As I alluded to in previous essays, it’s incredibly important to understand the specific physiological demands of your sport, or whatever skill / hobby / thing it is you want to be good at.

It’s a very different end goal, and thereby training picture, if I want to be generally fit and well rounded (the literal definition of cross-fit) versus competitive at a specific prescribed physical task (running, swimming, Hyrox, etc.).

The picture is even small and more detailed when our competitive endeavor (“sport”) becomes more mentally or technically dominated versus physically dominated. This is a third dimension to the graph below depicting a sport-spectrum of expressions of “maximum strength and power” (weightlifting, track sports) to “maximum endurance” (marathons, triathlons).

While Joel Jamieson puts “combat sports” closer to the endurance side, this is because of the overall oxygen consumption (e.g. a 10 minute round versus a 20 second sprint or 10 second deadlift pull). We did see, in the previous discussion on combat sport “fuel”, that striking sports typically have more aerobic demand, which is not a surprise.

What this tells us is that we often see a more direct carryover to grappling — a sport literally based on gripping and controlling — from strength training. However, top-end power expressions in a single-rep format start to lose relevance the same way long runs do.

Since we covered “grabbing and holding” in the last module, let’s move on to that “conditioning” element. This is where a lot people really go sideways. Two great errors are:

Assuming no nuance and that "improving your gas tank” means endless miles of low-intensity-steady-state (LISS) exercise.
Training conditioning at the exact same intervals and intensities you practice and compete at.

These are the same error in different directions.

In the endurance module we thoroughly debunked that “endurance myth” that associates LISS exclusively with monostructural activities (running, cycling, swimming, etc.) and more accurately maps them onto a somatic expression or at least a ventilatory / heart rate zone regardless of movement or implement.

However, there’s a long, LONG, road to transition “running endurance” to the aerobic (threshold) and anaerobic (intervals) of grappling. So, while this foundation is important, we need to recall the 3:1 rule. If I typically compete in 5 minute rounds, then training intervals longer than 15 minutes start to lose relevance (that is, adaptation specificity).

Inverted, we have a decent strength / power heuristic as well. If I compete at 5 minute rounds (300 seconds), then my (applicable) strength / power intervals shouldn’t be shorter than ~90 seconds.

To come full circle, we also have to recognize that only training in 5-minute intervals makes us stale. We will need to push those tertiles a bit to see the benefits of each. By always training in the middle, we derive neither specific power or aerobic adaptations and actually become de-conditioned.

Savage Zen Athletics

Module 9d: Engine Air

Comments on this post are for paid subscribers