Workout with Junior dos Santos to Develop Knockout Power

By Phil Daru

Today we're working with UFC fighter, Junior dos Santos. He's about five weeks out from UFC down in Australia and our focus today is maximum strength. We're trying to induce the most amount of force production — knockout power, in plain terms — that we can. So the main lift is the floor press. After that it's accessory and supplemental work for the posterior chain and trunk stability — the stuff that lets him actually deliver the force he builds.

Start with the full framework: How to Train Your Punching Power: The 8-Week Plan.

Phil Daru's Max-Strength Workout for Knockout Power

Tips for Creating More Knockout Power

Why triceps are important when pressing...

So as we're pressing, it needs to be a straight line.  If you're arching back, you're putting into the Delt too much. We got to work on that. I want you to work more on the triceps. I rather you have stronger triceps because that's going to be at the end of the punch. You're not rolling forward too much. So I want you to have this. You're not punching from your chest either. The chest can only pull the arm across the body, and you're not throwing punches that way inside a fight. You're throwing the jab through here. So I want the triceps to have this more power there.

Why Does Coach Daru use the floor press with his fighters?

So right now, upper body maximal strength, he's working through a floor press. This primarily is a better lift for the fighters that I choose. I use about four different compound lifts. This is one of them. Twist the body in the right position. It's a lot safer for the athlete and also he's creating the ability to strain underweight. And that's what's really going to help with that maximum strength. So we're going to give him a little bit of a break. Let them recover his ATP and we'll start again. He's doing a max single right here for absolute strength.

So a lot of the times with maximum effort, we'll see breakdown in muscle. So from there I'll get to go ahead and correlate the accessory work after receive the breakdown from a maximal effort. The good thing is we got what we wanted from an adaptation standpoint and I got to identify a weak point that we can hit on in the accessory work.

Accessory work to fix weak links...

So now we're getting into accessory work. Trying to work on a posterior chain. We're going on the hamstrings, working on the upper back. Things that I see that we need to work on from a structural standpoint. Want to mitigate any type of injury or at least reduce the risk of injuries. And then also to maximize our potential to be strong in all muscles.

Working on multiple physical qualities.

Now basically what we're doing, is we're super setting goals so we can maximize our time efficiency, but also so he's not sitting around idle. Obviously Junior is a ball of energy. So I got to make sure that I maintain that energy. The reason why we're doing this anti rotation, I want you to be able to be strong and have stability. I want you to be able to maneuver whatever way you want that if you'll knock him out.

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