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 💪🏼

Today I posted about Alexandr Karelin, The Russian Experiment with a record of 887 wins, 2 losses. For sure, he was competing for the Soviet Block when they were literally bathing in steroids, but that's not the point. Here's what you can learn and apply to your own training, when we look at the case study that is Karelin; - Compound lifts (multi-joint) get you strong as fuck. Training by 'muscle-group' doesn't. For the love of the suplex, follow a programme built for your combat sports performance. Not for Hyrox, Crossfit, Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, or otherwise. This is an important one. You should be aiming for a minimum of 2 compound lifts, per session, per week if you want to build mutant strength. An easy classification that we use all the time is; Day 1 = Squat Variation, Horizontal Push Variation, Vertical Pull Variation Day 2 = Hip Hinge Variation, Vertical Push Variation, Horizontal Pull Variation - Now you need to LOAD those compound lifts accordingly, to build strength there. During the Base Strength phase, work between 65-82.5% of your Predicted 1 Rep Max. During the Max. strength phase, work between 70-90% of your Predicted 1 Rep Max. And during the Power phase, work between 60-80% of your Predicted 1 Rep Max. (This is an over-simplification, but it gives you an idea of what intensities you need to be thinking about in your programming if you actually want to get somewhere with your gains.) - You need to prioritise your RECOVERY as much as your training. Read that again. The best way to stay on top of this, is start TRACKING your workloads each week. How much S&C are you actually doing each week? How many hours of skills training do you turn up for and complete each week? How many rest days do you take each week? 90% of combat sports athletes completely wing this part of their training schedule, and wonder why, 15 years later when they look back, they never made it to the top, despite having all the 'talent'.