Do No Harm

I get quite upset when I read people’s comments about strength and conditioning for combat sports. See, most people are absolute idiots when it comes to their understanding of training. They think that just because they can lace on some shoes and stumble around the block that it means they are somehow experts on training.

Well, not really.

Just like any job it takes a long time to really get good at it. To learn what to watch for, even to understand why you’re watching for particular things and to communicate these problems to people effectively. And given most trainers have less than five years experience you need to ask yourself if what you’re reading on the net is really such good advice.

Now, I’m happy to admit that there ar plenty of people out there that make my knowledge look pedestrian, especially in certain areas that aren’t my forte, but I’ll also admit that when it comes to getting people ready to fight I’m pretty darn good.

I recently wrote about my work with women’s no Gi world champ Sophia McDermott and more recently I was asked to work with her coach and six time world champ Robert Drysdale.

Just an average day of work - two world champs!

And this is where I start to get upset with people. Robert, like most people who have world champion after their names, is a stellar athlete. He’s 6′3″ and 100kg yet moves with the grace and speed that only the true elite really have. However Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a rough sport and after many years of competing at the highest level his body has some aches and pains that need to be dealt with.

The first step was to find out what, if anything caused him pain. Relying on my trusty FMS kit to run him through his paces and see if he had any movement issues I was happy to find out that his body, although a bit banged up, was actually in very good shape! Using the FMS test as the corner-stone to our work we pinpointed his biggest issue, and one that is shared by a lot of grapplers – his hips.

Robert Drsydale performing the Deep Squat test

Just like sitting for long periods of time can shorten and weaken the hip flexors, so can playing an aggressive guard. Continually using the feet to hook behind the opponents legs and then pull them towards you has the effect of tightening the hip flexors. This is compounded by BJJ being played on the ground where the muscles involved in keeping posture standing – the Glutes – not having to work.

FMS lunge test

His only other problem, and another one that plagues many grapplers, was that his neck was a bit stiff and was causing nerve impingement into one of his arms.

And so at this point, after having established that he was in essence pain free, most trainers would go nuts and pull out the big guns – Squat, Power Clean, Clean and Jerk, etc. Meanwhile I decided to do some stretching with him and teach him how to switch off his hip flexors.

See, Robert is a big strong guy already. Truthfully we didn’t even talk about his lifting program. Whatever he’s been doing it works – he’s won the world championships 6 times! So my job was to try to and iron out some of the kinks in his movement and try to get him as close to pain free as possible. Adding in high risk movements, even with kettlebells where the total load is relatively light, was just going to take him the other way.

So here’s what we did:

Brettzel stretch

• Kneeling hip flexor stretch
• Brettzel

At this point he would go off and do a few Get Ups to see how his body was moving. See, there are telltale signs when your hips are over active in the Get Up and using it in this way tells Robert if he’s ready to really train or whether he needs more work to free up his hips before getting into training.

Robert performing the RKC style Get Up

Most likely we found that he needed some more work to teach his body correct recruitment patterns so we performed some FMS corrections based around abdominal recruitment to further shut off his hips.

He would then perform Get Ups again. Usually we found that this time his hips were behaving and he would do 12-15 minutes of Get Ups.

After these he would move onto some single leg work – stick DLs and single leg DLs to fire up his hip extensors which again, would help to switch off his hip flexors more.

Robert Drysdale performing stick deadlifts

Noting too complex, nothing extraordinary. But when a guy is in front of you who has trouble walking around the shops for an hour because it hurts his back so much says that the above makes it better why would you do anymore?

Single leg deadlifts

His last problem – the neck stiffness – I’ve been doing some work with Melbourne based physiotherapist Andrew Lock on. Andrew is a clever guy and has hit upon some misfirings which seem present in most grapplers. Because of how much the head is pulled and twisted in grappling the neck develops some inherent tension to reduce the chance of injury to the cervical spine. This inbuilt tension, while great for grappling due to its protective nature, can create problems like headaches and upper back stiffness when not training.

Andrew’s fix for this is to place the neck in a stable position where gravity can’t affect it and work to regain full movement. Instead of doing neck work standing, like most do, I had Robert lie on the ground and perform neck rotations and ear to shoulder movements. With his head fully supported he regained, instantly, a few inches more of movement. Not only that but continual regrooving of the correct pattern will eventually result in his neck being pain free and mobile. It may take some time to achieve this but to see it improve by inches immediately was gratifying.

And that’s not unusual if you’re working with the right person. A skilled trainer who has a big tool box of corrective drills can get from A to almost Z in a jiffy.

Don’t waste your training time trying to follow someone else’s plan. Go speak to someone truly skilled at athletic preparation and get a program that will help you. Perhaps all you need is some more movement. Maybe you do need to be stronger, but aren’t yet ready to perform ballistic movements. Maybe you’re fats, but have no joint stability. Everyone is different and you would do well to steer clear of cookie cutter internet programs.

Train with the Best

Over at www.dragondooraustralia.wordpress.com there’s a post about my work with BJJ no Gi world champion Sophia McDermott.

I won’t write about it twice as I think the article speaks for itself. But it ties in nicely with what my last post was about – this girl is a world champ and one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen, male or female. She is strong, lean, fast and fit – yet she needs to be trained like a beginner because that’s what she is when it comes to strength training. In fact, we spend more time ironing out the kinks in her body than we do performing “traditional” strength work.

For instance, right now she is barely raising a sweat in her training and we do more FMS drills, Z health and focus on postural training. Like any good athlete we have scheduled in time to relax and work on injury prevention or rehab – now is that time.

But my point is still the same. It always strikes me as funny that there are several groups around all claiming to be great trainers with combat sport athletes. They make up all kinds of ridiculous exercises claiming they are “sport specific” yet I never see their athletes do that well on the big stage. My results with Sophia prove my point about exercise programming – it doesn’t have to be bells and whistles and complicated. Her training is bare bones simple and it works.

For anyone serious about their training – either for combat sports or general population – Dragon Door Australia runs regular classes and the schedule is available here. Don’t accept substitutes. If you want to be the best, train with the best.

One of the things that has made a world of diference to my combat clients in particular is the use of the FMS (Functional Movement Screen). Its an awesome tool to help me pinpoint movement problems, address them quickly and  keep my clients moving forward. I’ve been doing a lot of work with some elite grapplers and you’re going to see some big articles very soon about it all, but if you’re in a hurry and live near Adelaide don’t miss the chance to head to Dr. Mark Cheng’s seminar on January 23 and 24. He’ll be teaching Hardstyle concepts mixed with FMS drills to sky rocket your chances of success in your own training. For more information go here

Also, Dragon Door Australia is now running HKC preparation classes. If you have signed up for the HKC now is the time to start making sure your technique is squared away. Don’t miss out on all this top quality kettlebell instruction that is now available in Australia!

Are you Advanced?

There is a lot of distinction made in literature between beginner and advanced training programs. Like most things in the word of training there are some massive misunderstandings from the general public about where exactly they fit.

You see, people want to feel like they are something special. It grates at them to be labelled anything other than fantastic. That’s why we have kids sport where everyone gets a medal, or in the case of martial arts, frequent gradings so we can break belt grades into smaller chunks so people feel recognised for their efforts. Boo hoo.

In the world of strength training it is often written that if you’ve been training less than a year you’re a novice. Fair enough, no argument from me there. But then it start to get a bit hazy. Intermediate is somewhere between 1 and 2 years and after that it is generally thought that if you’ve been steadily training for two or more years that you’re advanced.

I’d just like to say that that is total unadulterated BS.

So to start 2010 with some home truth here are my recommendations for what should be considered beginner, intermediate and advanced. I will include standard resistance training, kettlebells plus conditioning.

Beginner:

• < bodyweight bench press, squat and deadlift
• Cannot perform multiple reps of chin ups
• Cannot perform > 20 push ups.
• Cannot properly squat, deadlift, lunge or perform push ups.
• For men cannot press or snatch a 16kg kettlebell for multiple reps. For women a 12kg.
• Cannot run 5km in under 25 minutes.

Intermediate:

• 1.5 x bodyweight bench press, squat and deadlift.
• Can perform multiple bodyweight chins.
• Can perform 50 push ups non-stop.
• Can maintain correct form on all exercises even when fatigued.
• For men can press and snatch a 24kg kettlebell for multiple reps. For women a 16kg.
• Can run 5km in under 20min.
• 100 burpees in less than 10 minutes.

Advanced:

• Double bodyweight bench press, squat and deadlift
• Multiple chin ups with extra weight added.
• Exceptional form.
• Can press a kettlebell equal to half their bodyweight one-handed, and perform double clean and jerks with double 32s equal to their weight in pounds/10 (e.g. a 185 pound man would have to perform 19 continuous reps). Exceeds 200 reps in the 10 minute snatch test with a 24kg kettlebell. For women, press the 24kg, perform single clean and jerks with one hand switch equal to their bodyweight/10 and exceed 200 reps in 10 minute snatch test with the 16.
• Run 5km in 18 minutes or less.
• 100 burpees in less than 7 minutes.

Now, I realise I’ve just pissed off nearly everyone who trains at this point. Tough luck. If you can’t hit all the criteria for each category then you’re not as good as you think you are. It is possible to be advanced in one area but a novice in another (ahem…powerlifters take note – go for a damn walk!!). That means that your training should take into account your weaknesses and work to rectify them.

I write a lot of programs and people often comment that my programs aren’t complicated because they feature lots of squats and deadlifts. They then ask me for a more “advanced” routine. I tell them when they can squat and deadlift double their bodyweight it’ll be an advanced routine.

For those of you who say things like “I can’t squat, I’ve never been able to”. Well, go fix it. It’s a basic athletic move and its a disgrace that you’d call yourself athletic without being able to perform such a simple move. Likewise with being able to hold your form during exercise. The set stops when your form deteriorates, not when you reach some arbitrarily decided number. I actually have a friend who thinks he’s too advanced to drill simple things – he wants to juggle and do double this and that. Yet he can’t squat and his Get Up is just horrible. I think I made about 15 corrections on him, without even having any weight in his hand, in under 5 minutes. But he’s too advanced for all that…

Meanwhile, my guys are all still progressing. My own training just keeps plowing ahead like a glacier. Every week I am stronger than the one before and all I do is basics – Get Ups, Armbars, Brettzels, Clean and Press, Chins, Squats and Snatches/ Swings. Given the results these few are getting me it’d be hard to imagine needing to use anything else for quite some time.

And its the same with combat sports too. I don’t see Roger Gracie doing anything much more complicated than Cross Lapel choke from mount. Seems to have been good enough to win a few world titles. I don’t see Tiger doing anything crazy and far fetched on the links either. The top guys do the basics very, very well. They don’t look for crazy stuff. They do the basics at such a high level they don’t need to. One of the most important traits for a boxer is not to get hit. In his first 18 pro fights Mike Tyson didn’t get cut once – an almost unbelievable statistic. His head movement was simply too good for anyone to lay a glove on him. But who practices head movement round after round after round? Well, the champs do.

So stick with the basics. Chances are its all you’re ready for anyway.

The Russians Are Coming!!

Breaking news hot off the presses!

Dragon Door Australia has announced that for the first time ever a fully approved, 100% Dragon Door instructor course will be held in Australia!

For anyone who is looking to learn about kettlebells, either for themselves or in a professional sense to use with clients, this is the course you need to do. I can’t stress enough how deep the pool of knowledge is within the RKC community when it comes to physical performance training via the kettlebell. To have one of the top dozen kettlebell instructors in the world coming to our shores is amazing.

Click here for more details: http://dragondooraustralia.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/the-russians-are-coming/

You’d be crazy to miss this. With only thirty spots up for grabs it will be first in best dressed.

One bell, two results

I have a few physical problems. However, aside from a few bouts of stiffness on some days my body copes really well with everything I throw at it. I’ve had ankle troubles, knee problems, broken a lot of stuff in my hands and had two surgeons cut holes in me to fix my hamstring and my shoulder. But really, when it’s all taken into account, my body copes very, very well with the demands I place upon it.

One thing that became apparent this year, during my preparation for the RKC, was that I have limited elbow flexion. Elbow flexion is what happens when you bend your arm, at the elbow, as much as you can. For most, even those guys with big guns, this means they can touch their shoulders with their hands or fingers. I can’t.

Not only can I not bend my arms as much as everyone else but the problem shows itself going the other way too. Where most people struggle to get their arms straight mine will actually hyperextend and go just beyond straight.

When the arm goes beyond straight the bicep completely relaxes to avoid tearing. Once completely relaxed it isn’t doing its job to support the joint and the I wind up having my elbow jam up on itself. So I need to be carefull when doing anything where my arm goes straight – this can include heavy snatches or even heavy get ups where my arm is held straight for periods of time, essentially resting bone on bone.

Doing anything heavy into flexion is also a problem. Heavy cleans, because of my restricted motion, tend to jam the joint the other way too.

All of this, plus the resulting elbow pain got me to thinking about ways to not only cope, but maximise what I can do with my training given these physical limitations.

I’d been messing around with Bottoms Up work for a while, mostly doing it as a way to either switch the neural system on prior to a workout, or to work my grip. The BU Press is a really great drill. One of the main things I like about it is its self-correcting nature. If your body isn’t tight, isn’t lined up, if your shoulder isn’t packed – it will fail.

One of my key training concepts is that we should seek to minimise the load on the body during training. You’re all probably thinking I’m nuts right now, but if my sport include a lot of body contact why should I seek to add to it in training? Training is to build the body up, not break it down or challenge it to near extremes. Using a lighter kettlebell to achieve the same effect helps me do this – great workout, minimal load on the body. Perfect.

And then a thought struck me. Over ten years ago Poliquin and King did some research on using very low reps (1-2) to fire up the nervous system before doing maximal strength work using slightly higher reps (5-6). They found that the resulting increase in nervous excitation allowed for heavier than normal weights to be used in the maximal strength sets. I won’t go into rep ranges too much here except to say that many, many researchers have found that the 5-6 range is the most beneficial in terms of overall effects – from strength to size gains.

For this to be effective it turns out that the low rep sets don’t even need to be a true 1 or 2RM. As long as they are around 90% of the day’s working max they will be sufficient to boost the firing of motor units.

And this led me to what I have been using for the last month or so. Given that I start to have elbow problems when I perform Cleans with 32kg, and not having anything between a 24 and a 32 I started my experiment with the 24. I started with 5 super sets of a single BUP Clean and Press with the 24kg on each hand, rested around a minute and then performed sets of 6 normal Clean and Presses.

The results have been good. My elbows are not inflamed. My Press strength is up – I am now able to BU Clean and Press the 28kg for reps. I have even also done a 20kg BU TGU. I am sure that if I decided to use this routine to add size it would work just as well as the original King/ Poliquin workouts did in terms of size and strength. The only difference is that I would use double kettlebells instead of singles.

This has led me to further experiment with using the BU work in place of switching to a heavier kettlebell. Not everyone has 200 kettlebells at their disposal like I do at Dragon Door Australia, nor do they have the intermediate weights (20kg, 28kg, 36kg, etc.) This allows someone to really maximise the benefits of the single kettlebell that they likely started with before worrying about spending the money on a second one. I am even sure that programs such as ROP from Enter the Kettlebell (
available here). This last part is actually going to form a large part of my preparation for the RKC II – it allows me to build strength without weight gain (which is not necessarily something I am keen on as I like the fitness I have at my current weight. Gaining weight in the past has always led to a loss of fitness). Plus it will allow my elbows to be healthy to perform the necessary Snatch training to stay certified.

So don’t automatically assume you need a bigger bell. Just turn it upside down and see what you can do with it.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

There’s a saying that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. While it may be true in dogs, and some humans, it’s not always the case.

Allow me to explain…

After the age of 35 in humans brain chemistry does indeed change, making it harder to learn new things. This is across the board from learning a language to a musical instrument, a martial art or any physical skill.

So, to a point it is true that older people will struggle to learn new skills.

But that’s not the whole story.

You see, researchers have found that if a person has kept an open mind about things during their life span that their brain chemistry doesn’t go through the same change. This allows them to continue learning new skills and evolving.

Things they have found to be helpful to keep this youthful brain chemistry are lifelong study habits (although not centred on a single subject but rather on a wide variety of subjects) and continuing to play some sports.

The choice of sport is important too because some sports have more learning qualities in them than others. Traditional endurance sports for instance – running, swimming and cycling – are not good choices. These sports require only a few motor patterns to be learnt and then repeated over and over ad nauseum. A better choice is a sport requiring large amounts of skills to be used during the course of play. Sports such as beach volleyball, martial arts, gymnastics/ circus training, mountain biking, trail running and soccer are all good choices.

So you really are (chemically) only as old as you feel. It may also help to explain how people who have lived the most amazing lives filled with adventure seem to live the longest and keep their marbles too. I’ve long said that your body can only go where the mind leads it. If you act and think young, always trying new things and keeping an open mind – stopping to smell the roses of life, as it were – you will indeed stay young.

And this is where I get to talk about me for a bit. I’m 38, have done martial arts since I was 10 as well as played a variety of sports from field hockey to swimming to volleyball but these days the majority of my training is martial/ combat related and all things kettlebell.

So where does the kettlebell fit into this?

As a tool I’m obviously in love with them. Apart from just recently where I have been barbell squatting for the first time in years as an experiment I haven’t trained in a normal gym or with anything other than kettleblls, chin ups and push ups for over three years. The kettlebell is a unique tool in that it teaches your body not just to move things up and down, as normal weights do, but also to absorb shock, stay balanced and to move the kettlebell around itself to properly and safely execute the lifts. In short, they are motor pattern rich.

In terms of training longevity, things that we should all be looking to do as we get older and can continue for a long time I believe that kettlebells have a place right near the head of the table. I’ll reserve the place at the head of the table, the most important piece of the training puzzle, to creating correct movement. This comes in the form of joint health drills – either Z health, IntuFlow or Pavel’s Super Joints all fit the bill – plus activation drills and stretching.

To get Super Joints, Pavel Tsatsouline’s amazing book, go here:
Super Joints
Russian Longevity Secrets for Pain-Free Movement, Maximum Mobility & Flexible Stength

I know many will disagree with me but if you don’t have a full range of motion sooner or later you’re going to end up looking like a hunchback and moving about as well. Most of my time spent training people is an effort to get them back to correct posture, get the joints moving through a full pain-free range, get the body balanced from front to back, left to right and top to bottom, then build strength on top of that.

Gray Cook, one of the greatest minds in sports training, has a great saying “Dont try to build fitness on top of dysfunction”. In other words, get everything moving right first, then seek increases in performance. Don’t worry about how hard you can hit, how fast you can run or how high you jump before you know the body is right. If you imagine your body is a car, in most people’s cases the tires are bald and the wheels may not even be pointing in the same direction! Imagine what happens when you drop a bigger engine in that car and go to the track…? Boom. Something is going to let go. Now instead imagine that we get new tires on the car, get the wheels balanced, put new brakes in before we drop the big engine in. Is that car ready to go faster now? You betcha.

The problem most people have is that the fine tuning of the car – preparing the body to really work hard – isn’t sexy at all. It’s slow, tedious and won’t generally lead to big changes in body composition. Most people want to lose weight and get stronger. So this is a hard place to be in as a trainer. To earn a living basic business sense says we need to give clients what they want even though we know they really need something else. But once we have affected these seemingly minor changes, all of a sudden people’s progress can go through the roof.

If your posture is bad because you’re tight through your upper back and shoulders, it will stop you working hard on overhead pressing. But imagine we fix your tightness so you can stand straight and press correctly. I’m not kidding when I say I have seen someone double their press in only a few weeks, all from gaining mobility, not strength. I’ve watched someone go from barely a quarter squat to a full depth squat over a few weeks. In both cases – using more weight, or using more range – more work is being done. More work done = better results. So the time spent on these issues, while not seeming as if they will bring you closer to your goal actually make it much faster to achieve it in the long run.

Not only that, but reclaiming fuller ranges of motion satisfy one of my training longevity goals – the learning of new skills – enabling our body to feel as if it were ten years younger. Most of my clients are younger than me and don’t have my injury history yet I move better than all of them. While I’m in no hurry, I’m keen to see what difference another ten years makes.

Busy as a bee!

I’d like to say the reason I haven’t really been writing much is because I’ve been coming up with this super duper absolutely ass kicking new piece. But the truth is, I’ve just been busy.

In the last few weeks I’ve had guys competing all over the world in BJJ tournaments. For starters, a client of mine, Sophie McDermott, won the No Gi World Championship!

Sophia McDermott winning the world champs

Sophie has been on the scene for about 8 years in BJJ. She has been training with the best in the world and is the first female to ever be accepted to train at Rickson Gracie’s. Look out for my interview with her to be featured in an upcoming Oxygen magazine where we go over her competition career, diet and training.

On top of that we have just had the ADCC Gi trials here. With only 7 spots up for grabs – 2 female and 5 male – the guys from Dominance Mixed Martial Arts won 2 of them! With two other competitors making the final the results of dedicated competition practice are already showing themselves. Next year will see some massive changes in the way our academy approaches tournaments based on the success we have already had in the last few months.

I am also hard at work getting Dragon Door Australia up and running. Starting any new business is never easy, but I believe in the products having used them with such great results both personally and with my clients. To read the kind of thing people say about working with an RKC go here: http://www.dragondoor.com/instructor/1720 

The new website for all Dragon Door products will be located here: www.dragondooraustralia.com Our first order of books and dvd’s will be available soon and we expect our kettlebells before Christmas.

The new HQ for Dragon Door Australia

Obviously I am also busy training my clients, performing my own training (can barely walk thanks to a new squat specialisation program) and fitting out my new space which will be the HQ of Dragon Door Australia. It is located upstairs at 555 Victoria Street, Richmond. From here I will be able to train people and house all the books, DVD’s and kettlebells required.

Next year is going to be very exciting. With a new business – both PT and retail – along with two trips to the US to attend various courses I’ll barely have time to scratch myself. But just to make things a bit more complicated I plan to bring one of the best kettlebell instructors in the world, Senior RKC Shaun Cairns, to Australia to host a series of HKC’s. (For information on the HKC go here: http://www.dragondoor.com/hkc/hkc015.html). The HKC is a one day, 3 lift instructor certification. It is not a watered down RKC rather an eye opener for people who may be hesitant to commit to the rigours of RKC training – its nr everyone – but see the value in a shorter course to learn the principles of safe, hardstyle training and want to learn from the best kettlebell instructors in the world.

So everything is just great, sorry for not getting more words down sooner, but life has been hectic. I am hoping that now my office is set up I will have time during the day again to work on various online projects such as this.

With Christmas just around the corner I urge everyone to keep up their training, don’t get sloppy over the holidays and ruin all your good work. For anyone who wants a kick in the butt check this out: fat loss redux 2

What Martial Arts has Taught me About Kettlebells

I read a lot. Like at least a book a week, often with two going at the same time. And one of the things I admire most about the people I read about is their ability to continue learning.

You see, my job isn’t easy. Aside from just having to know how some exercise technique I also have to be able to break it down for people so they can understand it. I have to know the role correct nutrition plays both in fat loss and performance scenarios. I need to be a mentor and sometimes a counsellor. I also have to know how to market myself and sell my services plus do my own book work.

So there’s always something I can learn.

When it comes to reading about exercise science there are a couple of guys who really stand out for me. First and foremost is Pavel Tsatsouline, the founder of the RKC/ Hard Style training with kettlebells. His ability to learn from a variety of sources, keep an open mind and apply outside information into his system is amazing.

So I took great interest a while ago when I was invited to Canberra to train alongside Australian sporting legend Rob de Castella and his Goju Ryu karate friends. There are many comments in the RKC manual about elements of sanshin, the central kata in Goju Ryu. The opportunity to see firsthand what it is, how it works and learn from highly ranked black belts was a good enough reason on its own to make the trip.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

The few hours we spent on sanshin and how to properly root myself to the ground led to a new pressing PR. Not only that but it made me realise where else I could create more tension in my lifts so that I would be able to generate more strength again. It also led to an article on it all here: http://relentlesspt.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/the-root-of-the-problem/

Lately I’ve been getting back into a bit of grappling. I say a bit because despite how much I enjoy it experience shows me that I am quite fragile and usually wind up significantly injured if I train too much or too hard.

And its funny, but learning BJJ has given me a better understanding of how to perform Get Ups. I have a fairly serious love affair with the Get Up. I think that on its own it is a marvellous exercise and done in parts it can be used for rehabilitation, warm up, strength, flexibility or movement screening. So I was pretty happy to see links to it in BJJ.

Its not really surprising that the guy who introduced it to the RKC system was none other than Steve Maxwell – BJJ world champ and, in my mind at least, like a current Jack LaLanne. The Get Up has been sourced back to ancient Indian and Turkish wrestlers who obviously also saw its benefits to their grappling arts. Along the way the RKC have added tweaks to improve it for our purposes and in its current form world famous sports therapist Gray Cook now uses it for all of the reasons I gave above.

I know that what I have learnt, and passed onto my clients, has made massive differences to their training, strength and technique. Given quite a few of my clients are in fact BJJ players they have taken to these new concepts like ducks to water (like Russians to vodka?).

Bruce Lee was a smart guy – he took the useful and discarded the rest for his system. The RKC system, and Pavel, are much like the Jeet Kune Do/ Bruce Lee of the strength training world. With no ego they take what works, regardless of source, and add it to the system.

What most people don’t know is that the RKC is like a training collective. We share information globally about what we are doing and things we are working on. Problems faced in one country are sometimes solved by someone half a world away, or by an email from Pavel himself detailing exactly how to solve it.

Its amazing to me that two martial arts, one old and one comparatively new, have seen my understanding of some key training concepts sky rocket this year. All without even touching a kettlebell. So keep your eyes open when you train, you never know what you’ll learn.

The Myth of Sport Specific Conditioning

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even the slightest bit interested in sport that elite athletes spend a lot of time in the gym. In combat sports its even more obvious due to the fact that the pros often compete topless (well…the guys do anyway).

And here’s where most people start to get their wires crossed.

For most, strength training equates to bodybuilding. Now, in beginner stages, strength will increase as a by-product of starting to resistance train. But in more advanced trainees bodybuilding training is actually counter productive to reaching serious strength goals.

The primary reason goes back to the SAID principle. To become better at something you must do it a lot. “Better” in this case equals getting stronger. Strength is a skill. Specifically it teaches the body to be more neurally efficient and fire more muscle fibres with each command from the brain. This is the holy grail of strength training for athletes – strength gain without weight gain leading to increased performance. This is like taking the family car, putting a new microchip in it and then boring out the motor to get more power.

But training like a bodybuilder and seeking muscle size means that you need adequate rest. In typical bodybuilding programs you rest a week before hitting the same muscle group again. While that’s great for muscle growth it does very little for strength gains. For strength you need to perform the same movements over and over again. The more familiar the body becomes with a movement the greater the possible adaptation.  

Another problem with bodybuilding style training is that the muscles are treated as stand-alone entities and trained in isolation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The body is designed to work in integration and it is important that it be trained that way. I can’t count the number of massively developed guys I’ve seen over the years, either in the ring or on the mat, who despite looking like they’re going to rip people to shreds end up getting mauled by the little skinny guy.

There is actually a thing called intermuscular coordination – the ability of the muscles to work together to bring about a desired result. To achieve this requires the muscles learn how and when to fire. The only way to do that is to teach them and practise this over and over again.

And that is where most end up with sports specific conditioning. A vain attempt to integrate muscles together often based on what elite athletes do in their own training.

Which leads to the next interesting problem.

Just because elite athletes do something in their own training doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to replicate it in your own training. For starters, they have genetic advantages over many of us. This allows them to push harder and recover faster from their workouts. In addition, they’re professional athletes, meaning they have the luxury of afternoon naps, massage and all the rest that goes with it. An amateur athlete with a full-time job and a wife and kids has nowhere near the same recovery abilities.

Unlike most elites, our hypothetical weekend warrior probably also took up their sport late in life. In general his movement skills will be worse and he will have a multitude of postural problems associated with normal nine to five routine. So his training needs will be very different, no matter how much he thinks he needs to train like the pros.

The only other missing observation about sports specific training is usually the least noticed – just because someone is advanced in their sport it doesn’t mean they are advanced in the weight room. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing athletes and can honestly say that the vast majority don’t need anything special in terms of their supplemental training. They need to mobilise and activate, they need better core and postural endurance and they need more maximal strength. And that’s pretty much what everyone needs, just to a different degree.

The final nail in the coffin for sports specific work is that unless your sport is actually gym training then there are no movements that really mimic what you do in competition. There is no dumbbell upper cut performed with the same speed as one in the ring, likewise there is no barbell duck under go behind.

Gym based training should be used for one purpose – getting stronger. Forget trying to mimic sporting movements – it just doesn’t work. How could you replicate the speed of a golf swing, or the leg speed of a sprinter in the gym? Instead use the gym to get stronger and see what the results are on the field. If getting stronger in the gym doesn’t lead to better on field performance then you are wasting your time and your program is poorly designed.

Two workouts that stand out to me for their simplicity are totally different in terms of their look, but equal in terms of training benefits received. One of the things that distinguishes a winning fighter from a losing fighter is work capacity. Developing that work capacity is a matter of developing what is known in training circles as General Physical Preparation. This is the phase of training that athletes go through to get their body’s ready to absorb the load of more serious training. But in this day and age, of sedentary lifestyles and diminished work capacity, even elite athletes need to further develop it.

And that is why guys like Sean Sherk perform “caveman training” and Randy does his grappling circuit. The reality is that both forms of training are really doing the same thing – low load, highish rep training designed to work on general fitness and strength. To most these look like what is becoming known as anaerobic endurance or power endurance. To me, in particular Sherks’ training, looks like a day of labour. Thats’ exactly what GPP is designed to mimic. The long, easy physical work performed by farm hands, black smiths, etc. is one of the reasons why they were the strongest man in the village way back when. It develops that go all day, never need a rest kind of ability that is necessary in combat.

The addition of GPP work into your program is a worthy one. The only caveat is that it must be low intensity – exercises like Farmer’s Walks or other weighted walks, bodyweight calisthenics, easy aerobic work such as running or swimming are all idea. Adding in an extra two days a week of the Smolov Squat program probably isn’t going to help you much, rather it will just make you so tired you can’t actually do your real training.

And that’s the crux of it. Any training that makes it harder to get your skill work in – whether it be Judo, wrestling, BJJ or striking – is useless. Most people don’t need much more than a well designed plan running two days per week. I now train a variety of grapplers ranging from white to black belts as well as several stand up fighters and none perform more than two strength sessions per week. Yet all are progressing, all are injury free or getting that way and all have the energy and mental focus to apply themselves fully to their skills training.

If you’ve only got limited training time available each week skills come first, strength second as that will have the biggest knock on effect to all other factors of performance and finally conditioning.

A quick word about conditioning too – a little goes a long, long way. Just because you get great benefits from an hour or so a week doesn’t mean you’ll get double the benefits from two hours per week. What you’ll probably get is tired and sick.

Training isn’t about how much you can do in a week. It’s about how much you can absorb and benefit from. For most that number is far lower than they think and is the reason why most people never make any real advances with training.

Kokoda Wrap Up

So I’ve been home for about two weeks and everyone keeps asking me the same question…

“How was it?”

To be honest I don’t really know where to start. I can say it was hot, humid, steep and muddy. But the words don’t really do it justice. I have some pics which I will sprinkle throughout this, but again most of the pics don’t really do it justice either.

Day 1: Due to what can only be described as poor planning by my father, who had organised the trip, we flew from Melbourne to Sydney and then to PNG/Port Moresby.

Now, as anyone who travels with international connections knows you need some time to make sure that both you and your bags arrive in the same place at the same time. For us, we had an hour in Sydney. While we made it, just – our plan started boarding as we cleared Customs – our bags did not.

This is how you look when all your gear doesn't turn up.

 We had all worn our boots as they are probably the most important thing for the whole experience, but most of our essential stuff was in our bags. Well, not mine, because I had brought my pack onboard with me and that had my first aid kit, water bottles and bladder plus some snacks. The only thing I was missing was my clothes to walk in and spare socks.

But things were different for my Dad and brother – everything that was critical for them was in the luggage! We were obviously quite concerned about this. The plan was that the group would head off at 9am the next morning. As in be on a plane to start walking at 9am! Given the next flight from Australia was arriving at 11am this was going to be a problem…

In the end it turned out to be much ado about nothing. Thanks to my Dad running into a guy who used to work for him who had connections at the airport our bags turned up at 11am, we got changed at the airport and the flight out had been delayed by 3.5 hours meaning we all ended up leaving together. Which was way better than my plan which was to go flat out carrying my gear plus my Dads and make up two days of walking to catch the main group. For reasons I’ll explain in a minute we never would have managed that.

So we end up flying to Popondetta. Because of the recent crash there’s not much air traffic going into Kokoda. Popondetta is a 4 hour drive from Kokoda. While it was dry in Moresby and Popondetta we started to get a feel for how hard it rains during the drive – every single bridge we came to had been washed away! Now some of these were flimsy wooden things, but several of them were concrete! I’m no engineer but I can tell that if a river floods hard enough to wash away a concrete bridge it must really rain!

River crossing PNG style.

The drive from Popndetta to Kokoda is fairly unremarkable except for one small detail… There is a big river – like about 150m wide at its banks during wet season – that needs to be crossed. Just like the other rivers its bridge had been washed away during the severe floods in 2002. Think about that for a second – a concrete bridge spanning a 150m river had been washed away. Are you starting to see what I mean about how hard it rains? The locals now have these big inner tubes that they chuck the gear on and then the people to get them across.

Check out how wide this river is! And the bridge got washed away!

 

After a looong drive bouncing around in the back of a truck – seatbelts..? What are they..? – we arrive at Kokoda at 6.30pm. That basically leaves us time to eat and then get to bed.

The next day we’re up at 5am – not much of a change for me, but I can see most people aren’t accustomed to the early starts. I’m ready to go by 5.15am and have already eaten breakfast by the time the next person rolls up to start eating.

At 6.30am we walk a short distance down a road to the battle site at Kokoda. First off, it’s no surprise they crash planes here! The fog is thick, thick, thick, with visibility less than 100m. Standing on the high ground looking into the village I’m wondering how the hell anyone did battle here because the conditions are terrible. The hillsides are almost vertically steep and the jungle so thick at the outskirts of the village the enemy would be upon you with no warning.

Today is the first day of actual walking. It’s hot, exposed and uphill all day. We have a flat, easy walk of about 90 minutes and already I can see people struggling with the heat. The first two days are the most dangerous times as the body hasn’t yet adapted to the heat and dehydration is a very real risk. One girl in our group is suffering from gastro and is doing it tough. She spends the next two days either trying not to spew or crap her pants. Tough chick, very impressive she didn’t chuck it in. Another guy is super struggling. A bigger guy he is clearly not coping with the heat. I grab his pack, chuck it on my back, turn mine around to the front and away we go. (Taking someone’s load, whether it be their full pack, or just parts of it, is about the nicest thing you can do for someone under the circumstances).

By the end of the first day I have drunk 8 litres of water and gatorade, but apart from that the rest of the day was a doddle. My brother is coping fine, although he’s a bit fatigued. Dad also seems to be ok although I am worried after he says that the first 90 minutes was a bit tough for him! This is concerning because it was flat and I felt pretty damn easy. This does not bode well for the remainder of his trip…

This is a section of track.

We arrive at Isurava, another famous battle site, and the location of the War Memorial that night. At 5am we wake up. Again I’m ready in about 15 minutes and once I’m done I sort my brother’s feet out. He’s learning quickly how to look after himself and he’s ready a few minutes after me.

 

At lunchtime a few people are complaining of blisters and I sort their feet out. Fairly simple – needle the blister, drain fluid, wipe with alcohol to dry out and tape over once its flat.

This is how steep that section is - you have to climb it.

 

Dad is really starting to struggle. For the uphill sections he holds out one of his hands to his porter who then helps to drag him up the hills. In fairness, the hills are STEEP. Words can’t do justice to how steep they are in places. Near vertical and you use your hands to hold onto tree roots and climb up like a ladder. Behind him another porter helps to give him a push. We are at least 30 minutes behind the group into every rest stop, usually 60 minutes.

 

This goes on like this for the entire next day. I carry his pack for half the day plus my own. It’s painful to watch. He’s 69, and the effort is clearly taking its toll. On the uphills he needs to stop every 20-30 steps to catch his breath. His preparation was not great. He overdid it about 4 months before we left and injured his hip – just a stupid ego thing. So that meant he could no longer strength train, and his fitness work became minimal. Then, about 5 weeks before we left he slipped and fell and cut his leg requiring 5 stitches. The intern who did it must have done it with his teeth in the dark because it required restitching and a further 2 weeks off. With only 2 weeks before we left he was finally allowed to walk again.

 

I asked him at this point how many omens he would need before wisdom decreed that we postpone our trip. I knew that my brother and I were ready but at 69 my dad doesn’t have a lot of residual strength or fitness. There’s a really strong streak of pig-headed stubbornness in my family and not surprisingly dad didn’t want to postpone the trip. At this point I decided that it would be better to hire a porter to carry my sleeping bag and clothes because I could tell that the wheels were going to fall off sooner or later.

Steep and muddy. Notice the porter holding onto my Dad's pack to grab him if he falls.

 

Day 6 dawns and as it happens its my birthday! Everyone sings me Happy Birthday which was great. While it wasn’t my first choice for a birthday party, the card I got from everyone will be kept forever. The trek leader, Nerida, somehow managed to whip cream and make a chocolate ripple cake in the middle of the jungle. Again, big props to everyone because after an easy day we end up at Brigade Hill, I get a birthday cake and feel great after such a short day. Not everyone feels the same way – I carry dad’s pack up all the hills and he’s really struggling.

 

We have a dawn service which was moving. I had thought that I would be a mess, but the jungle is so thick, the conditions are so unbelievable that the reality of what happened here is impossible to comprehend. The porters finish off the service singing their national anthem. Their voices are so beautiful and pure. A strange highlight, but their singing is one of the things I will remember most.

 

The next day is a big day. We had a short day the day before because it was deemed that my father wouldn’t have made the trip to the next campsite that day. So we have to make up the time today. We arrive at lunch over an hour behind the main group. Nearly everyone is already eating (given it takes about 30 minutes to boil water for lunch this tells you how far behind we are).

Another section of track.

 

Several things happen during this lunch break. Firstly, my Dad says that the trip is harder than what he had expected. I’m not sure what fantasy land he was living in before we went, but Kokoda is no joke. You walk past a few memorials for people who have died either from heat stroke or heart attacks. Its got the same amount of ascension as going 2/3s of the way up Everest. Every book written about it tells of the horrid steepness, the unrelenting heat and humidity and the mud. Yet, Dad thought he would breeze through it. This tells me that even when he wasn’t injured he probably was not really working very hard in training.

 

Secondly, my brother and I are down to our last couple of water purification tabs. We started with a box of 50 and have 2 left at this point. We’re quite concerned because we’re drinking about 4 litres a day, and we know that for reasons unknown Dad has only brought 100. We ask him how many he has left thinking it will be about 20-25 as he should have drunk the same as us…

 

When he tells me he has 40 left I just about lose my shit. That means he’s only drunk 2 litres of water a day. At this point I corner the trek leader and let her know that we’re going to have a real problem sooner or later. The day is a scorcher and we spend lots of time on exposed hill tops in the sun and also in a swampy lowland with no wind and heat that is stifling.

 

That afternoon Dad stops sweating. For people who don’t know, that is bad. Very, very bad. The body uses evaporative cooling – sweat – to regulate body temperature. If you don’t sweat, your core temperature rises. Only two degrees more and you start to suffer some real problems. By this stage we are at least an hour behind everyone else. My brother, the trek leader and I are with dad and his now customary two porters. None of us have much water. I’ve been carrying Dad’s pack all day. This presents problems for me as with both my front and back covered I overheat easily, so it’s a good thing our pace is so slow or else i would probably gave gone down too.

 

The climbs up to the camp site are steep and we’re now hauling Dad up with both hands – me on one side and his porter on the other with another porter behind him assisting. The pace is slow. We come to the top of the hill and I see that camp is still a few kilometres away. Dad is in urgent need of water so I run off to go get some already treated water.  My brother tells me later that Dad is delirious and thinks I’ve run off to get a good tent (some of them leak at night). I scream into camp, grab water, alert the ambulance guy in our group to get a drip ready, just in case, and bolt back to Dad. I can tell you that a 3km run, in scorching heat, uphill, is not much fun. I get back to Dad with 2 litres of gatorade and start forcing it into him. We finally make it into camp and between the ambulance guy and the trek leader Dad is forced to drink over 5 litres of fluid that night including 2 litres of rehydrate.

 

He goes to the toilet once.

 

The group we walked with were amongst the nicest people I’ve ever met anywhere in the world. To have a group of 18 people who can all get along is rare. Because they were all so nice they voted that they would walk slowly the next two days to help dad out and make him feel more a part of the group. That kind of selfless behaviour is rare, particularly on things like this.

 

Dad is better the next day, still slow, but clearly better. He remarks to me that its amazing the difference that some water makes. Go figure, huh?

 

The second last day! It’s hot. Jungle hot. And dad is struggling right away. I think he went back to just having little baby sips of water again. I’d checked him at the end of the day and he wasn’t very sweaty. I had been thinking that he would be borderline dehydrated for a few days and I wasn’t wrong. I carry his pack up the climbs for the day. At the top of Imita ridge (very steep) we’re an hour behind. Dad drops down to the ground immediately and is out like a light. I kid you not, he just passed out on the ground.  The descent from here is down the Golden Steps. That’s kind of misleading. What it is is steep, really steep and muddy.      

Dad waking up from his disco nap.

       

 

About halfway down it starts to rain. That’s an understatement. In seconds I’m drenched. Absolutely soaked. My waterproof boots are filled with water as it runs down my legs, soaks my socks and then squishes out into my boots.  

 

Because of the rain I don’t hang around and as soon as the decision is made to make it to the next camp asap I’m off with the head guide. By the time Dad arrives an hour later assisted by 4 people, I’ve already eaten lunch. He’s clearly exhausted. While his determination is impressive I can’t help but wonder how much more enjoyable he would have found the whole experience has he actually been in shape and taken it seriously.

 

Our final day is an easy climb to Ower’s corner. Dad has got 2 porter’s plus my brother with him so I take off with the lead guide. He ends up running this final section and I go with him, happy for the chance to stretch my legs and finally get my heart pumping. We rest about 100m from the top. he’d set such a fast pace that by the time the next person turns up I’ve stopped sweating and my breathing is back to normal.   

Ower's corner.

 

The entire group gets Dad to the front and he leads us up to the finish.        

 

Overall the trip was great. Watching my brother realise that he was strong enough and fit enough to enjoy the experience was awesome. After about the second day he was just so relaxed about the whole thing. I often forget what a witty, funny guy he is. Sharing a tent with him for a week has given me a new appreciation for what a good guy he is. The downside was watching my Dad almost check out. He still doesn’t recognise how close he came to cashing in all his chips.  I find that somewhat frustrating but I guess he’s probably not going to change.

 

My message to anyone attempting this is simple – Kokoda is no joke. While I may not have struggled at all, I trained hard for this. I was walking with a 30kg pack on three days per week for up to 5 hours at a time up the biggest hills I could find. On top of that I was doing kettlebell training another 2-3 times per week and boxing at least once.

 

The mistakes I saw most people make went like this – at some point they expected it to be easy. It’s never easy. It just gets to the point where you can relax about it. Sleeping on the ground is never comfortable but you just need to accept it for what it is – sleeping on the ground. Using slit trenches for toilets is gross too. If you don’t fall in the smell could kill you anyway. The conditions are tough – hot, humid and the footing is treacherous. You can’t take your eyes off the track at any point. There are so many tree roots running across it, mud, rocks, etc. that you need to keep your wits about you the whole time. And its steep. Almost vertical in places. How on earth they fought a war here I’ll never know.

 

If you do plan on going make sure you prepare. Heavy pack, lots of hill work, plenty of strength work for the legs. Once there drink a litre per hour of movement and eat as much as you can. Go to sleep once its dark and get all the rest you can. But most of all respect it – people die there because its tough. Do not go into it thinking its like doing a marathon or whatever the new thing is for those seeking to prove their fitness. Stumbling a 5 hour marathon on 12 weeks of training won’t even get you to the finish line of Day 1. And you need to repeat that for a whole week.

Mud, mosquitoes, hills, heat, humidity and sleeping on the ground. As good as it gets.