This might cause some discussion. Context is combat and high intensity intermittent sports. Not pure endurance sports.

If you're not familiar, Seth Lenetsky is the leading punch researcher (and trains Olympic boxers).

Effective mass is a concept he derived from sprinters where the leg hits the ground. This spring mass model was then applied to punching with the fist hitting a target.

While most people think squatting and benching more and jumping higher = harder punches (it can help but isn't the most important aspect), punch performance is really down to how much momentum can you transfer to the target.

Known as effective mass.

The main tool for developing effective mass is the heavy bag and Seth details why that is in this short clip and on the 3 podcasts we've done on the Sweet Science of Fighting podcast.

If you're looking for some new things to try in your training program, give this a watch

Tried to make these short without paragraphs of explaining:

Career/Coaching

1. Have a source of income from outside of your career job.

2. Your career will very rarely be linear.

3. Are you ready for the inevitable? There are two types of strength coaches: One, those who are looking for work; and two, those who are about to be looking for work – Ashley Jones.

4. The S&C profession is still relatively new. Sadly, it is not taken very seriously or is not understood well enough by upper management and some coaches.

5. You will have to work for free for many years.

6. I’m still yet to land a job through application. My CV has essentially been useless.

7. That doesn’t mean all of your formal education is a waste of time. If you manage to find a role overseas, you may be required to show you are a level above what they can find in their own country.

8. The language of coaching. No, not external vs internal cues. I mean the actual language that is spoken. I’ve experienced it. I’ve seen it in action. If you can’t relate to the players or the coach doesn’t speak the language well at all, player buy in becomes very, very difficult.

9. If you have the opportunity to work overseas, do it without hesitation.

10. You’ll only be happy in your job if you have the freedom to do and implement what you want and know is best for the athletes.

11. Read, apply, read, apply, read, apply.

12. Train! Even compete in something. Doesn’t have to be at a high level. The interest, buy in, and trust you’ll build with your athletes is huge.

13. Don’t be in a rush. Many people in the high paying, high level jobs are in their late 30s-40+.

14. Join our conditioning mentorship for the latest real-world conditioning application.

S&C

1. Injury prevention sessions are a myth. It's holistic. Standing on one leg on a wobble board doing some random shit isn’t going to magically prevent knee and ankle problems.

2. Get strong on the basics. What does that mean? What are the basics? Are they the same for every sport? Sure, squat, push, pull, etc. But there are many great athletes that are shit at all of them yet excel at their sport.

3. Are we doing too much? Is the heavy emphasis on strength training dampening our athlete’s outputs?

4. The age ol’ question, how strong is strong enough? I honestly believe it’s much, much less than what we think. And again, strong in what?

5. Is momentum a better KPI for collision sports than pure max V?

6. The most important aspect of an athlete’s and teams performance and success isn’t down to physical capabilities, it’s down to the technical/tactical knowledge and skill of the athlete(s).

7. On pre-season, many organisations run the approach of mainly S&C in the beginning and then rugby/techincal training only starting to make an entrance a few weeks into the pre-season. This is a mistake.

8. We have energy system development horribly wrong, and it's hurting athlete preparation.

9. Physiology is important for conditioning. But there's more to it. My triangle also includes movement efficiency and technical/tactical to the equation.

10. My number one method to reach max V in training without worrying about hamstrings (e.g. if the weather is too cold or training loads have been high) is the gear change and then hitting 100% for 8-12 steps when the athlete feels ready (learned from the man Vern Gamebtta).

11. Can block periodization for team sports just disappear?

12. Traditional overload vs coordinative approach? Don’t sway too far to either side.

13. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You’ll learn a lot more about a topic trying to apply it with your athletes than thinking about it.

14. Games are still horribly underrated. Play more of them.

15. S&C can be implemented with sport coaching a whole lot more. Working with skills and sport coaches can help design drills that has the coaches involved in your sessions.

16. The hyper focus on an aerobic base and MAS intervals is undercooking athletes.

17. You can do high-intensity/sprint interval conditioning year round and continually make gains.

18. You need intensity during conditioning to continually drive adaptation in high-intensity intermittent sports.

19. While momentum into contact is important for dominating the collision, the forgotten aspect is transfer of momentum. Effective mass is what delivers the knockout blow.

20. Zone 2 is doing sweet f\* all in well trained intermittent sporting athletes.

21. Train for the adaptation you want. The external output is the side effect.

Probably missed a bunch and don't even think I counted properly to 36 😅

Tried to make these short without paragraphs of explaining:

Career/Coaching

1. Have a source of income from outside of your career job.

2. Your career will very rarely be linear.

3. Are you ready for the inevitable? There are two types of strength coaches: One, those who are looking for work; and two, those who are about to be looking for work – Ashley Jones.

4. The S&C profession is still relatively new. Sadly, it is not taken very seriously or is not understood well enough by upper management and some coaches.

5. You will have to work for free for many years.

6. I’m still yet to land a job through application. My CV has essentially been useless.

7. That doesn’t mean all of your formal education is a waste of time. If you manage to find a role overseas, you may be required to show you are a level above what they can find in their own country.

8. The language of coaching. No, not external vs internal cues. I mean the actual language that is spoken. I’ve experienced it. I’ve seen it in action. If you can’t relate to the players or the coach doesn’t speak the language well at all, player buy in becomes very, very difficult.

9. If you have the opportunity to work overseas, do it without hesitation.

10. You’ll only be happy in your job if you have the freedom to do and implement what you want and know is best for the athletes.

11. Read, apply, read, apply, read, apply.

12. Train! Even compete in something. Doesn’t have to be at a high level. The interest, buy in, and trust you’ll build with your athletes is huge.

13. Don’t be in a rush. Many people in the high paying, high level jobs are in their late 30s-40+.

14. Join our conditioning mentorship for the latest real-world conditioning application.

S&C

1. Injury prevention sessions are a myth. It's holistic. Standing on one leg on a wobble board doing some random shit isn’t going to magically prevent knee and ankle problems.

2. Get strong on the basics. What does that mean? What are the basics? Are they the same for every sport? Sure, squat, push, pull, etc. But there are many great athletes that are shit at all of them yet excel at their sport.

3. Are we doing too much? Is the heavy emphasis on strength training dampening our athlete’s outputs?

4. The age ol’ question, how strong is strong enough? I honestly believe it’s much, much less than what we think. And again, strong in what?

5. Is momentum a better KPI for collision sports than pure max V?

6. The most important aspect of an athlete’s and teams performance and success isn’t down to physical capabilities, it’s down to the technical/tactical knowledge and skill of the athlete(s).

7. On pre-season, many organisations run the approach of mainly S&C in the beginning and then rugby/techincal training only starting to make an entrance a few weeks into the pre-season. This is a mistake.

8. We have energy system development horribly wrong, and it's hurting athlete preparation.

9. Physiology is important for conditioning. But there's more to it. My triangle also includes movement efficiency and technical/tactical to the equation.

10. My number one method to reach max V in training without worrying about hamstrings (e.g. if the weather is too cold or training loads have been high) is the gear change and then hitting 100% for 8-12 steps when the athlete feels ready (learned from the man Vern Gamebtta).

11. Can block periodization for team sports just disappear?

12. Traditional overload vs coordinative approach? Don’t sway too far to either side.

13. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You’ll learn a lot more about a topic trying to apply it with your athletes than thinking about it.

14. Games are still horribly underrated. Play more of them.

15. S&C can be implemented with sport coaching a whole lot more. Working with skills and sport coaches can help design drills that has the coaches involved in your sessions.

16. The hyper focus on an aerobic base and MAS intervals is undercooking athletes.

17. You can do high-intensity/sprint interval conditioning year round and continually make gains.

18. You need intensity during conditioning to continually drive adaptation in high-intensity intermittent sports.

19. While momentum into contact is important for dominating the collision, the forgotten aspect is transfer of momentum. Effective mass is what delivers the knockout blow.

20. Zone 2 is doing sweet f* all in well trained intermittent sporting athletes.

21. Train for the adaptation you want. The external output is the side effect.

Probably missed a bunch and don't even think I counted properly to 36 😅

Sorry to break it to anyone who thinks dodging tennis balls and touching lights is making them more agile.

Agility is contextual to the task and predicated on the information being processed. Doesn't matter how fast your feet can move or your reaction time against some lights.

Agility is defined as the ability to maintain or control body position with a rapid change of velocity or direction in response to a sport-specific stimulus.

Sport specific is the important part here.

Most people training or testing agility are really looking at change of direction speed (CODS). But, CODS and agility are independent qualities.

A 2015 study by one of the top experts in agility, Dr. Warren Young, showed that CODS and agility display a correlation of only 21% when averaged out over six different studies on the topic [1].

From this, we know that agility is more than just physical. I’ve broken down agility into two main components.

https://preview.redd.it/xnfucm2rsndh1.png?width=547&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6069fe39b169745dfd1d3b6fd521ce96b7a276c

To make this even easier to understand, cognitive ability can be renamed decision making speed and accuracy.

To have great agility, both accurate decision making speed and physical factors must be at a high level.

And at a high level for both offensive and defensive agility. This is why you can’t go from only running through ladders with perfect technique and footwork to playing live at a decent level.

One way of deciphering if a quality is important is to compare elite and non-elite athletes. If the higher-skilled athlete performs better in the test, then the quality that that test measures would be deemed important for performance in that sport.

Unfortunately, no research has been performed within combat sports so we will have to turn to team sports again.

In netball and rugby league, higher standard players had faster decision-making times to sport-specific stimuli compared to lower standard players [2,3].

In Australian Rules football, professional players were found to be faster and more accurate in their decision-making ability when reacting to an attacker changing direction compared to elite junior players [4].

Similar results were found in elite soccer players who were faster and more accurate at anticipating pass direction in one on one situations compared to recreational players [5].

Higher skilled athletes are also less susceptible to feints (just watch Adesanya vs. Costa at UFC 253 to see this play out live) [6,7]. But most importantly out of all of this…

Higher skilled athletes ONLY perform better when reacting to a SPORT SPECIFIC STIMULUS.

What does this mean for your training? Performing reaction drills with tennis balls, ladders, or flashing lights provide a stimulus too generic to carry over to sport.

Agility must be trained as an open skill with the sport-specific stimulus with the physical attributes to support it.

I go into even more detail with research and the practical breakdown of how to properly train agility here: https://liftbigeatbig.com/agility/

This is just an appreciation thread. If you're struggling to find a trusted dog daycare facility in Round Rock or Pflugerville, just go to Hip Hounds. You get 2 free dog daycare days as a new client to test them out, and every dog is vetted for behavior issues.

Our puppy started at a bigger, private equity backed dog daycare and she had issues multiple times a year. The final straw for us was her being attacked with a bleeding gash on her ear. Plus they would crate the dogs at 4pm until they were picked up (gross).

Now she's been going to Hip Hounds 2-3x a week for the past 2 years and absolutely loves it. Family owned and staffed 24/7 along with webcams.

Their rates are at least $15/day cheaper than our previous spot too.

Joel Smith from Justflysports joins the pod again this week as chat some interesting topics.

​

One of them is a personal favorite of mine around this idea of rhythm. Sport is a dance. Does that mean we can train to improve rhythm to translate to the sport?

​

I like Joel's thoughts on it being a forceful dance as it ensures we don't stray too far to potentially woo woo land.

​

But I'd argue we are often too far the other way on the forceful side.

​

Regardless, catch the new episode out on the Sweet Science of Fighting podcast now.

​

https://youtu.be/F-bOa7Xs2BM

Your bag and pad work likely isn't translating to better cardio.

​

But you can change that by modifying how you approach some of your bag work.

​

Remember, we pick the exercise modality for the adaptation we want.

​

This is the specific conditioning version of driving potent peripheral adaptations (and as always, you get a bit of everything including central function).

If you're familiar with sprint intervals, you know how potent they are for targeting muscular adaptations for better oxygen use and refueling alongside all the other physiological benefits.

But 30 sec on with 3-4mins rest is the default prescription.

Unfortunately, its not the best way to go about them. So I broke it all down in this video

I broke down some of the scientific rationale behind why Usyk does some of the exercises he does for his upcoming fight.

If you've seen his training, you might be interested to know why and if you should do it too.

Facebook is now paying creators quite well for content posted there. If you have a moderately sized Facebook page that's in the content monetization program and/or a blog with display ads (and/or affiliate), then I can run it hands off for you.

You can see some of my earnings and requirements here if you're interested: https://facebookpagemanagement.com/