The Misconception
By Matthew Saitz, CSCS
As a strength and conditioning coach, I feel there’s a duty not only to
educate and learn from fellow sport-specific coaches on proper
implementation of strength and conditioning programs but to educate and
learn from the athletes as well.
Most high school athletes today see what has been commercialized in
magazines such as “Muscle and Fiction” promoting a workout to get
“bigger arms in an hour” or pursue a body split type workout that Ronnie
Coleman or Jay Cutler endorse as their own.
About three months ago, I met a young man named Greg Benenati, who is a
former nationally ranked and state champion wrestler out of Missouri. He
had expressed a serious interest in becoming an MMA fighter. I asked him
what his workouts consisted of and he proceeded to tell me the
following:
Day 1: chest
Day 2: shoulders and traps
Day 3: legs
Day 4: arms
Day 5: back
Day 6: who knows
Day 7: who cares
Now, this type of workout may be beneficial to an aspiring bodybuilder
loading up on supplements. However, such workouts lack structure and
purpose. So we started from the beginning, implementing the philosophy
to “train the movement” and stay away from isolating each individual
muscle group. This is a philosophy well-known to many strength and
conditioning coaches.
Greg became familiar with GPP and body weight mastery—something that all
athletes should become accustomed to before earning the right to
incorporate external resistance (as stated by Alwyn Cosgrove). We
addressed the need to increase his work capacity and took a “chaos” type
approach to his training.
A sample workout of his now looks like this:
Objective: Increase athlete’s work capacity.
Warm-up: dynamic/mobility movements
Main session
1. Pull-ups, 3 X AMAP*; jog two minutes on treadmill
2. GPP circuit (3 X through)
Prisoner squats X 30
Push-ups X 20
Mountain climbers X 50
Toe touches X 25
Jog two minutes
3. Tire flips, 3 X 5; jog two minutes
4. Sledge hammer chops from knees, 3 X 10/each way; jog two minutes
5. Ladder drills (on all fours), 2 X down and back /movement; jog two
minutes
6. Circle of death (push-up variation at different levels), 3 X through;
jog two minutes
7. Sled push/pull variations
AMAP = as many as possible
I would like to stress that not all of his workouts are consistent of
endurance training, but they include a variation of the Westside for
Skinny Bastards templates among other methodologies.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to spot this young athlete in the future as an
upcoming MMA fighter. Until then train hard and learn harder.
Matthew Saitz is a strength and conditioning coach in St. Louis,
Missouri with a bachelor’s degree from Missouri State University in
health and wellness. He is a Cooper Institute certified personal trainer
(CI-PTr) and is CSCS certified through the National Strength and
Conditioning Association.
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