UFC 130 Training Camp: Weeks 1-2

In the second part of this article series on Tim Boetsch’s training for UFC 130, you can get an inside look at accumulated training effects, something that needs to be well understood if you’re going to effectively design and manage training programs. All too often, coaches only consider the effects of the previous day of two on subsequent workouts, rather than understanding the cumulative effects taking place over time as the athlete trains and recovers over and over again. The picture can be quite different when looking at an athlete’s training and adaptation compared to only looking at a small piece of the puzzle.

[hidepost]When looking at the first two weeks of Tim’s training camp there are some interesting things that can be seen. First, if you look at Monday, the beginning of the second week, you can see the effects of the previous week of training on him. Despite resting completely on Sunday, you can see that his vagal index is down on Monday morning, indicating he has not fully recovered from the previous week of training. You can also see this simply by the large spike in his stress index.

Because of this – and the fact that it was still relatively early in training camp and too early to accumulate too much fatigue – I managed the volume and intensity on Monday and Tuesday to facilitate more complete recovery. For the workouts, I used protocols designed to produce a large hormonal response, which again will help with increasing speed of adaptation and recovery as well.

Management of hormones is absolutely vital to training progress as a whole. There’s a reason athletes on drugs recovery much faster and make better progress than those that aren’t, hormones are a huge factor in the speed of protein synthesis and protein synthesis is a huge component, the biggest component really, of recovery and adaptation.

As a result of this, you can see that through Tuesday and Thursday Tim’s vagal tone increased and stress index decreased noticeably. This essentially shows that he is recovering well and improving aerobic fitness as well. This is obviously incredibly important given the training to come and his ultimate goal of being ready to fight.

The first couple weeks of training are about building work capacity as much as anything else, because this gives him the chance to train more and recover better. MMA is a very skill intensive sport and a great deal of time must be spent on skill development. Poor work capacity means less training and less training means less skill. Training camps generally include a high volume of training and because of this, a good deal of work capacity is required.

As you can see, one of the ways I improve work capacity is by managing the overall training program to facilitate recovery early on. If I had increased the volume and intensity too much in the beginning, Tim’s recovery would have gotten worse and his work capacity would not have increased. This is why management of training is just as important anything else. Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish through training and you have an objective way to measure if you’re going the right direction or not, then it’s just a matter of managing the process correctly.

Moving forward in Tim’s camp, I expect the next couple of weeks to be increased loading but we’ll also continue to manage overall volume to avoid overworking too early in camp. He spent a week at home for Easter and is now getting back here for the rest of training camp. I had Tim use a portable HRV tool that I’ll be discussing more in the coming weeks to monitor his recovery while at home and make sure his program was going as it should.

Next week, I’ll continue to show how I’m managing his overall training as we progress through his camp. He’s now about 4 weeks away from his fight, so the next couple of weeks are absolutely critical for making sure he’s seeing the improvements in fitness and conditioning he’ll need to be ready to fight. Training him hard enough to make sure this happens while also timing his fitness and overall condition to peak at the time of his fight is not an easy thing and is really only accomplished through effective training management. [/hidepost]