Work Capacity: How Much is Enough?
“Capacity” training, or metabolic conditioning, is simple in theory, but complex in practice. Describing “work” capacity as merely density or high-intensity-intervals fails to accurately articulate the experience.
Combat sports are often referred to as “repeat sprint” sports because individual “rounds” are characterized by explosive bursts separated by “active rest” or impaired recovery (e.g. static positional holds in the case of grappling).
We can conceptualize work capacity in terms of three domains or potential deficiencies:
Movement (MOB)
Recoverability (REC)
O2 Mobilization (O2)
Typically I consider mobility it’s own energy system, because it is a limiting factor in the application of all energy systems. When time becomes a force multiplier — or pressure cooker — we see inefficiencies in this domain amplified.
For example, most people know how to walk and ride a bike, so running, or a stationary bike, aren’t too complex and thus one’s ability to apply their aerobic fitness isn’t typically limited by poor movement.
However, if I told you to ride a bike for 10 minutes vs. do burpees for 10 minutes, you might have a very different emotional response even before the physicality begins.
I find it more clear to describe O2 and REC by my emotional responses to them. O2 sessions usually mean pain (searing lungs and muscle lactate), while REC usually invokes a trauma response (puking, or the other end).
REC is simply our ability to recover, between sets, between rounds, between training sessions, etc. While this is clearly influenced by our aerobic ability it is possible to strength-your-way-through a REC session because of the micro-rests you’re afforded during transitions between movements. In this way, it is very similar to grappling.
O2 sessions, on the other hand, offer no condolences to — and in fact often punish — strength-based athletes. These sessions are heavily aerobically dependent and test the body’s ability to clear waste products that build up during intense activity.
In-Context for Grappling:
Men in the UFC (average across all weight classes) were able to decrease their max heart rate by 15% in one-minute and 37% in five-minutes (1).
After reaching max heart rate, being able to reduce heart rate by < 12 bpm (in a 2-minute cooldown) has a 4x relative risk of mortality compared to > 12 bpm (2). Similar in scale, another study found that after a 2-minute cooldown, a hear rate reduction of < 22 bpm had a hazard ratio (HR) of 2.6; meaning the total risk of death was 2.6x — more than double (3).
Yet another study of over 9,000 people estimated the median heart-rate-recovery (HRR), in the same 2-minute cooldown period, to be 19/min and the 25th and 75th percentiles being 14/min and 24/min respectively (4).
While interval weight training (IWT) might closely mirror the metabolic demands of a grappling match (5), it’s easy to hide in our strengths. Thus, we need to test and develop the extremes and then build relevancy on top of them.
What I mean is that a 10-minute constant metabolic threshold test isn’t very similar to a grappling match, even if we scaled the interval down to 5 minutes. Why? Because you all know that grappling isn’t a constant grind. Even the most persistent “boat-racers” have stops and spurts between scrambles.
The value, or at least part of it, is the mental pressure, the knowing this will suck and there is no way to cheat, dampen, or avoid that fact. Once you step up (or off) the plate, there’s no turning back — because the interval isn’t long enough to complain about, yet demands self-control lest you pay a hefty price for “coming out too hot.” Does that sound like a fight? It is.
Testing and Standards:
O2 Mobilization
Typical laboratory Wingate tests conduct about 2 minute intervals (6), but some suggest a deeper “pain cave” of 6-12 minutes (7, 8). 10-minutes is a round number that fits that domain, and also happens to be the length of IBJJF black belt matches.
In my own training, various “walls” hit at 2-minute intervals. I can maintain a very high output for 5 that diminishes a a little by 7 minutes, but 10 seems enough to temper even the most noble intentions.
An Echo or Assault Bike is simple implement that likely won’t have movement limitations. NonProphet has suggested achieving your bodyweight in calories as a “good” score for a 10-minute interval (9).
As much as I love and appreciate their work, I have to acknowledge that some of their MOs are more aerobically driven than necessary for grappling. For example, my grappling “conditioning” isn’t bad, but I was still a ways off from achieving a body weight score on the 10-minute airbike test (dubbed 300FY).
This is a tough one to adjust because it doesn’t scale linearly. I can hold 8 cals / min for 60-minutes, 10 cals / min for 30-40 minutes, but 15 cals / min for 10 minutes leaves me suffocating on the floor for another 20 minutes afterward. Tentatively, here’s what I’ve come up with:
Work Capacity:
Metabolic Threshold (O2 Mobilization): 10 min on AirBike
Expected: 75% BW in calories
Game-Changer: 85% BW in calories
Recoveryability (REC)
Testing here is closer to the Wingate test above. Joel Jamieson gives the general benchmark that “after your workout… you should be able to get your heart rate to (within) 5-10 bpm of resting (heart rate) in 3-5 min.(10)” In other words, we shouldn’t need more than a 1:1 work:rest ratio — assuming 5-minute training rounds.
As an aside, interesting things happen when we manipulate that ratio. After a work:rest ratio of more than 2:1 we start to sub-consciously conserve and pace ourselves. On a macro-level we see this in the differences in pacing between combat sports with longer vs. shorter rounds (e.g. wrestling and judo vs. boxing and MMA).
Heart rate can be somewhat fickle to measure, particularly at higher ranges with the wearable optical devices most people have. One alternative may be measuring work output during descending intervals; again on a simple machine like an Echo / Assault Bike (otherwise known as a “to hell” structure):
5:00 work, 2:30 rest, then
4:00 work, 2:00 rest, then
3:00 work, 1:30 rest, then
2:00 work, 1:00 rest, then
1:00 work
As with 300FY, your score is total calories from all rounds combined. Benchmarks are even more difficult to assess here, but given what I found in the literature we probably don’t want to see more than a 20% decrease in work rate (cals / minute) per interval.
A reasonable total then might land us around 125% BW in calories (total):
Work Capacity:
Recoverability / HRR: 5-4-3-2-1 minutes on AirBike at 50% rest between intervals.
Expected: 115% BW in total calories.
Game-Changer: 125% BW in total calories.
The pacing on those benchmarks comes out to applying our 300FY pace to a 15-minute interval rather than 10-minutes; however, there’s 7 minutes of rest in there (about 2:1 ratio) which should allow us to scale for the increased duration.
As I’ve said before, these metrics are somewhat arbitrary and often times the difficulty is in translating synthetic benchmarks and physical attributes (fitness) to sport-specific skills “on-the-mat” (conditioning).
What I’ve outlined here is based on a small (~10) sample of participants I’ve run through the 300FY test at our gym, which assumes there’s an even distribution. It’s quite diverse, but a small sample nonetheless, so if you’ve partaken in any of these tests, please let me know in the comments (or DM) what your results were.
Get it done while you can, because no one gets out of life alive.