Joel Jamieson Interview

The great content for the week continues!

Today, I got to spend some time interview Joel Jamieson. Joel is not only one of the smartest coaches I’ve ever met, but he’s learned from everyone and continues to evolve.

I really think you’re going to enjoy this interview!Joel, thanks a ton for being with us here today. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Well, first and foremost I’m a strength and conditioning coach and gym owner. I’ve owned a small training facility outside the Seattle, WA area for about 8 years now and then in my spare time I run 8weeksout.com, write for various magazines and speak at seminars and workshops around the country.

I’m generally most well-known for my work in the sport of MMA and for specializing in conditioning and energy system development.

How did you originally get started in the strength and conditioning industry?

Growing up, I was always into lifting weights and training; but like a lot of coaches out there, I got my start as an athlete myself. After a short stint playing football in college, I started helping out in the University of Washington’s weight room and fell in love with strength and conditioning.

I enjoyed being able to stay in the competitive environment and around lifting and the endless search for a better way to train appealed to me as well. I’ve always been impatient and I think that’s part of why I’ve always wanted to try and figure out the best way to train – to get the best results in the shortest amount of time possible.

For the first 3-4 years as a coach, I spent the majority of my time working with football athletes. Then in 2004 I started working with fighters and over the last few years that’s really become my biggest focus.

Sounds like we’re very similar in our upbringings!

Tell us a bit more about how you got started working with fighters?

To be honest, I was in the right place at the right time.

The first fighter I trained walked into my gym and told me he needed to get ready for a fight in K-1 but I remember I had to look it up online to see what K-1 even was.

The fighter I trained won his fight and soon afterwards, I was fortunate enough to start working with one of the top MMA coaches in the world, Matt Hume, and the rest is history.

Since then, I’ve trained fighters from the UFC, PrideFC, Dream, Strikeforce, and just about every other major organization out there.

About a year or two after I first started training fighters, the sport really exploded, but when I first started training them, almost nobody knew much about the sport and it had only a small following. I would never have guessed it would get as big as it has, but I can tell you that MMA fighters train as hard as any athletes in any sport out there and I have a tremendous amount of respect for their work ethic and commitment to their sport.

Very cool man. Now, let’s talk training! You’ve seemingly written about a whole host of topics, but energy system training seems to be your bread-and-butter.

I’ve said that your MMA Conditioning book is probably one of the 10 best books I’ve ever read in our niche.  Where do most average trainees go wrong when it comes to their energy system training?

You know Mike, that’s a great question.

I think for starters, most average trainees make the mistake of thinking all energy systems training as just “conditioning” but it is often quite a bit more complicated than that. Our muscles, just like every other cell in our bodies, run on chemical energy and how we develop our different energy systems to create that energy has a huge impact on our performance.

Aside from oversimplifying what energy system development really means, I think most trainees make the mistake of thinking that conditioning is just a matter of hard work. They usually think that the harder they work the better results they get.

Over the last few years, high-intensity has become a powerful buzzword in the industry and there’s definitely a need for training hard to improve conditioning, but a lot of athletes train their butts off only to end up with sub-par conditioning.

That’s great stuff Joel. Take it a step further, could you briefly explain to people why it is, in fact, important to train the aerobic energy system?

I think too many people assume this is still just 30-minute runs or something like that.

I think it’s unfortunate that the aerobic system has gotten a bad rap in recent years considering how important it is in just about all areas of performance. Unless you’re talking about a sport like Weightlifting, Powerlifting, Shotput, or some other similar event, the aerobic system no doubt contributes a huge portion of the total energy to most sports.

Unfortunately, as you said, most people tend to think of the aerobic system as only being necessary for endurance sports or only being trained through long slow runs, but this is actually pretty far from the truth. The reality is that even in events as short as 1 minute, the aerobic system contributes at least half the total energy. A lot of sports people to tend to think of as being “anaerobic” are actually largely aerobic in nature.

The same goes for most intervals, which also tend to be hugely reliant on aerobic energy production as well. The truth is that the aerobic system is developed not just through long slow events, but also through much higher intensity intervals as well. A lot of the training people are doing that they think as being anaerobic, has a much larger aerobic component than they realize and research has shown that the more reps of an interval you do, the more aerobic it becomes.

Interestingly enough, recent research has also shown that largely aerobic intervals consisting of 2 minutes of work with 1 minute of rest were highly effective at speeding up phosphocreatine resynthesis during the first 60 seconds of rest. In other words, doing intervals that are almost purely aerobic in nature can help you regain your explosiveness faster.

I also use a similar aerobic interval, one I’ve termed “Cardiac Power Intervals” with 2-3 minutes of work up to maximum heart rate followed by 3-4 minutes of rest and have found this to be hugely effective for increasing endurance at high intensities. The aerobic system plays a role in performance across all intensities, even the highest, and I think this is the biggest thing most people simply don’t realize.

Okay coming back to fighters, what are the biggest issues you deal with when training these guys?

Without question, the biggest issue in combat sports is overtraining. A lot of these guys train striking, wrestling, submissions, etc. 5-6 days a week for 2-3 hours or more. When you also add in a strength and conditioning program on top of that and consider that there is no real off-season in these sports, it is often a recipe for overtraining.

I think that after years of this approach, it’s only a matter of time before the body starts to break down and is why we’re starting to see so many athletes that have been fighting for a while having to drop out of big fights due to injuries.

The real problem is that in combat sport, the mentality that is some is good, then more is better. They often think that of you aren’t killing yourself in the gym, you aren’t getting better.

Sooner or later, this approach inevitably results in overtraining and overuse injuries so the biggest thing I always try to stress is that training is more than just the time you spend in the gym, it’s also the time your body spends recovering and getting better as well.

That’s a great point! Along those same lines, you also place a premium on proper recovery. Where do most people go wrong with their recovery?

That’s an easy one. Most people make the mistake of not realizing that there are different types of recovery methods necessary depending on the individual and the situation. In the right situation, recovery methods can make a huge difference and help improve work capacity and training, but used inappropriately, they can also decrease results or even worse, they can actually make recovery a slower process.

The real key is being able to apply the right recovery method at the right time and this is not always easy. Even if you choose an effective recovery method, if you try to use this same recovery method over and over again, the body will get used to it and it will have less and less of an effect.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I think the biggest thing to take away is that there is no one size fits all approach to recovery or a single method of recovery that’s always best for everyone and anyone. Just like training, the best approach to recovery methods is an individualized one.

We can’t talk recovery and managing the training process without discussin the Omegawave.

How has that influenced or changed how you look at recovery, training stresses, etc.?

Having the Omegawave has had a huge influence on me as a coach because it’s given me an “inside look” at the process of training and recovery that’s taking place with the athletes and individualized I’ve trained over the years. This has taught me a great deal about what really works, what really doesn’t work, and how different everyone is.

The biggest thing I’ve found is that life stress and factors far outside the control of coaches and trainers, such as like sleep quality and amount, have a huge impact on how much training someone needs and how much they can effectively recover from. Without objective feedback on how well someone is adapting and recovering from their training, a lot of what’s going into determining the right amount of volume and intensity is simply guesswork.

Using the Omegawave has eliminated a great deal of this guesswork and allowed me train people in a much more precise and individualized manner. Over time, I’ve learned how to really fine tune this approach and optimize the training process for each person in a way that is simply not possible without the type of information the Omegawave has provided me.

And while that’s all fine and dandy most of us don’t have an Omegawave, or the $30K+ it’s going to set us back to purchase one!

What options do we have at our disposal to better understand recovery, training stresses, and how to optimize our own training process?

Until now, trying to piece together the kind of information I’m talking about without the Omegawave has been a difficult process.

Fortunately, however, that’s all about to change because for about the last year or so, I’ve been working on making the technology that the Omegawave uses much more accessible to everyone, not just elite athletes and teams. The Omegawave is a tremendous tool, but the $35,000 price tag that comes along with it makes it far out of reach for all but the biggest teams and organizations out there.

After spending a great deal of time testing, tweaking and refining, I’ve put together a solution that is extremely affordable, practical to use and very accurate. The solution I’ve developed is called BioForce HRV and it uses the same heart rate variability (HRV) technology that the Omegawave also uses.

This technology was originally developed by the Russians back in the 1960s, but until now, the only system that’s used it for training and sports applications has been the Omegwave. Unlike the Omegawave, however, I’ve developed my solution to be extremely affordable for everyone and since it runs on iphones, Android phones and related devices, it’s also very easy to use.  I think that personal technology like this is really the wave of the future and it’s something we’re going to start seeing more and more of soon.

Technology can provide us with information and that information can help us train much more effectively. I think it’s only a matter of time before it starts to work its way down from the elite teams and organizations to the masses of people that may not be professional athletes, but they still train hard and want to get the most out of their time and hard work.

For people that want to learn more about what BioForce HRV is and how it works, I’ve put together a FREE report that people can download HERE that details the whole story of how technology is about to change the game and give everyone an opportunity to train like the pros.

I think people will really be fascinated when they hear of some of the technology that’s out there that will be making its way into gyms in the coming years.

Last one Joel, and this isn’t really training related.

Did I hear Joe Dowdell say while you were here that you guys once slept on Mel Siff’s floor?

If so, would you mind telling us what that was all about?

Ha, yeah that is a true story and brings back memories!

Back when I was first getting into strength and conditioning, I somehow stumbled upon the Supertraining discussion group on yahoo and that’s where I first learned of Mel Siff and Supertraining.

Back then, Mel offered 3 day workshops periodically that he literally ran out of his basement for just a few hundred dollars – and that included room and board at his house. Of course, little did I know it at the time, but the “room” consisted of a part of his basement sectioned off with mats and pillows for each of us to sleep on.

Mel was a brilliant guy and I think the entire world of strength and conditioning lost something when he passed away, but I think most people that met him found him to be much different than they expected.  He was a very generous guy and welcomed anyone that had ever come to one of his workshops to stop by anytime they were in the area. His floor was always open to anyone who needed a place to stay and I actually took him up on the offer and slept on his floor more than once.

Next time you talk to Joe, make sure to ask him about Mel’s dog!

I will definitely do that!

Joel, I could seriously talk with you all day – maybe we’ll get on the phone soon and knock out a podcast or something.

In the interim, where we can my readers find out more about you?

I could talk training all day so just let me know when! In the meantime, your readers can find me on 8weeksout.com where I post articles and my blog letting everyone know what’s going on.

Thanks again for coming on Joel. I know how busy you are and I really appreciate it!

No problem Mike, thanks for having me on your site, it’s a great resource for the strength and conditioning community.

It’s been great sharing my thoughts with your readers and I’m looking forward to coming back to your seminar again next year!


Back to All Posts