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Fight Science Made Simple is for fighters and martial artists who want to train harder, recover faster, and stay on the mat for life.
Each week, we break down strength & conditioning, nutrition, recovery, and mindset into straightforward strategies you can actually use in training. Simple, practical, and backed by real fight science—so you can keep chasing your potential, performing at your peak, and becoming the fighter you’ve always wanted to be.
What is going on? Welcome to episode twenty one of the fight science made simple podcast. I'm your host coach adam snyder. I'm a lifelong martial artist. I'm a performance and recovery coach, and i'm the founder of the fight science collective.I'm also [...0.6s] an active anime fighter. It's been a little bit [...0.4s] since we've done an episode a couple weeks. Typically i like to do episodes every single week, breaking down, straining, conditioning, nutrition, recovery mindset for fighters and combat athletes. If you caught the last episode, maybe you didn't.On the last episode, my partner in alexandra talked about our move to pukat, thailand. And over the last couple of weeks, we've been packing up our entire life, putting it in a ten by ten box and then traveling over twenty eight hours to be here in pukat. And so we finally made it. We're finally situated.I taking my first couple of classes at bangtau muay thai, done some mma, done some muay thai classes, got situated. Um.And now we're back on the podcast, grind. I can tell you it is a lot [...0.4s] in your entire life across the world. Like i knew it was going to be a lot, but it was a lot. And one thing that i wasn't expecting was, [...1.1s] honestly, the little bit of fear and uncomfortableness and sadness that came with moving here.Moving to thailand is something that myself and alexandra have always wanted to do, um, always dreamed of it and we're really excited about it.But as it got closer, as you were packing things, as you were saying bye to friends and family, saying bye to our cats, we almost didn't want to go. Like going here felt like something we had to do. Um.That being said, we're like really grateful that we're here and it's amazing that it's incredible. Like i was doing some wall wrestling yesterday, beautiful mat space and did a live go and stood up and just looked over at the mountains. It was just filled with gratitude.And so i'm gonna continue to document this entire experience. We might even have another podcast, you know, maybe a month or two in talking about what living here has been like.But if you wanna see even more about our experience, make sure you go over to our instagram at fight science collective. And give me a follow, [...0.5s] because i'm gonna be documenting the entire thing. But that being said now that we're situated, we're back on the weekly podcast grind for now.Podcasts are gonna be weekly on wednesdays that might change. Um, but that's how we're gonna be rocking it for now. Uh, so if you're new to the podcast, this is a weekly podcast [...0.4s] supposed to be weekly, where i break down different straining industry nutrition recovery mindset topics. So the best thing that you can do to support the podcast.If you're loving the podcast is share it with somebody, a teammate, training partner, so coach someone that, you know, can benefit from this. And if you're digging the information that we're dropping, make sure you follow it. So we don't miss out on anything that we're dropping here.Also side note, if you want to get early access to the podcast, i live stream every single recording over on my instagram.So if you wanna be one of the very first people to get the content to see what we're dropping to fuel the value to level up, make sure you follow me on instagram, cause that's where the episodes go live first.Okay, [...0.5s] today's episode is a very important episode, something that i've been thinking about making a lot. It's a very important pillar in our fight science coaching program, and it's the number one reason fighters struggle with their performance and recovery.If you're listening to this podcast, if you're following me on instagram, if you're engaging with the value that were dropping, then chances are you have the skills side of things dialed in.You're probably training five, six, seven days a week, you probably have great skills, coaches, you're probably putting in the effort, you're dedicated to the sport, you have big goals in the sport, you're killing it on the mats.But when it comes to your off mat habits, performance and recovery, this is where you're falling behind.You're training hard, but maybe you're gassing out, maybe you're dealing with nagging injuries, maybe you're having a hard time being consistent with your diet or making weight, maybe your recovery is garbage, maybe your mindset isn't as full of belief and confidence as it should be.You know, you have the skills and you have the ability to make it far in fight sports, but your body and mind just can't keep up with your vision and the skills training that you have.And [...0.4s] what happens is most fighters are stuck in this old school cycle where some kind of injury or gassing out or issue with making weight happens. And so the old school approach tells them that you just have to train harder, do more rounds, [...0.4s] eat cleaner, do more sparring, go on longer runs.And so you put in all this work that's random and filled with guest work, maybe you get a fight booked, maybe you don't see any real progress, you looking really really, really hard, you putting so much effort and you're not getting that much better.And so you start getting filled with anxiety and fear and doubt. It hurts your mindset.And then the cycle repeats. Maybe you gas out, maybe get injured, maybe you miss weight, and the cycle continues continues, continues until you either burn out, you fall short of your goals and dreams, or you quit.Okay, and what we do at the fight science collective through our free content to our coaching is we help fighters in combat athletes break this cycle. We call it the old school cycle. And we help fighters in combat athletes break it.And the very first step in breaking the cycles we're gonna talk about today is we're going to identify [...0.4s] why you're struggling. Why are you gassing out? What is causing your injuries? Why are you struggling with nutrition?If you don't know what your weak point is, if you don't know why you're having issues, then you can't solve those issues. But an issue that most fighters have is that they say, oh, i'm gassing out, i'm gonna go on more runs. But they're missing the key piece, why you're gassing out.And this is where, what we call a system diagnostics phase comes into play. A system diagnostics phase is simple tests and assessments to identify your weakest links. We use a system diagnostics phase to see what are you good at and what are you shitty at. What is causing you to gas out? Why are you injured all the time? Why are you struggling to make weight?Once you identify your biggest weakest points, the biggest gaps in your training, your performance, in your recovery, then you can put a day driven plan together to turn those weaknesses into strength to fill the gaps, to solve the issues.When you can't put a plan in place, you can't take action until you have the baseline data. Duncan french, who is one of the top guys over the ufc performance institute, has a quote that i love. I use it all the time.If you are not assessing, you're guessing. And so much training in recovery and combat and fight sports is full of random guest work because there are any assessments. There's no real data.And so if you wanna make meaningful changes to your performance and recovery, if you want to actually dominate fights for a long time and make something of yourself in the sport, not just fight for the sake of fighting, then you need the data in order to remove the randomness to remove the guessing and make meaningful [...0.6s] achievable and intelligent gains in your performance. And so that's what i'm gonna break down for you today.I'm gonna break down what a system diagnostics phase as a combat athlete should look like. Before we talk about any specific tests. It's important to understand that any kind of testing that you do needs to have a variable of validity and needs to have a variable of reliability.What does this mean? Validity is very simple. You have to make sure that you are testing for something specific that is going to have an impact on what you're trying to accomplish.For example, [...0.7s] if you're a fighter, cardio is pretty important. And so testing your v o to max or max heart rate is probably a test that is valid for your sport of an internet.On [...0.4s] the other side of things, [...0.8s] let's say you're testing your mile time. How fast can you run a mile? Okay, that might be a good test for runners, for sprinters, for marathon [...0.5s] athletes, but for a fighter, your mile time probably isn't a good indicator of your mixed martial arts performance. And so this isn't gonna be a valid test for fighting.The other side of it is once you have your list of valid test tests that are actually applicable and meaningful to your sport, and we're gonna talk about what those are in a second, then you have to make sure that when you test, the conditions of your testing are [...0.4s] reliable. Okay, what does this mean?That means when you test, you should be testing and retesting in the same conditions, on the same day, in the same facilities, with the same food, using the same equipment, tracking metrics and data in the same way.This way, there's consistency across the board in all of your [...0.4s] variables of testing, and you can actually compare if you don't have validity in your testing process.If you're testing at different times, testing different things, if it's random that you're testing, then the data, [...0.4s] it's not reliable, you can't use it, it's not showing you anything. So your variables have to be as controlled as possible when you put your test together.All right. And so at the fight science collective, when we test combat athletes, we're testing in three major categories.We're testing in strength, speed, [...0.5s] power, and endurance. So that's one main category. This is your performance. We're testing nutrition and body composition, and we're testing for injury risk. These are the three main areas that we're testing our clients in.Let's talk about the performance diet things first. This is the, the fun shit. This is what most people are, are concerning about when we test clients at the fight science collective. We're looking for max strength, so we'll do this with a three to five rep max squat test and a three to five rep max bench press.Typically, what we do is we'll hit them with a couple warm up sets, fifteen pound, fifteen reps with the bar. Then we'll do maybe a set of one thirty five, maybe one eighty five from there, and then we'll just hit triples or fives until they get to the point of [...0.4s] technical breakdown.We never wanna go to mechanical breakdown when we're testing any kind of movement because if we go to mechanical breakdown where like your body physically can't do any more reps, then you're gonna get risk for injury.And the whole point of this is to identify where your weaknesses are, not create more weaknesses. And so what mechanical breakdown means is that your body fails, what technical breakdown means that your technique fails.So let's say you're testing for your three rep max on a back squat. You hit one rep, it's pretty solid, second rep it starts to slow down, third rep you really struggle to come out of the hole and maybe you have to lean forward a little bit in order to get out of the hole and come out of the squat.Your technique broke down. That's when you stop the testing, that's gonna be your three rep max. The reason we test a three to five rep max and not a one rep max is the same reason we test the technical breakdown. It's just to reduce injury.Okay, fighters, you are not powerlifters. Your one rep max doesn't matter unless you're an advanced level athlete and spend a lot of time in the weight room and are comfortable going to one rep max's. Obviously, that's gonna be the best indicator of your max strength.However, most clients that i work with, this is not the case. Most of them are beginner intermediates in the weight room. And so we test with three to five rep max. It still gives us a pretty good idea of where their base strength is, where their force output is, and allows us to reduce injury.My more experienced athletes intermediate on the advanced side will be in that three rep range and my more beginner athletes will be in that five rep range. Okay, [...0.6s] we're also testing for muscular endurance.I'll use a max push up test and a max pull up test, making sure that technique is perfect, that form is strict, and we'll use this to get a gauge of where our clients muscular endurances. Um.On the conditioning side of things, what i like to use at the fight science collective is a twelve minute conditioning test where i'll put our clients on an assault bike or have them go on a run and we'll have them go as hard and as far as they can for twelve minutes.This allows me to gauge a couple things. Obviously, they're wearing a heart rate monitor. We're gonna get an idea of where their max heart rate is. We're gonna get an idea of where their aerobics threshold is. We're gonna get an idea of where their v o two max is. We're gonna get an idea of where their one minute heart rate recovery is. So at the end of the test, we test their heart rate.At the end of test, we test their heart rate one minute later and we see how quickly they can recover in the rounds. We also get an idea of their mental fortitude and see how hard they can push themselves. Okay.On the power side of things, we test our clients with a vertical jump test to get an idea of where their max power is.Now when it comes to testing, what we do at the fight science collective is online coaching, and so all of the testing that we do in our programming is designed to be tested for clients that don't have access to exercise science testing labs, which is most fighters, most clients don't have access to these high level labs like the ufc performance institute.And so [...0.4s] we use what our clients have in order to create reliable and valid tests that are very meaningful to their combat sports performance.If you were to go to a sport science lab or the ufc performance institute, they might have [...0.7s] some more expensive [...0.5s] and impressive technology and tools to help [...0.8s] test their clients.For example, at the fight science collective, we use a heart rate monitor and a tracker and assault bike to test conditioning. At the ufc performance institute, they're probably going to test v o two max with a treadmill and an oxygen mask to [...1.2s] gauge their co two output.Have an ekg on their chest, use something like a bruce protocol to assess their v o two max, max heart rate anaerobic threshold. Another example of, uh, higher budget testing versus low it, lower budget testing would be on the vertical jump side of things.If you're gonna go to an exercise science lab, like at the uc performance institute, they're probably going to test your vertical jump with something like a force plate. At the fight science collective, we use a tape measure and tape. Both tests work very well.You do not need to have a crazy amount of money and a crazy access to an exercise science lab in order to [...0.5s] get meaningful, reliable and valid data to help your performance.Okay, [...0.7s] so that's typically what we're looking to test on the performance side of things. We're looking for max strength, we're looking for muscular endurance, we're looking for power output, and we're looking for conditioning metrics.Max heart rate, [...0.5s] anaerobic threshold, [...0.7s] one minute heart rate, recovery [...0.5s] v o two max. All right, [...0.6s] very important. This helps us get a really good understanding of aerobic capacity, lactic system capabilities, a lactic system capabilities, force output, [...0.8s] injury resistance, all of that.Okay, so that's what we're testing on the strength, speed, power, nutrition, or, sorry, cardio side of things.The second category that we test for at the fight science collective is nutrition and body composition.I believe in a holistic approach. So anytime that i work with a client, we are always going to guide them on their strengthening conditioning, their nutrition, their recovery, and their mindset. Some clients might need more nutrition help than other clients, but we still have some kind of nutrition component in their testing and in their plan.The reason for this is because [...0.5s] you have the best strengthening conditioning in the world.Let's say you're gassing out, right? You have the best cardio program in the world. But if you're not eating the right way, if you're not recovering from the work that you're doing, and if your mindset is in full of belief and confidence, your cardio is not gonna get better.You have the best cardio in the world and eat amazing, but if you're not recovering well, and your mindset isn't right, your cardio isn't gonna get better. And so my job as a performance and recovery coach is to make sure that your performance and recovery is the fucking best in the world.And we need a clear snapshot everything. A lot of times people come to us, and let's say they're struggling with cardio, and they're like, oh, i don't need help with nutrition, i just need a workout plan. No, you don't. Like a workout plan alone is not going to build the gas tank that you need.Sometimes i have guys that they're struggling with weight cutting, and they're like, oh, i don't need help with strength and conditioning, i just need a nutrition plan. No, you don't, because your strength and conditioning is garbage. And i give you the best nutrition plan in the world. You might make weight, we might get you to refuel.Okay, but you're still gonna get smashed in the ring. And if you're here, you're not doing this just to fight. You're here to dominate fights. You're here to be the smasher, not the smashy.So the second thing that we assess at the fight science collective is nutrition and body composition.On the nutrition side of things, i will have our clients fill out a form to get an idea of some of their nutritional habits and their nutritional preferences. Then we're going to have them use a photo log inside the fight science app.They can actually keep a photo log of everything that they eat. And i'll have them track everything that they eat for three days so i can get a really clear understanding of our clients preferences, nutritional habits and where we might need to focus to [...1.1s] better guide their nutrition. We're gonna take an assessment of their supplements.What supplementation are you using? We're also going to look at their body composition. What is their weight? What is their lean mass? What is their body fat percentage? What is your bone density?Now [...0.6s] just like there's different [...0.4s] budgets of testing on the performance side of things, there's also different budgets of testing on the nutrition side of things.A great example of this is body composition. If you have a higher budget [...0.6s] and can afford a bit more testing or have access to different resources, you can use something like a dexa scan in order to get a very detailed breakdown of your body composition. This is something that i recommend for my high level pros.On a more intermediate side of things is what most of our clients use, is a body composition scale.For us, we use what we, the withings body plus scale because it sinks to my app. My clients step on the scale. All of their data gets upload the app and i can see everything. It assesses their weight, their body composition, their body lean mask, excuse me, their body fat composition, uh, and then their hydration level as well.When it comes to weight, [...0.7s] when it comes to body fat percentage, when it comes to lean mass, i am more concerned about relative data [...0.4s] than absolute data.What do i mean by this? If we're looking at a dexa scan versus a body composition scale, the [...0.5s] dexa scan is going to be more accurate in terms of absolute data. It's gonna tell you pretty much exactly what your body composition is.The body composition scale might be a little off compared to the dexa, but like i said, i'm more concerned about relative data.For example, if our goal is to lose weight, let's say we need to cut fat in the off camp to prepare ourselves for fight camp. We can measure our body fat percentage on a body composition scale at the beginning of an off camp. We can measure it every single week for two to three months.And if we are seeing a consistent downward trend in body fat percentage, that means you've lost body weight, that means you've lost body fat.And so i'm not as concerned if you're actually ten percent body fat or eleven percent body fat, but if we've gone from thirteen percent body fat and we've lost some body fat percentage and we're on track to make weight on fight night, i'm more concerned with that than anything else.The lowest budget for an example of a body composition test would just be body weight.Okay, for my amateurs, for my guys that are just getting started, my guys that, you know, have a little bit less experience or are working their way up through the ranks to get to a higher level amateur or pro level, that's probably a fine option.But body composition scales aren't that expensive and are gonna be more accurate than a just a normal scale. Okay um, [...0.5s] so we're looking at those different metrics as well. We're gonna look at hydration with our clients. Um, you could get, [...0.7s] uh, metabolic efficiency test done as well to get a really good understanding of your metabolism and how many calories you actually burn at rest.We use [...0.9s] equations to calculate this based on activity level, height and weight and age with our clients to gauge how many calories they burn [...0.6s] just to be alive and how many calories they burn in a day.But you can get actual testing done to have very, very clear, precise exact metrics to how many calories you burn. Again, [...0.5s] if you're a low level pro, medium level pro, [...0.4s] even so my high level pros, this isn't necessary.If you're someone that's, like about to make a ufc move, or you're in the ufc or you're getting to those higher levels of a higher promotion, then getting metabolic testing done, getting a dexic scan gun, getting the most accurate information done is going to give you the edge.Because [...0.5s] at the end of the day, the higher you get in the sport, skill level becomes so much similar [...0.4s] between guys and girls.You get so close to skill level that what separates the good from the great is the little details, the x factor, your strength conditioning, your nutrition, your recovery, your mindset. The fighters that are doing those things better are going to be the ones that win in the long term.Now you might be an amateur, a little pro, and be like, i cool, like, i'm not there, i don't have time yet. I have time, i'm not there yet. But that's not true, because there are low level pros and amateurs that are acting like fucking top ten contenders right now.And so the earlier that you can act like this, the earlier you can start assessing, the earlier you can start putting a data driven plan together, the [...1.1s] more success you're going to have. And you're also going to have more longevity in the sport.This sport is unpredictable, you don't know when fights are gonna fall through, what injuries you might have wins or losses. Like, you don't have control over all of that.So i always tell fighters control as much as you can control, because there's so much that you can. And if you wanna have [...0.8s] the best opportunity [...0.7s] to crush it in the sport long term, [...0.4s] then you need to have as many factors dialed as possible.Okay, so we have our performance test. We're looking for max strength, we're looking for muscular endurance, we're looking for conditioning metrics, [...0.5s] we're looking for power metrics on the nutrition side of things, we're looking for nutritional habits and preferences.We're looking for supplementation, we're looking for [...0.9s] total calories burn in a day. We're looking for body composition metrics. Okay, [...0.8s] now the final category that we have is [...0.4s] injury risk, very important. [...1.1s] Fight sports are fucking hard. You are never going to be one hundred percent free from injury.That's just the reality of the sport. But what we can do is make your body as resilient to injury as possible. We can prevent injuries the best that we can, and if injuries do come, we can bounce back from injuries faster.You probably know this, but i tore my acl in may of twenty twenty five. And i was back to sparring in november of twenty twenty five, no surgery, complete acl tear because i had a data driven system in place.I knew where my strength and weaknesses were, and then i put a plan in action to rebuild faster. I pay attention to small details.So when it comes to testing for injury risk, we will put our clients through a movement assessment, will use different functional movement screens to identify [...0.6s] muscular imbalances [...0.5s] and discrepancies in mobility, will test for shoulder mobility, will test for hip mobility, knee mobility, ankle mobility.We'll take a look at our clients thoracic mobility, their balance with their eyes open and their eyes closed. We'll look at overhead squatting, and we'll have a full run through of where there might be imbalances, where our clients might be at risk for injury.And typically this testing phase takes a couple days. So when someone starts to fight science collective, we put them through a system diagnostic phase right away. And we have a very clear identification, very clear profile of where their strengths and where their weaknesses are.We know their performance metrics, we know their nutrition metrics and body composition metrics, and we also know their injury risk metrics. Once we have this complete profile in place, then you can put your plan together, then you can put your plan together.Okay, but if you're struggling with cardio, if you're struggling with power, if you're struggling with nutrition, if you're struggling with cutting weight or injuries, stop going on chats between looking for random workouts, stop injecting yourself with peptide, stop [...0.6s] going on instagram and watching as many instagram reels as you can and trying to wing it together on your own, stop asking your skills coaches and your teammates at the gym.The first thing that you need to do is you need to identify why you are struggling.You have to find your weakest points and that's done with assistant diagnostics phase what we talked about today. Now i put together [...0.5s] a more detailed breakdown of the system diagnostics phase that we use at the fight science collective. This is a very general overview.You can go back and watch this episode a couple times and start putting the pieces together and doing a little bit of research on your own. Definitely over on my instagram if you don't follow me already, go follow me cause i'm breaking down the different methods that we use every single day.But if you want a full breakdown of the system diagnostics phase that we use with our clients to help identify their biggest weakest points so we can turn them into strength, so they can dominate on and off the match every single time they step in the cage, not first for one, not just for two, not just for three fights, but for the long term, go over on instagram and dm me the word test.I put together our entire system diagnostic, diagnostic phase in detail and a pdf, [...0.5s] and i'm giving it to you for free. Just go over to instagram, [...0.5s] dm me the word test [...0.5s] and i'll send it over to you. That's all i got for you today though.Thanks for tuning in. We're back on the fight science made simple podcast. I'm pumped to be here. If there are any topics that you want me to cover, you can drop them in the comments below until next time. I'll catch you next week. Peace.