Ross Enamait: Anyone use his programs?

[Mr Mojo Lane]

I like Ross and he has some great advice but I noticed a huugge difference in my cardio for fighting when I started incorporating long slow runs. Boxing, MMA is all HIIT style training if you think about it. So you're targeting that specific type of anaerobic/aerobic style work tALL the time through sparring, hitting the mit's, bag work, etc. etc. while neglecting the aerobic system that gets hit through road work. I'm not good with the terminology of it all but it's certainly a different work capacity going all out at 190 bpm compared to keeping your heart rate 135 bpm.

As soon as I started incorporating 5 mile runs at a nice slow pace I noticed my conditioning improved quite a bit and felt a lot better in sparring. So that's one thing I don't exactly agree with ross.. But like anything different strokes for different folks.

Do you think that is more about having a "lower drain" activity like slow runs as opposed to having another "higher drain" activity like HIIT. Is it b/c your recovery is better?

 

[Badger67]

^ I'm willing to bet it's more a result of his initial aerobic capacity being shit than anything. He's admitted before he was a lazy guy in training/fighting.

I'm on Ross' side in the argument; not anti LISS but it's over done and intervals will help more prudently, especially when you consider most skill work is muscle specific LISS.

 

[Dogstarman]

Wasnt he against roadwork or steady state saying you'll end up looking like a marathon runner and how doing steady state is useless training for a fight?

Funny cause boxers do alot of steady state work

He isn't against it. You have to look at his audience. He doesn't want you to go out and run for 20 minutes where your heart rate is at 120. There is a time and a place for that, but that isn't your bread and butter for his program. I remember he had a post about it on his website years ago. Talking how he likes to go lss in Sunday's as it develops mental toughness and good cardio.

His target audience are dudes who are trying to train for fights on their own, maybe some of these guys don't have the highest education. He does say road work is good, he just wants to make sure that you do the core exercises he prescribes.

 

[colby25]

Do you think that is more about having a "lower drain" activity like slow runs as opposed to having another "higher drain" activity like HIIT. Is it b/c your recovery is better?

^ I'm willing to bet it's more a result of his initial aerobic capacity being shit than anything. He's admitted before he was a lazy guy in training/fighting.

I'm on Ross' side in the argument; not anti LISS but it's over done and intervals will help more prudently, especially when you consider most skill work is muscle specific LISS.

Badger is most likely correct that my initial aerobic capacity was probably lacking because I soley focused on HIIT style workouts such as Ross' programs and sparring and MMA work is more of a HIIT style anyhow.

@Badger67 while I have slacked on working out NOW since I haven't really taken any MMA fights in the last 8 years but when i competed in MMA I can promise you I was not lazy. For about 5 years I dedicated myself to MMA doing double even triple sessions a day. I can tell you of jobs I've quit on the spot because they were going to interfere with sparring sessions I had planned. Unsuccessful at MMA- I'll give you that but not because I was lazy.

Ill copy and paste what Joel Jamison has to say about training cause he says it much better than I ever could back when he posted on these forums. I saved it in an email so I'll paste it here:

Training to improve your conditioning depends greatly on your specific cardiac system development. Fighters who have low cardiac output are limited by their heart’s ability to deliver oxygen and their conditioning methods should be completely different from those who have good cardiac output. Using the wrong training strategies can reduce your conditioning potential by causing too much concentric hypertrophy – as well as other negative adaptations.


The average person can get an idea of where their development lies by looking at their resting heart rate and their heart rate response to increasing intensity of activity. In my experience coaching, the optimal resting heart rates for fighters in the UFC (3-5 x 5 min rounds) is in the upper 40s to mid 50s beats per minute. Because of the longer 10 minute round, the well conditioned Pride fighters I worked with typically had lower resting heart rates (mid to upper 40s and low 50s). I also use a series of heart rate conditioning tests that are very informative as well.


Keep in mind this is only one part of the conditioning equation, but it is a very important part and is a good example of why following a generic conditioning program is unlikely to lead to the best results.


How you train leads to very specific changes in the cardiovascular system, the central and peripheral nervous system, within the muscle tissue itself, etc. For some people following high volume low intensity GPP type programs will work miracles, for others they won’t do much at all.


Likewise, sometimes high intensity intervals are absolutely great, and sometimes they are completely the wrong thing to do and will do more harm than good in the long run.


The key is knowing when and how to use the right methods at the right times.

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Eccentric hypertrophy is the result of aerobic training that takes place for long periods of time (high volume) under low intensities and lower pressures within the heart itself. Generally this means in heart rate zones of about 120-150 where the stroke volumes are the highest. In simplest terms, think about filling a balloon full of water, if you keep it full of water for long enough it stretches.


Concentric hypertrophy takes place under higher intensities (generally the upper end of aerobic heart rates and into the anaerobic rates, although this is not always the case because pressure is the primary stimulus rather than heart rate). Higher pressures mostly come from higher resistance, holding your breath, isometric tension, etc. Strength training generally causes concentric hypertrophy as well as any sport that includes intense efforts under high loading. This type of work raises blood pressure and thus pressure within the heart and over time leads to a thickening of the cardiac walls.


Concentric hypertrophy is more or less the result of pressure overload while eccentric stems from volume overload.


For someone with poor cardiac output a good program would include a lot of low intensity high volume work at the heart rates I mentioned. Low intensity GPP work for long periods of time (at least 60 minutes or more) is ideal for this. For someone with good cardiac output but lower power, higher intensity intervals up to VO2 max are the most effective - keeping in mind how this affects lactate accumulation and the resulting changes in cellular energetic within skeletal muscles however.


I'm not a big fan of tabata sprints or any protocol that uses exact work:rest ratios because they will be different for everybody.


Using tabata's protocols might cause one person's heart rate to go from 130 to 160 while someone else's might go from 110-180 and the results each person would see would be totally different. This is why all conditioning training needs to be heart rate specific to the individual.
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Bear in mind I had not known any of that information when I started incorporating 5 mile runs. I think I started to doing them to keep my weight down and in return noticed a huge difference in the gym with my stamina. According to Joel it would appear I had a poor cardiac output and inadvertently, without even knowing at the time was able to improve it by doing these slow steady jogs to improve it.

 

[colby25]

Do you think that is more about having a "lower drain" activity like slow runs as opposed to having another "higher drain" activity like HIIT. Is it b/c your recovery is better?

Hey you should check out this page here on sherdog where Joel talks quite a bit about it.

Here's on bit i'll copy from what he said on there when questioned:

"I think traditionally LSD has been used by combat athletes because they knew no better, something that is still evident in certain cultures such as thailand and is common in many boxing camps to this day."

No actually it's been done for centuries because athletes and coaches noticed it improves endurance. It's foolish to think that for generations athletes have been doing training that served no purpose or was harmful to performance because they simply didn't realize this. It's not that difficult to tell if something makes a difference in your training once you start doing it.

All you have to do is look on my own forum to see that many people have written and said they have felt improved endurance once they incorporated LSD back into their training at different points. Again, why hasn't there been some huge increase in the conditioning levels of american athletes since this whole anti LSD craze caught on?

Also, european sports science, especially the eastern europeans, and training methods are far superior to our own and they incorporate LSD type training with all athletes and discuss the benefits in their literature. Now am I saying that all combat athletes should do nothing but run long slow distances in their training? Of course not, but it does serve a purpose and it is useful for developing the adaptations I've mentioned in athletes who lack them.

Oxygen supply is one of the primary limiting factors in aerobic fitness. There are roughly three different components to cardiac output that dictate the level of central oxygen supply. The volume of the left ventricularly cavity and elasticity of diastole are central to increasing cardiac output. LSD improves these areas in a way that higher intensity methods do not for obvious reasons if you understand cardiac physiology and adaptations. Go read Viru's "Adaptations in Sports Training" and specifically the section on the myocardium. There really isn't any debating this point.

I don't have access to anything but the abstracts you listed, I mostly just access research through pubmed and get ahold of a lot of translated material out of eatern europe and elsewhere. Very little of the best research I've seen is published in english. There was just a huge 3 year study done at the University of Madrid that should be published soon that discussed the importance of aerobic system across the board in all sports so look for that.

The international shipping rates to the UK are about $14 for my book

http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/t...ystem-everyone-has-it-all-wrong.965299/page-5​

 

[phys_therapy]

Balancing long-slow runs with more high-intensity runs is almost like balancing powerlifting/weightlifting and calisthenics. Too much of one and too little of the other and you're going to be missing something. HIIT develops your ability to compete at a rate of high-intensity, but equally as importantly, recover after a bout of a high-intensity activity. That's why doing 110's/400's/440's in sets, and tracking your rest periods to reduce them is important. Even distance runners add sprints/hillruns or HIIT/fartlek training to improve their running speed, whereas if you relied on long runs only, you wouldn't improve your run speed much once you're not a beginner.

But, sometimes a long run just feels good.

Random tip: Expect to see improvements in cardiovascular conditioning every ~7-9 days after completing a cardiovascular workout.

 

[UL]

Not for a long time but the guy is legit and seems like a pretty awesome guy too.