Episode #22: Robert Schwartz Strength and Conditioning for Boxers, MMA Fighters and other Combat Athletes

September 08, 2021

In this interview we discuss:

Assessing athletes
Defining top priorities for each camp
How he progresses his athletes throughout camp
What a typical workout structure looks like
High Intensity vs Low Intensity work
Coordinating with Skill Coaches
A typical week of training
Needs of grapplers vs boxers
Addressing weak links (hips, core, etc)
and much more.

Rob Schwartz is the Strength and Conditioning Coach/Sports Nutritionist for Adrien Broner and other boxers trained by Michael Stafford since early 2011. In that time, Broner has won World Championships in 3 different weight classes and the team’s record is 52 – 1. From 2009 to 2013, Schwartz was Director of Strength and Conditioning within the United States Olympic Committee for USA Wrestling, Boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, Karate, Fencing and Gymnastics. At the 2012 Olympics his athletes won 31 medals. He then became the Combatives Strength Coach for US Army Special Forces at Fort Carson and took part in the Special Op’s Combat Preparation course. He has also coached a Bellator Champion and at 4 Division I universities.

If you’d like to connect with Rob, please email him at [email protected]

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with ROBERT SCHWARTZ

COREY: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley from Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone here with Rob Schwartz. Rob, how’re you doing?

ROBERT: Good. How are you?

COREY: Good, man. Thanks so much for calling in. I appreciate it.

ROBERT: No problem. Thanks for having me.

COREY: So for the guys that are listening Rob, give everybody a two minute bio on yourself.

ROBERT: Well, I’ve been Strength and Conditioning coach for 15 years now. I got my start kind of the usual way, worked in 4 Division 1 universities. Then eventually I became the Director of Strength and Conditioning for the Olympic Training Center and all the US Olympic combat sports, combat and acrobatic actually; so wrestling, boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, sprinting and karate on the combat side. Started working with Adrien Broner about four years ago. His coach Mike Stafford had coupled with his guys in the Olympic system, or the Americas only three time Olympian, [incomprehensible] was one of his guys. Mike saw how I was working with [inaudible] those guys, asked me if I wanted to work with a pro at the time. I had no idea, he just hand me the keys to a Ferrari, and we’ve been together four years now, won three titles.

In the meantime I’ve also worked with 10th Group Special Forces with the United States Army. I did that for a little while, worked really closely with their combatants of their hand to hand combat training. I actually took part in the Special Op’s Combat course and here we are. Now I’m working full time in pro boxing, going out to camps wherever those may be and just getting guys ready for fights.

COREY: Right on. So Rob you had quite a few different types of people. I mean, you’ve had wrestlers, you’ve had boxers, and you’ve had Special Forces. With a lot of the strength and conditioning stuff that’s out there, what are some of the things that you’ve seen change? I mean you’ve been working with these guys just for quite a few years. And even in those few years, I’m sure things have changed quite a bit. What are some of the trends that you’ve kind of seen come and go?

02:16

ROBERT: When I first got to the training center and working with combat guys, everything seemed to be the long slow duration aerobic base training, regardless of when it was in the preparation cycle. So guys were doing eight mile runs as part of their weight cutting strategies and things like that. And it was a big thing at the training center if a guy was trying to cut weight or keep his weight down even, they wouldn’t really touch the weights or any kind of strength exercises. They would just get on the treadmill and run like a marathoner. We introduced some more metabolic protocols, explaining the coaches and the athletes how we can continue to increase strength and power while still really increasing that metabolic demand, that’s going to burn even more calories and cause a greater raise in metabolism over the long term, rather than just getting on the treadmill and jogging at a steady pace for 30 minutes to an hour, three times a week.

So that was kind of big step for us. It took a little bit of time, got to be honest. But I’d say within my first four to six months there, enough of the guys were willing to give it a try, then it just spread like wildfire. And you started seeing wrestlers who would only come in for camp here and there with the National team, they’d learn some of our stuff and then they would implement it wherever they were training, whether it was back in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, what have you.

So that was one of the things and we really tried to work on getting the guys to understand a little bit more about the lactate specific and alactic work to rest ratios and intensities required there for those energy systems and the importance of those energy systems because they are an anaerobic sport. Not that aerobic is unimportant, you have to have that base specifically for recovery, but just getting to understand there’s more to this than just trying to get that weight down and going out and wrestling in that state. So that’s one of the biggest things I’ve seen.

04:30

COREY: Right on. So when you have a new athlete coming in to work with you, and you’re starting to camp with a new guy, what are some of the ways that you kind of assess or test your new guy?

ROBERT: So brand new athletes, what I do is I usually — I just call it a functional postural. So on the postural side, I just have them stand how they normally stand. I just say them, just relax. I don’t want you to stay in that tension. But I just look for certain things. Maybe I’m looking for anterior pelvic tilt, maybe I’m looking for if at least one of their foot is externally rotated just in their normal posture. I’m looking for slouch shoulders or internally rotated humerus, neck being so tight their jaw is pulled forward and their head is kind of protracted forward. I’m looking for all sorts of those types of things that are going to tell me a little bit about what muscles might be tight, what muscles might be a little bit inactive.

And then also, I have them do some type of a functional movement. I prefer the overhead squat, but some guys, especially in the grappling sports, their joints are a little bit beat up and that may not be the best way to assess them. So I’ll put them in some type of squat pattern. If they’re fairly healthy athlete, I’ll just have them do an overhead squat test with a PVC pipe. So all together, my functional and postural takes less than five minutes.

And then from there, what I can do is, I look at their top three priorities of need and I write them a corrective exercise program based on those three priorities and what I’ve found is, if you properly address needs 1, 2, 3, the needs 4, 5, 6 and beyond, they kind of come out in the wash. So that’s first thing I’ll do with them.

And like I said, between the assessment and giving them the protocols and teaching them protocols, I mean, we’re talking about a total of 20 minutes to half hour of actual time to get it assessed and taught, and now they’ve got something tangible in their hands that’s specific to them and we can start hitting the ground running with our developmental program, which is very athletic based; very simple movements, teaching the squat pattern, teaching the hinge pattern, teaching them how to hit set up properly on exercises, a lot of core stability and then they’re in that developmental phase for however long they need. Some athletes have graduated within a month in that developmental because they’re already pretty well trained. Others are may be in it for a lot longer.

But of course, performance testing, I’m not real big on performance tests. Usually what I’ll see is, once we get working and they’re in that developmental, like I said, it’s all pretty introductory stuff, I’ll see a lot of different things to assess on a daily basis and then that’ll give me an idea. And we can get numbers just based off of what they’re doing with their lifts in the program right away. So I don’t like do a full on Testing Day or anything like that. Because my feeling is you’re not paying me to make numbers better, you’re paying me to win. So let’s get working toward that win. Let’s not worry about the other stuff and I’m very big on the Vince Lombardi, singleness of purpose. Our single purpose is to win. Nobody really cares if you jump higher in the process.

A lot of times they do, but we don’t thump our chests about increasing the fighter’s vertical, we’d rather increase their knockouts or their wins.

07:59

COREY: Yeah. So as you’re going through it basically on a daily basis from rep to rep, you’re just analyzing and kind of assessing each athlete as they go.

ROBERT: Yeah, absolutely. And I think a big thing is my role as a coach — I define coach by two things; being a teacher and a leader. So a lot of times I think when you start testing right away or you start assessing every little thing without actually teaching them what to do, they may just not know.

If I’ve got a kid, he’s doing dumbbell press and his elbow is flaring back towards his ear, well maybe he just doesn’t know how to set up and get his upper back tight to support that shoulder joint so he don’t get that humoral rotation backward. Maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, maybe all I got to do is tell him hey, you’re tight in your setup now feel what your elbow is doing. Oh, all of a sudden, he’s better at it. So sometimes I think a little bit of over assessment can tell you some things that aren’t actually there simply because the athlete doesn’t know that they’re doing it. So I’m really big on taking time to teach because that’s going to lead to the greater long term performance.

09:11

COREY: Sure. So you have a kid come in and you go to that quick assessment, you put him into that developmental program, it’s kind of an introductory making sure that they’re doing the basics correct. And then from there, how do you kind of graduate those kids as you progress?

ROBERT: So from developmental to intermediate, the graduation process is based on two things: Technique that they’re the able to use; they’re showing good technique mastery in all the exercises that we’ve asked them to do in the developmental program, and then also coachability; I got to know that if I turn my back that that kid is going to continue to do what I told him to do. I even explain it to them hey look, I have a rule of thumb so I got to tell you something more than twice, then there’s a problem, either you’re not getting it or you’re not listening.

So we need to address that because in the next level, the intermediate level, things get more complex in terms of what I’m asking the athletes to do, the weights get heavier, the speed gets greater. So if we’re up the ante, we need to make sure that we’re doing this in the safest way possible. So they got to be geting what I’m telling them, and they got to be demonstrating that they get what I’m telling them, and they got to be accountable to that. So that’s how we progress to the intermediate.

And then for the advanced, basically what I’m looking at is okay, for their weight class, for their sport, do they have adequate levels of strength? Or is their body comp always in the right range? Are they always showing up to camp with the aerobic base developed so that we can hit the ground running and continue to progress forward from our last camp before having to hit the reset button each camp because they didn’t take care of things on their end and they don’t have the accountability to be doing the higher level stuff. If they took three months off and now I start throwing them in with the advanced stuff early in camp, they might get injured now we’re out of a fight. And being out of a fight, in my mind, because of injuries is just as bad as losing the fight. We haven’t lost the training day with our athletes since I’ve been with the team in 2011, not to injury. We’ve had doctor’s appointments and things like that, it’s the normal [incomprehensible] of the physical fight, but we’ve never missed the training day to injury.

11:43

COREY: That’s awesome. So when you’re talking about adequate levels of strength, what are some of the lifts that are the foundation of your program and then what would you consider an adequate amount of strength for each type of weight class?

ROBERT: So one of the big ones for a lower body is going to be trap bar deadlift. That’s the bar that forms kind of square, you stand in the middle of it, and it has got the handles on it. So we’ll do trap bar deadlift and what we’re looking for is roughly 1.75 times body weight to double the body weight.

So I’ve got a guy that fights at 140 and he’s way above those levels. He has actually done 365 for three, which equates out to a 400 pound max. Like I said, he fights at 140 so for him, he’s well beyond an adequate level of strength. So that’s basically what I would do, take say roughly double the guy’s body weight and make sure that he can do that amount for one rep max, but we don’t actually one rep. We [inaudible] goes three, then we’ll equate it out. Just because things go wrong in one rep then typically, there’s a bit of a — given the structure whatever whereas over the course of three reps if I start to see a decrement in performance during that set, I just tell them stop right there and we don’t [inaudible] out reps and fail because that was kind of talked about by everybody at the conference, we’re not into failing and the same thing for us even with our max effort, we’re not going to actually let a kid miss a weight and risk injury or anything like that. But plus it’s overwhelming to the nervous system when you do that and with all the other stuff that these guys have been thrown at them during eight week camp, you get that nervous system out of whack and now you’re really behind the eight ball.

13:40

COREY: Yeah, of course. So you’re testing the trap bar deadlift, are there any other lifts that you guys test with your guys?

ROBERT: Well again, this is all part of our training plan, our training program. So I just assess where they’re at. Yeah, one of the ones we’ll look at is dumbbell incline for the upper body, we’re also looking at a rep number on — we do chin up in the top, you’re going to hold that top position and then do what we call hanging pelvic tilt. So we’ve already got the hips at 90 degrees, so the quads are parallel to the ground at all times. So we’ll pull up and then at the top where the quads are already parallel, we’ll have them tilt their pelvis up so basically roll their hips up toward their nose, and then come back down to that quad parallel position and go back down. So essentially, they’re holding at the top for probably about two to three seconds each rep. And what we’re looking for there’s that they can get eight to ten of those with their body weight fairly easily. And then that’s a good number for upper body pulling and of course, we use dumbbell rows and things like that. What I’m looking for there with the dumbbell rows is if they’re able to do for a set of five or weight that’s a little bit more than half their own bodyweight. So for my 140 guy, he can do 85 to 90s on the dumbbell rows for set of five, so half of his body would be 70. So that’s why he’s in that advanced group.

15:17

COREY: Gotcha. Cool, cool. So you got your guys a set, you have a progressive program that kind of makes sure that — because I think a lot of people are going on YouTube or they’re seeing stuff online, oh I see that, Pakia is doing this or GSP is doing that and they kind of see what all those guys are doing and that’s what they want to do is the most advanced stuff. It’s cool that you have that developmental program that kind of goes for developmental, intermediate all the way to advance. When guys are coming in, you’ve got a clear picture of what they’re capable of. At a typical session with you, what does it kind of look like from an outline standpoint?

ROBERT: Well, I’m really big on warming up and that’s kind of funny to say, but I know some people just blast through their warm ups. I want my guys actually sweating by the end of the warm up and really raising that body temperature up. I’d rather be too warm but my feeling is also if I warm you up so much to tease you for your maximum effort or dynamic effort or the lactic work that we’re doing then you’re not in good enough shape in the first place. So we need you to increase your general conditioning from that standpoint.

So good 15 minute warm up should not be detrimental to the following workout, if it is, we got bigger problems. But for our guys, that’s not an issue. As I mentioned at the conference last week, our guys are required to come in and be able to spar 12 rounds first day and that’s with three to four different sparring partners being rotated in and they don’t need to be in championship shape. I mean, that’s impossible. You’re in peak to that three, maybe four times a year at the most, but they need to be able to be technically proficient and sound in the sparring for 12 rounds. So if they’re able to do that then they’re probably aerobically in good enough shape to progress and what we’re doing during the camp.

So anyway, I’m getting a little off track, sorry about that. But anyway, we start off with the warm up, we do some myofascial stuff, foam roll, lacrosse balls, whatever you have or whatever you like to do for that. Then we’ll get into some neural activity, it has to be skip slides, jump rope, agility ladder, whatever you like to do there. Just some quick stuff gets a nervous system firing and helps keep the heart rate up a little bit.

Then we’ll go through some of our muscle activation, general mobilities, then into our dynamic flexibility. At a certain point we will incorporate several of their corrective and extra training drills that are specific to their needs. And then at the very end of the warm up we’ll do some power development whether that be power skips, standing broad jumps, bounds, single leg bounds, whatever level of athlete they’re at.

18:16

So that’ll get us going. And then it’s really dictated on when we are in camp in the first three to four weeks of camp. And this is highly dependent on what kind of fight we’re anticipating, and the first thing we do in the camp is I need to [inaudible] the fighter and head trainer, and we get everybody on the same page, okay, what did we like from last camp? What do we need to improve on? All that and then of course, where are we going with this fight? What do we think we need to work on? When we think we need to anticipate in the ring?

So, I’ll get them going with the lactate stuff early in camp that maybe three to four weeks, then we’ll move more into alactic. That’s basically just like a typical periodization scheme for peaking. You start with higher volume stuff, a little bit lower intensity, and you cross those the other way. So you finish up with the highest intensity and lowest volume as the camp progresses. That’s typically how it’s going to work. Even in the lactate phase, one day a week, we’re going to hit some max effort, whether it’s three to five reps somewhere in there for maximum on least a push or pull and a leg driven exercise and then we [inaudible] our circuits or whatnot.

19:42

COREY: Yeah, so as you guys are kind of progressing through camp. And you’re primarily working with a lot of boxers and stuff these days, right?

ROBERT: Yes.

COREY: I know a lot of the boxing community is scared to death of a lot of the strength work that’s going to slow their guys down.

ROBERT: A lot of the what work?

COREY: A lot of the upper body strength work that people typically do, they’re scared to death that it’s going to slow their hands down. When you’re working with these guys on a weekly basis, what does a typical week look like?

ROBERT: Well, addressing hands we think, everything we do is designed to be explosive. So even our heavy press work and things like that, what we’re looking for is a rate of speed. So again, like what I was talking about with the max effort we don’t actually miss, what we’re looking for is that you can actually punch it up there in about a second, second and a half. If you’re grinding the weight and it’s taking three seconds to get up, it’s a little bit too heavy for our case. And this could be argued one way or the other, but that’s just how we do it.

So what we’re doing is we’re trying to increase their neural drive by always focusing on explosion. So like my guy that’s pressing 80s, in his warm up sets when he’s pressing 40s, he’s doing it with maximum concentric speed, controlled on the negative but then being explosive. And we do that in each progressive, warm up set.

So to get back to your question though, where do we fit that in? So one workout will be like, let’s say we’re in that lactic phase where everything is a little bit longer and designed to increase the intensity of our endurance work. What we’ll do is one day it will be purely the circuit and then another day we’ll start off with some max effort. We’ll keep the volume fairly low, maybe only three sets there, whereas when we get into the alactic phase, it’ll be more like five sets, but that’s kind of how we program that in.

As far as the hand speed, I think that there’s a lot more detrimental work being done with bands where people are trying punch against bands that are way too heavy in terms of resistance, or they’re throwing med balls that are way too heavy. I think when you start to try and mimic a sport technique, and this is regardless of sport, when you start to mimic the sport technique and things get slow down more than 10%, you’re really running into problems. And you talked about YouTube, you talked about TV, and I see this stuff all the time. I just saw it on episode last night, where they were training somebody and for my taste, he had way too much resistance in a boxing specific movement where I’m like, my guy won’t do that. My guy already knows not to do that because we’ve had those conversations. So this is one of those things.

22:46

COREY: Now most of your strength work in comparison or in relation to their skill work that they’re doing, are the guys typically doing their skill in the morning? Are you guys training in the evenings? How many days a week you guys are typically working with these guys?

ROBERT: So our week will go Monday to Friday. And boxing is in evening just because it tends to work out that that’s the time we can get into the boxing gym the best. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we do our conditioning program. And then Tuesday and Thursday, we do strength training in the weight room with me. So by the time we leave the weight room, there’s a good four to five hours before they actually go into the boxing gym, and we never lift on sparring days. So we’ll lift opposite of sparring days.

23:45

COREY: Gotcha. Cool. And if you guys are working with boxers versus a grappler or a wrestler, what are some of the things you take into consideration there?

ROBERT: Well, the grappler is going to need a lot more of that lactic capacity, just because the nature of their sports, they’re going to hold isometric positions much longer, they’re going to use their hands and grab whereas boxer is obviously in gloves. So a grappler is going to need a lot more lactic capacity in order to get through the round and be able to fold around legs. It’s kind of one of those things on humps grappling you’ve done that anybody’s done any has had that experience where their hands just can’t grip anymore. That’s basically we’re training so that that never happens.

Whereas the boxer we’re more focused on something like that in terms of the legs. My guys the way we train in boxing, we don’t really have to worry about that too much in the shoulders in strength and conditioning because they’re already very acclimated to that from some of the drills that they do in boxing. And that’s one of the things that I want to note is our boxing training and our strength and conditioning mimic each other throughout the camp. So when we’re doing more high volume stuff early in camp, that’s what the boxing looks like, and as we cycle down, so do they.

I’m always in tune with what the boxing coach is going to be doing in terms of the volumes and intensity so that I can make sure that we’re not competing for energy stores in our trainings. But that would be one of the biggest things, and then with boxers, we’re going to be working a lot on being agile and very quick and explosive at a distance, whereas with Greco Roman or Judo athlete, they’re obviously going to be much tighter, and actually torso on torso and using the hip, the head and shoulders and the elbows to maneuver and position against their opponent. So we just have to train a little bit differently in terms of some of the body mechanics that we’re going to work on. They’re still both athletically based, it just could be a boxer is working with [inaudible] of distance and a judo athlete is working with an inch and half of distance.

26:16

COREY: Right. Now, the majority of the strength work that you’re doing with your guys, are you guys primarily using a lot of traditional barbell work, dumbbell, stuff like that, because a lot of times these days, there’s so many different tools that are out there.

ROBERT: Yeah, we prefer dumbbells a little bit more. I don’t have my guys barbell squat or barbell press. We do all of our squats with either dumbbells, kettlebells, things like that. We’ll do squats against bands but I don’t load a bar on their back or anything like that. And then with the pressing stuff, I can get this from my baseball background, when you’re a boxer, it’s pretty typical for each shoulder to operate a little bit different than the other just because the nature of the punches that you’re throwing. So when we press with a bar and this is true for throwing athletes, their shoulders operate differently one to the next. When we press with the bar, it’s almost locking you into a specific line of movement pattern, and then one shoulder is kind of dictating what that is, and that could be a little bit detrimental to the other shoulder.

So we do dumbbells, we do single arm pushups, those types of things. Our rolling movements are always either cables, bands, or dumbbells or kettlebells. But we’re trying to keep it as free as possible with our stuff. We don’t do any sitting in a machine and just going crazy and pushing away. We want to increase stability demands within the joint. And then as much as possible, we want to increase core demands.

We’ll do — one of my favorites is a standing single arm military press. And the whole idea is that you keep your clavicles and your AC joints parallel to the ground. So there’s no tilting, there’s no rotating and it really is tough on the core. And with some guys, it’s tougher on their cores than it is on their shoulder, and that’s fine because I’m only interested in strengthening up the weakest link possible. We’re not bodybuilders, doesn’t matter if our delts are huge, we need to strengthen those weak links because those are the things that are going to be where we lose power in a punch or we get exposed in the ring in terms of us getting hit. So we try to train as athletically as possible for that type of stuff.

28:51

COREY: Yeah. So you’re talking about weak links, what are some common weak links in a lot of these combat athletes?

ROBERT: You know, very tight in the thoracic spine which limits some of your maneuverability defensively and then also being able to turn on some shots offensively. With our wrestlers, when I first got to the Olympic Training Center, we had a plethora of lay rooms. And when I first got there, what we found was they were so tight in thoracic extension that when they were getting sprawled against and they had their hands locked around the person’s hips or thigh or whatever and that person would sprawl, their thoracic didn’t have enough movement and all the stress went into that shoulder and now we’re having lay room problems. So what we did there was we mobilized their T spine but we also increased the strength in their scapular retractors and depressors.

And this is another one, that’s common boxers they throw so many punches, they’re very strong on the anterior sides, so the pecs, their anterior delts or biceps, but there are little bit lacks in the muscles that support the scapula. So what we do is we strengthen up that. So for different reasons, we’re hitting the same thing whether you’re grappler or striker. This is one of the many things I found with the thoracic spine.

Generally we need to be stronger in the hips and flexibility in the lower body. And one of the things that kind of drives me nuts I hit on in the conference last week, but the core training is very, very old school in the combat sports; a million crunches but you can’t hold a front bridge for a minute to save your life.

30:46

We actually had a grappler athlete, I don’t want to embarrass the kid so I won’t tell his sport or whatever, but he was a silver medalist and every time he comes to town for camp, we do front bridges together and he could never hold it for a minute. He’d be shaking like a leaf just dying. Now this kid belonged on any magazine cover you can think of. I mean, he has six packs, he’s shredded and good athlete, but he could not hold that front bridge. And you’re saying well, if you want a silver medal, why is this important?

Well, the reason that’s important is he had a laundry list of injuries through his career, a lot of which were coming from the hips and the low back, some of which were in the knees. But he’s done by the time he is 30 years old. No UFC, no million dollar contract, nothing. So basically he did a million crunches and that’s fine. It looks good with your shirt off, but it doesn’t help support the spine, it doesn’t help keep you healthy, it doesn’t help prolong your career so you can make real money.

And again, I’m of the belief, if you’re going to devote 20, 25 years to something and you have the opportunity to get paid for it, it’s silly not to. So let’s preserve these guys and I know stability stuff isn’t fun. It’s not glamorous, but it sure is necessary to keep these guys healthy. And that’s one of my key points of what we do.

32:17

COREY: Yeah man, a lot of this stuff is super important. Just I mean, you talked about the T spine, being able to get that more mobile as well as strengthen those muscles in the back by your shoulder blade, strengthen and mobilize the hips in the core as well.

ROBERT: Not necessarily mobilize the core; stabilize the core.

COREY: Stabilizing the core, right?

ROBERT: Yeah, especially around the lumbar spine. Lumbar spine and cervical spine we want stability, so we want a rigid strength. We want to be able to take any kind of shot and not have it move us in those areas, and then in the T spine, so that thoracic spine up between the shoulder blades area, that’s where we want more mobility. So it works as alternating chain, stability, mobility, stability.

33:09

COREY: Right on. Cool, cool, cool. Very good, man. So I guess there’s a ton of information. I mean, you’re unloading a lot of wisdom in this experience that you’ve had over the years working with these guys. Is anything else that sticks out? I mean, are there any other big mistakes that people are making, things that they need to consider, things that the community could improve as a whole? What are some of the things that kind of stick out to you, if you haven’t left anything out.

ROBERT: I touched on it a little bit, but I just think that a lot of people are doing themselves a disservice and their athletes a disservice by trying to sell the gimmick, whether it’s the new product that’s on the market, oh we’re going to use this fancy tool in our training, or it’s the new method or the new whatever. I think good strength coach can get you better using some very, very simple tools and simple methods. And you almost want to be a little bit afraid of the guy that has to rely on selling the new cutting edge stuff because there’s been a million things come down the pike that have bee new and cutting edge, and within a year they’re gone. They’re gone for a reason. They don’t last because they don’t work better than a lot of the things we know already do work. So I think that’s a big one, it’s just people falling in love with the new shiny toy.

34:32

I said in my speak last week, the secret is, there is no secret. Be consistent, work hard and do things that you already know work. I’m not saying you don’t have room to expand your toolbox. But before I do it with a million dollar athlete or an $8 million athlete in my case, I’m going to make sure this thing works long before I ever put it with them. And it’s funny, on social media, one of my fighters hit me up and there was a picture of them doing one of these new gimmicky things. I’m not going to name the apparatus, I don’t want to ruffle anybody’s feathers, but they were using something. So I just sent him a quick text on some research on it and some science behind it and he basically was like, oh, thanks. I did not know that. And he didn’t do it again. I was just like, hey, that’s what I’m here for man. And I actually told him, I was like, I actually looked into this a few years ago for the 2012 Olympic team, and we decided against it. So this thing’s been on my radar for a while.

But anyway, yeah, that’s my big thing is, don’t try and be the guy doing all the new cool stuff unless you’re signed on to fight against us, then do all the new cool stuff you want to because we’ll beat you with the regular methods.

So there’s plenty of variability. There are plenty of variables to manipulate in training. We don’t need to go out and invent new ones, [inaudible]. And again, sorry, I’m ranting all day here.

36:07

COREY: Cool. No that’s important because there’s so much information out there, I think with social media and the internet, web, videos and all these different things, information is at our fingertips at a moment’s notice and you get exposed to so much more stuff than we used to.

ROBERT: Right.

COREY: I think a lot of times, it becomes like information overload. People really just don’t know all the variables and things that truly work or what guys are actually using versus what’s just marketing and endorsements and stuff.

ROBERT: Yeah, basically we have been seeing the things, same supplement companies for 30, 40 years now and it’s really expanded into training methodologies and training tools. So like you said, a lot of it is just marketing. They’re trying to make a quick buck before they get exposed as not being effective, and that’s fine. Once that method or product goes under, they’re just going to come out with something new based on new faulty science.

37:16

COREY: Right. Well, cool, cool. Well Rob, thank you so much, man. If guys are wanting to stay in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to touch base?

ROBERT: I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t have in front me what that’s called but if you put LinkedIn Rob Schwartz Strength Coach or something like that, I’m sure it’ll come up. But I don’t mind if people email me just like you did, and it’s [email protected].

COREY: Cool.

ROBERT: I’m getting emails all the time, so no big deal.

COREY: Very cool. It’s cool that you make yourself available man, I appreciate it.

ROBERT: No problem. Thank you.

COREY: Have a great weekend. We’ll talk to you soon.

ROBERT: Alright, sounds good. You too.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with ROBERT SCHWARTZ

COREY: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley from Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone here with Rob Schwartz. Rob, how’re you doing?

ROBERT: Good. How are you?

COREY: Good, man. Thanks so much for calling in. I appreciate it.

ROBERT: No problem. Thanks for having me.

COREY: So for the guys that are listening Rob, give everybody a two minute bio on yourself.

ROBERT: Well, I’ve been Strength and Conditioning coach for 15 years now. I got my start kind of the usual way, worked in 4 Division 1 universities. Then eventually I became the Director of Strength and Conditioning for the Olympic Training Center and all the US Olympic combat sports, combat and acrobatic actually; so wrestling, boxing, Judo, Taekwondo, sprinting and karate on the combat side. Started working with Adrien Broner about four years ago. His coach Mike Stafford had coupled with his guys in the Olympic system, or the Americas only three time Olympian, [incomprehensible] was one of his guys. Mike saw how I was working with [inaudible] those guys, asked me if I wanted to work with a pro at the time. I had no idea, he just hand me the keys to a Ferrari, and we’ve been together four years now, won three titles.

In the meantime I’ve also worked with 10th Group Special Forces with the United States Army. I did that for a little while, worked really closely with their combatants of their hand to hand combat training. I actually took part in the Special Op’s Combat course and here we are. Now I’m working full time in pro boxing, going out to camps wherever those may be and just getting guys ready for fights.

COREY: Right on. So Rob you had quite a few different types of people. I mean, you’ve had wrestlers, you’ve had boxers, and you’ve had Special Forces. With a lot of the strength and conditioning stuff that’s out there, what are some of the things that you’ve seen change? I mean you’ve been working with these guys just for quite a few years. And even in those few years, I’m sure things have changed quite a bit. What are some of the trends that you’ve kind of seen come and go?

02:16

ROBERT: When I first got to the training center and working with combat guys, everything seemed to be the long slow duration aerobic base training, regardless of when it was in the preparation cycle. So guys were doing eight mile runs as part of their weight cutting strategies and things like that. And it was a big thing at the training center if a guy was trying to cut weight or keep his weight down even, they wouldn’t really touch the weights or any kind of strength exercises. They would just get on the treadmill and run like a marathoner. We introduced some more metabolic protocols, explaining the coaches and the athletes how we can continue to increase strength and power while still really increasing that metabolic demand, that’s going to burn even more calories and cause a greater raise in metabolism over the long term, rather than just getting on the treadmill and jogging at a steady pace for 30 minutes to an hour, three times a week.

So that was one of the things and we really tried to work on getting the guys to understand a little bit more about the lactate specific and alactic work to rest ratios and intensities required there for those energy systems and the importance of those energy systems because they are an anaerobic sport. Not that aerobic is unimportant, you have to have that base specifically for recovery, but just getting to understand there’s more to this than just trying to get that weight down and going out and wrestling in that state. So that’s one of the biggest things I’ve seen.

04:30

COREY: Right on. So when you have a new athlete coming in to work with you, and you’re starting to camp with a new guy, what are some of the ways that you kind of assess or test your new guy?

ROBERT: So brand new athletes, what I do is I usually — I just call it a functional postural. So on the postural side, I just have them stand how they normally stand. I just say them, just relax. I don’t want you to stay in that tension. But I just look for certain things. Maybe I’m looking for anterior pelvic tilt, maybe I’m looking for if at least one of their foot is externally rotated just in their normal posture. I’m looking for slouch shoulders or internally rotated humerus, neck being so tight their jaw is pulled forward and their head is kind of protracted forward. I’m looking for all sorts of those types of things that are going to tell me a little bit about what muscles might be tight, what muscles might be a little bit inactive.

And then from there, what I can do is, I look at their top three priorities of need and I write them a corrective exercise program based on those three priorities and what I’ve found is, if you properly address needs 1, 2, 3, the needs 4, 5, 6 and beyond, they kind of come out in the wash. So that’s first thing I’ll do with them.

And like I said, between the assessment and giving them the protocols and teaching them protocols, I mean, we’re talking about a total of 20 minutes to half hour of actual time to get it assessed and taught, and now they’ve got something tangible in their hands that’s specific to them and we can start hitting the ground running with our developmental program, which is very athletic based; very simple movements, teaching the squat pattern, teaching the hinge pattern, teaching them how to hit set up properly on exercises, a lot of core stability and then they’re in that developmental phase for however long they need. Some athletes have graduated within a month in that developmental because they’re already pretty well trained. Others are may be in it for a lot longer.

But of course, performance testing, I’m not real big on performance tests. Usually what I’ll see is, once we get working and they’re in that developmental, like I said, it’s all pretty introductory stuff, I’ll see a lot of different things to assess on a daily basis and then that’ll give me an idea. And we can get numbers just based off of what they’re doing with their lifts in the program right away. So I don’t like do a full on Testing Day or anything like that. Because my feeling is you’re not paying me to make numbers better, you’re paying me to win. So let’s get working toward that win. Let’s not worry about the other stuff and I’m very big on the Vince Lombardi, singleness of purpose. Our single purpose is to win. Nobody really cares if you jump higher in the process.

A lot of times they do, but we don’t thump our chests about increasing the fighter’s vertical, we’d rather increase their knockouts or their wins.

07:59

COREY: Yeah. So as you’re going through it basically on a daily basis from rep to rep, you’re just analyzing and kind of assessing each athlete as they go.

ROBERT: Yeah, absolutely. And I think a big thing is my role as a coach — I define coach by two things; being a teacher and a leader. So a lot of times I think when you start testing right away or you start assessing every little thing without actually teaching them what to do, they may just not know.

09:11

COREY: Sure. So you have a kid come in and you go to that quick assessment, you put him into that developmental program, it’s kind of an introductory making sure that they’re doing the basics correct. And then from there, how do you kind of graduate those kids as you progress?

ROBERT: So from developmental to intermediate, the graduation process is based on two things: Technique that they’re the able to use; they’re showing good technique mastery in all the exercises that we’ve asked them to do in the developmental program, and then also coachability; I got to know that if I turn my back that that kid is going to continue to do what I told him to do. I even explain it to them hey look, I have a rule of thumb so I got to tell you something more than twice, then there’s a problem, either you’re not getting it or you’re not listening.

So we need to address that because in the next level, the intermediate level, things get more complex in terms of what I’m asking the athletes to do, the weights get heavier, the speed gets greater. So if we’re up the ante, we need to make sure that we’re doing this in the safest way possible. So they got to be geting what I’m telling them, and they got to be demonstrating that they get what I’m telling them, and they got to be accountable to that. So that’s how we progress to the intermediate.

And then for the advanced, basically what I’m looking at is okay, for their weight class, for their sport, do they have adequate levels of strength? Or is their body comp always in the right range? Are they always showing up to camp with the aerobic base developed so that we can hit the ground running and continue to progress forward from our last camp before having to hit the reset button each camp because they didn’t take care of things on their end and they don’t have the accountability to be doing the higher level stuff. If they took three months off and now I start throwing them in with the advanced stuff early in camp, they might get injured now we’re out of a fight. And being out of a fight, in my mind, because of injuries is just as bad as losing the fight. We haven’t lost the training day with our athletes since I’ve been with the team in 2011, not to injury. We’ve had doctor’s appointments and things like that, it’s the normal [incomprehensible] of the physical fight, but we’ve never missed the training day to injury.

11:43

COREY: That’s awesome. So when you’re talking about adequate levels of strength, what are some of the lifts that are the foundation of your program and then what would you consider an adequate amount of strength for each type of weight class?

ROBERT: So one of the big ones for a lower body is going to be trap bar deadlift. That’s the bar that forms kind of square, you stand in the middle of it, and it has got the handles on it. So we’ll do trap bar deadlift and what we’re looking for is roughly 1.75 times body weight to double the body weight.

13:40

COREY: Yeah, of course. So you’re testing the trap bar deadlift, are there any other lifts that you guys test with your guys?

ROBERT: Well again, this is all part of our training plan, our training program. So I just assess where they’re at. Yeah, one of the ones we’ll look at is dumbbell incline for the upper body, we’re also looking at a rep number on — we do chin up in the top, you’re going to hold that top position and then do what we call hanging pelvic tilt. So we’ve already got the hips at 90 degrees, so the quads are parallel to the ground at all times. So we’ll pull up and then at the top where the quads are already parallel, we’ll have them tilt their pelvis up so basically roll their hips up toward their nose, and then come back down to that quad parallel position and go back down. So essentially, they’re holding at the top for probably about two to three seconds each rep. And what we’re looking for there’s that they can get eight to ten of those with their body weight fairly easily. And then that’s a good number for upper body pulling and of course, we use dumbbell rows and things like that. What I’m looking for there with the dumbbell rows is if they’re able to do for a set of five or weight that’s a little bit more than half their own bodyweight. So for my 140 guy, he can do 85 to 90s on the dumbbell rows for set of five, so half of his body would be 70. So that’s why he’s in that advanced group.

15:17

COREY: Gotcha. Cool, cool. So you got your guys a set, you have a progressive program that kind of makes sure that — because I think a lot of people are going on YouTube or they’re seeing stuff online, oh I see that, Pakia is doing this or GSP is doing that and they kind of see what all those guys are doing and that’s what they want to do is the most advanced stuff. It’s cool that you have that developmental program that kind of goes for developmental, intermediate all the way to advance. When guys are coming in, you’ve got a clear picture of what they’re capable of. At a typical session with you, what does it kind of look like from an outline standpoint?

ROBERT: Well, I’m really big on warming up and that’s kind of funny to say, but I know some people just blast through their warm ups. I want my guys actually sweating by the end of the warm up and really raising that body temperature up. I’d rather be too warm but my feeling is also if I warm you up so much to tease you for your maximum effort or dynamic effort or the lactic work that we’re doing then you’re not in good enough shape in the first place. So we need you to increase your general conditioning from that standpoint.

18:16

19:42

COREY: Yeah, so as you guys are kind of progressing through camp. And you’re primarily working with a lot of boxers and stuff these days, right?

ROBERT: Yes.

COREY: I know a lot of the boxing community is scared to death of a lot of the strength work that’s going to slow their guys down.

ROBERT: A lot of the what work?

COREY: A lot of the upper body strength work that people typically do, they’re scared to death that it’s going to slow their hands down. When you’re working with these guys on a weekly basis, what does a typical week look like?

ROBERT: Well, addressing hands we think, everything we do is designed to be explosive. So even our heavy press work and things like that, what we’re looking for is a rate of speed. So again, like what I was talking about with the max effort we don’t actually miss, what we’re looking for is that you can actually punch it up there in about a second, second and a half. If you’re grinding the weight and it’s taking three seconds to get up, it’s a little bit too heavy for our case. And this could be argued one way or the other, but that’s just how we do it.

22:46

COREY: Now most of your strength work in comparison or in relation to their skill work that they’re doing, are the guys typically doing their skill in the morning? Are you guys training in the evenings? How many days a week you guys are typically working with these guys?

ROBERT: So our week will go Monday to Friday. And boxing is in evening just because it tends to work out that that’s the time we can get into the boxing gym the best. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we do our conditioning program. And then Tuesday and Thursday, we do strength training in the weight room with me. So by the time we leave the weight room, there’s a good four to five hours before they actually go into the boxing gym, and we never lift on sparring days. So we’ll lift opposite of sparring days.

23:45

COREY: Gotcha. Cool. And if you guys are working with boxers versus a grappler or a wrestler, what are some of the things you take into consideration there?

ROBERT: Well, the grappler is going to need a lot more of that lactic capacity, just because the nature of their sports, they’re going to hold isometric positions much longer, they’re going to use their hands and grab whereas boxer is obviously in gloves. So a grappler is going to need a lot more lactic capacity in order to get through the round and be able to fold around legs. It’s kind of one of those things on humps grappling you’ve done that anybody’s done any has had that experience where their hands just can’t grip anymore. That’s basically we’re training so that that never happens.

26:16

COREY: Right. Now, the majority of the strength work that you’re doing with your guys, are you guys primarily using a lot of traditional barbell work, dumbbell, stuff like that, because a lot of times these days, there’s so many different tools that are out there.

ROBERT: Yeah, we prefer dumbbells a little bit more. I don’t have my guys barbell squat or barbell press. We do all of our squats with either dumbbells, kettlebells, things like that. We’ll do squats against bands but I don’t load a bar on their back or anything like that. And then with the pressing stuff, I can get this from my baseball background, when you’re a boxer, it’s pretty typical for each shoulder to operate a little bit different than the other just because the nature of the punches that you’re throwing. So when we press with a bar and this is true for throwing athletes, their shoulders operate differently one to the next. When we press with the bar, it’s almost locking you into a specific line of movement pattern, and then one shoulder is kind of dictating what that is, and that could be a little bit detrimental to the other shoulder.

So we do dumbbells, we do single arm pushups, those types of things. Our rolling movements are always either cables, bands, or dumbbells or kettlebells. But we’re trying to keep it as free as possible with our stuff. We don’t do any sitting in a machine and just going crazy and pushing away. We want to increase stability demands within the joint. And then as much as possible, we want to increase core demands.

We’ll do — one of my favorites is a standing single arm military press. And the whole idea is that you keep your clavicles and your AC joints parallel to the ground. So there’s no tilting, there’s no rotating and it really is tough on the core. And with some guys, it’s tougher on their cores than it is on their shoulder, and that’s fine because I’m only interested in strengthening up the weakest link possible. We’re not bodybuilders, doesn’t matter if our delts are huge, we need to strengthen those weak links because those are the things that are going to be where we lose power in a punch or we get exposed in the ring in terms of us getting hit. So we try to train as athletically as possible for that type of stuff.

28:51

COREY: Yeah. So you’re talking about weak links, what are some common weak links in a lot of these combat athletes?

ROBERT: You know, very tight in the thoracic spine which limits some of your maneuverability defensively and then also being able to turn on some shots offensively. With our wrestlers, when I first got to the Olympic Training Center, we had a plethora of lay rooms. And when I first got there, what we found was they were so tight in thoracic extension that when they were getting sprawled against and they had their hands locked around the person’s hips or thigh or whatever and that person would sprawl, their thoracic didn’t have enough movement and all the stress went into that shoulder and now we’re having lay room problems. So what we did there was we mobilized their T spine but we also increased the strength in their scapular retractors and depressors.

30:46

32:17

COREY: Yeah man, a lot of this stuff is super important. Just I mean, you talked about the T spine, being able to get that more mobile as well as strengthen those muscles in the back by your shoulder blade, strengthen and mobilize the hips in the core as well.

ROBERT: Not necessarily mobilize the core; stabilize the core.

COREY: Stabilizing the core, right?

ROBERT: Yeah, especially around the lumbar spine. Lumbar spine and cervical spine we want stability, so we want a rigid strength. We want to be able to take any kind of shot and not have it move us in those areas, and then in the T spine, so that thoracic spine up between the shoulder blades area, that’s where we want more mobility. So it works as alternating chain, stability, mobility, stability.

33:09

COREY: Right on. Cool, cool, cool. Very good, man. So I guess there’s a ton of information. I mean, you’re unloading a lot of wisdom in this experience that you’ve had over the years working with these guys. Is anything else that sticks out? I mean, are there any other big mistakes that people are making, things that they need to consider, things that the community could improve as a whole? What are some of the things that kind of stick out to you, if you haven’t left anything out.

ROBERT: I touched on it a little bit, but I just think that a lot of people are doing themselves a disservice and their athletes a disservice by trying to sell the gimmick, whether it’s the new product that’s on the market, oh we’re going to use this fancy tool in our training, or it’s the new method or the new whatever. I think good strength coach can get you better using some very, very simple tools and simple methods. And you almost want to be a little bit afraid of the guy that has to rely on selling the new cutting edge stuff because there’s been a million things come down the pike that have bee new and cutting edge, and within a year they’re gone. They’re gone for a reason. They don’t last because they don’t work better than a lot of the things we know already do work. So I think that’s a big one, it’s just people falling in love with the new shiny toy.

34:32

I said in my speak last week, the secret is, there is no secret. Be consistent, work hard and do things that you already know work. I’m not saying you don’t have room to expand your toolbox. But before I do it with a million dollar athlete or an $8 million athlete in my case, I’m going to make sure this thing works long before I ever put it with them. And it’s funny, on social media, one of my fighters hit me up and there was a picture of them doing one of these new gimmicky things. I’m not going to name the apparatus, I don’t want to ruffle anybody’s feathers, but they were using something. So I just sent him a quick text on some research on it and some science behind it and he basically was like, oh, thanks. I did not know that. And he didn’t do it again. I was just like, hey, that’s what I’m here for man. And I actually told him, I was like, I actually looked into this a few years ago for the 2012 Olympic team, and we decided against it. So this thing’s been on my radar for a while.

So there’s plenty of variability. There are plenty of variables to manipulate in training. We don’t need to go out and invent new ones, [inaudible]. And again, sorry, I’m ranting all day here.

36:07

COREY: Cool. No that’s important because there’s so much information out there, I think with social media and the internet, web, videos and all these different things, information is at our fingertips at a moment’s notice and you get exposed to so much more stuff than we used to.

ROBERT: Right.

COREY: I think a lot of times, it becomes like information overload. People really just don’t know all the variables and things that truly work or what guys are actually using versus what’s just marketing and endorsements and stuff.

ROBERT: Yeah, basically we have been seeing the things, same supplement companies for 30, 40 years now and it’s really expanded into training methodologies and training tools. So like you said, a lot of it is just marketing. They’re trying to make a quick buck before they get exposed as not being effective, and that’s fine. Once that method or product goes under, they’re just going to come out with something new based on new faulty science.

37:16

COREY: Right. Well, cool, cool. Well Rob, thank you so much, man. If guys are wanting to stay in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to touch base?

ROBERT: I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t have in front me what that’s called but if you put LinkedIn Rob Schwartz Strength Coach or something like that, I’m sure it’ll come up. But I don’t mind if people email me just like you did, and it’s [email protected].

COREY: Cool.

ROBERT: I’m getting emails all the time, so no big deal.

COREY: Very cool. It’s cool that you make yourself available man, I appreciate it.

ROBERT: No problem. Thank you.

COREY: Have a great weekend. We’ll talk to you soon.

ROBERT: Alright, sounds good. You too.

Episode #22: Robert Schwartz Strength and Conditioning for Boxers, MMA Fighters and other Combat Athletes

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with ROBERT SCHWARTZ

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