Poor Cardio or Poor Movement?

Friends,

Some of you who are loyal followers may have noticed that I have taken a year off from training professional fighters and other athletes, this is by choice. It has been a great blessing and allowed me to focus more on helping the average athlete develop their skills to a higher level. This year alone, three of my athletes signed pro contracts. Two more high school athletes are ranked top 5 in the nation in their respective sports. This has been extremely gratifying for me.

One of our biggest groups of supporters has and always will be the fight community, including Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, MMA, and boxing. A question I am continually asked about is how to improve my cardio for combat sports. I realize many of you reading this may not participate in Jiu-Jitsu or MMA, however the information I’m giving you applies equally, to all sports across the board. I will use Jiu-Jitsu as an example because of the technicality of the art.

To start off, many times an athlete will come to me complaining about how their “cardio sucks”: these are my usual questions followed by the usual answers:
What sport are you playing? Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, or MMA)
What are you doing for cardiovascular training? Airdyne, jogging, circuit training, tabata.
How is your diet? Could be better. I eat clean. The worst answers being “Im on a full keto diet” or “I fast before workouts”.
Tell me about the work ratio of your training (example: 30% cardio, 20% weightlifting, 20% technical, 30% active training). I train mwf  with weights, I run sometimes…I….ENOUGH!

SPECIFIC ENERGY REQUIREMENTS

Every sport you play will have specific energy system requirements. These energy system requirements are measured by the duration and intensity of the action in the sport. The duration is not something we can control, but the intensity is somewhat relative to your efficiency.

You must also assess the physical requirements of the sport. Not just the cardiovascular requirements, but JUST AS IMPORTANT, the movements, the skill, and the specific type of strength requirements for the sport. In case you did not know there are many different strength types such as speed-strength, starting-strength, strength speed, absolute-strength, explosive-strength, reactive-strength and strength-endurance. Each type of strength is built in a different manner and each type of strength will affect your speed and power. You need to know which strength type(s) your sport requires and focus on building that. I would venture to say that most sports, and nearly all combat sports require a unique combination of speed-strength, explosive strength, reactive-strength, and strength-endurance. This makes combat sports one of the most challenging to train people for.

THE PROBLEMS.

You are ruining your ECONOMY OF MOVEMENT.
Cardio is easy to develop…no wait, it is incredibly easy to develop when your body moves efficiently. Many of you are spending way too much time training for sports as if they require maximal strength, or slow strength that moves up and down, in straight lines under high degrees of tension. You may be spending hours working kettlebell swings, back squats, chest presses for sports that require little to none of that strength type or movement pattern. Your strength exercises are deconditioning your specific needs.
Those of you that are hooked on these exercises and have been doing them for years will not fully understand just how much more efficient you can become. I have seen some of the strongest men in sports struggle to move a 3lb. hand weight filled with water, because their shoulders were not trained to deal with the tiny reactions occurring within the hand weight, nor were they trained to rapidly accelerate it and decelerate it in a ballistic manner.

If you have trained in combat sports you will know how important it is to have a high degree of reaction, not static-strength, not maximal-strength, but reactive-strength, the ability to rapidly change direction and produce force.

I can tell you a Jiu-Jitsu story about myself from about 15 years ago. Around this time my body was beginning to break down. I was doing CrossFit, lifting heavy, and training Jiu-Jitsu every day. I remember going to class one night and while training with my friend, I caught him in a choke hold. He said to me “Why are you trying to kill me?”, I said “I’m not trying to kill you buddy”. “Then why are you trying so hard to squeeze my neck?” he asked.

It was at this moment when I realized that I was exerting way more energy than I needed to just to perform a tiny movement like squeezing the lapel of his gi. He was irritated, he thought I was angry, being overly aggressive because I was clenching my teeth, my arms and neck were straining, the amount of tension and exertion I was using on him. However, in my mind I was as cool as a cucumber, not an ounce of animosity towards him. What I realized was that for the past several years up until then,
 “I WAS FIGHTING MYSELF”.

The hardest thing for me to overcome in Jiu-Jitsu was not my adversaries, it was my own lack of economy of movement. It was the inability of my body to perform the movements required by my sport that were being forced into submission by the overemphasis of my shitty training program.

Up until then I was not even conscious of how hard I was pushing myself to perform basic tasks. From then on, I started seeing it in everything I did, golfing, swimming, you name it.

I was so used to straining, being under tension, lifting heavy, grabbing iron bars that offered no reactive feedback whatsoever; these dull tense exercises had become ingrained in all my movements. I would do all cardio sessions at max heart rate for 20-30 minutes; this would cause my heart rate to automatically go to maximum during any physical activity. Remember, what you repeat becomes habit, physically and mentally, hence the word conditioning.  I had conditioned myself to become a tense, linear, gas guzzler. I had ruined my economy of movement.

I use Jiu-Jitsu as an example because there is so much body contact that you can get a great sense of who moves well and who does not. You know who the spaz is, who is “all strength”, who is stiff, and who is super technical and fluid. Be cognizant of how you move, where you hold tension, what movements cause the tension to become more noticeable. I have seen athletes with weak toes and feet, hold their breath and strain their necks and faces just to perform a simple toe raise. Imagine if they are exerting that much energy to perform a toe raise, how much more energy are they wasting trying to run, jump, etc?

During our Certifications and Seminars we study our ATHLETIC ASSESSMENT in depth. The ATHLETIC ASSESSMENT tests the athlete for specific strength weaknesses that inhibit efficiency. This is the root of our training.

One of the tests I perform in our Athletic Assessment is a hip adduction, and abduction test. Most athletes, around 85%, have very weak hip abductors. When I put them in a side lying position and have them perform simple lateral leg raises even the biggest, “strongest” athletes are usually melting into a pile of sweat. How much more energy are they exerting to perform lateral movements? Or worse yet, perhaps they are compensating by avoiding those movements altogether.

Become more in tune with your body and focus more on specific movements. Many of you have purchased our video ATPv1, this is a perfect way to begin enhancing your efficiency.

YOU ARE TRAINING THE WRONG ENERGY SYSTEMS, AND AT THE WRONG RATIOS.
First question for you. Do you own a heart rate monitor, with a chest strap?
NO?
Why not?
How are you monitoring your cardiovascular fitness?
How are you quantifying results?
How do you know when you’re in the right training zones for your sport?
How do you know which energy system(s) need more focus?

There are some things in the training world I am quite lenient with in terms of sets, reps, etc… Cardiovascular and Endurance are not one of them.

If you’re serious about getting in shape and do not own a heart rate monitor and a stopwatch, you need to buy one asap. Polar Heart rate monitor with a chest strap is my favorite option.
You will need to assess the requirements of the sport. Here is a list of generally accepted ratios of energy systems per sport.


Sport                Alactic Anaerobic          Lactic Anaerobic          Aerobic

Basketball              85%                                        15%                                    0

Football                   90%                                        10%                                    0

Rowing                     20%                                         30%                                   50%

Track 100m             95%                                        5%                                      0%

Track 5000m          10%                                        20%                                  70%

Wrestling                  90%                                       10%                                  10%

Marathon                  0%                                           5%                                     95%
                       
Gymnastics               90%                                       10%                                    0%

Tennis                           70%                                        20%                                  10%

Golf                                 95%                                       5%                                       0%

Baseball                        85%                                       15%                                    0%

Weightlifting             95%                                         5%                                     0%

Volleyball                     90%                                         10%                                  0%

Soccer:
goalie, striker             80%                                         20%                                  0%
                      
{Adapted from Fox, E. and Matthews, D (1974)}

By looking at this chart it would be easy to say, “Ok, I just need to do more alactic (short term) training to improve my endurance”; however, if it were that simple I’d be out of a job.

Believe it or not I have seen athletes come to me with training heart rates above 200bpm.
One was a world champion boxer. My mind was blown. This guy had tremendous power but would gas after 3 rounds. If he looked at this chart and said something stupid like “I just need to do more alactic training”, I would have probably walked right out of the camp. In fact, his case was the complete opposite. This was the perfect example of an athlete who was far too anaerobic and had no aerobic base. Developing a solid aerobic base will help keep the heart rate lower, and recover faster.

Despite his resistance, I reduced all of his anaerobic sessions to about 40% for the next 10 days. We focused primarily on developing his aerobic energy system, even while in the middle of a fight camp, we were going nonspecific, back to the basics…but with a specific intent. After the 10 days we pushed him to a full 10 rounds of sparring, his heart rate never went above 170, and he had power through the tenth round. Four weeks later we won a world title together.

Despite what the chart says all energy systems are interwoven, and a lack in one system will affect the others. When all of the energy systems are operating in synchronicity with one another something incredible happens. 

If you are running, doing tabatas, and circuit training: ask yourself what is your training goal? What training zone should I be in? How can I make my training more efficient?

This was originally sent out as an email, I apologize of it is too brief, but I’ll be sending another one soon.
For now, I will offer you some SIMPLE ADVICE to follow.

If your cardio sucks and you are lifting heavy weights, get off the weights. Do not be butt hurt about it, just do it. I don’t judge people on their bad training habits, it’s one of the best ways to learn, by learning what’s not working. My gym has always been a place of admitting our faults and accepting accountability. I crush egos quickly as ego ruins potential.

Drill your weaknesses over and over, positions and movements, the positions that cause you to exert yourself the most. You can determine which ones by using a heart rate monitor during sparring, Jiu-Jitsu, field work, etc... Do this on a consistent basis, 3-5 times a week, prioritize exploiting your own vulnerabilities, before someone else does it for you.

Develop a solid aerobic base before going into anaerobic training, preferably outside your training camp.
During anaerobic training, take time to develop each system. Training multiple energy systems at one time may be detrimental and produce minimal adaptations, this is known as the interference theory…but again it’s just a theory.

Allow yourself enough time to get your heart rate down to its recovery zone before going into the next round of anaerobic training. If you don’t train your heart rate to recover, how will it know how to recover?
That’s all I have for today. Thank you for taking a minute to subscribe and be ready for the next email.


Sincerely,

Nick Curson
Founder/Trainer
Speed of Sport