What do you guys do for tendon health? Our sport puts high pressure on our tendons, and making sure they're up for it might be just as important as strong muscles. In Japan most fighters don't carry around too much muscle, but they do lots of jumping rope, roadwork, sprints and jumps. Small tip: It's easy to add in some potentiation exercises (medicine ball, sandbag throws or jumps at the end of your warm up or jumps (lunge, squat, split squat, broad) at the beginning of your strength and conditioning sessions.

Due to an old injury, I always suffer from significant tension in my back and neck. This causes my lower back, upper back, and neck to stiffen up quickly. According to my current physiotherapist, the issue is that my left glute does not activate properly and is too weak, so it isn't doing its job correctly. I am currently working with weights to strengthen this left glute and the surrounding muscles. The goal is to get it functioning properly so that, hopefully, I can eventually continue sports and training without needing to visit the osteopath every month.

This is the tl;dr version. I am in no way qualified for the advice I'm repeating here and would advise working with a professional s&c coach and consulting a medical professional before starting anything related to this kind of programming. But what I've learned so far is this: Two full body strength sessions per week are awesome. One is great. Three, four and five have diminishing returns. Meaning you'll be sore for your skills work. Always warm up properly. Then start off with plyometrics like jumps, hops and leaps. Next do your main three lifts, like squat, bench and row on one day. Deadlift (or rack pull), incline bench and a pull variation the other day. Add in some accessories (neck work, mobility exercises,...) throughout as circuits so you don't waste time waiting. And at the end to cool down. A good video on training splits for combat athletes: https://youtu.be/6FArXgCAeds?is=Vd6lUnpIqCcs_EwA

This is the tl;dr version. I am in no way qualified for the advice I'm repeating here and would advise working with a professional s&c coach and consulting a medical professional before starting anything related to this kind of programming. That said, here’s the basic framework I’ve learned so far: The body relies on multiple energy systems, and different types of conditioning train different systems. A good starting point is building a solid aerobic base first. Better baseline cardio improves recovery between rounds, between exchanges, and even between training sessions. It essentially gives you a bigger “engine” to support everything else. You can start with 3x 8 minutes with one minute of rest between rounds. And work your way up to 3x 15 minutes of your preferred zone 2 cardio. (Jogging, biking, swimming, assault bike, bag work, ...) Once that base is established, you can start developing: - Lactic capacity → the ability to sustain hard efforts while dealing with fatigue and acid buildup - Alactic capacity/power → short explosive bursts with high output and relatively low fatigue accumulation You can train these systems with tools like: - Assault bike - Row machine - Elliptical - Treadmill Personally, I’d prioritize them roughly in that order because they tend to give a strong conditioning stimulus with lower impact and lower injury risk compared to a lot of road running. One concept that really changed how I look at explosiveness is understanding the ATP-PC system. The body can only sustain maximal explosive output for roughly 6 to 10 seconds before those immediate energy stores are largely depleted. After that, power output drops and the body starts relying more heavily on other energy systems. That’s why true explosive training often uses: - Very short bursts - High quality output - Longer rest periods than people expect The goal is not just “being tired.” It’s training the ability to repeatedly produce high power while recovering efficiently between efforts.

After an entire day of waiting.. And waiting.. And getting nervous... And then some warning up... And then some more waiting... And then some more nerves.. They announced a ten minute break 😫 And then the fight began. Professional card. Tatsujin Rules. Clinch, throw, ground and pound. Clinch, throw, ground and pound. Clinch, throw, ground and pound. T-K-O! Brent Dupuis won his pro debut match against an experienced Taiga Striker! And can now call himself a professional fighter. Flawless fight camp. Flawless weight cut. Flawless victory. Now, we feast! And Brent didn't event use the calf kicks we trained on the calf pad. Two weeks after our last pad session my leg still hurts...