Why should MMA fighters golf? Amongst other things! MMA fighters should pursue varying interests but things that require focus, and the flexing of different muscles than those in their sport. Almost by definition MMA requires a huge discipline and commitment time wise, and mentality wise. Taking breaks from this repetitive pursuit, and using other muscles will offer an outlet, release, and reinvigorated passion for MMA. We talk a bit on the physical side of rotational power, and the benefits of ...
Aug 07, 2023•36 min
Wildin’ and Freestylin’ Talking about our experiences at UW - La Crosse, theory vs. practice, and where genuine action comes from. We hit on professionalism, self improvement, and consistency. The role of coaching bubbles up as a main topic in this talk. We ponder the weight of doing all the right things all of the time. What are the pros and cons of this, and can it guarantee success? What is excellence and by demonstrating excellence are you automatically excellent. These talks are though prov...
Jul 31, 2023•50 min
Why do Strikers need strength and conditioning? One word: Power. Training in the strength and conditioning setting will increase the underlying physical qualities that lead to power. Long story short lifting weights is a good way to enhance your potential to be more powerful. Power will still depend on your timing, technique and build but with the aid of a specific program we can enhance your power output. Another reason we touch on is that of overuse injury reduction. By exposing the muscles an...
Jul 24, 2023•44 min
The hustle. Fighting rarely pays the bills, which is a problem on its own, but we can do something about it. There are so many ways to profit off of your career as a fighter. You work so hard in the gym to win fights, work just a little hard at marketing, branding, and promotion to reach some level of financial support. One avenue to feel great about using your platform as a fighter to make money is to dive into authenticity. How can you capitalize on your personality and be real in your promoti...
Jul 17, 2023•29 min
Summer is time for the boys! Freestylin about home gyms, finding new exercises, competition, and fun! We dig into topics about building teamwork and just comradery amongst athletes. While this profession and the pursuit of excellence can get serious, there are so many opportunities to have fun! Enjoy this athletic journey and keep it fresh! Let us know how you keep it fresh in your workouts! Visit our Website at buildingafighter.com Message Building a Fighter directly at buildingafighter@gmail.c...
Jul 11, 2023•29 min
What does it take to be a high level strength and conditioning coach? Sacrifice is a word that comes to mind. It takes a lot of investment in time, money, passion, and curiosity to become a good strength coach. Speaking of time, internships, continuing education, and practical experience take years to accumulate and build up. This time can be fun, and being a coach is a fun job, but it also takes a lot to be good at. That being said, there is a gradient in the field. If you just want to be a str...
Jul 03, 2023•58 min
Why should wrestlers lift heavy? Why doesn’t lifting heavy feel intense? Am I wasting my time if I am not tired while I lift? Wrestlers need strength. It’s a non-negotiable. Adding strength through lifting heavy is one of the easiest ways to compound your skillset in wrestling. It's not just about the specific strengths in wrestling, it's about the ability to adapt and train a new skill set. Taking the right rest breaks to maximize power and strength is an uncomfortable feeling for wrestlers but...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr
The age old question, youth vs experience. How can we best adapt strength and conditioning to fit these two different athletes? The rookie vs the vets, which is also the theme of the renewed reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter. To boil it down we look at qualities not yet developed and what skills we can add for the rookie, vs how to adapt around previous injury and dysfunction for the Vet. Training is an individual process and a key attribute of that is the experiences that the athletes have h...
Jun 19, 2023•35 min
Time to get after it. When and why should you actually train hard? The work is unavoidable, but we can still organize it in the right manner. The mental benefits are untold in the realm of hard pushes. Conditioning pushes, wrestling grinds, attention to detail, and marathon sessions. These give you a perspective on where you are at mentally, and where your weak links are. Invite the challenge in, and do that repeatedly. This will lead to an iron will to continue fighting and challenging yourself...
Jun 12, 2023•33 min
Freestylin’ Welcome to the Summer Vibes! We cover a bit in this sporadic episode. Entering into new Freestyle and Greco wrestling seasons, what wrestling can mean to a child’s growth and maturity. We get into talking about how valuable hard work and hard workouts can be! Pushing yourself is not a sin, however it is best in moderation. Hard work is immensely valuable in today’s culture, and wrestling can supply that, as long as we aren't getting into a highly toxic culture. We end talking about s...
Jun 05, 2023•29 min
Are you truly ready to go? Well Ready or not, here we go! We are talking all types of preparation and your ability to take on the day in this podcast. A slight bit of terminology to start off but we dig into how to really be ready, prepared, and robust. We, as strength and conditioning coaches, have great opportunities to make sure athletes are ready to take on the day, prepared for the next competition, and robust to any challenge they might see. If we fall short on accomplishing those tasks, w...
May 29, 2023•47 min
Creating a winning environment. How can we cohesively piece together all of the aspects of training so that the atmosphere is a positive one. Home life, training life, strength and conditioning, and wellness, each of these aspects add up to create a situation where you are getting better or you are getting worse. Finding good people and good facilities is key. The right people can make consistent training seem a bit easier. Good training partners are crucial as well. Then create winning habits. ...
May 22, 2023•32 min
I know I should be lifting and going to the gym, but what should I do? Create a plan, based around a couple of variables. The variables that we should address first is changing your loading, amount of reps, and exercise selection. Doing the same thing day in and day out will not benefit you as much as adding variety into your workouts. Once we dig into how we change these variables, we can target certain adaptations: more power, stronger, better shape. All of these adaptations can be planned for...
May 15, 2023•33 min
Mentorship, What's it worth? We both agree that mentorship and having a person to guide you/rely on is super beneficial. It's a relationship, both mentor and mentee have to put in quality work and effort which defines the relationship. Should professional athletes be looked at as mentors by default? Should they act accordingly and carry this weight? This is a key question we dig into with this episode. Accountability, establishing morals, and leading by example are many methods of mentoring. Let...
May 08, 2023•50 min
Apologies for Austin being so cringy. Odds are, if you grapple your lower back and neck have and still hurt. We have created some continuing care protocols for these areas of pain. Here we talk about the causes, symptoms, and rehabilitation processes you can go through to address these specific problems. Austin, Building a Fighter’s very own Chiropractor, spits his wisdom for general spine wellness, and potential mechanisms for pain. Those potential mechanisms are very common in grappling based ...
May 01, 2023•34 min
Aligning your goals. How does your style in MMA or training match your exercise protocol? Through training we look at three factors to lead to high level performance Sport Demands, Individual needs, and Overall Health and Wellness. We address the Individual needs part heavily in this podcast. Your physical demands will change drastically based on your game plan for a fight. This means that we need to alter the physical preparation for that gameplan. Which also works in our reverse engineering pr...
Apr 24, 2023•33 min
Fitness Technology that is actually worth the $$$. What tracking do I need and what actually matters from biotech? We argue that something that tracks your heart rate is the most important and most affordable avenue to objective measurement. Heart rate straps do great to measure cardiovascular exercise, but are not great to measure strength qualities. To measure strength qualities (speed, power, strength, hypertrophy etc.) We recommend a velocity based trainer that tracks the barspeed of your mo...
Apr 17, 2023•38 min
Top 5 grappling mistakes made by mixed martial artists. As wrestling coaches we go over our top 5 ways to improve your grappling efficacy in mixed martial arts. We dive into the technical pieces of cage wrestling, timing and spacing for shots, grappling feints and movements, and how to align these for ultimate MMA grappling. The other pieces we really dig into are wrestling frequency and practice. There is no replacement for reps and time put in to get better at technical skills. We must rep cor...
Apr 10, 2023•42 min
Apologies for the intro y’all. We are talking about trunk training misconceptions. *Having a six pack does not mean you have a strong core!* The ability to expand and create pressure through your trunk is more important than the outward appearance. A Power Barrel to us means that you can expand your trunk and that you are getting 360 degree activation. This total expansion is hugely important for proper movement patterns. We cover a lot of core training principles in our trunk training series he...
Apr 03, 2023•29 min
DNS Strength Training 1. What did Building a Fighter learn through this course? We took away many key principles of movement, such as uprighting of the spine, joint centration, and breathing and bracing. This in depth look at movement can help us be more efficient in our use of energy. This was another principle called functional capacity vs absolute capacity. Through this lens of movement we can apply a more efficient movement practice through life. Specifically the application to MMA is huge b...
Mar 27, 2023•46 min
Do the Work. How you feel, is a lie. It is what it is. Cliché central in this podcast! Sometimes it truly is about how hard you work. We need a standard of movement and to avoid unnecessary risk, but we can’t do this at the complete expense of training effects. Often we err on the side of caution in the weight room, but this can have a detrimental effect on our athletes. Sometimes we need to just work hard. As coaches we can play with this by addressing exercise selection, then putting seemingly...
Mar 20, 2023•30 min
Post Competition Plan. How should we carry on with training after a fight, or season. We talk about good mental and physical training strategies when you’re fresh off a fight in this podcast. So many times there are high emotions and a lot of adrenaline dumping after a competition, and while you have earned the right to relax a bit and enjoy the fruits of labor, we shouldn’t take too much time. Training is a 365 day per year endeavor. Now we should be smart about that and take time to heal and o...
Mar 13, 2023•34 min
Building a Fighter Ep.147 March Freestyle! We talk a lot about coaching in this one, Alex has started coaching a high school wrestling team in the last two years and makes many reflections on that experience. We talk about building a program, then warming up, and creating a good culture on a team. Not just a hardo culture, but one of valuing winning the right way. Then we talk about stress cycles through a season and brainstorm periodization across many different disciplines. We have a bunch of ...
Mar 06, 2023•40 min
Rotation is a pivotal piece of movement! (See what I did there??) Especially sports that involve max power output, a rotational movement is typically the main movement. We can correlate MMA and baseball in this sense. Both are rotational sports with different energetic demands. In this podcast we give rotation its due. Rotation is one of the 7 primal movement patterns we have identified countless times on the podcast. We talk about how to train rotation through and through in this podcast. Progr...
Feb 27, 2023•40 min
Let’s talk about how to be in peak condition when competition is at its highest. This is a common topic for track and field and other more controlled sports, but as with all good training principles we can apply it to wrestling and MMA. A taper is a limit in volume of training, measured in sets/reps, or time at practice. While a peak is a change in the intent and intensity behind the work. Peaking typically means training more similar to competition whether that's higher weight, faster pace, or ...
Feb 20, 2023•27 min
Having hard conversations. We talk a lot about the leadership aspect of being a coach, business partner, husband, athlete, and quite frankly a person. What makes anyone reliable and accountable to their job? For a lot of athletes accountability comes down to a coach. As a coach there is a good way to hold athletes accountable and a more toxic way. It's the classic argument of leading with fear or love. Holding athletes accountable in a high performance setting and meaningful relationship is not ...
Feb 13, 2023•42 min
Yoga, pilates, and organizing your supplemental training methods. As an MMA athlete should I be doing yoga? Or cycling? Or add pilates? Or add anything? In a sport where more training always seems better, we talk about navigating these extra workouts and truly finding what is best for you. OVerall adding these workouts may not make or break you, however to get the most benefit from them we should be selective in what type of workout we add in, and where we add it in. As we state constantly, it i...
Feb 06, 2023•29 min
We hit the ground running on this edition of our Building a Fighter Freestyle. Talking about holistic wellness vs going all in for a goal. Are they one in the same, or is one approach better than the other? How can we function best as humans, and how can we balance all of our priorities? We explore so many facets of living your best life in martial arts and training. We talk about setting a plan, but chronically and dynamically adjusting that plan. Austin comes from a stance of pursuing excellen...
Jan 31, 2023•45 min
What's your goal? Define your goal then train for it. We talk about two different common training goals in this podcast. First is training for a championship, and second is training for a healthy long life. We debate whether you can chase both of these goals at once, or if you must isolate one goal or not. Different times in your career you will train for each of these goals but the problem persists when there is no one to check in and transition between the two, that is where injury or underper...
Jan 23, 2023•46 min
What is a training age? Quite simply we explain the difference in chronological age, and your experience level in any athletic endeavor. In the weight room, we like to quantify everything so we are quantifying your “age” based on your experience level and ability to execute. Every sport does this, whether it's with belts, specific equipment (think metal baseball bats vs wooden only in the MLB), or in the weightroom with exercise selection and teaching drills. This is such a hot topic because eve...
Jan 16, 2023•35 min
