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Thoughts on Conditioning for Grappling Competition Part 2

by William Wayland ~ posted March 19th, 2013

In part one I went over, common issues I see with conditioning for grappling sports and application of TUF methods. This one will focus on planning your conditioning approach and how to effectively work in an “inseason” between tournaments to maintain conditioning. This is more or less a lose collection of thoughts and approaches I’m using with the athletes I work with.

Having a Plan

A plan or periodisation as its know in a sport context, allows us to know when and how long we have to peak for an event. If you decide to enter to a tournament with 4 weeks or less planning, in the words of Saint Kurt “you fucked up a long time ago”. Failing to plan is planning to fail as they say. Last minute HIIT sessions in a desperate bid to get game fit 2-3 weeks out because you hesitated on entering isn’t fun.

In terms of your approach, I like fighters designate an “in season” of sorts where their greatest competition focus is going to be this could be a period of 2, 3 or even six months. Look to build strength in the “off season” and work on conditioning up to and during the in season, strength takes a back seat and is merely maintained. Obviously this isn’t always the way the competition schedule will play out over a year but do attempt to leave at least 3 months where you can focus on strength building. Strength needs a decent build up, competing demands of conditioning and technical training make it a tough balancing act.

In terms of prep we can borrow the “Fast and Frugal Peaking Tree” and “Mesocycle Sequence from http://www.scramblestuff.com/workable-periodisation-for-mma/ TUF can be applied at 4 weeks or so out.

This covers pre-competition, but what about between inter-competition periods which I would argue would be 5-4 weeks or less between events. Basically we move into quality maintenance with the right planning athletes can carry on peaking and improve on an “inseason” template if training is planned and moderated properly.  Maintaining physical qualities is far easier than training to peak them, especially when usually this inter-competition periods involve plenty of hard sparring.

Strength work effectively becomes something like this

Strength In Season

Weeks 5-3 out 2 days

Main movement (bench, squat, deadlift, olift variant) (55-80% of 1RM)

2-3 Prehab, Accessory movements

Main movement (bench, squat, deadlift, olift variant) (55-80% of 1RM)

2-3 Prehab, Accessory movements

Weeks 3-0 out

Main movement (bench, squat, deadlift, olift variant) (-55% of 1RM) (using bands, chains, AFSM, Oscillatory method etc)

2-3 Prehab, Accessory movements

Main movement (bench, squat, deadlift, olift variant) (-55% of 1RM)

2-3 Prehab, Accessory movements

Conditioning In Season

But what about maintaining conditioning between competition? You need to understand the concept the of training residuals, this is the time over which a physical quality lasts after being trained to a high level. Many combat athletes fail to understand this concept and will often try to training all physical qualities all at once often right up a fight.

A number of studies (Neufer et al. 1987; Hickson, 1982) indicated that if the frequency of training is reduced by two thirds, that endurance capacities can be maintained for up to around 14 weeks. So often athletes can get away with as few as one session a week conditioning.

This can take the form of Complexes, running workouts, TUF style workouts, Fartlek. Your conditioning selection depends on your game fitness, fatigue levels and how much intense rolling you may be doing during practice. E.g. if you are beat up from sparring, TUF or HIIT circuits maybe unwise, where as running workouts or Fartlek maybe a better choice. This is context specific and a perceptive S&C coach can help a lot here. Learning to break the addiction to conditioning can be tricky especially when athletes do it year round, multiple times a week.

So for a dedicated 5 day a week BJJer with 4-5 weeks between comps may plan their week like this.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Strength Conditioning Strength Skills Skills Skills Rest
Pm Skills Pm Skills

We could even reduce load further by having only 1 strength session a week. This obviously depends on variables like schedule, access to facilities, available training time.

Wrap -up

But what is important to understand is most sports are determined by more athletic qualities than can be trained at once. This is the key I feel is often missed with upper intermediate athletes, beginners get caught in the trap of mixed methods, e.g. heavy strength work, power work, hypertrophy work, conditioning all in the same session, means all these qualities will be built poorly simultaneously. Beginners progress doing pretty much anything, because like much an unmolded peice of clay anything you do initially will start to shape it, whether you switch to a scapel later on or keep using a hammer will shape you as an athlete further down the road. Often athletes will succeed in grappling sports in-spite of their S&C because of high variability in opposition/skill ceiling in BJJ.

The key concept is maintenance versus development of physical qualities. Maintenance of strength qualities will require one to two sessions per week depending on your training experience (more advanced athletes need less I often find), whereas developing qualities such as hypertrophy or maximal strength will require the athlete to perform up to three to four sessions of strength training per week. Conditioning is a highly trainable physical quality, where as strength takes years of cultivation aerobic and anaerobic fitness can be mustered in a shorter time frame.

This is an ongoing series of articles from guest blogger and Strength & Conditioning coach William Wayland of Powering Through, who offers online training planning for tournament peaking for MMA, Nogi and BJJ

References

Hickson, RC, Kanakis Jr, C, Davis, JR, Moore, AM and Rich, S 1982, ‘Reduced training duration effects on aerobic power, endurance and cardiac growth’, Journal of Applied Physiology, 53, pp. 225–29.

Neufer, PD, Costill, DL, Fielding, RA, Flynn, MG and Kirwan, FP 1987, ‘Effect of reduced training on muscular strength and endurance in competitive swimmers’, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 19, pp. 486–90.

[VIDEO] Techniques from How We Roll –

by Matt - Scramble ~ posted March 5th, 2013

Check out this slick inverted work form Vicente Cavalcante, shot by our buds (and Scrambler Cristiano) at How We Roll in Australia.

 

Thoughts on Conditioning for Grappling Competition

by William Wayland ~ posted March 4th, 2013

Common mistakes, Misconceptions and Using Technique Under Fatigue

Conditioning is often the poor relation in “STRENGTH and conditioning” it is hard, it mocks you, where as training for strength allows for a resplendent display of your badassery and curious looks from the folks on the eliptical. Where as conditioning belittles you, turns you into a sweaty exasperated mess, its general unpleasantness makes you groan about it to anyone with in earshot. Conditioning is often a victim of the too much, too hard, too soon approach to training, people often “deep-end” themselves and do high intensity work before they have built the capacity to handle this kind of work, general fitness is key. Get fit to train as they say.

General fitness for grappling is what I define as the ability to complete training sessions of a reasonable (RPE 6-8) intensity without fatigue becoming so bad it impedes your ability to complete a practice, cutting rolls or rapid technical training short etc.

Hopefully you have a resting hear rate of below 60bpm, if this isn’t the case then you probably need to work on your general fitness. This can take the form of moderate intensity rolls of a longer duration (you still get to practice sport that way), running, cycling rowing, barbell complexes or HICT. If your general conditioning is of a reasonable level then you look at getting specific in terms of round times and intensity when preparing for a tournament.

Now down to nitty gritty, often our technical coaches while meaning well have little understanding of energy systems or neurological demand of exercise and thus often issues arise in conditioning sessions

Common flaws I see;

  • Too much standing work.
  • Too much focus on concentric muscular action.
  • Not enough active rest.
  • Misuse of plyometrics.
  • Training longer than needed.

Work to rest ratio’s for BJJ are important to replicate, in a 2012 study Del Vecchio et al in a Brazilian study found that effort:pause ratios from other combat sports ranged from 10:1 (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), 2:1 (judo and wrestling), and 1:3/1:4 (taekwondo) and 1:2 and 1:4. A 10:1 ratio is dramatic and I can understand why based on my own observation, as soon as two grapplers make contact there is rarely any let up in activity and the two are actively working with very few breaks in play. While judo for instance there is often a slow down with grip fighting, sudden frenetic activity and pauses in contact to reset fighters and so on.

BJJ has a lot of isometric action, by isometric I mean positions that are held where muscular contraction is maximal but movement is minimal. Such as holding a top side control position with really tight head and arm control, fighting to keep an opponents posture broken or gripping up for passes and sweeps but holding the position. These isometric actions should be replicated because it is exhausting, whereas most conditioning is repeat concentric (explosive action). Often athletes when very fatigued doing this kind of activity will merely go through the motions all that explosive intent is gone, where as an iso-hold at the top of a pull up is hard to fake.

Pull up holds with scramble grip trainer make for a challenging isometric hold

Misuse of plyometrics is a massive problem in fitness right now, there is a certain fitness movement that thinks that box jumps for time are an intelligent training approach (enough to make a dead Russian sports scientists spin in their graves). plyometrics are a neurological bulldozer, short contraction times and short ground contact times are great for improving power output. However fatigue caused by excessive plyometrics destroys explosiveness and kills coordination, basically an accident waiting to happen.

Because of nature training culture in martial arts we often think more is better when it comes to conditioning. Coaches will make athletes do 8 or 10 minute rounds when you may only be a purple belt and require 7 minute rounds. Humans are excellent unconscious pacers and we will spread our selves energetically if we know we have the luxury of time. If your match last 7 minutes then train for 7 minute rounds, but make those 7 minutes as high a quality as possible.

Adding in more conditioning from the floor is also important, hip thrusts, floor presses and the addition of high intensity drilling intersped with formal conditioning work can make a world of difference, being tired on your feet is different to being tired on your back with someone on top of you. The very action of getting up off the floor repeatedly is tiring in itself.

Technique Under Fatigue

This where the introduction of TUF or Technique Under Fatigue training is important. I credit Brendan Chaplins writings for exposing me to this flexible method. My next point only at the sharp end 4 or so weeks before competition should formal conditioning in any start to resemble grappling, this is when we introduce TUF.

Examples of TUF would be;

30 second KB swings

30 seconds Pummeling (pummelling here works as active rest)

Or

30 seconds of Sprawl to Deadlift

30 seconds of mount escapes (mount escapes again working as active rest)

Or

30 Seconds of Hip thrusts or burpees

30 Seconds of Shrimping under top pressure

Or

30 Second pull up hold

30 Second back escapes (the person who just did the hold tries to stop his opponent from escaping)

Complete for a total of whatever your round time is. 3-5 Minutes Rest and Go again.


 
Sprawl to deadlift combined with pummelling makes for a favourite combination of mine

Bodyweight combinations work well in group settings but we can do more intensive work with small group or one to one settings. While I do like as a precomp method it can be used as general method if need be. Exercise and technical selection requires athlete coach cooperation.

Practising fundamental skills while fatigued allows us to sharpen those skills while under duress, smart coaches can come up with combinations that would be best for their students trying to eliminate weaknesses. The method is also more enjoyable than straight conditioning which is often high volume and does’nt allow for active recovery which generally will occur in game scenario. Advanced and intermediate level grapplers will get more out of this method than novices who may not have motor skills or the general fitness to derive a benefit from this type of training.

All out conditioning for prolonged periods does’nt work otherwise usian bolt would win the 400 and 800 meters it simply violates basic biology. I see this often in conditioning videos as fatigue sets in the quality of effort takes a nosedive, because no one is capable of sustaining high power outputs for prolonged periods of time.

Chaplin describes “the key points for TUF conditioning as this:

  1. Integrate conditioning with technical/skill work
  2. Be specific with the conditioning to suit the skills being trained. This requires collaboration with the coaches.
  3. The conditioning needs to be progressive just like general conditioning. The goal is to build technique in a fatigued state, not obliterate the athletes.”

Thats all for part 1, in part 2 I’m going to discuss periodising and planning your conditioning approach and how to effectively work in an “inseason” between tournaments to maintain conditioning.

This is an ongoing series of articles from guest blogger and Strength & Conditioning coach William Wayland of Powering Through.
Who offers online training planning for tournament peaking for MMA, Nogi and BJJ

Do you know Scrambler Nakamura Daisuke?

by Matt - Scramble ~ posted January 17th, 2013

 

Nakamura Daisuke is one of the top black belts in Japan – multiple time all-Japan weight and open weight champion at black belt. This year he plans to attack the Europeans and the World Championship.

You can follow his progress on his blog, http://www.d-nakamura.com/ . There’s English content alongside Japanese content, and it’s a good insight into how one of Japan’s top competitors prepares for each tournament.

Leave him a comment or find him on facebook here.

 

S&C Lessons from 1908 for the 2013 Grappler

by William Wayland ~ posted January 14th, 2013

You scrambler, yes you! Firstly Happy new year! Secondly you are into your old school grappling aren’t you? Of course you are, names like Frank Gotch, Billy Robinson, Karl Gotch, Masahiko Kimura should be familiar to you. If not I suggest you Wikipedia these names and come back. Wrestling and physical culture have always gone hand in hand, wrestlers and free fighters of the old days carried a reputation for their prowess in the gym and on the mats. At some point in martial arts the two divorced each other and we wandered through a wilderness where weightlifting was bad, worse yet would make you slow and gas like a flatulent hippo. Its now 2013 and we are under-going a physical culture renaissance. Suddenly everyone is kettlebelling, olympiclifting and TRXing, functional training-ing, armflailing and it’s topped off with the internet, a fitness resource so vast it has more pages dedicated to the subject than Gangnam Style has views on youtube.

While this isn’t bad, it often leads to a scenario of athletes and trainees who have read too much, seen too much and subsequently try to do too much. Something gets lost, everyone does a lot and winds up showing very little for it. I get emails from eager grapplers and mma fighters asking me to look at their program and what I see often is just a lot of “stuff”. A program chock full of exercises and modalities matched by a periodisation scheme only MIT grads can understand (or the exact opposite, no plan at all). I’ve mentioned before often when a program has a lot of volume we see intensity plummet, this is why apart from the untrained circuits often don’t yield much of a strength or power improvement. And yet often trainees stop and admire their currentness, the fact they are doing “X and Y” because it is current or trendy, assaulted by the power of choice these are also the people that program hop like mad and then complain about their general lack of strength or athleticism.

Full Cirle
Coming back to our old school grapplers, I want to tell you about one in particular that I draw great inspiration from. Georg Hackenschmidt was a strongman and professional wrestler known as the Russian lion, he was one of the greatest whom ever lived. President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a proponent of physical culture and exercise (not to mention early adopter of judo and jiujitsu), proclaimed, “If I wasn’t president of the United States, I would like to be George Hackenschmidt.” Hackenschmidt at the time had access to traditional Barbells and Dumbells, no racks, benches or machines. In the book “The way to live” written back in 1908 many of the things that Hackenschmidt talks about are considered modern, cutting edge things today. The fundamentals have not changed in 110 years.

To borrow Jim Wendlers analysis of hackenschimdts writings “before you begin a workout session, perform a general warm-up including full mobility work; always eat moderately and drink plenty of water; that bodyweight exercises are good but they won’t get you strong; always use full range of movement when exercising; and rarely go to failure on any set.” Startlingly this is surprisingly modern in approach.

Hackenschimdt was also an advocate of heavy lifting.
“For it is only by exercising with heavy weights that any man can hope to develop really great strength.”

“it is quite impossible to improve strong muscle groups, as, for instance, the hip muscles, with light-weight exercises.”

Hackenschmidt suggested that jump rope and gymnastics could be added to the plan, but his overall approach was that of heavy lifting. He also advocated running “Run as much as you can and as often as you can, and whenever you come across a hill, run up it. This will force you to inhale deep breaths and will also accustom you to breathe through your nose. Besides the chest and lung development resulting there-from you will soon appreciate the benefits which your leg muscles will derive”. Hill sprints anyone? It need not be any more complicated.

Keep in mind this was all before the discipline of sports science, before even the bench press (everyone did floor presses), before racks/stands, machines, creatine, protein powders and even before performance enhancing drugs. It is sad that athletes like Hackenschimdt and his teachings are being lost to the mists of time. Very little in strength and conditioning for grappling, honestly, has not been done before.

This is an ongoing series of articles from guest blogger and Strength & Conditioning coach William Wayland of Powering Through.

[VIDEO] Jiu Jitsu Priest! JEWELS 22 highlights

by Matt - Scramble ~ posted January 2nd, 2013

The latest video from our friend Kinya Hashimoto at Jiu Jitsu Priest is chock full of female grappling awesomeness, including our Scrambler Rikako Yuasa rocking her custom rashguard and bending someone’s arm completely the wrong way. Yeah!

Make sure you check out the entrance! Starts around 30 mins in.

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[VIDEO] NAKAMURA DAISUKE’S BASIC JIUJITSU TECHNIQUES

by Clean Dean ~ posted December 28th, 2012

Check out some basic BJJ techniques from Japanese Scrambler Nakamura Daisuke.

Scramblers at the IBJJF International Open & Euro No Gis

by Matt - Scramble ~ posted October 23rd, 2012

We had a superb weekend at the London International Open (GI) and the European No Gi Championships, laid on by the IBJJF in Crystal Palace, London.

The new ranked rash guard was in full effect and spotted numerous times through the day and across all divisions.

Best of all we were able to meet Scramblers old and new and watch the Scramble team in action.

Without further ado:

Oli Geddes

Oli’s black belt competition life consists of being thrown at the wolves again and again. Wait, scratch that. He throws himself at the wolves. Black belt? C’mon! It’s crazy. We’ve known him since he was a purple belt and now here he is fighting people called Bernardo and Souza and who have had black belts longer than he has been training. (In some cases.) We watched Oli fight over the weekend and he did superbly, holding his own against some world class competitors. The smile never lost his face (except when he had to cut a few hundred grams in a few minutes) and he always had a hello for everyone who stopped to shake his hand. It would often take him 20 minutes to move 5 metres due to the sheer amount of greetings he had to dish out. Oli took home three bronzes over the weekend.

 

Adam Adshead

Adam travelled all the way down from just outside Manchester to fight in his first ever no-gi event. Like an absolute boss he calmly took care of business and went home the brown belt European champion. Top work, Adam! Check out his gym Factory BJJ if you’re in the area.

 

Hannah Gorman

The “She Beast” had some amazing fights on Sunday in the no gi, after having travelled all night on an overnight coach with little to no sleep. She lost a narrow fight on advantages in the final of her weight, and then beast-moded a couple of people to get to the final of the open weight. I was exhausted just watching so I have no idea how she managed to do it. She also did it all in style, wearing the Meerkatsu x Scramble special edition ranked rash guard – oh, and she went #fullspats. Read all about her two silver medals on her blog.

 

Simone Francheschini

Aside from having an epic Italian name, Simone is friend and training partner of Andrea Verdemare, one of our long time Scramblers. Both are black belts fighting out of Cyclone jiu jitsu in Italy. Simone is a very talented black belt and took home third place in the featherweight division. There was a little bit of strangeness in one of his fights, where his opponent carried on cranking a foot after the referee said stop, injuring him, and then attacked the foot again on the restart. But still, it’s all experience and he took third place. Andrea, Simone and the Cyclone team were very friendly and I look forward to meeting them again next time.

 

Jordan Baddi

We’ve been in touch with Jordan for a while so it was great to finally meet him. He just got back from training at the Mendes brothers academy in the USA, and it showed. Jordan was berimboling his way around the mat, but he also had a fierce determination that showed through, scrambling for takedowns in the dying seconds of one of his matches. We’re happy to have Jordan representing Scramble. He took silver in purple light feather on both days. 

 

Lena Zenkevich

Lena is one of our best customers, located deep in Mother Russia. It was great to be able to meet her in person. She’s super humble and nice off the mat, and a super-beast on the mat, which is absolutely our favourite kind of person. She won her division and got third in open weight.

 

Miha Perhavec

Last but definitely not least is the great Miha Perhavec, who travelled all the way from Slovenia to fight. Miha is a blue belt who trains under a purple belt and fights whenever he can. I was struck by his amazing English, and really admired his character. He obviously trains hard and is very serious about competing. It was a pleasure to watch him fight all day, usually against bigger and stronger opponents. By the end of the open weight fights he had a small cheering section in the crowd who cheered him on as he scored points on larger fighters. Miha took home two bronzes and did himself and his instructor proud. I’m looking forward to seeing him wear Scramble and have more tough fights.

 

 

There were plenty of other people wearing Scramble – thanks! Check out the IBJJF pics by Meerkatsu here.

[VIDEO] Oli Geddes on BudoVideos This Week in BJJ Podcast

by Matt - Scramble ~ posted September 12th, 2012

Oli Geddes American tour is going pretty well. Lots of training, lots of competing, lots of Scrambling.

He made it to the Budo Videos HQ to film a podcast with them. It’s very entertaining, I had it on in the background while I played Minecraft. I couldn’t have been a bigger nerd at that particular moment in time. My cool points were drastically reduced. Luckily, no one saw me. So I got away with it.

Oli talks about his tour, what it’s like training with the big names in the UK (Roger, Braulio, Victor) and his philosophy on how he is developing his game as a black belt. He’s also wearing the out-of-print Jiu Jitsu Zoku tee, which is badass. With a bonus half guard sweep to mount technique thrown in for good measure.

 

[VIDEO] NAKAMURA DAISUKE TAKES GOLD AT ADIDAS CUP 2012

by Clean Dean ~ posted September 10th, 2012

Yesterday, Scrambler Nakamura Daisuke took gold in the Lightweight division at the East Japan Adidas Cup 2012 after submitting Toru Nakayama with an old-school wrist lock.

It was pretty eerie to watch the match. The large gymnasium had been roaring with sound all morning, but everything turned dead quiet the second Nakamura stepped onto the mats.

Nakamura has established himself as, hands down, the best competitor in Japan and I can’t to see him make a run at the international level.

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