Three MMA fights in six months is difficult, but four fights in four days is another type of challenge. How do you strategise for your fights? Take too much damage early in the tournament, and your resilience buffer won't be there for the next few days of fighting. Play it more conservative early on, you risk losing and not making it the whole week. Max did a fantastic job, winning two of his fights with submissions, and two by decision, against tough opponents. Fortunately, at the Junior level, shin pads are worn, so you're not eating raw tibia all week. However, five fights in five days is still a ton of volume for MMA, whatever the equipment rules are. I've been working with Max for a couple of years now, and this was our second time competing at the IMMA Federation's Junior MMA World Championship, held in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. You've got the best juniors there that you've never heard of. Dagestan's future talent, Europe's best, and the western hemisphere's top prospects, all trying to win. Unfortunately Max took more damage than he would have liked to in his semi-final fight, his coaches and team decided risking more in the finals was not worth it and withdrew, earning Max a silver medal overall. An important lesson here is that 'pushing through' and fighting in the finals, whilst in a compromised state, was not worth Max risking his future for. He's only 19. The rest of his career awaits. Instead, 2 weeks of complete rest (including no skills) is the plan, followed by re-assessing, visiting clinical practitioners, and rebuilding foundational components of his physicality from there (Zone 2 work, deload lifts, prehab/rehab work). My job in all of this is to manage his return to training, and then another preparation period before his next camp begins for whatever's first in 2027. And this is just one example of how I work with my athletes online. If you're looking to take your performance to the next level, and capitalise on our 5-3 Fight Method Black Friday online coaching special, send me a DM with the word 'RESILIENCE'.

55 seconds. That’s how long it took Bobby to win the title. But two years earlier, his body was breaking down faster than he could fix it. Here’s what we changed 👇🏻 Bobby’s assessment showed exactly where the gaps were: → Strength-to-weight ratio → Power output → Scheduling → Rest & recovery And so we go to work. Strength-to-Weight Ratio: Our whole goal here was to make Bobby as strong as sensibly possible, to fight and dominate at 170lb. How? By following the Combathlete standards for Bobby's strength levels, we were able to calculate that completing Level 3 would make him a real problem to deal with in the cage, and it's true. We have definitive numbers to hit at every level. We wanted to improve Bobby's Back Squat, Trap Bar Deadlift, Bench Press, and Weighted Chin Up numbers in the weight room when he was out of camp. And his maximal power, and maximal aerobic speed for his gas tank; both moving the needle on these when he was out of camp, and peaking the hell out of his conditioning during his fight camps. We focused a lot on our phasic model for conditioning - Base phase; Lactic Power and Aerobic Power Max. phase; Lactic Capacity, Alactic Power, Aerobic Power Power phase; Alactic Capacity and Aerobic Power Scheduling: We also worked with Bobby on levelling out his training schedule. Fighters are prone to doing too much, if left unattended, so we worked through his weekly skills schedule, communicating with his skills coach, as to which were lighter days, and which were heavier sessions throughout his training week. This made a huge difference for Bobby's recoverability and training output across a month. Which meant more skills to beat future opponents with. Rest and Recovery: We also inputted one full rest day per week, so that Bobby was not training, not lifting, not running, not doing anything. This also contributed massively towards being able to handle the demands of the training week without getting sick, or buried in fatigue. Here's what Bobby has to say;

How should you return to training if you've been out of the game for a bit? Should you pick up where you left off? What's the best type of conditioning work to be doing after having a break? All will be answered with this 4 week conditioning programme; 2 sessions per week, using the assault bike. Suitable for all combat sports if you have taken 4 weeks away from training, or more. Coming back to training after taking some time off, whether you have been rehabilitating an injury, life just got super hectic, or you've been travelling for work, doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to be sensible. Unfortunately, if you've been out of the game for a few weeks, your gas tank will have suffered a little. That's OK, this programme is going to show you how you can build it back up over the course of 4 weeks. You will be doing 2 conditioning sessions per week, focused on improving your heart and lungs' oxygen delivery ability. You will use the assault bike - one of the best off-feet conditioning tools for combat sports athletes. You'll begin with testing your Maximal Aerobic Speed (the minimum speed that maximal oxygen uptake - V02 max - occurs) which will give you the numbers you will need to use for calculating your percentages for your conditioning sessions. In less than 2 hours a week, for 4 weeks, you will have rebuilt your gas tank and be back on track for more intense conditioning work to continue to push your progress forwards. Time to get to work! Available now for Premium members. - Coach Harry 🫡

This week I posted a conditioning cheat sheet for fighters, shown above. I wanted to give you more detail here on why your resting heart rate can be a good indicator of what type of conditioning sessions you should be doing, and where to find them in the Classroom section here on Skool. If your resting heart rate is above 60 BPM, your best bet is going to be spending 8 weeks building better aerobic capacity. The ability of your heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to working muscles will improve if you spend time building it, which is what our 8 week BASE programme is designed to do. If you click on the 'How to weaponise your gas tank' course, and scroll down to the attached resources, you will see the 8 week BASE programme, and you can start that, today. You can perform your base work after lifting, or after skills, or on a separate day entirely. 📈 Here is an example of a BASE session; Warm up by getting your heart rate to ~130BPM across 3-5 minutes with an easy pedal on the assault bike. Perform 12 minutes of pedalling, keeping your heart rate at the top of Zone 2. Recover for 2 minutes, pedalling very slowly. Perform 3 rounds of this, total. But what if your resting heart rate is already under 55 BPM? Then it's time to perform conditioning that focuses on peripheral adaptations; your muscles and their ability to utilise the oxygen being sent from your heart and lungs. Different types of sprinting intervals is an easy way to think of this 'Peripheral' category. 📈 Here is an example of an Alactic Sprint Repeat session; Warm up by getting your heart rate to ~130BPM across 3-5 minutes with an easy pedal on the assault bike. From a rolling start on the assault bike, pedal hard and hit 85% of your maximum watts in 7 seconds. (If you hit your target wattage before your 7 seconds are up, try and hold your power output at 85% until the 7 seconds are over.) Rest completely for 35 seconds. Repeat for 12 rounds. Now I know what you're thinking. What do you do if you heart rate is under 60 BPM, but over 55 BPM?

The Combathlete's Ultimate Guide to Safe and Self-Directed Weight Cuts is a full 47-page guide that teaches you everything you need to know about cutting weight...properly. So many combat athletes just completely butcher their weight cuts. Not eating for days at a time, trying to crash the weight off. Unsure of when to eat carbs, or avoiding them completely. Confusion around eating foods that contain sodium, or when to ditch the fibre. At the extreme end of the spectrum, getting it so wrong, they end up in hospital, on the verge of kidney failure. You name it, we've seen the plethora of mistakes that combat athletes make with their weight cuts. And you can't even begin to compete at your best if you don't make weight. This guide, however, will help you do it properly, whether you have same-day weigh-ins, or a 24-48 hour time window - we have got you covered. This ebook is written by our very own, professional, and qualified Sports Nutritionist, Coach Jana. She has a 100% success rate of helping our athletes cut, and make weight, over the last 2 and a half years. Including working with PFL champ Liz Carmouche, helping her do 3 weight cuts in 6 months, to win the 2025 PFL Women's Flyweight Championship So she knows exactly what she's talking about. And she's written about how to use this weight-cutting system so you can start safer and more effective cuts, today! That exact weight-cutting system is available now for just $50 in the Classroom section 💪🏼