Episode #17: MMA Strength Coach, Loren Landow, Discusses Training for Fighters

September 08, 2021

Loren Landow works with some of the best athletes in the world.

At his clinic in Denver, CO, he has worked with NFL, NHL, Olympic, MLB and a host of MMA’s best.

He has worked with Nate Marquardt, Brendan Shaub, Cat Zingano, Shane Carwin and many others

Needless to say, if you are ever training in Denver, Loren is the man to see.

Check out the full interview here:

On your cell? Download the Full Interview: MMA Strength Coach, Loren Landow

In this episode we discuss:

Lack of communication between coaches
Assessing a new athlete
Tests to judge athleticism
2 characteristics of the BEST fighters
Mental Toughness vs Mental Strength
Periodization for fighters
and more.

Loren Landow is a strength coach, international presenter, and owns Loren Landow Performance in Denver, CO.

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Loren Landow

COREY: Hey guys this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning and I’m here on the phone with Loren Landow. How’re you doing Loren?

LOREN: I’m doing good Corey. Thank you for having me on.

COREY: Yeah absolutely man thanks for taking the time I know you had a busy day, talking about [incomprehensible] assistant the other day and from the sound of it you had a long day.

LOREN: Yeah my days are usually about 10 to 12 hours straight through and I have a plenty of projects going on on the side that keep me busy so no rest, right?

COREY: Yeah absolutely, no rest for the dudes that are working it. And guys, just so you guys realize, Loren’s out there in Denver, Colorado. He’s working with some of the top UFC guys in the whole world. And on top of the UFC guys he’s working with, he’s working with NFL guys, Olympic athletes; you guys name it; NHL and MLB. He seems to be the [incomprehensible] visit when you guys are in Denver. So Loren, for the guys that are listening, can you give us just a quick snapshot of who you are and where you’re at, what you’re doing out there?

LOREN: Sure Corey, thank you and everybody out there listening, I’m out here in Denver, Colorado. I’ve been in practice for almost 20 years now. Started as a good old fashioned personal trainer and quickly made my jump into sports performance about 18 years ago, and just kind of fell in love with how to maximize human performance and ultimately, I’ve evolved my game over the years. There’s days I think I know what I’m doing and then there’s a lot of days I feel as though I have no clue.

01:33

COREY: Right on. I think that’s pretty true across the board. I mean, all the people that are coming through and all the different things that you hear out there and read and as things evolve, there are always — things are always changing, that’s for sure.

LOREN: Absolutely, and we’re just blessed here we’ve got an amazing fight team out here at Team Elevation and Team Factory X and between those two teams, I get to see a host of fighters. I get to see a lot of my fighters are, from Brendan Schaub, Nate “The Great” Marquardt, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, he’s up from Albuquerque, Cat Zingano, Neil Magny, Brandon Fache, Jared Hamman, Josh Copeland, newly signed heavyweights, the UFC ranks, so we see a lot of UFC fighters and then Cortez Coleman, Chris Camozzi and Dustin Jacoby, guys who fight in Bellator. So we have a nice stable of fighters coming in.

02:32

COREY: That’s awesome man. That’s a fun gig when you get a crew like that, han?

LOREN: Oh you know what? Tell you what, if you’re having a slow day or you’re a little bit low in the gas tank, they walk in and the gas tank changes. It’s on full and everybody’s raving and everybody builds off each other’s emotions and work ethic and habits so it makes for a fun day for myself and my staff.

COREY: Absolutely. So Loren, just to kind of jump into it, I mean, you got a killer group of dudes that just by itself is absolute gold because you and I both know that you get a crew of guys feeding off each other like that that just elevates everybody’s game.

LOREN: You’re absolutely right. We were very fortunate in our fight team, and I’ll throw some names out there. When I first started with this fight team about five, six years ago, I was fortunate enough to work with guys like Duane Ludwig, Shane Carwin, and those guys really kind of embraced me and embraced the strength and conditioning side of training and allowed me to kind of come in and see what they did at all their tactical sessions from the wrestling, the jiu-jitsu, the sparring, the Muay Thai. I was able to really get a bird’s eye view of what was going on and it allowed me to really make some good and smart decisions on my training.

03:56

COREY: That’s awesome. So Loren, with your experience, I mean, it’s obvious you’ve been in the game for a long time you studied your ear off, you got a lot of practical experience with a ton of different athletes, including a lot of the fighters and some of the best fighters that have been around over the last 10 years. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see with strength and conditioning and the fight world? Because it seems like to me that between MMA and jiu-jitsu and boxing and all these different things, there are a ton of opinions out there and a lot of different theories.

LOREN: The biggest mistake that I tend to see with all the different disciplines is a lack of communication, and lack of communication between all the coaches who run the tactical sessions. Does the jujitsu coach talk to the wrestling coach, does the wrestling coach talk to the striking coach, does the striking coach talk to MMA coach? And if nobody is communicating, I mean, you might as well be spinning a wheel blindfolding someone and asking them to throw darts and you have no idea what you’re training for. And I think that MMA falls into the category of feel versus real. Well, I worked hard today so that means I must be in shape for tomorrow. And as you and I both know Corey that couldn’t be further from the truth, training is a science and it’s a blend of your education and your intuition. And as coaches, we have to communicate and we have to set up your parameters and structure to the training camps.

05:31

What I simply did when I was brought on to this fight team, I had my fighters label out every tactical session, every training session they had through a week. And to my surprise, they walked away and most of them came to me with about 16 sessions a week that they did, three of those which were strength and conditioning.

So from here, I just simply made a schedule, and I listed all the days of the week and I listed all the tactical sessions, and I simply put a red, yellow or green, and I said, here’s what I want you guys to do. I want you to take this with you with every practice, and I want you to mark if the practice in your mind was red, which was hard; if it was a yellow, which was moderate; or if it was a green, which was easy, more technical and more of a flow.

Well, I gave it to probably my most reliable fighter which was Nate “The Great” Marquardt and of the 16 practices, he came back with 12 reds. And I said we have a problem. I said we have a problem here. And that was the way that I could take it to the [inaudible] coaches and say, hey guys, here’s the perception of what this athlete is going through. I get the training camp needs to be hard, but we’ve got to be smart. And that really opened up those coaches to allow me to really help a tempo or a true peaking tapering kind of stance, if you will, or periodization. Yeah, lack of a better term, it’s not necessarily a four year cycle, it’s usually two mesocycles that we get through in the camp. So this has allowed me to help set the foundation of what our camps would look like.

07:21

COREY: That’s good. I mean, because yeah I think it’s pretty common these days that people just want to get in, they want to work hard, they’re very fortunate. Even from my experience that if they’re doing all of their skill training under one roof, that’s pretty rare as well.

LOREN: You’re absolutely right.

COREY: There’s a handful of camps around the country that have everything under one roof, but a lot of these guys are going to do jiu-jitsu at one place, they’re going to a boxing coach in another place, to do a strength and conditioning here, they’re going to MMA practice and sparring here and that just magnifies I think that lack of communication between all those different coaches.

LOREN: Right, and within that lack of communication, I would also say that the other biggest issue with MMA is lack of recovery and that’s obviously a no brainer. I think when you think of any tactical fighter, any tactical athlete, you know recovery is going to be low on the totem pole. But what we’ve tried to do is really find a way to make our strength and conditioning a win-win and supportive of all their tactical sessions.

COREY: Right on. So when you’re starting with a new guy, a new guy walks through the door, you have no idea who he is, maybe he fights at a high level maybe he doesn’t. How do you typically start out with your athlete?

LOREN: Well, the first and foremost, they go through a pretty extensive medical questionnaire, because I can assume if anybody spent any time in any types of mixed martial arts, they’re coming in to me with the host of injuries that they either know about or they forgot about.

COREY: Right.

08:59

LOREN: So the first for me, I need to know what they’re dealing with. It’s almost like clockwork. Any MMA fighter comes in to me has some sort of shoulder pathology, low back pathology, and usually some sort of hip or groin pathology. So those are usually pretty good places to start.

So once they come in, they’ve gone through their medical questionnaire, we take them through a simple screen. It’s not necessarily like an FMS, but it’s really more of an active dynamic warm up that has more of a qualitative feel to it, where I’m assessing ranges of motion but I’m paying attention to where they get their ranges of motion from, what’s the stability like through the ranges of motion that they go through? What do symmetries look like left to right, front to back, top to bottom. And so that’s first and foremost, I have to lay down the foundation of my warm up because ultimately even though my warm up is my screen, my warm up is also my 10 to 15 minutes of corrective exercise with the beginning of our session. So I’m kind of killing two birds with one stone, for lack of a better term, when I implement my warm up and my strategies.

10:15

Now again, if somebody is coming in healthy to me, I’ll typically take them through some sort of testing I need to understand their measurable, I need to see know is this person — you can get a pretty good look at somebody and know if they are fast twitch or slow twitch by just how they move a little bit. But we will take them through a battery of tests that allows to determine does this person have a potential to be explosive or they are just more of a slow twitch cat.

And then I like to follow up my vertical jump and my broad jump tests. I like to follow them up with some sort of 10, 20 yards sprint just to make sure that it is — if I do notice that they’re more fast twitch in their jumps that it shows itself in their sprints, or vice versa. I’ve seen some people who just don’t understand how to pre load, how to counter movement and so they jump poorly but then you get them into a sprint they can actually roll. So sometimes we get so damn caught up into what our numbers say versus watching the person move.

Now after I take them through their sprints, we’ll take them through some sort of multi directional work, I want to get a sense of what type of athlete they are. Now I’m probably going to get a lot of haters out there for this comment but in my opinion, from a general athletic standpoint, I don’t think that mixed martial artists are the pinnacle of athletes out there. When we look at like general athleticism, the ability to change direction, the ability to be explosive, they have some amazing skill sets but if you take them down the board and if you’re measuring all the different bio motor abilities that make up athleticism, they’re not usually going to be at the top of the board with all the other sports.

12:02

COREY: Well, like a football player spent his whole life on his feet being as explosive he can in multi directions, right? Hockey player can knock a puck out of the sky which blows me away, and there’s a lot of hand eye coordination and stuff on their feet and hands. And there’s all kinds of stuff that those guys have spent their whole life doing. Where maybe a MMA guy, like you said, they have just a different set of skill sets.

LOREN: They’ve unbelievable skill set as far as practitioners, but at the end of the day, I think there’s a lot of the mixed martial artists that [inaudible] play organized sports growing up, and maybe they went early into the martial arts, which again, makes them have a fantastic skill set. But when we look at general athleticism, those are the things I’m trying to identify when somebody new comes into my door. And we’ll also take them through a battery of a whole host of other tests and then obviously we’ll end up with some sort of lactate threshold where we’re doing 300 yard shuttles with a one to two work to rest ratio and I’m running two of them and I just want to see what their recovery time is. One, from a heart rate standpoint, but two, what is their second repetition of their 300 yard shuttle look like compared to the first. Is it similar or is it drastically different?

COREY: Right on.

LOREN: Yeah, and then everyday ultimately becomes an evaluation to be honest with you. I have a guy, he’s a little over a week out today. And every time we’re in the weight room, it’s an evaluation. It’s an evaluation of the quality and the speed on the bar or the load that they’re pressing and pushing.

13:43

COREY: Right on. Now with your program, as you’re working with those guys, are there kind of pillars to your program, foundational things that you see that every single guy needs. I had a question that came through the other day and the guy was asking me and he said, hey for football, they have the combine, for a lot of other sports they have pillar challenges or tests that kind of are benchmarks for that sport that kind of gives coaches an idea of, hey this guy’s either ready or this guy has a potential to be in the spotlight, like as an athlete on our team, so on and so forth. Are there certain things that you guys use that are kind of pillars for you guys with your athletes?

LOREN: I wouldn’t say that there’s anything that’s more or different. I’m one of those practitioners if it’s not broke, don’t break it or don’t reinvent it kind of thing. And if I look at the testing for the NFL Combine, those are all general measurables of athleticism. And to me, I can get the same kind of report out of MMA fighters like I can from football player from those same test. I can get an idea, I can get a sense of all their bio motor abilities that make up athleticism.

If we look at speed, power, agility, strength, flexibility, neuromuscular coordination and conditioning, I can get that through all my tests that I mentioned previously. So I don’t know if I necessarily do that, I will tell you this. I think this is going to sound more anecdotal than anything. But I think the most important thing for an MMA fighter is focus and coachability. Those are the two things when I see a fighter come in the door — I’ve seen plenty of fighters should come in the door explosive and elastic and in great conditioning but they don’t comprehend well. They do not take coaching well. And so to me, those are the bigger red flags or those are the things I see in an athlete and I see focus and I see the coachability, that’s the [incomprehensible] con our head coach and hey, this guy’s a real deal. I don’t know what his skill sets are like in practice but this kid can be coached.

16:12

COREY: Now just to clarify that, because I think it’s an important point, when you’re talking about focus and coachability; when a guy walks through the door, from your viewpoint as the strength coach, what specifically are you looking for that makes you like, that red flag goes off like whoa, this guy’s good.

LOREN: You know what, actually if it’s a red flag in a good positive manner, it’s an indication….

COREY: Yeah like, there’s something that they’re doing on a daily basis that has just really caught your eye. What are some of those daily habits that are sticking out?

LOREN: Yeah, this is going to sound really old school but a couple things. Is this person professional? Do they take it as a job? Are they always early, 5, 10, 15 minutes early? Are they prepared or does it look like they just woke up or if I’m giving them coaching cues, if I’m giving them any types of instruction, is their eye contact? Are they addressing me? After I address them, are they turning around and are they following suit for the instructions I gave them. So those are all the little things that I pay attention to.

During some of the metabolic circuits that I put together, I purposely put a massive amount of lactate on the lower extremity and then I ask them to shadowbox. Because I want to see how they respond to being in the most uncomfortable pain, can they still show me athleticism?

Well, a lot of guys have the tendency to go through the motions when I get to this point. And if somebody walks in through the door and that person’s head comes up as they’re shadowboxing, it tells me that they’re not training with the same intent that I need somebody to train with to be a champion.

So those are the little things that catch my eye, and I’ll have a talk with the athletes. I’ve had a talk with a couple of athletes like hey, you’re punching in the clock but you’re not doing the work. Just because you showed up to strength and conditioning did not mean you hit it with the intent. And here’s the bigger issue I have with it Corey, is that if they lose focus and intent with me on their butt what’s going to happen when they’re in a room with 30 other guys training same damn thing. They’re going to lose focus, they’re going to lose that and you know yourself, if you lose focus for one second of five minute round in a 15 minute fight or a 25 minute fight, you’re done.

18:31

COREY: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a very good point man. It’s powerful stuff. Because there’s a lot of those — everybody wants to talk about hey, how much you deadlift or what do you squat, there’s all kinds of things, like tell me the most brutal challenge that you did yesterday at the gym or whatever, everybody likes to post that crazy stuff on Instagram and YouTube and people are like, oh, I got 700 likes because I did the craziest shit on Earth.

LOREN: You got it.

COREY: But showing up on time and being consistent is few and far between, and you’re dead on, I think with the focus on coachability and being on time and being ready to work and being focused while you’re there, it’s a very huge point.

LOREN: Well, and what I always — I’ll pull my athletes aside and I give them all the [inaudible] speech. And I tell them, there is a difference between mental toughness and mental strength. To me, mental toughness, I ask you to run through a wall, you do it for me. I ask you to do this many exercises in this amount of time you do it for me. But mental strength is the ability to maintain focus and intent in those same circumstances.

19:43

COREY: Yeah, right on. Well, I mean, there is a big difference and I think the mental side of the game is a very big missing piece of the puzzle for a lot of guys because it’s just not coached. There’s a lot of that mental piece that everybody kind of let it slide. It’s like you said if they worked hard and they’re tired and tomorrow is going to be better and they’re going to be better for it, and there’s a lot more I think to the puzzle than that.

LOREN: Yeah, you got it and you know yourself Corey, you work with a lot of athletes. I will tell you this across the board, all athletes have performance anxiety to some level, to some degree, and if you do not address it on the front end it will rear its ugly head.

COREY: Yeah, that’s very true. So when you’re going through and you’re working with some of these guys, there’s obviously the daily assessment, the initial assessment and then there’s a daily assessment as guys are going through stuff. There are tests and strength work and metabolic work and then southern down into a fight so that they peak correctly and they’re ready and prepared. What are some of the strategies or ideas that you have because on one side of the coin, you’ve got, hey, they need to work, they need to work hard, and we’re going to wrestle live for 90 minutes straight. Then you have a lot of strength coaches that say circuits are ridiculous, and they need to be doing strength work and sprinting only. And then there’s a lot of gray area there. Right?

LOREN: Right, right.

COREY: So when you’re kind of planning out someone’s camp, what are some of the things that either you assess with that individual or some thoughts that go through your head like, okay cool, this guy needs this.

21:47

LOREN: Yeah, the thing that’s really cool is, everything’s laid out in front of us. We know we have five minutes on one minute off. We have three rounds or we have five rounds. The way I look at it is I need my athletes to be strong, I need them to be explosive and I need them to have the metabolic capability to do all those things I mentioned already within five minutes, in that five minute time; and turn around, recover and do it again, turn around, recover and do it again.

So I take the approach of more of an undulating model in my periodization during the camp. And so what I mean by that is if I see them three times a week for strength and conditioning, typically what I do is my Monday is usually my speed, power and strength day, where I’ll touch on elements of sprints. Now I’m not going to go run my guys hundreds because sprinting is a skill. It is a skill that I teach to all my athletes who need to sprint. And to me, it’s ridiculous to go run an athlete 100, 200 meters who hasn’t been taught how to run in my opinion.

I can do other things that express the metabolic pathways with less stress — I shouldn’t say less stress, less risk. I always look at a risk benefit model to every exercise I give somebody and if I ask an MMA fighter to go sprint 100 meters, they don’t understand how to run tempo, they don’t understand how to really run fluid and relaxed. They’re very few and far between. I’d say my guys who have a decent amount of speed work in their background like Brendan Schaub or Shane Carwin or Donald Cerrone, they get it. But I can’t just have anybody do that. Because God forbid somebody pulls a hamstring or a hip flexor running 200 meters when they’re fighting in the octagon, that’s a problem to me. So my training one has to be complimentary, it’s got to be a win-win to their tactical sessions.

So again, going back to it, my Monday will be a speed, power, strength day where we will work on some short sprints, 10, 20 yard bursts, maybe some resistance runs in those same distances, and then I start off with a very nervous system stimulating kind of pairings, where I’ll go from a vertimax jump to a med ball drop to a med ball slam, all three very high velocity based exercises that stimulate CNS but they don’t create a lot of global fatigue.

24:20

So once I’ve got the engine running, then I’ll take them into three pillars of strength. We usually do a lower body movement, the deadlift, the squat, some sort of heavy lift. Now, I don’t traditionally back squat my fighters, I typically trap bar squat them or Zercher squat them. I’ve just found with the back squats and front squats, a lot of guys have a real difficult time front squatting based on wrist and elbow issues in the past from all the years of fighting. So I accommodate around it and I still get my work in. So again between deadlifts, trap bar squats or Zercher squats are really my pillars of my strength work on the lower half.

Now, I do a lot of pulling from racks, I’ll rack pull my guys, I very rarely catch my cleans or my snatches, again, just because wrist elbow issues if I injured one of my fighter’s wrist from a bad catch on the clean, shame on me. So I try to minimize as much risk as I can.

Now from here, depending on where we’re at in our camp on my Monday, on the strength day, if let’s say I’m doing a trap bar squat. My trap bar squat, I may turn around and just complex this or contrast it with a med ball overhead throw, so going from an absolute strength exercise to a high ballistic exercise.

From there, we’ll move into some sort of a press whether it’s a forward press, dumbbell press, you name it, it’s horizontal press of some sort. And again, same idea, we’ll work on the aspect of producing more absolute strength and then I’ll turn around and contrast it right into a speed strength exercise and med ball drop, apply a push up, something in that nature.

Now, I’m not going to failure on any of these exercises, I’m allowing these guys to be successful to minimizing the wear and tear because I know on Mondays, my guys have to go to wrestling practice. So I’m not just going to knock them down the cellar just because I can. I have to understand that their training has to be complimentary to what they have tactically for the rest of the day.

26:35

Now we may turn around after we’ve done a horizontal push and I’ll go into a vertical pull or horizontal pull and from my vertical pull, again, working on more of an absolute strength side of things, keeping our reps in the three to five range, and then turning around and doing an overhead and med ball slam or some sort of ballistic overhead — I’m sorry, into a ballistic pulling type of motion; and again, trying to complement the absolute strength and the speed strength method together. Now, that’s just a quick kind of glimpse at what a Monday would look like.

27:12

And then my Wednesdays in camp tend to be more of a metabolic session. And when I say metabolic session, I’m talking about a series of three to four exercises clustered together to create a metabolic response; whether I pull three or four different exercises in that have a lifespan of 30 seconds each. So by the time they’re done with their set, they’ve gone 90 seconds to two minutes of straight work, and then I’ll turn around and depending on where we’re at in the camp, they may get a one to one work to rest ratio, shoot, they may get a one to two work to rest, they may get a one to one or a two to one based on where we are in camp and who it is and what their fitness levels are. And I pay attention to what their recovery heart rate comes down to, to really help decide that.

And what I typically do, I take four different circuits that they have those types of criteria. Now, when I build my circuits, my circuits usually involve a lower extremity lactate like Versa climber, and upper extremity lactate like a TRX Iso Hold and then I may take them to 30 seconds shadowbox right after that. So that way they’ve got 90 seconds of work, but I’ve put it on fatigue the heck out of their lower extremity, upper extremity. Now I’m asking them to do something within their skill set. I need to see that my guys have coordination in fatigue states.

So that’s just one example of how I build a cluster of exercises or a cluster of circuits. I’ve got so many more that we build but all of them have either a power output component, because you know yourself you can see guys kind of go through the motions. So it’s usually a watch reading, an inches reading for a jump. There’s some sort of quantifiable aspects so I know what effort I’m getting. And then there’s always a coordinative aspect that has to be implemented as well. Because at the end of the day, you know yourself, the guys who start to stock in walk with their legs straightened around, that’s the guy who’s about to get beat up. So I want to make sure my athletes have the ability to have level changes, have the ability to circle and have the ability to be very aggressive or defensive based on need.

29:44

COREY: Right on.

LOREN: And then just to give you the quick and [inaudible] my Fridays, tend to be an active recovery strength session that has a high high tendency to really — or a high undertone of stability work. Our sparring sessions for our fight team run Friday evening and so I’ve had to augment my strength and conditioning program on Fridays to really more corrective exercises in nature or just pure stability, a lot of active ranges of motion within the weight room but I still keep it metabolic. I will still put three exercises together in sequence, they’re all very low in intensity, but it gives them that nice aerobic foundation within their strength training where I can just reinforce all active ranges of motion and it serves as a great pre-workout to their sparring session five hours later that evening.

COREY: Right on.

LOREN: I do want to touch on something because you touched on it yourself with the — some trainers think that metabolic circuits you shouldn’t do it, you should just do strength work. When I first got started with MMA, I thought the same thing I was like, you know what, these guys have this many tactical sessions a week, the last thing I need to do is pull the trigger more on the metabolic work. However, if you ever go to sparring sessions, if you ever go to tactical sessions, what’s the number one thing that happens? Sessions go for 60 to 90 minutes, there are very few breaks. So guess what the intensity level is that they’re training with. It drops significantly after the first 15 minutes practice. And if you’ve ever watched an MMA sparring session, you know yourself, those guys pull back significantly, whether they start slow, whether they use rounds one and two to warm up for round three, four and five, but they typically start slow. So for that very reason, I introduced a metabolic day.

31:45

The other reason is, these guys have to pull back in training, they cannot hurt themselves and they cannot hurt their training partners. So there’s a degree of the gas pedal but it’s not being pushed in those sessions. So for that very reason is why I feel that certain metabolic circuits should be done or introduced some tabatas at the end of some strength sessions, because there is a metabolic zone that a lot of times these guys do not get into in their tactical sessions.

COREY: That’s very good point. Very good, that’s awesome.

LOREN: Sorry I got pretty [inaudible] wind there.

32:25

COREY: Well dude I mean, that’s the type of stuff that I think is absolute gold for people to hear. Like you said, there’s a lot more to it than that, what I also think is important for people to understand, there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat and a lot of way to do these things and work with the different guys, especially when you’re working with a variety of people with different needs and different ability levels.

LOREN: You’re absolutely right. I’ve got a guy Neil Magny, he’ll fight not this Saturday, but next Saturday, October 25th and this would be his fifth fight in 2014.

COREY: Wow.

LOREN: Yeah. And this kid he just keeps coming back stronger and stronger each and every camp. And to me, it’s a testament of his consistency like we talked about, his consistency and his intent that’s allowed him to turn around and call up the matchmakers and say, hey, I’m ready to go again. I’m ready to go again.

COREY: Well, that’s cool. I mean, I was talking with Martin Rooney when [inaudible] last weekend and he was specifically talking about Jim and Dan Miller. And those guys got their shot at the UFC because they were in shape and they were prepared. And when they got a call, they got their first shot with like two weeks’ notice or something like that, some crazy short notice and they took it. They’re like, yes, absolutely, I want in. And they went in, they won andthey still didn’t get a contract. They call them last minute again, they were in shape and they were ready and that’s how they got their shot.

LOREN: You got it, you got it. And I think that’s another issue that these fighters run into is, they go through a camp and they let themselves go. And we have a motto within our fight team and that’s if you’re always in shape, you never have to get in shape. So obviously there’s varying degrees of the shape you’re in but we never let our guys get too far off the grid.

34:23

COREY: That’s cool. Good stuff man. Well hey, last thing, and I’m always kind of curious to hear what people say on this one but with all your experience in MMA and outside of MMA, I mean, you’ve got a lot of things you’ve been doing over the last 20 years. What are you most proud of?

LOREN: What am I most proud of? That’s a tough one. But I think the thing that I’m most proud of is probably creating a business model where I can turn around and train my coaching staff and other coaches around the country who care and want to learn about the philosophies that I teach and the methods at which I match my philosophies.

35:17

To me, I think it’s easy to walk around and say, yeah, I train people, and to put people under hard workouts, and maybe you’re doing some really good things from a program side, but to actually use your embodiment of work to lay down a system of training and to be able to turn around and teach that system of training, not holding your cards to the chest, because let’s be frank here, a lot of people in this industry don’t like to show their cards. I don’t care. I want people to see my cards. I want people to see my card and say you know what, I think you can do this better. I think you can do this differently, because that’s ultimately how we evolve and get better. And I think in this industry, to me, people are afraid to expose their hand because they don’t want to be exposed maybe as a practitioner or they feel as though they’ve stumbled on to the secrets. And to me, I like to be in a position where I can share what I feel I’ve learned from my mentors and maybe turn around and be mentors to others.

COREY: Well, that’s a pretty killer statement to be really honest.

LOREN: I appreciate that.

COREY: I appreciate that you’re willing to share and even just take the time to talk to us. I know a lot of the guys that are out there, everybody is busy. Everybody’s got a whole pile of to do’s and all kinds of stuff going on. So for the guys that are listening, hopefully they appreciate the knowledge that you spit out tonight. And there’s a lot of pretty killer nuggets that are in there.

LOREN: I appreciate it Corey, thank you so much for having me on man.

COREY: Hey, of course man. If guys are wanting to touch base with you, what’s the best way for people to get in touch?

LOREN: You know what, probably my website www.lorenlandowperformance.com. Loren is L-O-R-E-N. Last name is L-A-N-D-O-W, performance.com.

COREY: Right on. Guys, I’ll put that link for sure on the post. So if you guys are listening to this, you guys can simply just scroll down below and the link will be there for you. So Loren, thanks again dude. I appreciate your time. And guys, hopefully you appreciated it and we’ll talk to you guys soon.

LOREN: Appreciate Corey, thank you.

COREY: You’re welcome.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Loren Landow
COREY: Hey guys this is Corey Beasley with Fight Camp Conditioning and I’m here on the phone with Loren Landow. How’re you doing Loren?

LOREN: I’m doing good Corey. Thank you for having me on.

COREY: Yeah absolutely man thanks for taking the time I know you had a busy day, talking about [incomprehensible] assistant the other day and from the sound of it you had a long day.

LOREN: Yeah my days are usually about 10 to 12 hours straight through and I have a plenty of projects going on on the side that keep me busy so no rest, right?

COREY: Yeah absolutely, no rest for the dudes that are working it. And guys, just so you guys realize, Loren’s out there in Denver, Colorado. He’s working with some of the top UFC guys in the whole world. And on top of the UFC guys he’s working with, he’s working with NFL guys, Olympic athletes; you guys name it; NHL and MLB. He seems to be the [incomprehensible] visit when you guys are in Denver. So Loren, for the guys that are listening, can you give us just a quick snapshot of who you are and where you’re at, what you’re doing out there?

LOREN: Sure Corey, thank you and everybody out there listening, I’m out here in Denver, Colorado. I’ve been in practice for almost 20 years now. Started as a good old fashioned personal trainer and quickly made my jump into sports performance about 18 years ago, and just kind of fell in love with how to maximize human performance and ultimately, I’ve evolved my game over the years. There’s days I think I know what I’m doing and then there’s a lot of days I feel as though I have no clue.

01:33

COREY: Right on. I think that’s pretty true across the board. I mean, all the people that are coming through and all the different things that you hear out there and read and as things evolve, there are always — things are always changing, that’s for sure.

LOREN: Absolutely, and we’re just blessed here we’ve got an amazing fight team out here at Team Elevation and Team Factory X and between those two teams, I get to see a host of fighters. I get to see a lot of my fighters are, from Brendan Schaub, Nate “The Great” Marquardt, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, he’s up from Albuquerque, Cat Zingano, Neil Magny, Brandon Fache, Jared Hamman, Josh Copeland, newly signed heavyweights, the UFC ranks, so we see a lot of UFC fighters and then Cortez Coleman, Chris Camozzi and Dustin Jacoby, guys who fight in Bellator. So we have a nice stable of fighters coming in.

02:32

COREY: That’s awesome man. That’s a fun gig when you get a crew like that, han?

LOREN: Oh you know what? Tell you what, if you’re having a slow day or you’re a little bit low in the gas tank, they walk in and the gas tank changes. It’s on full and everybody’s raving and everybody builds off each other’s emotions and work ethic and habits so it makes for a fun day for myself and my staff.

COREY: Absolutely. So Loren, just to kind of jump into it, I mean, you got a killer group of dudes that just by itself is absolute gold because you and I both know that you get a crew of guys feeding off each other like that that just elevates everybody’s game.

LOREN: You’re absolutely right. We were very fortunate in our fight team, and I’ll throw some names out there. When I first started with this fight team about five, six years ago, I was fortunate enough to work with guys like Duane Ludwig, Shane Carwin, and those guys really kind of embraced me and embraced the strength and conditioning side of training and allowed me to kind of come in and see what they did at all their tactical sessions from the wrestling, the jiu-jitsu, the sparring, the Muay Thai. I was able to really get a bird’s eye view of what was going on and it allowed me to really make some good and smart decisions on my training.

03:56

COREY: That’s awesome. So Loren, with your experience, I mean, it’s obvious you’ve been in the game for a long time you studied your ear off, you got a lot of practical experience with a ton of different athletes, including a lot of the fighters and some of the best fighters that have been around over the last 10 years. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see with strength and conditioning and the fight world? Because it seems like to me that between MMA and jiu-jitsu and boxing and all these different things, there are a ton of opinions out there and a lot of different theories.

LOREN: The biggest mistake that I tend to see with all the different disciplines is a lack of communication, and lack of communication between all the coaches who run the tactical sessions. Does the jujitsu coach talk to the wrestling coach, does the wrestling coach talk to the striking coach, does the striking coach talk to MMA coach? And if nobody is communicating, I mean, you might as well be spinning a wheel blindfolding someone and asking them to throw darts and you have no idea what you’re training for. And I think that MMA falls into the category of feel versus real. Well, I worked hard today so that means I must be in shape for tomorrow. And as you and I both know Corey that couldn’t be further from the truth, training is a science and it’s a blend of your education and your intuition. And as coaches, we have to communicate and we have to set up your parameters and structure to the training camps.

05:31

Well, I gave it to probably my most reliable fighter which was Nate “The Great” Marquardt and of the 16 practices, he came back with 12 reds. And I said we have a problem. I said we have a problem here. And that was the way that I could take it to the [inaudible] coaches and say, hey guys, here’s the perception of what this athlete is going through. I get the training camp needs to be hard, but we’ve got to be smart. And that really opened up those coaches to allow me to really help a tempo or a true peaking tapering kind of stance, if you will, or periodization. Yeah, lack of a better term, it’s not necessarily a four year cycle, it’s usually two mesocycles that we get through in the camp. So this has allowed me to help set the foundation of what our camps would look like.

07:21

COREY: That’s good. I mean, because yeah I think it’s pretty common these days that people just want to get in, they want to work hard, they’re very fortunate. Even from my experience that if they’re doing all of their skill training under one roof, that’s pretty rare as well.

LOREN: You’re absolutely right.

COREY: There’s a handful of camps around the country that have everything under one roof, but a lot of these guys are going to do jiu-jitsu at one place, they’re going to a boxing coach in another place, to do a strength and conditioning here, they’re going to MMA practice and sparring here and that just magnifies I think that lack of communication between all those different coaches.

LOREN: Right, and within that lack of communication, I would also say that the other biggest issue with MMA is lack of recovery and that’s obviously a no brainer. I think when you think of any tactical fighter, any tactical athlete, you know recovery is going to be low on the totem pole. But what we’ve tried to do is really find a way to make our strength and conditioning a win-win and supportive of all their tactical sessions.

COREY: Right on. So when you’re starting with a new guy, a new guy walks through the door, you have no idea who he is, maybe he fights at a high level maybe he doesn’t. How do you typically start out with your athlete?

LOREN: Well, the first and foremost, they go through a pretty extensive medical questionnaire, because I can assume if anybody spent any time in any types of mixed martial arts, they’re coming in to me with the host of injuries that they either know about or they forgot about.

COREY: Right.

08:59

LOREN: So the first for me, I need to know what they’re dealing with. It’s almost like clockwork. Any MMA fighter comes in to me has some sort of shoulder pathology, low back pathology, and usually some sort of hip or groin pathology. So those are usually pretty good places to start.

10:15

Now after I take them through their sprints, we’ll take them through some sort of multi directional work, I want to get a sense of what type of athlete they are. Now I’m probably going to get a lot of haters out there for this comment but in my opinion, from a general athletic standpoint, I don’t think that mixed martial artists are the pinnacle of athletes out there. When we look at like general athleticism, the ability to change direction, the ability to be explosive, they have some amazing skill sets but if you take them down the board and if you’re measuring all the different bio motor abilities that make up athleticism, they’re not usually going to be at the top of the board with all the other sports.