depends where you're coming from and what you're trying to achieve, whether it's MMA specific or whether it's more generic training.

• 1:01:56Chris Williamson?

  Cheers. Duncan, thank you so much for today, mate.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  No worries. Thanks for the chat.