Cardio and gymnastics

Donald Lee said:

If anybody here cares about learning how MMA fighters/boxers train or ought to train, Joel Jamieson's book is a good book to read. I've read all of Ross Enamait's stuff and a bunch of other stuff here and there, but Joel's the first guy I've read who isn't biased towards strength training.

Yea I've read Ross Enamait's stuff and thought it was good. Just followed the link to Joel Jamiesons sites and loved it. Think he describes in quite a lot of detail the balance between aerobic and anaerobic fitness for MMA'ers. Long and short of it seems to be that you need both but you just back off the accessory fitness work in favor of more pad-work/sparring leading up to the fight. Seems to make a lot of sense. Think I'll be investing in that book. Cheers Donald.

I just checked out the articles and 8weeksout, and it's a great site! Joel is definitely on top of the energy system department of training from what I have read. Thank you for linking those here, Donald!

No problem guys. I highly recommend his book. He breaks down the Block Training Periodization that Verkhoshansky, Bondarchuck, and Issurin write about into an easy to comprehend manner. He explains how to train each quality and how to organize it all into training blocks. Block Training is not necessary for beginners, as Traditional Periodization is still advocated for beginners by even the proponents of Block Training, but Joel's book helps to break down how to train for mixed sports. It's tough to train for a sport in which you have to develop so many different qualities and develop your fighting skills.

Personally, I don't find that most people who train fighters, at least MMA folks, know much of the science behind S&C. They might understand training for strength or certain aspects, but they don't understand the entirety of S&C. The pro-interval all the time dogma seems to have pervaded that industry.

Lyle McDonald wrote a nice review of Joel's book. I read it a while back somewhere, but I have only been able to find it on the middle of the page here:

http://www.irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtop ... fe6200e48b

Dear Lekman, if disagreeing is moving the discussion in a wrong way, maybe we should close this forum down.

Dear Ido

Sadly, but you didn't carefully read what I am saying.The problem is not disagreeing, but You are already have your conclusion about something (and that’s not a 2 + 2) and you closed the door, but its up to you.

Thank you for another 'road work' recommendation for fighters, which belongs to the junk pile of history next to communism, as Tsatsouline say.

Where do you read in my post that I recommend something ? I hope you thinking with your head, and not with Pavels or anybody heads (by the way I like Pavel work) and forget the politics please.

Examples can be given to any direction and people will be successful BECAUSE or IN SPITE of their training habits.

Very close to my point, but you already throw away one opinion about running from admin, and aproach that you don’t like despite the results, and as a coach, thats not very wise.

dont let misunderstanding, I have no doubt that you are a successful, and I like your work so keep working and best of luck,

As a breakdown of the effects (according to Jamieson, whocites a doctor who used ECG analysis on a weekly basis for 9 weeks) of long, slow runs( really slow, like 120-150 bpm, which translates to a pretty slow jog) for 60-90 minutes

once a week:

Here are the guy's ECG numbers:

Left Ventricle Wall Thickness:--------08April, 2009----------17June, 2009

Septal wall thickness(diastole): ---------1.04cm--------------------1.04cm

Posterior wall thickness(diastole):--------0.94cm----------------------1.04 cm

Left Ventricle(LV) Systolic Function:--------08April, 2009----------17June, 2009

LV diameter(diastole) ---------------------------5.31cm------------------5.83cm

LV Volume(diastole)-----------------------------135.9ml-----------------168.54ml

Stroke Volume------------------------------------100.4ml-----------------116.3ml

LV Ejection Fraction----------------------------74%-------------------------69%

LV Fractional Shortening-----------------------43%-------------------------39%

Left Ventricle(LV) Diastolic Function--------08April, 2009----------17June, 2009

Peak E Wave----------------------------------------0.60m/s-----------------0.75m/s

Peak A Wave-----------------------------------------0.41m/s-----------------0.38m/s

E/A Ratio----------------------------------------------1.46--------------------1.97

This is from one of Donald's links, http://www.elitefts.com/documents/cardiac_output_training.htm

There is a cleaner table plus explanations of all these numbers. Basically it means the guy's heart is more efficient.

He was pumping 16% more blood than at the beginning, and his heart was using less energy to do so, around 5% less.

Slizzardman's somewhat educated opinion of this whole shebang:

Once a week jogging is seriously not going to have any noticeable detrimental effect on strength. We're talking about like 5-6 miles at a 10-12 minute pace, or walking around 3-3.5 miles in an hour on flat ground, maybe less. Hell, you could do a combination of the two and be EXACTLY LIKE THE HUNTER GATHERERS IN THE VIDEO. Not even 600 calories, and that's my big ass we're talking about. Very low force movements, meaning you aren't even using the muscle fibers people get so worried about converting. Add to that the fact that for a strength/power athlete this is one single fairly weak stimulus surrounded by many more frequent stronger stimuli, and you are simply not at risk for losing any athletic abilities. It appears that the only thing you're at risk for is a healthier heart. I'm a bit surprised by the dramatic difference, but there it is.

I think the guy in that article did 2-3 days/week of cardio. Gains in cardio seem to require higher frequency more so than strength/hypertrophy gains. I'd say 2 days/week should be the minimal frequency for appreciable gains in cardio, although doing even 1 day/week is better than nothing.

Also, this article on GPP for strength athletes by Mike Tuscherer might interest folks:

http://www.reactivetrainingsystems.com/ ... gth-sports

Drats! You're right. He was following Joel's recommendation :

His recommendations to increase cardiac output are to train for at least an hour a session at a heart rate of 120-150 for 1-2 days/week to cause eccentric hypertrophy of the heart (increase in chamber size, not wall thickness). The type of activity doesn’t matter (you can run, bike, swim, do bodyweight exercises, etc) so long as you keep your heart rate in the right range the entire time.

The guy in the study walked after his workouts.

I decided to lift twice a week and do the cardiac work the day after each weight session. I started by staying in the low end of the heart rate range (120-130) usually by walking, or, in bad weather, by climbing my stairs (boring, but effective). I did this for several weeks and then decided to focus more on the conditioning. I needed to cut down to 3 days per week, so my lifting stayed the same, with my cardio following each lifting session. I then added a third day of cardio. I also started to push the heart rates higher by jogging until my heart rate hit ~140 and then walking until I got back down to 120, then repeating the process until I got my total time in (at least an hour). I also pushed the third day to an hour and a half when I could. As I got more conditioned, I pushed the upper limit heart rate to 150 and started raising the lower limit to 135,

So basically walking and eventually walk/jog fartleks after his workouts. It's interesting to me that Joel says that 1-2 times a week is enough to accomplish a fair amount of increase in chamber size. It's really not very much, especially when you consider the low intensity of the work.

Joel gives different recommendations for different populations. The problem is that he never explicitly states the target population. You always have to ask him before he says that a certain recommendation was for the general public or for MMA fighters.

When Joel says HR 120-150, he usually reserves the lower end for general population folks and the higher end for MMA type athletes. The rule is to start at the lower end though and work your way up. Cardiac output training is supposed to be done at about 45-65% (IIRC...keep on forgetting the exact percentages) of maximal heart rate. For most purposes, however, the 120-150 range seems to work well enough. To get accurate numbers, you need to do lactate threshold and maximal heart rate testing in the lab. You can approximate these numbers by doing something lasting about 5 minutes or so at maximal intensity and using that as your estimated maximal heart rate and doing a 5k run or something (there are standardized tests out there) to estimate your lactate threshold.

When I was training for the military, I'd use about 170 as my lactate threshold, which worked semi-well with predicted calculations based on an estimated maximal heart rate of 225.

Also, Joel generally recommends folks starting out at a frequency of about 1-2 days/week 20-30 min/session. This can be increased to 3-4 days/week 40-60 min/session. Intensity, as in increased heart rate, can also be gradually increased. One thing to keep in mind is that MMA training is mostly aerobic, which is why it's very easy for fighters to maintain their aerobic capacity when they start training other qualities.

If you want to know more about lactate threshold, this guy always has good stuff on endurance and ex phys:

http://home.hia.no/~stephens/lacthres.htm

Yep, always start slow. I'm pretty methodical abut such things, I work up to the full 60 minutes before I start adding extra sessions, and those are worked up as well. I'll probably end up doing my first 20-30 minute jog today. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. i guess it's finally time to bust out the Five Fingers again!

slizzardman said:

i guess it's finally time to bust out the Five Fingers again!

I need to get me a pair as well!

Of course its time. Combat sports require a wide variety of physical conditioning I said earlier, and thats my experience, and know thanks to Donald for link to Joel - 8weeksout, ( I read it, thank you Donald ), he also has the same statement with much more experience.

Yes, they do. And, given that Ido does not compete in combat sports, I suppose it's not super surprising that he's not up to the latest on all that.

A Resting Heart Rate from 45-55 is pretty good for general health and fitness purposes. One thing to keep in mind is that strength training will reduce your Resting Heart Rate from whatever your couch-potatoe baseline level is. But, strength training also thickens the left ventricular wall, which makes it harder to stretch.

However, there are the genetically gifted who only strength train or sporadically do intervals and have a resting heart rate in their 40's. These people are the ones who tend to blow off what exercise science has to say about endurance and instead follow what the internet trend is.

Yes, they do. And, given that Ido does not compete in combat sports, I suppose it's not super surprising that he's not up to the latest on all that.

I guess you are also an expert on the topic 'Ido Portal'... Nice to know I have another fan.

You are wrong again, since among my 'sins' I used to box 2-3 years ago, (with 3 amateur fights) I practiced martial arts since I was 6 and participated in many competitions as a child and teenager. Later on I practiced BJJ and some mui thai and was 4 times in Brazil. ('training travels')

Here is my bottom line:

There is nothing more effective than performing your energy system work according to the sport you are competing in. Trying to mimic various traits with other type of training is making the same mistake as the 'sports specific' training camp.

General strength training, sports specific endurance work. Simple, but not easy.

(Of course much easier to go out for a run than rotate opponents in the ring... )

Nough said, I move on, you kids can continue to play just make sure you clean after yourselfs,

Ido.

Hey, you never know! And I am a fan, yes. However, I never said you were never a part of that world, just that from what you've been doing it appears that you are not currently.

Edit: I mean the MMA/grappling world. Stand-up fighting is different, and boxing even more so than the Muay Thai. I honestly have no idea how Capoeira fits in with all that. You're moving pretty constantly it seems like, but a lot of it seems to flow. I don't know how taxing it is.

I used to fight as well, and while I'm fairly well versed in a lot of what worked, since I haven't really been focused in on the fight game in the last two years or so I haven't been looking at all the new material in that area. I agree wholeheartedly with the "train as you fight" philosophy, but if there's a tool that lies outside of that and can add performance, I want to know about it and learn to use it. Just because sprinters don't lift weights during meets doesn't mean they don't benefit from weighted work, and just because they only compete in the 100m event doesn't mean they can't benefit from running slightly longer distances than they compete in occasionally. I'm not saying that's for sure the way it is, but the possibility is there until proven otherwise.

Lord knows you have a lot of knowledge and I would assume you do what you can to keep up, but any time that you're not focusing on a particular area it stands to reason that new information, ideas, and perhaps knowledge within that unfocused area goes unnoticed until someone happens to mention it in conversation. It certainly does for me. Perhaps you are different in that regard.

This article talks about some of the general vs. specific issues regarding metabolic training:

http://www.excelsiorsports.com/files/Ta ... aining.pdf

I think certain sports lend to specific training taking the bulk of energetic training (i.e., sprinting), while others (i.e., MMA, rugby) lend to the inclusion of more general training. Of course, close to a competition, regardless the sport, specific training must take up the bulk of training. I don't think there is only one way to go about training for energetics and mechanics, even for mixed modal sports.

I generally don't read too much into that stuff, because it gets into complicated sport science theory that frankly bores me. Someday, I may get to actually reading through "Supertraining," for example. Right now, however, it puts me to sleep.

Ido Portal said:

Yes, they do. And, given that Ido does not compete in combat sports, I suppose it's not super surprising that he's not up to the latest on all that.

I guess you are also an expert on the topic 'Ido Portal'... Nice to know I have another fan.

You are wrong again, since among my 'sins' I used to box 2-3 years ago, (with 3 amateur fights) I practiced martial arts since I was 6 and participated in many competitions as a child and teenager. Later on I practiced BJJ and some mui thai and was 4 times in Brazil. ('training travels')

Here is my bottom line:

There is nothing more effective than performing your energy system work according to the sport you are competing in. Trying to mimic various traits with other type of training is making the same mistake as the 'sports specific' training camp.

General strength training, sports specific endurance work. Simple, but not easy.

(Of course much easier to go out for a run than rotate opponents in the ring... )

Nough said, I move on, you kids can continue to play just make sure you clean after yourselfs,

Ido.

This is quite possibly the most patronising comment I've ever read on this forum. Usually I've been lucky enough to notice that people that are most experienced in a sport are usually the most humble, even in professional fighters. I'm disappointed to see that this obviously doesn't hold true here. Ive just realised there actually be a double meaning to the term 'the more you learn; the less you know'.

Although it is true to say that the best way to improve energy systems in your sport is do do more of it, in the real world this is not always possible. For instance, most fighting clubs now, especially if you live in rural areas only do 1 hour training sessions that focus mostly on skill work, simple because there isn't the time for much else. This is where doing extra conditioning outside of your club is should be commended, and is often reserved for the truly dedicated.

I was always under the impression that lot's of low level cardio was good for you. I mean low level stuff like brisk walking, hiking and for the very conditioned, light jogging. Something about increased capillaries, stronger heart and lungs, etc. It was only the long high intensity stuff that was the problem. Let's not fool oursleves, marathon runners exert as much effort as they are capable of over that type of distance (which by necessity makes it high intensity still), they're not jogging, and that seems to be the problem. Exerting yourself to near your max for 42km or whatever it is can't be healthy, but going for light jog where you can still carry a conversation, seems to be healthy whether its 5km or 10km or 15km. I don't believe Long Slow Distance to be a problem at all because the very fact that it is slow distance means you're not fully exerting yourself...marathon runnning is long fast distance, maybe not as fast as sprints, but as fast as one's body will take them at that distance. Anyways I think I've made my point that it seems to be long distance going as hard as you can that is the problem and not a long leisurely jog. That's what I've gathered from my reading of the literature anyways. And I still have a problem with people calling endurance running long slow distance as it is anything but, those people are racing so I doubt they're taking their time.

Jay Guindon said:

Let's not fool oursleves, marathon runners exert as much effort as they are capable of over that type of distance (which by necessity makes it high intensity still), they're not jogging, and that seems to be the problem.

It may be maximum intensity for the aerobic respiration system, but it is not high intensity in terms of the percentage of maximum muscular force being exerted by the running muscles. They are capable of a lot more, even in the marathoners, just not for such a long time. Your interpretation of the term "intensity" is not in line with how it is used to describe muscular output.

The aerobic system is a sub-maximal system. It can not provide enough energy for maximal muscular force production, which means it can not support high intensity exercise. Distance running depends heavily on the aerobic system, and is therefore limited to relatively low intensity levels(even 80% of maximal output is relative low, and long distance runners(especially marathoners) do not even produce that level, they'd burn out before the race was finished).

Sorry if you feel like that's petty, but I think it's important to use terms correctly. Once you start taking liberties with semantics you lose your ability to effectively communicate ideas.

Semantically you are correct, however his intended point is still valid whether or not he used the appropriate venacular.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

This is quite possibly the most patronising comment I've ever read on this forum. Usually I've been lucky enough to notice that people that are most experienced in a sport are usually the most humble, even in professional fighters. I'm disappointed to see that this obviously doesn't hold true here. Ive just realised there actually be a double meaning to the term 'the more you learn; the less you know'.

Longshank, relax, my friend. Me and Slizzerman are old forum buddies, we are just teasing each other. Lets not forget, he is a fan...

Also, I have written before on my opinion of humility, needless to say, not everyone have the same view on the subject as you, thank good. Stay fit, longy.

Ido.

Coach Sommer said:

Semantically you are correct, however his intended point is still valid whether or not he used the appropriate venacular.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Marathon runners definitely push the aerobic system to its maximum capacity, no doubt about it. I just wanted to make a distinction between the maximum intensity an energy system can support and the maximum intensity a muscle is capable of, because it sounded like one was being confused with the other. I know Jay probably understands the formal difference, it just wasn't conveyed clearly.

The intended point was definitely a good one, I hope I didn't sound like I was just saying "No man, your WRONG! WROOOOOOONG! JUDO CHOP!"

So Jay, sorry if I came off that way.

Ido Portal said:

This is quite possibly the most patronising comment I've ever read on this forum. Usually I've been lucky enough to notice that people that are most experienced in a sport are usually the most humble, even in professional fighters. I'm disappointed to see that this obviously doesn't hold true here. Ive just realised there actually be a double meaning to the term 'the more you learn; the less you know'.

Longshank, relax, my friend. Me and Slizzerman are old forum buddies, we are just teasing each other. Lets not forget, he is a fan...

Also, I have written before on my opinion of humility, needless to say, not everyone have the same view on the subject as you, thank good. Stay fit, longy.

Ido.

Hahaha, Yes. Ido can be controversial because he is not as humble as some, but that's not a bad thing. Pretty much every time he posts he has a valid point, and sometimes humility is an impediment to effective communication. Besides, Ido's comments spice things up! I'm a little too much of a wild man to have things be perfectly civil all the time, I don't think it's natural. I can be the same way at times.

slizzardman said:

No matter what, if you decide to run, start off slow. Increase distance to what you want at a quarter to a half mile per week. So if you're running 3x a week, the first week you should run a half mile each time. The second week you should be running 3/4 to 1 mile. The third week you should be running 3/4-1.5 miles, etc, etc. You should up your mileage slowly. It takes time for your body to get used to running if you never do it, just like everything else.

If you're only running a few times a week, like 2-3, for 5 miles or less, you're not going to lose muscle even at my size of 225 lbs. I've done it plenty in the past, most of my best strength work was done when I had some cardio in my program, come to think of it... But that was a lot of sprints, primarily.

Once you've built up to the distance you want to run, ONLY THEN should you start working on speed. You could also work on your speed at a certain distance until you get to the speed you want, and then increase your mileage as outlined above. Either way works. The bottom line is that you should never increase speed AND mileage at the same time. That's just extra stress on your body that puts you at an increased risk of injury with no greater reward.

I took these principals and applied them to rowing about three weeks ago now. Just take it steady and added 2 extra minutes after my static holds 3 times a week. My weight keeps dropping steadily, have already lost 5 pounds and whats left of my injuries seems to have shown a drastic increase in improvement. Think the low resistance high rep exercises must be great for the joints. Not sure about the heart rate yet but I'll test it again and post the results in a few months if it interests anyone. On the whole I'm very impressed with the results and will probably be sticking to this indefinitely now.

Nice work Longshanks! I've definitely found that this is a pretty surefire way to ease into what ends up being extremely high-end training. It probably takes about 6 months to really be doing a lot, but you never get tired along the way. It never gets in the way of other work.

Lower intensity, higher rep work does increase bloodflow in the joints as well as lubrication, this has been well documented in research studies. Throwing some in there, especially for lifters, helps the body regenerate tissue faster. I remember reading a good study about this concerning barbell back squats. There was one group that did low rep high intensity work and another that did low intensity high rep work. The findings were that the high rep group had healthier knee cartilage than when they started the study, and the low rep group had some degeneration. I believe they did another experiment that showed that one workout a week of the high rep work was enough to maintain knee cartilage and prevent degeneration from the heavy weights.