Fight Science Made Simple

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Fight Science made simple podcast. Episode 8. Can you believe it?Two months of doing this thing. I'm super excited, really grateful for everyone that has checked it out. We're international, I have to do the count, but we're in more countries than I thought we would be in the first two months [...0.5s] recording this. So I'm really grateful.If you're new to the podcast, welcome, I'm coach Adam Snyder. I'm a lifelong martial artist. I'm an active MMA fighter and I'm a performance and recovery coach. I've dedicated my life to martial arts. I've been training since I was 5 years old. I went to school for exercise science, and I've invested everything, all of my time, money, resources into helping fighters and martial artists just be the biggest badass as possible.Whether it's strength conditioning, nutrition, recovery, mindset, we're here to help you build Championship, Cardio, devastating power and stay on the map for life. So if you're new, welcome.If you've been listening for a while, welcome back. The best thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with friend, teammate, training partner, anyone that you think is gonna get a ton of value out of this podcast. Please share it with them.And the second thing that you can do is follow. If you don't follow already, please do. We release new episodes every single Monday, and so if you don't wanna miss out when a new episode drops, you can make sure you can follow. Um, you also can follow me at Fight Science Collective on Instagram.That's where most of my content goes out, and I live stream these podcasts every single Monday. What's up? IG, if you wanna get early access to it. I've been throwing around the idea of doing a daily podcast, even if it's just for five minutes jumping on and throwing something up on the podcast.I don't know if it's something that I wanna do yet, because it's a commitment, and when I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it.So if you wanna commit to a daily podcast, I'm gonna do it. If you wanna see a daily podcast, let me know. I don't wanna put that much energy and effort into something if it's not even something that you want. Um, but I'm throwing the idea around for a daily podcast, who knows, maybe. And, uh, in 2026 that'll be something on the Goal's list.Anyway, [...0.5s] today's episode is a really exciting episode. I'm pumped about it. We're talking about conditioning, specifically everything that we need to know, you need to know about the aerobic system. What is the aerobic system? Why is the aerobic system important? How do we develop the aerobic system?This is gonna be [...0.6s] just everything aerobic. 1:01 should give you [...0.6s] a full breakdown, full framework to help you develop your aerobic system. Whether you're a fighter or a hobbyist, it's gonna be a game changer for your gas tank. Um, it's gonna be a similar style to last week's episode. Last week's episode was a full breakdown of hypertrophy for fighters.This week is gonna be a full breakdown of aerobic development for fighters. So before I jump into the specifics of it, um, I need to make sure I give credit where credit is due, because [...0.6s] I didn't invent any of these topics that I'm talking about. Whether it's aerobic development, hypertrophy, straightening, nutrition, like, I didn't create these things. I Learned these things. I studied with these things. I experimented these things.And then I went out and applied in the real world with real fighters to develop systems to deliver these things.And so for conditioning, specifically one of my, [...0.6s] excuse me, [...0.8s] I'm a little sick, and so I'm coming over it. So I, I might have a little bit of, like, gross sickness come up in my throat during this episode.So if I [...1.0s] sniffle or cut off, that's what's happening. But I think I sound pretty good. Um, but just giving you a heads up, excuse me on that one. Um, one of my biggest [...0.6s] influences [...0.8s] and resources of knowledge when it comes to conditioning, is actually a gentleman named Joel Jameson.So I just wanna give out shout out for Joel Jameson, cause I didn't invent any of these systems, and Joel didn't either. Like, cardiac aerobic development has been around for years and years, decades and decades, and has been, [...0.5s] you know, develop in a lot of different ways.But Joel is someone that has taken these concepts and brought them over to the MMA world, and has inspired a lot of our systems. Actually his book Ultimate Anime Conditioning, um, I have it right here.This is one of the very first books on strength and conditioning for fighters that I [...0.8s] ever purchased, um, which is pretty cool, um, back when I was in college.So I was in college, UH2015 is when I started college. So a decade ago, um, a, straining conditioning was new to me and b, [...0.6s] there was no information on stranding conditioning, really.The only for fighters specifically, really the only resource was like Phil Daroo and then this book, everything else I had to figure out.Like I was sitting in exercise science classes, training conditioning classes, learning about football and basketball, and like trying to figure out how to apply these things to fighters. Um, and it was a headache and this was one of the first resources that really helped me.And you can tell, like, I, this is something that I reference [...0.6s] frequently. I revisited a couple times throughout the year just to refresh [...0.7s] my mind. I know these systems really, really well. Energy systems conditioning development, it's what we're known for. But I always wanna make sure that my, my mind is sharp.And I even revisited this [...0.6s] aerobic chapter today to make sure that I didn't miss anything when I create this episode. But this book has definitely gotten a love.So I just wanted to give credit where credit is due to Joel Jameson. He's Demetrius Johnson's strength coach. He, he's worked with guys like Matt Brown. So he's, he's a goat. He's a legend. Um, so I want to throw, throw a little credit out there where it's due. Okay um, let's talk about condition.Let's get into the meat potatoes. My goal with today's episode is for you to walk away with a really, really clear understanding of what the aerobic system is, and how you can start [...0.7s] changing your conditioning sessions and changing your approach to training and nutrition. So you could have better aerobic development if that's something that you need.Okay um, I guess before we even talk about the aerobic side of it, we have to understand what conditioning is.Because [...0.7s] I think specifically in the fight world, but I think in the general world, there's kind of a misconception to what it is to be conditioned or even what it is to do conditioning [...0.5s] in the fight space.I think [...0.7s] conditioning is widely confused with cardio. Cardio is a portion of conditioning, right? All cardio is conditioning, but not all conditioning is cardio. And so conditioning is [...0.5s] basically your ability to meet the energy production demands of your sport. And so if we look at MMA, for example, there are [...0.5s] three different systems that produce energy in MMA. There's the aerobic system which we're talking about today.This is how your body uses oxygen and some other things that we're gonna talk about to break down energy, to break down oxygen to produce energy. Then we have two anaerobic systems. This is energy production without oxygen.So you have the lactic system and you have the a lactic system. And we're not gonna talk about the other two energy systems today. I'm planning on doing episodes for each individual energy system.I'm just going to hone in and focus on the aerobic system for today's episode. But it's important to know that in fighting in MMA, [...0.5s] you use all three energy systems at different times.And so in order to have a championship level gas tank, to be [...0.5s] properly conditioned for MMA, you can't just do cardio. You can't just be aerobically developed, all three energy systems need to be developed.Okay, we're gonna talk about the other ones at a later time. We're just covering mainly the aerobic system today. And I keep looking down, cause I have a lot of notes here in my chicken Strat scratch handwriting, and I wanna make sure that I don't miss anything. Uh, so I took a lot of notes to make sure that I cover everything, uh, that we need, which is good. Um okay, so [...1.0s] your aerobic system, it breaks down energy with oxygen.Okay, very important to understand. Um, [...1.1s] great awesome, just gonna collect my thoughts, appreciate your patience on that. Okay, [...1.4s] boom, okay, so I'm back. So the aerobic system, it breaks down energy with oxygen. It also [...0.5s] breaks down energy, produces energy, um, with carbs and with fats.Okay, this is a really, really important under concept, understand these are called substrates, these are the fuel for your aerobic system for your conditioning. And so when we're doing aerobic development, your aerobic system is basically activity that lasts longer than two minutes.So once you cross that two minute Mark or even up to that two minute Mark, any kind of [...0.5s] activity that you can do for a really sustained duration, this is fueled by the aerobic system.The reason that you can use the aerobic system for so long is because of the oxygen side of things. When you're performing activity at that low enough intensity to use oxygen, [...0.7s] you're really not producing any [...1.2s] byproducts or waste or heat or lactate that's going to fatigue you and burn you out.And so you can just go and go and go and you're really only limited by your body's ability to supply working muscles with oxygen and then your muscles ability to utilize that oxygen. Okay.So when we understand this, then we can understand, okay, if we want to develop our aerobic system, that means we either have to increase how much oxygen goes to our working muscles or [...0.5s] how much oxygen our working muscles can [...0.7s] use.Alright. So either oxygen supply or oxygen utilization, those are gonna be the two biggest pillars in improving your aerobic system.The third pillar that we add to that is what we call substrate availability or fuel availability.And this is either through carbs or through fats. These are the two substrates, the two fuel sources that your aerobic system loves to produce energy. Um, and specifically in fight sports, we wanna rely heavily on carbohydrates.The reason you're gonna wanna rely on carbs more than fats is because fats are more calorie dense, which means they have more calories to them. And there are more complex [...0.5s] biological structure than carbs, so they take longer to break down.And so the rate at which your body can break down [...0.5s] fat with oxygen to produce energy is just a longer duration than with carbs.And so it's not very reliable or dependable for sport. You're gonna primarily use fats for energy production with you aerobic system at lower intensitys, like Zone 1, some of zone 2 conditioning.But if we're talking in terms of anime Jiu jitsu boxing, Muay Thai combat sports, you're gonna be in your Zone 3, zone 4, zone 5 heart rates. And these heart rate zones rely on carbohydrates, just because you can rapidly break down carbs.And it's really interesting, like when I start [...1.0s] working with a fighter or a client, and they're struggling with gassing out, sometimes it's not a training issue, but it's a fueling issue. And we just change when we time their carbs and how many carbs they eat in a training session in a day.And they immediately see improvements their gas tank because there's more substrate availability. There's more fuel, there's more fuel in the engine that your body can break down.And especially in fight sports where we're simultaneously trying to for competition while also decreasing our body weight to cut and make weight. Your body is in a calorie deficit.And what a lot of fighters do is they cut their carbs drastically, cut their carbs, cut their carbs too much. Because well, when you cut carbs, you're gonna lose some water, because having carbs, having sugar in your muscles, in your bloodstream, it's gonna cause a little bit of water retention.And so what fires think is while, like, when I eat carbs, it makes it hard for me to make weight. So I'm going to cut my carbs because then I see the number on the scale goes down.And [...1.0s] yes, you're gonna lose weight when you cut carbs, but you're also tanking your performance because you just don't have the fuel to perform on the mats, which is why [...0.6s] when my fighters are in camp, we give them as many carbs as we possibly can without it causing them [...0.6s] to gain weight.And then we cut the carbs at the end of camp in fight week, the weeks leading up to the fight. Because they're not training us hard.They've already done the work that they need to do. They're already peeking for the fight. Now we just need to focus on the weight cut. And so we can remove the carbs that water is gonna drop. They can make weight and then we refuel. So we're not gonna talk too much about the substrate side of it. We, kind of, just covered it.Just know, like, carbs are gonna be your best friend when it comes to the aerobic system. Um, [...0.5s] you should really focus on the aerobic system if you struggle to go the distance.So if the fight gets out of the first round, or even, like, you're starting to gas out in the second round, you have a hard time making it through round three, round four, round five, you probably need to focus on aerobic development.If you struggle with recovery in between rounds, or even recovery in between higher intensity burst of activity like wrestling scrambles or clinch work, you probably need to focus on some aerobic development.And if your resting heart rate is in the mid 50s or higher, you probably need to focus on the aerobic system.A really great sign of a well developed aerobic system is a low resting heart rate, either in the low 50s or the high to mid 40s. That's the sweet spot for aerobic development. So that's really important.So one way that you can improve your aerobic system is just by having more fuel, giving the right carbs at the right time. So your body has the energy to then break down and produce it into ATP, which is basically, [...0.6s] you might have heard before, ATP atacine triphosphate.This is basically like energy currency for your body break down ATP. You have ATP and then you can perform activity.The other two ways that you can improve your aerobic system is either by improving your oxygen supply, which we touched on, how much oxygen your muscles can receive and then your oxygen utilization, how much oxygen those working muscles can [...0.7s] use once the oxygen gets there, okay, great, like we have all this oxygen [...0.7s] at our muscle, but can our muscle actually use the oxygen?And so we're gonna talk about [...0.6s] how to develop both of those [...0.9s] different aspects of just those different pillars of aerobic development separately.Um, [...0.5s] the first part that we're gonna cover is your oxygen supply. Um, this is basically like cardiac output, right? How much blood can your heart put?Now the reason we want to increase how much blood your heart can put out is because the oxygen gets, is delivered in your muscles through your blood, right? If you think about it, blood goes through your heart, your lungs oxygenated.So your lungs inject the blood with oxygen, then your heart shoots it out through your veins. Your veins deliver the blood to your muscles. Your muscles use the oxygen that deoxygen blood circles back to your heart through arteries, and then the cycle repeats itself. Okay, and so there are two ways that you can increase your oxygen supply.Okay, the first way that you can increase your oxygen supply is by increasing the total volume of blood that your heart can hold.And we do this by increasing the size of your left ventricles is just heart has four chambers, and the chamber that, the last chamber that your heart uses to boom, pump blood and send it all throughout the body is called the left ventricle.The bigger that left ventricle is, the more blood it can hold. And the more blood it can hold, the more blood can go throughout your body. And if you can send more blood throughout your body, that means your muscles are going to get more oxygen. You're gonna have an increased oxygen supply.Okay, so we wanna increase the size of our left ventricle. The other way that we can increase oxygen supply is by increasing the strength of your heart, increasing the force that your heart can produce.Because if you have a heart that can maybe it's, you know, it's a little soft heart and it can't produce a lot of force. It's gonna have to send blood throughout your body with a lot more beats. But if it's strong, if that thing's beefy, I think that thing's got power. It can send the same amount of blood throughout the body with less beats.This is why a low resting heart rate is important. If you can supply your body with oxygen with less beats per minute, then you're going to be able to [...0.6s] do more work before your heart and before your body fatigues.And so by increasing the contractile strength how hard your heart can be, it's gonna help you send more blood throughout the body. And we have to train both of these things separately, right?First we have to improve the volume of the left ventricle, the total volume of blood that your heart can hold. And then we have to improve the strength of your heart, how strong and powerful your heart is.So you have this big chamber [...0.7s] full of blood in your heart and you have this big strong heart boom and in one forceful beat boom, it sends so much blood throughout your body and you're gonna have more oxygen to use.Okay. And so [...0.8s] I like to develop both of these [...0.5s] separately, both of our methods for oxygen to supply separately.The method that I like to use to develop the size of your heart chambers is called the cardiac output method. Okay? We're increasing what's called your aerobic capacity here. Cardiac output method is basically like what everybody thinks of when it comes to cardio.Like when you go on a run and you're holding a long, sustainable pace, you are using the cardiac output method. You are increasing the size of your left ventricle. And the reason that this is important, like you need to make sure that you have like a, like a moderate resting heart rate. So zone 3, 130.Do 150 beats per minute. And then what we have to do is we have to perform activity at this heart rate for a long duration of time, 30 to 90 minutes.And the reason that we cannot develop this cardiac output, the size of the left ventricle with higher intensity intervals, is because [...0.5s] we need to [...1.2s] grow the size of that chamber through eccentric contraction.And so if you're [...0.5s] doing high intensity activity in your heart's beating really fast, well you're not giving your heart enough time to fill with blood and cause the left ventricle of your heart to grow.And so we need to do a more sustainable moderate pace at, you know, zone 3 because what happens is your left ventricle [...0.5s] slowly fill with blood. And as it slowly fills with blood, it's slowly going to grow.It's slowly going to expand and doing this enough times, the adaptation is going to occur, is just a total volume change. It's like when you blow up a balloon, right? If you [...1.3s] do a lot of short breaths into the balloon, that balloons not getting very big.But if you take your time [...1.9s] and you slowly blow up a balloon, the balloon going to expand to a really, really high volume. And then when you let all the air come out of the balloon, the balloons a little stretched out, it's a little bit bigger than before you expanded it with air. And your heart works the same way. You have to give that left entrical time, it needs to slowly expand.And then once your heart contracts and the blood is out of that ventricle, your, your left ventricle is a little bit bigger. And so you train that enough times, you're going to increase the size of the chambers of your heart.Then you're going to increase the total amount, total volume of blood that heart can hold, which means then you're going to increase the total amount of oxygen that's being supplied to all of the working muscles, which is super important.Um, I personally don't like to use runs or long sustainable cardio to train this. There are a lot of fighters that love it and it's [...1.3s] almost like the common trend. Like you gotta go on runs to have a great gas tank. I personally don't like runs.A I think they're boring. B I think there are [...0.5s] better more specific ways to develop your aerobic capacity than with just going on long runs.What I like to do specifically is skill training. So I'll either do bag work or I'll maybe like shadow spot, shadow boxing or shadow wrestling if you're a grappler. And I'll have my heart rate monitor on my phone in front of me. I either use the whoop or I like the Polar H10 to chest trap monitor.And I'll just make sure that my heart rate stays in Zone 3 for an extended period of time.So for example, let's say I'm doing bag work. I might just work on my basics like I'll throw 50 jabs, 50 crosses, 50 left hooks, 50 right hooks, 50 rear kicks, 50 switch kicks, 50 front kicks, and I'll work at a pace that maintains that Zone 3 heart rate. If my heart rate starts to go a little bit higher, I'll bring the pace down.If my heart rate starts to dip a little bit lower, I'll bring the pace up. And then I'll just sustain that for the 30 to 90 minutes, whatever. I need to work on my aerobic capacity. If I'm being honest though, I don't really work on my aerobic capacity that much because I don't need to.Like my resting heart rates in the 40s, I can go all day long. Like aerobic capacity isn't really the biggest limiting factor in my game for my fighters that have a ton of power but gas out when they're going the distance, like they can't sustain it or maybe their resting heart rate is higher.We're gonna put a lot of energy into the cardiac output method to improve their aerobic capacity.That so that's the first way that we focus on improving the oxygen supply [...0.6s] of your heart.The second way that we improve the oxygen supply of your heart, which is through the strength of your heart. The stronger your heart is, the more powerful it is, the harder it can contract, the more blood you can send throughout your body. Right? We already touched it.I reviewed a little bit. We just spent this time [...0.8s] expanding how much blood [...0.5s] the chambers of your heart can hold.And so if we have a soft heart, right? We have this big chamber, but then our heart doesn't beat hard enough to send all the blood throughout our body in one beat. It's gonna take a lot [...1.3s] of faster beats, shorter beats to supply the body with blood.So maybe [...1.3s] you have a low resting heart rate, but then when you start pushing the pace, your heart rate shoots up really quick. Maybe you're doing moderate intensity, like it's not that hard, it's not that intense, but your heart rates in Zone 4 or your heart rates in [...0.5s] zone 5.You probably need to focus on cardiac power. You probably need to focus on how strong your heart is, how hard your heart can contract because you have the oxygen, the volumes there, but your heart has to work really, really hard to supply the rest of your body and send that total volume to working muscles.And so the way that we improve the strength of your heart at the Fight Science Collective is through what we call cardiac power intervals. Our intervals for this are called reds, bone, bone line intervals. Um, [...0.5s] these are hard as shit.Okay, is this some of the hardest conditioning that you're going to do? What you need to do is you need a red line. You need to get your heart rate into Zone 5 and then you need to hold it there for one to two minutes. It's a short duration of work.You have to get there for one to two minutes. And what this does is by getting your heart rate to near max 90 to 100% of your max heart rate and then holding it there.Your heart has to work really hard. It has to beat so hard to send blood throughout the body because like we talked about with aerobic capacity and cardiac output, it's a moderate pace.Your heart has time to fill with blood and expand and cardiac power. Your heart doesn't have that time because you're going at such an intense pace. Your heart has to beat so hard in order to [...0.5s] keep the movement going, to supply [...0.6s] the muscles with oxygen and blood.And so by training in the zone you're increasing the total amount of power and the total strength and how hard your heart can contract. And this is going to help improve the total oxygen supply. So there are some other methods that we can use to improve the supply side of your aerobic development.These are my two favorite methods. Improving your aerobic capacity with cardiac output, and then improving your heart's strength with cardiac power intervals. So that those are my two number one ways to [...1.4s] improve oxygen supply when you're fighting or training.Okay, so that's one pillar of the aerobic system, right? Just a quick review. Aerobic system [...0.5s] is how we aerobically supply energy. We energy production with oxygen. It's our longest, most sustainable system. It's not very powerful, but it's a very sustainable system.Three pillars to developing the aerobic system is substrate availability, so having fuel, carbs and fats, oxygen supply, which we just covered. How much total oxygen can go to working muscles?And now the next part, oxygen utilization. Once the blood and oxygen has got to your muscles, your muscles have to be able to use it, because if your muscles cannot efficiently utilize the oxygen that's there, doesn't matter how great your oxygen supply is, you're still going to gas out.And the number one way [...0.8s] that you can improve the oxygen [...0.7s] utilization of your muscles is by increasing the total amount of mitochondria that your muscle has. Maybe you've heard of mitochondria and like high school [...0.6s] chemistry, maybe when you went to college.But they're basically the, the powerhouses of the cell. They're the part of your cell that [...0.6s] produces energy. And all your muscles are, your muscles are just a bunch of cells.They're living organisms like every other part of your body. And so if we have more mitochondria, you're gonna be able to use more oxygen, uh, which means you're going to be able to push the pace for longer while using the aerobic system.Uh, my [...0.5s] favorite way to improve oxygen utilization with our clients is called Threshold Training. Um, [...0.5s] one thing that we didn't talk about yet, which I think is a really important concept is what we call our anaerobic threshold or our lactate threshold.The way that I like to think about it is think about a line. This is right here underneath the line, you have your aerobic system. This is any activity [...0.6s] primarily being contributed through aerobic energy production. And on the other side of that line you have your anaerobic system, any activity that's primarily fueled [...0.5s] with an aerobic energy productions. Your lactic system is your a lactic system.These are your most powerful movement, your power shots, your hard scrambles, your intense work.What happens is when you cross this line, this aerobic threshold that your body shifts from primarily using oxygen to primarily not using oxygen. And once you cross that line, you're very powerful, is very intense, but then you also gas out very quickly. Okay.And so if we can train at and around this anaerobic threshold right around this line, we can adapt and we can actually increase our anaerobic threshold. And when we increase our anaerobic threshold, that means we can push higher intensities for longer while staying in the aerobic zone.And if you can push higher intensities for longer while in the aerobic zone, that means you're not going to gas out as quickly, or you're not going to gas out as long cause you can push a pace, you can grapple hard, you can throw a lot of powerful strikes, you can clinch hard without gassing out.And then you have a wrong aerobic systems, you can recover quick, and you can do it over and over and over and over again.So we wanna increase our lactic threshold, and we wanna increase the total number of mitochondria that your working muscles have. And this is the best way that we're going to be able to improve our oxygen utilization. And so my favorite way to improve this is through threshold training. Threshold training is intense.It's not as intense as the cardiac power method, but it's still fairly intense to do threshold training. You're going to [...0.5s] get your heart rate at or around your lactic threshold.We run tests at the Fight Science Collective to help us determine what that might be for our clients. Um, typically, like, it's around zone 4, the higher to middle ends of your zone 4 is where your lactic threshold is going to be.Once you get it there, you're going to want to maintain there for two to five minutes.Start with two minutes and then you wanna add volume, Wanna progress. Maybe you're adding rounds every week, maybe you're adding time every week. We don't wanna surpass that five minute Mark. Um, but two to five minutes is where you want to live. After you complete a rep, you're going to want to completely rest.Same thing with cardiac power. You wanna completely rest. Your heart rate should come down to 120 to 130 beats per minute. It should take two to five minutes of complete rest. If you're highly conditioned [...0.8s] and peeking for a fight, maybe you can recover that time in one minute, just like you have one minute in between each round. Um, but you need a complete rest. You can put the best effort forward.A lot of times when fighters condition, they just wanna be as exhausted as possible. So they do these really intense circuits, these really intense rounds with not a lot of rest.One minute rest, 30 seconds rest in between each round of work. And it kills them, it gets them tired, but it doesn't really [...0.6s] specifically and intentionally improve anything.And so if we're trying to intentionally improve your oxygen utilization and intentionally improve your lactic threshold, then you need to fully recover in between rounds, so you can put a high quality amount of work in.Cause if you're tired going into the next round, if you're burned out, if you're still fatigued going into the next round, you're not gonna be able to be at around the anaerobic threshold.You're not gonna be able to to handle it. You're not gonna be able to hold it there, and you're probably gonna either [...0.8s] slip more into anaerobic development. That's probably what's going to happen where now you're training [...0.8s] your lactic system or you're just not gonna be able to push a high piece at all.And now you're gonna slip more into like aerobic capacity or lower levels of your aerobic system.So you need complete rest in order to get that heart rate to zone 4 and then hold it there. Um, typically all of these methods, whether we're doing, um, cardiac output or we're doing [...0.6s] cardiac power or we're doing threshold training, we like to do one to two sessions per week.It really depends on the client. Uh, it depends on what their skill training session is. Like, are they doing any other kind of conditioning with a team, anything like that? Um, work schedule, family schedule, sleep schedule, strength schedule.Like there's so many components and that's why I believe in an individualized approach. Like, every single one of our clients has a different program and a different approach to developing these things.Because [...0.6s] there's just, there's just so much variability in combat sports and lifestyle that, so one size fits all approach doesn't, doesn't work. Um, so you gotta plug, you gotta play, you gotta figure out what works best with your schedule, with your life, with what you need.Um, let me just check my notes here, cause I don't wanna make sure that I missed anything for you. Um, this is really important, um, amazing, [...0.5s] awesome.So, so far we've covered specifically what conditioning is. We've talked, talked about what the aerobic system is and why it's important. We've talked about the three pillars to developing your aerobic system, oxygen supply, [...0.6s] oxygen utilization, and substrate availability, fuel availability.We've talked about how to develop each pillar of the aerobic system, talked about how to increase oxygen supply using things like the cardiac output method and cardiac power intervals.We talked about how to increase oxygen utilization by increasing the number of mitochondria muscles have, and increasing your lactic threshold with threshold training.Um, now the next thing in the last thing that I wanna talk about, and then we'll put a rap to this episode is when to train the aerobic system, and when to train each pillar of the aerobic system.Okay um, [...0.9s] so if we think about the phases of a fight cycle, we have the off camp, this is the time where you have no fights booked. We have the pre camp, this is your time leading up to a fight. Maybe you have something booked, maybe you getting ready for camp. This could be two to six weeks out from fight camp. And then you have fight camp.This could be anywhere from six to 12 weeks leading up to a fight and peaking. If you're like a low level pro or you're an amateur, you're not going to have these perfect phases. This isn't like a sport like football where you have the same calendar year [...0.5s] all the time and you can periodize and organize the perfect training blocks and system.It's gonna be very variable. You're gonna fight four or five times a year. You're gonna get ready for a fight guy. You're gonna pull out, you might get hurt, fighter might get hurt, fight might get scrapped, you take a last minute fight.Like these pretty [...0.9s] perfect phases, they don't exist. And so what I always do with my amateurs and my lower level guys is we identify like, what are our two or three cops or fights that are like big fights? Are they title fights?Are they headliner fights? And what are [...0.5s] less important fights? Are they jiu jitsu competitions?Are we taking a can as an opponent to get our confidence or our record up? Right? Like we have to kind of decide [...1.1s] the priority of, especially as an amateur, like no one's gonna remember your amateur career, I'm sorry, but it's not that big of a deal.So you should fight as many times as you can, and all of those fights are gonna get white, and then you're gonna go pro, and that's when the fights really matter. But even as a lower level pro, like, you should fight as much as you can, but you should also be smart about the matches that you take.Cause if you're just taking everyone, and you're taking guys that you shouldn't be fighting, cause they're just better than you, or they have more experience, and it fucks up your record. Your chances of getting called to a higher promotion have significantly gone down.So you wanna fight as much as you can as an amateur, and then be smart as a professional. But anyway, I digress. That's a whole other conversation. Um, when it comes to the phase of the fight cycle, typically your aerobic system.We're primarily going to develop your aerobic system when you're in the off camp, when you have no fights booked, or you're not looking at a date or anything like that.The reason [...0.8s] I like to do that is because it takes longer to develop the aerobic system, the aerobic system, [...0.6s] specifically the training methods for the aerobic system are [...0.6s] not very specific to [...1.0s] the fight itself.And so as we get closer to a fight, I like our training to be as fight specific as possible, which is why aerobic training is better in the off camp.And the adaptations that you make aerobically just carry over longer. Like, you train the aerobic system for 2, 3 months, maybe a month even. And you're gonna have those adaptations for 3, 4 months even if you're focusing on other things. And by the way, like, you spend a lot of time aerobic heavy focus.The [...0.5s] volume of aerobic work that you're gonna get just from skill training is going to be enough to maintain your aerobic development.So you don't need to keep going on runs every single fucking day. Like, once your aerobic systems good, it's probably good for a while until you start getting into, like, five, five minute rounds, championship level rounds, things like that.Um, [...0.6s] that being said, um, something like the erote, the galactic system, or yeah I mean the galactic system, it's so powerful. You can develop it so quickly, but the carryover is much smaller. So you can train the alactic system for like two or three months, you can get powerful as fuck.And then you stop prioritizing it and you're probably going to see diminishes in your power output, which is why I like to train the galactic system while we're in camp because it's not as fatiguing because the volume isn't as high. It's just more intense and you're peaking your power output. So those adaptations are rolling right over in the fight night.Again, I digress. Aerobic development [...0.7s] should be focused on when you are in camp specifically like your aerobic capacity and your cardiac output, your lowest intensity, longest duration aerobic development.Your cardio [...0.5s] should be developed in the off camp. Like, I don't do any of it with my guys when they're in the pre camp or they're in camp. Because if you're waiting till you're in fucking fight camp to start taking your training seriously and getting in shape, your priorities are screwed up.Like, if you're not aerobically developed when you're in fight camp, you got problems. You should not be focusing on aerobic development, at least the, the lower levels of aerobic development while you're in fight camp. Do that shit in the off camp, be a fucking professional.Okay, when it comes to [...1.0s] developing your lactic threshold, so threshold training improving, increasing the total amount of mitochondria for my guys will do that [...0.5s] a little bit in the off camp, but not too much.Will primarily do that in the pre camp or in the early stages of camp is when we'll focus on threshold training and then cardiac power training, because it's so intense, you can't really do it for a long time, because it's super super, super fatiguing.And so what I'll do that with my guys is either in the pre camp, maybe a little bit in the early camp, but mostly in, like, the mid to later phases of the fight camp.Um, you'll be able to introduce cardiac power, all right, um, again, there, there are a lot of things that go into developing [...0.6s] a good gas tank as a fighter. Um, these are just three of the methods that I like.Cardiac output, [...0.6s] cardiac power, and threshold trading. There are eight methods that we use at the Fight Science Collective, depending on what our clients need. Um, and the aerobic system is not the only thing that you need to build a championship gas tank.Okay, it's important, but most fighters just focus on the aerobic system. I'm gonna do these crazy hit circuits. I'm gonna train a lot, I'm gonna go on runs.Okay, awesome, but we also need to focus on the lactic system and the galactic system that's gonna be for later episodes. I think next week I'll cover the lactic system and the week after that I'll cover the galactic system. This is everything aerobic system.I think I covered everything. If you have any questions, either leave it in the comments on the podcast. The best way you can leave a question for me is to shoot me a DM on Instagram though at Fight Science Collective.I Wanna Jam pack as much information into this podcast as possible, so it's valuable for you and also simple. Um, it's challenging to take these complex [...1.0s] topics and simplify them into something that you can boom, take and use right away, uh, and apply to your training today. But I hope it helped a lot. Um, follow me at Fight Science Collective on Instagram. I break these things down all the time.Um, I'll actually [...0.7s] have a resource if you wanna know which energy system you should be focusing on. I put together a resource. It's the same system diagnostic, the same tests that I run my clients through to identify what energy system they need to be focusing on. I put it in a quick PDF. It's free, so I'll put it in the show note.You can grab that and start testing yourself out. And if you don't wanna figure this out yourself, cause [...0.5s] it's hard, and you don't have the time, and you don't wanna guess, and you wanna be like a professional and professionals investing themselves, and you want some help, you can just on Instagram, DM me the word collective, and you can inquire about 1:01 coaching. We've worked with hundreds of clients.I've been doing this since 2,019 with the Fight Science Collective. Guys in the UFC like Shane Burgos. I have a ton of pros that are about to [...0.6s] make the push to the UFC in the next year. Like a bunch of undefeated guys that hopefully will get the call up next year, and a lot of amateurs that are looking to make that pro turn as well.So if you want help with conditioning, straining, conditioning, putting a great gas tank together, just let me know, DM me collective on Instagram. I love to help. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week. Have a great day.