Episode #34: Ben Creamer Works with Some of the Baddest Dudes on the Planet

September 08, 2021

Ben is a martial artist and strength coach from Cincinnati, OH.

He has been working with top athletes for over a decade and currently works with elite boxers and the Cincinnati Bengals.

In this interview he shares some of his techniques and strategies for keeping a variety of athletes ready for competition.

Ben shares a wealth of knowledge…

His learning curve of the years
Dealing with adversity
Understanding a new athlete
Discovering strengths and weaknesses
Monitoring recovery
Stimulating the system, not annihilating it
What he’s learned from the NFL
Energy system development
and much more!

Get in touch with Ben here: Ignition APG

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Ben Creamer

COREY: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone with strength coach Ben Creamer. Ben, how’re you doing?

BEN: I’m doing great Corey, how are you?

COREY: Very good, man. Thanks for joining us this morning.

BEN: Oh, it’s my pleasure.

COREY: Yeah absolutely. So Ben, for everybody that’s listening, give everybody a little two cents of who you are what you’re doing?

BEN: Yeah, absolutely. I work at a private sector at a company called Ignition. We’re based out in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve been working here for about 10 years. We work with all kinds of athletes from NFL to boxing to even middle school, high school, youth team sports, I mean, I’ve even trained snowboarders, so you name it, we get a good mix of guys in here so it kind of forces you to expand your base. So we specialize in the NFL Combine training every year, prepping guys for the Combine, whilst NFL offseason and then, I work exclusively with the boxers. So we’re a faith based organization and we’re just about implementing the mind body spirit approach to training and trying to get athletes from point A to point B.

COREY: Cool, cool, cool. Now your background as far as martial arts in that world, how did you kind of get started in that?

BEN: Yes, so I started Taekwondo when I was younger. I did that for a while and then I got into team sports when I was more in middle school and high school. In my senior year of high school, I got injured pretty bad, just common — just nagging injuries, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trained but because I didn’t know how to train properly, and so that kind of forced me to find a passion for coaching rather than being an athlete myself. So that’s when I started going through the coaching thing and really digging into books and college going after my degree, just wanting to help athletes and help them to achieve their goals without all the hiccups and bumps along the road that aren’t necessary. And through that I still had a competitive fire in me. So I started boxing kind of early in college, nothing professional, I didn’t want to get beat up too bad so it was just enough to get my competitive fire out and I also started implementing a lot of that with the athletes I trained. So as I was learning, I was able to relate that to some of the athletes I worked with, more for cross training purposes like for our NFL guys. Then also it found a correlation between defensive line in boxing and martial arts, and so that’s when I got into Wing Chun Kung Fu. I’m now [incomprehensible] for a couple of years now, and then my fifth year with the Cincinnati Bengals implementing a hand combat program and essentially the martial art and the swimming.

So taking guys and getting into think more in purposes of instead of a five second play more like a five second round of combat. Like we were talking earlier, a boxer, he has 10 three minute rounds per minute rest in between. Football player, he may have 50 snaps, so he’s got a five second round, 10 to 30 seconds in between. So he’s got to take full advantage of that five seconds and be prepared for battle and have his weapons prepared accordingly. So you don’t really have to think about what you do and what hand maneuver to do. So there’s still combat that scenarios that happen instead of actually knocking guy out submitting them yet and go around and go through. And then on top of that, after I started doing [inaudible] and working with a professional boxer out in Dayton, Ohio, it’s Chris Pearson. Right now he’s 14-0, two knockouts he was just on the Mayweather vs Berto undercard got a seventh round TKO. So he’s doing really good and I found a strong niche working with the Combine athletes. I work primarily mostly with boxers now, I’d love to get into a mixed martial arts but it’s unique in a way that I get an experience from the team sport and the training camp and a team environment as well as a training camp with the one on one. And you find the parallels but also the differences in between that. So it’s been a great ride thus far man.

04:27

COREY: Yeah absolutely. It sounds like you got a pretty good a variety of different people that you’ve been working with, especially I’m interested to talk more about, you’ve been working with all the professional the NFL guys, specifically with the Bengals doing hand to hand combat stuff with them. As far as like those athletes, those are big strong powerful athletes, like you said, they have five seconds goes, they got to explode as hard as they can and be able to repeat that power over the course of a game. I [inaudible] Colorado Springs at the NSCA, they had somebody mentioned that the longest combination or flurry in UFC history was like, seven seconds long.

BEN: Yeah.

COREY: Right? And I think a lot of people have the tendency of wanting to do 30 second, minute goes with each exercise and they’re spinning up into circuits and doing all these different things and really not developing powerful explosive athletes. They’re just making guys tired. In your experience working with those explosive athletes and training people for Combine as well as boxers, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned as far as dealing with those two different types of athletes and actually developing an explosive powerful athlete versus just getting guys tired?

BEN: Right, right. Well, it’s funny that you take a lot of the same things. I mean, a lot of the athletes I work with in NFL and boxing, for that matter, there’s an umbrella of athleticism and performance, regardless of what sport you are, you got 10 seconds of free energy, your ATP system. And if you’re producing high amounts of power, that’s going to diminish pretty quickly after that five second range. And so I try to stay out of that middle range of training. I think, Charles [inaudible] labels as you’re just really spinning your wheels you’re not training intense enough to improve speed and power where you’re not training a low enough to enhance recovery or restoration. So you’re really just kind of spinning your wheels. And plus with boxing, he’s getting a lot of that type of work and a skill specific work. When we’re on the pads, heavy bag, when you’re sparring, essentially a lot of threshold training.

So I try to do things that you’re not doing in the ring. I try to undo some of the sport as far as restoring the body mobility wise but as far as power training, I mean it’s all about the quality. I think as a coach, you’re constantly searching for perfect breath, the perfect program, the perfect exercise even knowing that there will never be a perfect one, I think there’s still always the constant search for and that’s one reason why I like martial arts is you’re always looking for that perfect form and technique and that perfect timing and movement knowing you’ll never get there but it’s about the search and about the journey. So I kind of take that same approach with the athletes especially training power. Power is power. So we do it basically three ways: With a barbell heavy implement or heavy kettlebell, real [inaudible] ball, med ball so ballistic exercise projecting into space, as well as the body. How quickly can you displace your body whether it’s in sprint or some kind of jump or plyometric?

07:55

COREY: Right on. Just to kind of — and I think all of that is killer formation as far as working that power system, short explosive bursts and then avoiding that 20 seconds to a minute, kind of grinder work that I think has become so popular, having the restorative aspect on the backside I think that’s really, really smart. We’ll take it back just a little bit. So if a guy comes to work with you, they walk through the door, hey, Ben, I’m Corey, I want to train, here’s where I’m at. Where do you start with your guys?

BEN: So my whole purpose as a coach is take guy from point A to point B. So when a new athlete comes in, I first have to find out what point A is. So where are they currently? What’s their movement like? We’ve used the functional movement screen with a lot of our Combine athletes because they also get tested at when they go to the Combine. I use that from the times kind of as checkpoints, but I don’t use all the time. I feel I’ve been in the game long enough where sometimes I just use my eyes, I can look at movement patterns, push, pull, squat hinge and a lot of the warm up and a lot of times just be able to identify things like that.

So I set the fundamental movement patterns and I always got to recheck it. I also got to profile the sport. I have to know point A where they’re currently at. So all the questionnaires that go into it, injury history, all that, their biomarkers and then what’s the energy demand of the sport? So how much power is needed, how much levels of strength are needed? And then how long are you needing to sustain that? So how much endurance is needed, or how many times you have to repeat that? So football is a lot more intermittent. Boxing, you rely more on that aerobic system because three minutes of work that just like you’re saying, there’s still five seconds of flurries in there. And it’s not a one pace kind of a thing. So you have to kind of get in a little bit of idea of the energy system profile of that sport as well as those fighters, unique strengths and weaknesses because I want to maximize those strengths at the same time I minimize his weakness.

So we’re going to find a baseline as long as movement allows and the movement screen doesn’t put them up for any kind of injury risk. We’re going to see where he’s at with power basically like how Mike Boyle puts it, what buckets are full what buckets are empty. And I can’t maximize every bucket, I can’t fill every bucket because there’s give and take in our body. There’s give and take in every system. That’s why you’ll never have an Olympic gold medal — Olympic lifter also be a successful marathon runner. That’s just not how our body works. So it’s all about optimizing. So how do I optimize that buckets for this guy, for his unique scenario, one for the sport, but also for his unique strengths and weaknesses. So I got to optimize what buckets are full and what are empty. And we test power, I like the broad jump. We use the GymAware to get numbers on his peak power with some of the Olympic variations. I’m not a big Olympic lifting guy with the clean snatch, I’ll teach it with some athletes but then I try to keep the learning curve low. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the weight room having to teach little tiny nuances of deforming technique of an exercise. I want an easy learning curve so they can pick it up, we can train and we can get after it.

11:28

So we’ll set strength. There are some biomarkers for that, for every push, pull, hinge or squat. There’s a certain area at least to try to get to, because it really always goes back to that question how strong is strong enough? And I think that the answer to that is: It depends.

So we’re going to test speed, we’re going to test agility. I want to see what his engine power is like. So for example, we do like a 300 yard shuttle, and we also have a woodway force treadmill. So we do a minute test on that and see how far he can get. We also want to test his engine size, so his aerobic capacity using Modified Cooper’s Test. Basically, he’s going six minutes on a woodway curve, he gets as far as he can, that way I can look at his anaerobic threshold,what his max heart rate is, as well as before that I’ll get resting heart rate. And then also I like to look at his heart rate recovery between rounds, but love to get him when he’s going in intense rounds, heavy bag or mid I’m going to look at that one minute recovery in between to see how quickly he can drop his heart rate back down to like the 130s and 140s. So I’m looking around for 40 beats a minute to kind of give me an idea if this guy’s in shape and he’s ready to go.

And also, just from my eyes just from a coach, I want to see how this person responds to fatigue. So where they act like when they are fatigued. Because everybody that, yeah, they do a power exercise and broad jump, you just do one set, that might be great, but how do they respond to fatigue, their attitude and their facial expression and their posture? They tend to quit easy or they act like they’re tying their shoes stall for next two seconds of break. I’ve seen that a lot. So yeah, a lot of things go into I know that this is a long answer right there, but I just need to get a glimpse of where point A is when the first athlete comes to train. That way I can lay out the plan and how to get to point B.

13:32

COREY: Right on. So I mean, it is a long answer but at the same time there’s a lot of aspects that need to be addressed and assessed.

BEN: Right.

COREY: And you have to go through these things so you can get a ballpark of where your guys are at.

BEN: Right, absolutely.

COREY: So once you get the ballpark, you have the assessment, you figured out their strengths and the weaknesses, then at least for combat athletes, I know jiu-jitsu guys and wrestlers, the typical grapplers are going to be very, very different than a boxer or just a traditional stand up fighter. When they come to see you, what’s a typical hour look like?

BEN: So when they come to see me, basically there are two different types of sessions I would take them through. So one session, let’s say if this is on a sparring day, I basically just try to simplify things, I want to reset, reestablish and rebuild, and that’s something I got from Chip Morton. And reset, meaning that I want to reset the movement pattern, so I want to reset the body. It kind of goes along the line from the original strength principles. Then reestablish, I want to reestablish some of those baselines, lock it in, reestablish some of the weights or some of the numbers that we’ve had before. Maybe it’s not a heavy strength training day, but I need to reset the body and I need to reestablish what we’re trying to do to get it locked in. So the symmetry and the balance is there, everything’s firing on all cylinders. And then I need to rebuild. Now this can be on a lot of different levels, maybe it’s rebuilding being more restorative and mobility based or aerobic capacity rebuild is more of a cardiac function. So this can kind of play more along the lines of a restorative session. And so that’s kind of one way I take it on days where I want, that’s the kind of session where I want him leaving feeling better than he did coming in, so I want him leaving feeling great feeling energized. So being an example of something like on a sparring day when he comes to me two to three hours before he has a sparring session, I’m basically trying to maximize what he does while he’s sparring because he’s going to get the most benefit out of that. Now, if I bust them up in the weight room, that’s arrogant of me to think that he’s going to get more out of that and he’s in the ring sparring. It’s still specific work, he needs to spend most of time there and the game plan with head coach John Mitchell working tactics, strategy in the specific, so I don’t want to take away from that, I want to enhance that whenever I can.

Now on the flip side, he may come in and this is a session now where we’re going to get after it. So I’m going to set, establish and build, so the opposite of reset, reestablish and rebuild. Meaning, I want to set, I need to find time — I got to set the mood and then I got to set the mobility I need to — what’s the proper range of motion, what’s the proper hip hinge, and can he squat, does he have the range of motion, especially with strikers. The shoulder is crowded or you’ve got that rounding of the upper T spine, so I have to undo the sport a lot meaning, set them where I want, good posture, learning how to brace and I got to establish, I got to lock that in. I got to build some competence in the movement there, I got to build competence in the hip hinge, the squat, the push, the pull, some carries. So I got to lock that in with balance and symmetry so we can kind of express that skill in any environment. And then I got to build it. I got to build it up where [inaudible] strength, and we progress to speed and power. So we can express that skill and can really lock in.

So I try to simplify things as much as I can. So I know that’s again another long answer. But — so a typical session, we’re going to work power, we’re going to work strength, and we’re going to work endurance every single session. So especially working current in the way we kind of periodize things but what’s unique is we emphasize a certain quality while retaining others. So it’s not like he’s hitting power, strength and endurance on all equal levels. He might emphasize one or the other, while the others are kind of in a maintenance load. So we’re going to train power again, like I said, with a barbell, with a med ball and with bodyweight depending on where he is outside of his camp. That depends on what the load is. But again, the power implements are all about quality over quantity. So I want high quality reps, plenty of rest in between.

For strength work, I’m very low volume. I want to avoid hypertrophy unless there’s a unique scenario or you want to go up a weight class or there’s extra body fat but for the guys I currently got, fighter specifically, I want to avoid some hypertrophy so I’m going to go low volume in strength, low reps. Sometimes I don’t want him performing his next set until he forgets about the last one before. I mean I’m okay with him taking plenty of rest. He’s not going to get a lot of rest at least in the boxing ring, so this is the time he can relax and he can get plenty of rest. So I like the easy strength method from problem and get a lot of good stuff from him and Dan John. So again, I don’t want to take away, I want to do enough to cause an adaptation but not too much to take away from what he’s got to do in the sports specific realm.

19:12

COREY: So as an example, if you say low volume and you want to get enough to get that adaptation but you don’t want to — basically you want to stimulate the system, you don’t want to annihilate it. As far as reps go, for everybody that’s listening, what’s a traditional type of set and rep variation and what is set and rep variation that you’re using with your guys to show that lower volume.

BEN: So traditional set and rep you think of — I mean there’s endless amounts. So for the deadlift, one thing I’ll do with the deadlift, and again, this is my fire particularly I don’t have any input from the floor. So this is an elevated deadlift, I progress in range of motion as well. So there’s a lot of ways to progress this guy. Sometimes he’s just doing a rack force maybe just from the knees, some kind of elevated trap bar deadlift. So I’m always cautious to the range of motion, or where’s [inaudible]. And so example would be, we do five to seven sets of two reps. In between, he’s going to do a little bit of mobility. He’s going to hang there for some decompression of the joint and he’s going to rest and recover until he forgets about that last set.

Loads aren’t going to be crazy heavy, around 80% or so. Sometimes I might go a little bit over that. But it’s above the minimum effective dose, what’s the least I can do to cause an adaptation without getting in the way. So instead of infocomm I got some time we’ll get up to trap bar deadlift, four sets of five, we’re kind of in this building phase and he’s grinding where him, he’s, my boxing might be hitting 12 reps, even sometimes less, 10 reps or less sometimes, three sets of three, five sets of two. So that’s kind of where I’m going with the low volume for him to get away from hypertrophy but to get that neural adaptation to trigger response in the body but it’s not going to feel beat up and banged up from based on what I heard Conor McGregor say: “You got to upgrade your software without damaging your hardware”.

21:21

COREY: That’s a good way to put it. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think a lot of the traditional either — obviously the bodybuilder programs are all hypertrophy phase. So they have just huge amounts of volume to just shred the muscle and just try to get as big as they can.

BEN: Right.

COREY: And I think anybody listening that does compete, realizes that big muscles aren’t always our friend.

BEN: Right.

COREY: They can hurt us more than they can help us. When you do go to the power lifter, their manipulation of exercise variables and stuff like that are pretty different. They’re trying to just pick up or push a bar with the most weight possible, at whatever cost, right? So a lot of those guys lack different areas of athleticism that a fighter or a grappler has to have, they are essential. So they can’t quite go as far down that road as either, and then as far as Olympic lifting, similar but very, very different I think than the power lifter.

So I think it’s cool to kind of learn from all these different people and see how they do things and then to take pieces of that puzzle and put them into your toolbox, so to speak, and have them when you need them. But I think for fighters and grapplers it’s so important to stimulate the system but to keep the volume low enough because they do have other skill practices that are going to beat them up pretty good.

22:58

BEN: Yeah, you’re right. All these different practices, they have different goals. Powerlifting is about the number that you put up. The goal in boxing is become the world champion and become the best. And there’s a lot of qualities that go into that; a lot of rounds of athleticism, speed, power, agility, endurance, strength. So it’s not just about the numbers. So you always have to keep that mind of what the goal or the end goal is. Like I was saying from point A to point B I get to know where point A is, get to know the athletes, build a relationship with them and tend to get more buoyant but also always key point B in mind too, because sometimes you can get lost along the way with, you got to get this number I got to get him this strong. And you always got to remember what he’s got to do fight night or in the competitive event. That’s the end goal. It’s not about how much he can deadlift, how much he can bench.

23:57

COREY: So we talked a little bit about developing strength and power when you are working with your guys and on the conditioning side, getting them in shape making sure that they’re able to repeat those efforts for 12 rounds or whatever it is that they’re competing at. When you’re coordinating with your skill coaches, how do you guys implement a lot of the conditioning work that you guys do? Is it you doing it? Is it skill coach doing it? Do you guys coordinate? How does that work?

BEN: Yeah, well in this scenario I do it myself, basically it’s myself and a coach Al Mitchell. He has been the Olympic boxing coach back in ‘96. He was Olympic coach for the Chinese team, coached multiple world champions, Vernon Forrest, Dave Reed. That guy is in his 70s now, a boxing genius. So I’m just very fortunate to have him on my side and have his support and him to learn from.

So with Chris I take care of his conditioning because I know what he’s doing when he’s sparring, like how many rounds he’s going to do. So I have to take that into mind. He still likes to do some road work on his own. Sometimes I try to tell him, we can come in and get in here some low impact but there’s one thing different you need about boxing as opposed to MMA. MMA really came up and got popular when their performance training already out there. So I think there’s an easier buoyant for a lot of MMA athletes with performance training and strength coaches. However, boxing is very traditional in the way they train. A lot guys grew up in the boxing gym with a head coach and so the only thing they did to train was boxer run on the road. So a lot of this stuff I mean, Chris was in his early 20s before he came to me and so a lot of stuff was new to him.

So I got to constantly find creative ways to implement that aerobic conditioning. So methods and principles, they’ve never changed, they always stay the same and always have. It’s just the way in which we deliver those methods changes with the time and the environment. The things that worked in the past still work now but — so even with the ages now to stay up on technology, using that light system, Gym Aware, as long as you have access to it, you can get some better buy on from the athletes and finding more creative ways to implement that a little bit before, right. For example, instead of doing a steady state for 30 minutes, going to six mile jog, we’ll do it in aerobic type of intervals, and it’ll be steady state but he’s not doing the same exercise and it’s not the same movement. It’s the same thing boxing or any sport for that matter. You’re not doing the same repetitive motion over and over and over.

So I conclude, we do some carries, get those in our conditioning work, a Temple Run, aerobic plyometrics with a med ball, fled, even animal movements and mobility work incorporating that, have some calisthenics or even low impact cardio machines, Versa climbers, aerodyne bikes, battling ropes, something that’s going to be low impact on the body but I’m still increasing the size of that engine. And I manipulate that with might not be 30 minutes straight but we can do 30 seconds on 30 seconds off, progress to 40 seconds off 20 seconds on — or I’m sorry 40 seconds on 20 seconds off. So we kind of manipulate a minute like that just to keep it fresh, just so he doesn’t get burned out being doing the same piece of machine for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. Now there’s a time and place that we will do that but I like to keep it creative to throw different types of modalities in there still all kind of theme with the low impact and that is going to trigger that cardiovascular development, so I can monitor that using a heart rate monitor so I know keep him in certain zones, but I feel like that was it’s more interesting for the athlete to get more movements out of that works, a few different qualities but still getting everything that I want out of them.

28:10

COREY: Yeah. But I think it’s as you kind of expand your toolbox, right, you learn all these different things in different ways to stimulate the body. So I mean, it might be that tool, it might be manipulating the exercise variables, rest, intensity, different things like that, so that you can get the result that you want. And that’s cool I think it’s good to offer that variety just sort of the person, they do have to adapt, they do have to learn new things, and mentally and physically I think it just helps them out?

BEN: Oh, exactly, exactly. And it keeps it fresh one and same time, I got to explain the “why”. Why we’re doing this unless I just tell them like, okay, we’re going to carry this down and back and then we’re doing it. Okay, so he’s doing all these different activities but he’s not really understanding the reasoning behind it, whether if I explain beforehand, this is why we’re doing this, this is what we’re trying to achieve through this, and that creates some context one, which creates learning, and you’re going to have less resistance when you explain the “why” as well.

COREY: I think that’s a good point.

BEN: So I think [inaudible] to educate your athletes at the same time, why we’re doing this. This is why we’re doing 30 seconds on 30 seconds off, why we’re doing these exercises. So he gets it, he has that in his head the whole time. Not just like, okay, this sucks. I’m just sweating, I should be boxing right now.

COREY: Right. Now that’s important point. I mean, you could have the most well written program on earth, but if you don’t have buy in from the athlete that, they’re not going to do anything with it. So that’s a very, very good point.

BEN: Yep, exactly.

29:54

COREY: So last point I want to cover man, I mean, there’s been a ton of good info, it’s been assessment, your power development, strength, working with athletes, there’s a ton of good stuff in here. I hope everybody is catching it. But as far as your experience, you have a lot of work with those boxers and then you have a lot of work with the NFL guys. As far as learning tips or little pieces that you’ve learned along the way because those are two very different athletes but there might be some similarities. What is one thing whether it’s stuff that you do or stuff you’ve learned from other coaches that was just like an “Aha moment” where you’re like, damn, dude, that’s the coolest shit have ever heard, and really changed the way that you thought about coaching or implemented programs with your guys or anything like that.

BEN: I think the biggest thing for me is, understand the importance of having a spiritual component in your program. Meaning that, we’re a faith based organization and try to implement that in our training, not meaning I’m going to Bible study with the guy in their training, but I’m going to demonstrate the spiritual component in the way we carry ourselves, the way we communicate an the way we treat each other, I never had an athlete that refused me to say a prayer for him or to pray with them, for fight after fight for a training session after training session, or just even if I see him stressed out and see that there’s some troubles at home or something like that, there’s never been athletes who refused that. We’ll include just a Bible verse from time to time at the beginning of the session just to kind of get some motivation and get some focus there. I want to get to know my athletes, I want to get to know their struggles. And I think by having that spiritual component in your program, and faith to me is the backbone to hold this up when we think we’re broken and then we find that we’re really not. And again like I was saying our same format and they’ll happily how athletes respond to fatigue but, also how do we respond to adversity? I think that, this faith based component really helps us respond well to adversity because we all encounter it. Adversity makes a man it’s how we respond to adversity what makes a man.

So having this component in the spiritual side to the program that you can bring peace and bring confidence to an athlete to get rid of some of that fear and anxiety because the biggest parallel I’ve seen is everybody has insecurities. I don’t care what level of athlete that you are, you’re professional level, you’re a 14 year NFL vet and multi million dollars. Yeah, you still got your insecurity. I joke around people asking me what are the guys like in the thing with lock room. I’m like, they’re like giant versions of all your high school buddies. Like, they’re just like to be friends. If you went to high school, you’d be buddies with them, this exact same. They’re just giants, they’re just a lot bigger and stronger than they were. And they all have their own fears and their anxieties and their insecurities and I think it’s our job to coach not just to enhance them physically but also mentally and spiritually along their journey because it’s not just about their athletic career too but how are they going to be as men, how are they going to treat their peers and their spouses and kids, not just while we’re in sports but afterwards so there’s an important for the, sports psychology that goes into it as well. And that’s where a big difference is I think with team sports and boxing. The team sports, yeah, you screw up on a play. You got 10 other guys to kind of back you up. So a lot of fun maybe that can go unnoticed. Or you lose and then you got all your peers around to lift you back up. In boxing, you don’t want that guy out there in the ring. Yeah, you got a corner, corner fighter as well. You were in the corner there for him, but I can’t jump in the ring and fight for him. Thank God because I would get killed. So it’s very different in that way. So I need to think I need to grow in and spend more time in that sports psychology realm with my boxer, try to get him to refocus spend more of his time in between rounds refocusing not dwelling on what happened before. But spend that time in recognizing what you did wrong, what you did, right, regrouping and then the majority of time just refocusing to get back into that zone. Get back in that tunnel vision.

COREY: Yeah, that’s good advice, man. It’s a lot of good stuff. So Ben, dude there’s a tremendous amount of info, I hope we’ll put notes and hopefully everybody listened to this thing a couple of times, because there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Then if guys want to touch base with you and reach out and connect, what’s the best way for them to do that?

BEN: Go to ignitionapg.com. I have my email and my info, you can find in there.

COREY: Okay, cool. Everything’s on there. So guys, I’ll put that link down below. And Ben thanks again man, I appreciate you sharing, it means a lot and we will talk to you soon, man.

BEN: Hey Corey, man, I’ve been following you guys for a long time. I really appreciate the opportunity and honor.

COREY: Of course, man. Have a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.

BEN: Yes sir, you too.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Ben Creamer

COREY: Hey guys, this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning. I’m on the phone with strength coach Ben Creamer. Ben, how’re you doing?

BEN: I’m doing great Corey, how are you?

COREY: Very good, man. Thanks for joining us this morning.

BEN: Oh, it’s my pleasure.

COREY: Yeah absolutely. So Ben, for everybody that’s listening, give everybody a little two cents of who you are what you’re doing?

BEN: Yeah, absolutely. I work at a private sector at a company called Ignition. We’re based out in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve been working here for about 10 years. We work with all kinds of athletes from NFL to boxing to even middle school, high school, youth team sports, I mean, I’ve even trained snowboarders, so you name it, we get a good mix of guys in here so it kind of forces you to expand your base. So we specialize in the NFL Combine training every year, prepping guys for the Combine, whilst NFL offseason and then, I work exclusively with the boxers. So we’re a faith based organization and we’re just about implementing the mind body spirit approach to training and trying to get athletes from point A to point B.

COREY: Cool, cool, cool. Now your background as far as martial arts in that world, how did you kind of get started in that?

BEN: Yes, so I started Taekwondo when I was younger. I did that for a while and then I got into team sports when I was more in middle school and high school. In my senior year of high school, I got injured pretty bad, just common — just nagging injuries, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trained but because I didn’t know how to train properly, and so that kind of forced me to find a passion for coaching rather than being an athlete myself. So that’s when I started going through the coaching thing and really digging into books and college going after my degree, just wanting to help athletes and help them to achieve their goals without all the hiccups and bumps along the road that aren’t necessary. And through that I still had a competitive fire in me. So I started boxing kind of early in college, nothing professional, I didn’t want to get beat up too bad so it was just enough to get my competitive fire out and I also started implementing a lot of that with the athletes I trained. So as I was learning, I was able to relate that to some of the athletes I worked with, more for cross training purposes like for our NFL guys. Then also it found a correlation between defensive line in boxing and martial arts, and so that’s when I got into Wing Chun Kung Fu. I’m now [incomprehensible] for a couple of years now, and then my fifth year with the Cincinnati Bengals implementing a hand combat program and essentially the martial art and the swimming.

So taking guys and getting into think more in purposes of instead of a five second play more like a five second round of combat. Like we were talking earlier, a boxer, he has 10 three minute rounds per minute rest in between. Football player, he may have 50 snaps, so he’s got a five second round, 10 to 30 seconds in between. So he’s got to take full advantage of that five seconds and be prepared for battle and have his weapons prepared accordingly. So you don’t really have to think about what you do and what hand maneuver to do. So there’s still combat that scenarios that happen instead of actually knocking guy out submitting them yet and go around and go through. And then on top of that, after I started doing [inaudible] and working with a professional boxer out in Dayton, Ohio, it’s Chris Pearson. Right now he’s 14-0, two knockouts he was just on the Mayweather vs Berto undercard got a seventh round TKO. So he’s doing really good and I found a strong niche working with the Combine athletes. I work primarily mostly with boxers now, I’d love to get into a mixed martial arts but it’s unique in a way that I get an experience from the team sport and the training camp and a team environment as well as a training camp with the one on one. And you find the parallels but also the differences in between that. So it’s been a great ride thus far man.

04:27

COREY: Yeah absolutely. It sounds like you got a pretty good a variety of different people that you’ve been working with, especially I’m interested to talk more about, you’ve been working with all the professional the NFL guys, specifically with the Bengals doing hand to hand combat stuff with them. As far as like those athletes, those are big strong powerful athletes, like you said, they have five seconds goes, they got to explode as hard as they can and be able to repeat that power over the course of a game. I [inaudible] Colorado Springs at the NSCA, they had somebody mentioned that the longest combination or flurry in UFC history was like, seven seconds long.

BEN: Yeah.

COREY: Right? And I think a lot of people have the tendency of wanting to do 30 second, minute goes with each exercise and they’re spinning up into circuits and doing all these different things and really not developing powerful explosive athletes. They’re just making guys tired. In your experience working with those explosive athletes and training people for Combine as well as boxers, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned as far as dealing with those two different types of athletes and actually developing an explosive powerful athlete versus just getting guys tired?

BEN: Right, right. Well, it’s funny that you take a lot of the same things. I mean, a lot of the athletes I work with in NFL and boxing, for that matter, there’s an umbrella of athleticism and performance, regardless of what sport you are, you got 10 seconds of free energy, your ATP system. And if you’re producing high amounts of power, that’s going to diminish pretty quickly after that five second range. And so I try to stay out of that middle range of training. I think, Charles [inaudible] labels as you’re just really spinning your wheels you’re not training intense enough to improve speed and power where you’re not training a low enough to enhance recovery or restoration. So you’re really just kind of spinning your wheels. And plus with boxing, he’s getting a lot of that type of work and a skill specific work. When we’re on the pads, heavy bag, when you’re sparring, essentially a lot of threshold training.

07:55

COREY: Right on. Just to kind of — and I think all of that is killer formation as far as working that power system, short explosive bursts and then avoiding that 20 seconds to a minute, kind of grinder work that I think has become so popular, having the restorative aspect on the backside I think that’s really, really smart. We’ll take it back just a little bit. So if a guy comes to work with you, they walk through the door, hey, Ben, I’m Corey, I want to train, here’s where I’m at. Where do you start with your guys?

BEN: So my whole purpose as a coach is take guy from point A to point B. So when a new athlete comes in, I first have to find out what point A is. So where are they currently? What’s their movement like? We’ve used the functional movement screen with a lot of our Combine athletes because they also get tested at when they go to the Combine. I use that from the times kind of as checkpoints, but I don’t use all the time. I feel I’ve been in the game long enough where sometimes I just use my eyes, I can look at movement patterns, push, pull, squat hinge and a lot of the warm up and a lot of times just be able to identify things like that.

So we’re going to find a baseline as long as movement allows and the movement screen doesn’t put them up for any kind of injury risk. We’re going to see where he’s at with power basically like how Mike Boyle puts it, what buckets are full what buckets are empty. And I can’t maximize every bucket, I can’t fill every bucket because there’s give and take in our body. There’s give and take in every system. That’s why you’ll never have an Olympic gold medal — Olympic lifter also be a successful marathon runner. That’s just not how our body works. So it’s all about optimizing. So how do I optimize that buckets for this guy, for his unique scenario, one for the sport, but also for his unique strengths and weaknesses. So I got to optimize what buckets are full and what are empty. And we test power, I like the broad jump. We use the GymAware to get numbers on his peak power with some of the Olympic variations. I’m not a big Olympic lifting guy with the clean snatch, I’ll teach it with some athletes but then I try to keep the learning curve low. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the weight room having to teach little tiny nuances of deforming technique of an exercise. I want an easy learning curve so they can pick it up, we can train and we can get after it.

11:28

So we’re going to test speed, we’re going to test agility. I want to see what his engine power is like. So for example, we do like a 300 yard shuttle, and we also have a woodway force treadmill. So we do a minute test on that and see how far he can get. We also want to test his engine size, so his aerobic capacity using Modified Cooper’s Test. Basically, he’s going six minutes on a woodway curve, he gets as far as he can, that way I can look at his anaerobic threshold,what his max heart rate is, as well as before that I’ll get resting heart rate. And then also I like to look at his heart rate recovery between rounds, but love to get him when he’s going in intense rounds, heavy bag or mid I’m going to look at that one minute recovery in between to see how quickly he can drop his heart rate back down to like the 130s and 140s. So I’m looking around for 40 beats a minute to kind of give me an idea if this guy’s in shape and he’s ready to go.

13:32

COREY: Right on. So I mean, it is a long answer but at the same time there’s a lot of aspects that need to be addressed and assessed.

BEN: Right.

COREY: And you have to go through these things so you can get a ballpark of where your guys are at.

BEN: Right, absolutely.

COREY: So once you get the ballpark, you have the assessment, you figured out their strengths and the weaknesses, then at least for combat athletes, I know jiu-jitsu guys and wrestlers, the typical grapplers are going to be very, very different than a boxer or just a traditional stand up fighter. When they come to see you, what’s a typical hour look like?

BEN: So when they come to see me, basically there are two different types of sessions I would take them through. So one session, let’s say if this is on a sparring day, I basically just try to simplify things, I want to reset, reestablish and rebuild, and that’s something I got from Chip Morton. And reset, meaning that I want to reset the movement pattern, so I want to reset the body. It kind of goes along the line from the original strength principles. Then reestablish, I want to reestablish some of those baselines, lock it in, reestablish some of the weights or some of the numbers that we’ve had before. Maybe it’s not a heavy strength training day, but I need to reset the body and I need to reestablish what we’re trying to do to get it locked in. So the symmetry and the balance is there, everything’s firing on all cylinders. And then I need to rebuild. Now this can be on a lot of different levels, maybe it’s rebuilding being more restorative and mobility based or aerobic capacity rebuild is more of a cardiac function. So this can kind of play more along the lines of a restorative session. And so that’s kind of one way I take it on days where I want, that’s the kind of session where I want him leaving feeling better than he did coming in, so I want him leaving feeling great feeling energized. So being an example of something like on a sparring day when he comes to me two to three hours before he has a sparring session, I’m basically trying to maximize what he does while he’s sparring because he’s going to get the most benefit out of that. Now, if I bust them up in the weight room, that’s arrogant of me to think that he’s going to get more out of that and he’s in the ring sparring. It’s still specific work, he needs to spend most of time there and the game plan with head coach John Mitchell working tactics, strategy in the specific, so I don’t want to take away from that, I want to enhance that whenever I can.

So I try to simplify things as much as I can. So I know that’s again another long answer. But — so a typical session, we’re going to work power, we’re going to work strength, and we’re going to work endurance every single session. So especially working current in the way we kind of periodize things but what’s unique is we emphasize a certain quality while retaining others. So it’s not like he’s hitting power, strength and endurance on all equal levels. He might emphasize one or the other, while the others are kind of in a maintenance load. So we’re going to train power again, like I said, with a barbell, with a med ball and with bodyweight depending on where he is outside of his camp. That depends on what the load is. But again, the power implements are all about quality over quantity. So I want high quality reps, plenty of rest in between.

For strength work, I’m very low volume. I want to avoid hypertrophy unless there’s a unique scenario or you want to go up a weight class or there’s extra body fat but for the guys I currently got, fighter specifically, I want to avoid some hypertrophy so I’m going to go low volume in strength, low reps. Sometimes I don’t want him performing his next set until he forgets about the last one before. I mean I’m okay with him taking plenty of rest. He’s not going to get a lot of rest at least in the boxing ring, so this is the time he can relax and he can get plenty of rest. So I like the easy strength method from problem and get a lot of good stuff from him and Dan John. So again, I don’t want to take away, I want to do enough to cause an adaptation but not too much to take away from what he’s got to do in the sports specific realm.

19:12

COREY: So as an example, if you say low volume and you want to get enough to get that adaptation but you don’t want to — basically you want to stimulate the system, you don’t want to annihilate it. As far as reps go, for everybody that’s listening, what’s a traditional type of set and rep variation and what is set and rep variation that you’re using with your guys to show that lower volume.

BEN: So traditional set and rep you think of — I mean there’s endless amounts. So for the deadlift, one thing I’ll do with the deadlift, and again, this is my fire particularly I don’t have any input from the floor. So this is an elevated deadlift, I progress in range of motion as well. So there’s a lot of ways to progress this guy. Sometimes he’s just doing a rack force maybe just from the knees, some kind of elevated trap bar deadlift. So I’m always cautious to the range of motion, or where’s [inaudible]. And so example would be, we do five to seven sets of two reps. In between, he’s going to do a little bit of mobility. He’s going to hang there for some decompression of the joint and he’s going to rest and recover until he forgets about that last set.

Loads aren’t going to be crazy heavy, around 80% or so. Sometimes I might go a little bit over that. But it’s above the minimum effective dose, what’s the least I can do to cause an adaptation without getting in the way. So instead of infocomm I got some time we’ll get up to trap bar deadlift, four sets of five, we’re kind of in this building phase and he’s grinding where him, he’s, my boxing might be hitting 12 reps, even sometimes less, 10 reps or less sometimes, three sets of three, five sets of two. So that’s kind of where I’m going with the low volume for him to get away from hypertrophy but to get that neural adaptation to trigger response in the body but it’s not going to feel beat up and banged up from based on what I heard Conor McGregor say: “You got to upgrade your software without damaging your hardware”.

21:21

COREY: That’s a good way to put it. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think a lot of the traditional either — obviously the bodybuilder programs are all hypertrophy phase. So they have just huge amounts of volume to just shred the muscle and just try to get as big as they can.

BEN: Right.

COREY: And I think anybody listening that does compete, realizes that big muscles aren’t always our friend.

BEN: Right.

COREY: They can hurt us more than they can help us. When you do go to the power lifter, their manipulation of exercise variables and stuff like that are pretty different. They’re trying to just pick up or push a bar with the most weight possible, at whatever cost, right? So a lot of those guys lack different areas of athleticism that a fighter or a grappler has to have, they are essential. So they can’t quite go as far down that road as either, and then as far as Olympic lifting, similar but very, very different I think than the power lifter.

22:58

BEN: Yeah, you’re right. All these different practices, they have different goals. Powerlifting is about the number that you put up. The goal in boxing is become the world champion and become the best. And there’s a lot of qualities that go into that; a lot of rounds of athleticism, speed, power, agility, endurance, strength. So it’s not just about the numbers. So you always have to keep that mind of what the goal or the end goal is. Like I was saying from point A to point B I get to know where point A is, get to know the athletes, build a relationship with them and tend to get more buoyant but also always key point B in mind too, because sometimes you can get lost along the way with, you got to get this number I got to get him this strong. And you always got to remember what he’s got to do fight night or in the competitive event. That’s the end goal. It’s not about how much he can deadlift, how much he can bench.

23:57

COREY: So we talked a little bit about developing strength and power when you are working with your guys and on the conditioning side, getting them in shape making sure that they’re able to repeat those efforts for 12 rounds or whatever it is that they’re competing at. When you’re coordinating with your skill coaches, how do you guys implement a lot of the conditioning work that you guys do? Is it you doing it? Is it skill coach doing it? Do you guys coordinate? How does that work?

BEN: Yeah, well in this scenario I do it myself, basically it’s myself and a coach Al Mitchell. He has been the Olympic boxing coach back in ‘96. He was Olympic coach for the Chinese team, coached multiple world champions, Vernon Forrest, Dave Reed. That guy is in his 70s now, a boxing genius. So I’m just very fortunate to have him on my side and have his support and him to learn from.

28:10

COREY: Yeah. But I think it’s as you kind of expand your toolbox, right, you learn all these different things in different ways to stimulate the body. So I mean, it might be that tool, it might be manipulating the exercise variables, rest, intensity, different things like that, so that you can get the result that you want. And that’s cool I think it’s good to offer that variety just sort of the person, they do have to adapt, they do have to learn new things, and mentally and physically I think it just helps them out?

BEN: Oh, exactly, exactly. And it keeps it fresh one and same time, I got to explain the “why”. Why we’re doing this unless I just tell them like, okay, we’re going to carry this down and back and then we’re doing it. Okay, so he’s doing all these different activities but he’s not really understanding the reasoning behind it, whether if I explain beforehand, this is why we’re doing this, this is what we’re trying to achieve through this, and that creates some context one, which creates learning, and you’re going to have less resistance when you explain the “why” as well.

COREY: I think that’s a good point.

BEN: So I think [inaudible] to educate your athletes at the same time, why we’re doing this. This is why we’re doing 30 seconds on 30 seconds off, why we’re doing these exercises. So he gets it, he has that in his head the whole time. Not just like, okay, this sucks. I’m just sweating, I should be boxing right now.

COREY: Right. Now that’s important point. I mean, you could have the most well written program on earth, but if you don’t have buy in from the athlete that, they’re not going to do anything with it. So that’s a very, very good point.

BEN: Yep, exactly.

29:54

COREY: So last point I want to cover man, I mean, there’s been a ton of good info, it’s been assessment, your power development, strength, working with athletes, there’s a ton of good stuff in here. I hope everybody is catching it. But as far as your experience, you have a lot of work with those boxers and then you have a lot of work with the NFL guys. As far as learning tips or little pieces that you’ve learned along the way because those are two very different athletes but there might be some similarities. What is one thing whether it’s stuff that you do or stuff you’ve learned from other coaches that was just like an “Aha moment” where you’re like, damn, dude, that’s the coolest shit have ever heard, and really changed the way that you thought about coaching or implemented programs with your guys or anything like that.

BEN: I think the biggest thing for me is, understand the importance of having a spiritual component in your program. Meaning that, we’re a faith based organization and try to implement that in our training, not meaning I’m going to Bible study with the guy in their training, but I’m going to demonstrate the spiritual component in the way we carry ourselves, the way we communicate an the way we treat each other, I never had an athlete that refused me to say a prayer for him or to pray with them, for fight after fight for a training session after training session, or just even if I see him stressed out and see that there’s some troubles at home or something like that, there’s never been athletes who refused that. We’ll include just a Bible verse from time to time at the beginning of the session just to kind of get some motivation and get some focus there. I want to get to know my athletes, I want to get to know their struggles. And I think by having that spiritual component in your program, and faith to me is the backbone to hold this up when we think we’re broken and then we find that we’re really not. And again like I was saying our same format and they’ll happily how athletes respond to fatigue but, also how do we respond to adversity? I think that, this faith based component really helps us respond well to adversity because we all encounter it. Adversity makes a man it’s how we respond to adversity what makes a man.

COREY: Yeah, that’s good advice, man. It’s a lot of good stuff. So Ben, dude there’s a tremendous amount of info, I hope we’ll put notes and hopefully everybody listened to this thing a couple of times, because there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Then if guys want to touch base with you and reach out and connect, what’s the best way for them to do that?

BEN: Go to ignitionapg.com. I have my email and my info, you can find in there.

COREY: Okay, cool. Everything’s on there. So guys, I’ll put that link down below. And Ben thanks again man, I appreciate you sharing, it means a lot and we will talk to you soon, man.

BEN: Hey Corey, man, I’ve been following you guys for a long time. I really appreciate the opportunity and honor.

COREY: Of course, man. Have a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.

BEN: Yes sir, you too.

Episode #34: Ben Creamer Works with Some of the Baddest Dudes on the Planet

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Ben Creamer

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