How Strong Are You?

Stan Skolfield, ATC, CSCS

“The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”  . Henry Rollins “The Iron”

My workday revolves around responding to phone calls, emails, and face to face conversations about how to best develop the attributes necessary to turn someone into a superior athlete.   Most highly motivated athletes aren’t just looking to improve their performance they want raise it to a level in which they will dominate their competition.   However many of these athletes are looking for a template that will give them quick results and when I explain to them that in order to dominate their competition that there is no easy road to take-many of respond with confusion.  I then begin to educate them on the importance of establishing a strong “foundation”.  Once they are able to build a strong foundation the skill component of their sport becomes much easier.  An athletes “foundation” is made up of speed, agility, power, flexibility, balance, endurance, proper nutrition, and most importantly strength.

Strength.  Developing maximal strength is crucial to developing superior performance.  Why?  Because all of the attributes of an athlete’s foundation will be limited by their maximal relative strength.  Maximal relative strength is how strong someone is in relation to their bodyweight.  The stronger you are the easier it is to improve agility, power, endurance, and speed. 

One of the shortfalls I see in the MMA/ grappling community is the belief that one must focus their conditioning primarily on their power endurance.  So great emphasis is placed on working with resistance and exercising at a moderate to high intensity with a high volume of work.  This is done to raise their work capacity and improve their power endurance in hopes of not gassing out when they compete.  

Here is the problem.  When they work their grappling they are working on their power endurance, and then they work their striking-more power endurance, and now their conditioning consists of more of the same.   This isn’t just done 1-2 times per week it’s done 4,5, or 6 days per week.  The problem is that all they end up working on is power endurance and nothing else (and there is no deloading in place, but that is the topic of a different article). 

The other major shortfall is that they do nothing in between competition to improve their strength.  But improving your maximal strength can be one of the simplest ways to improve your power endurance.  How is that?  Very simply, insufficient strength has a ceiling effect on peak power.  If your peak power isn’t as high as it should be, then you’re not going to have very high levels of power endurance.  You want to have a ground and pound that is punishing for 3 rounds?  Then you better get stronger first.

Let me give you an example.  Let’s take two athletes who fight at 155lbs.  Athlete A is 155lbs and he can maximally deadlift 200lbs.  Athlete B weighs the same, but can deadlift 400lbs.  Who do you think is going to have an easier time taking you off the fence for 3 rounds?  As Jeff Monson once said “I can overcome a lot of technique with superior strength”.  Combine superior technique with superior strength and not you have a superior MMA athlete (GSP, Fedor, etc)

Here’s another example using the same athletes and relating it striking.  Athlete A can maximal bench press 135lbs  and athlete B can maximally dumbbell bench 235lbs.  If you lay on your back, cover your face up and each athlete is allowed to ground and pound you for 10 seconds who do you think will be able to generate the most force and do the most damage? 

Think about it.  If you could do walking lunges with 100lb dumbbells wouldn’t shots and running sprints with just your bodyweight feel a hell of a lot easier?  The power endurance components of your training will now become easier if you devote a period of time to raising your maximal strength. 

We have a t-shirt here at the Performance Center and on the front of it it says “STRENGTH PUNISHES”.  Have you ever competed with someone that is way stronger than you?  It is physically taxing-it takes a lot of energy to make up for that lack of strength and this can lead to early fatigue.  Fighting against takedowns, getting off the bottom, maintaining top position, all of this takes an exceptional amount energy to do if you’re the weaker opponent.

So how strong are you?  If you’re not the strongest person at your bodyweight then you are at a disadvantage.  When you are in between competitions you should program your training so as to develop maximal strength.  Developing maximal strength isn’t as easy doing 4 sets of 10 reps, or 5 sets of 5 reps or any type of set and rep scheme.  It has to be specific to the individual.  I can give you a general template below depending upon what kind of athlete you are.

The individual who has minimal strength training experience (novice) can get strength improvement by working with weights of less than 40% 1RM.  This individual should spend their time mastering lifting technique of some of the basic lifts (lunges, reverse lunges, split squats, step ups, bench press, pull ups, and rowing variations) as well as developing great CORE stability using plank variations (front, side, and bridging), farmers walks, and heavy 1 sided KB walks.  Following this template for 12-16 weeks the athlete will be able to develop

The next tier of athlete has been doing some form of strength training for 16 weeks to several years.  To improve their strength they need to get away from sets of 10-15 and start working within 5-8 reps for 3-6 sets.  They should eventually progress their lifts to the 3-5 reps range for some of the heavier total body lifts.  Incorporating total body lifts such as the deadlift, back squat, front squat, box squats, different benching variations, and performing 2-3 pulling movements for every pressing movement.

The athlete who has several years or more of strength training experience will require heavier loads (90% of 1RM and above) to begin to make strength gains.  Doing 1 major lift using heavy weights followed by 3-4 supplementary exercises will be the key to taking this athletes strength to the next level.  Many athletes reach this stage of training experience and their strength levels plateau because they use the same exercises and the same weights and then wonder why they never make any gains.  Their body has accommodated to the stress placed upon it.  To make gains you need to change the stress involved.

 The more experienced athlete will need a lower repetition volume as to avoid hypertrophy gains and risk moving out of a weight class.  Most phases of training are programmed in 4 week intervals with volume and intensity progression as follows-week 1 medium heavy, week 2 medium, week 3 heavy volume and intensity., and week 4 is a deload week where the intensity is still high but volume of work is cut by 50% compared to week 3. 

Another common mistake I see with MMA athletes is that their training contains too much volume combined with very high intensity which leaves them very over trained and peaking too early in their program.  Remember this general principle-athletes do not over train on intensity, they over train on volume.  So you can still train at high intensity, but do it for shortened periods of time and sets/reps.  Build in deload (recovery) weeks into your program and you will notice major improvements.  This doesn’t mean take the entire week off from training, just cut down on the volume of work.  Performance = training + recovery.  If you don’t recovery your muscles don’t get a chance to repair and you don’t make progress.

The MMA/ Grappling game is evolving rapidly and have you noticed that the athletes who are beginning to dominate are powerful, explosive, athletes who have great skill and power endurance.  They are athletes!  Then they suck down to the lowest weight class possible to take full advantage of their relative strength.   Wrestlers have been doing this for years.  So take the time to plan out your training and become the strongest athlete for your weight!