If you have been following any type of training programme for martial arts fitness and conditioning then you must have come across JC Santana. JC is respected in the industry at every level. This month we had a chance to gain some insights from the man himself.
Juan Carlos “JC” Santana is a world-renowned authority in the area of performance enhancement and is one of the most prolific speakers in the fitness industry. JC has been published extensively and has produced many videos on the subject of performance enhancement. His educational resources bring the most innovative and cutting edge training methodology to fitness professionals around the world.
Professionally, JC has been in the fitness industry since he was 14 years old. At that young age he was a fitness instructor at Brody’s Gym in Miami, the home of several champion bodybuilders, power lifters and other professional athletes. He eventually managed Brody’s when he was only 15-16 years of age. JC went on to direct and operate several fitness facilities in the Miami, Hollywood and Boca Raton areas. He is now the president and director of the Institute of Human Performance (IHP) in Boca, Raton Florida; a state-of-the-art training facility servicing a clientele that ranges from elite athletes to the neurologically challenged patient (www.ihpfit.com).
JC is the director of his consulting company, Optimum Performance Systems (OPS), which is based out of IHP. OPS provides: Consulting for equipment manufactures, fitness organizations, fitness professionals and major sports teams, athletic development camps, education for fitness professionals and internships for graduates in the allied health professions. The interview took place at the Perform Better Functional Training Summit in Providence Rhode Island on the 31st May 2008
MAI: JC, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to Martial Arts Illustrated
JC: My pleasure, can’t wait to see the article and can’t wait to visit the UK
MAI: What originally got you interested in the strength and conditioning world?
JC: I have always been fascinated with the human body, performance and the capability of the human body in terms of anything from gymnastics to sports, but not only performance, but the ability to tolerate hardship. I can remember back when I was 3, 4, 5 years old always going with my dad to boxing matches and going to the circus and being totally in awe of the gymnasts and strongmen, so it was a passion of mine ever since I can remember.
MAI: What is your personal martial arts and combative sports background?
JC: I started kung fu when I was 12 years old and at 12 years old I already had my exercise regimen, I remember believe it or not, I ordered a 25 cent or maybe it was 5 cent program from a bazooka bubble gum wrapper and it had the program where the guy gets sand kicked in his face and the girl is taken from him then he does this program and he goes back and kicks the bully’s butt and gets his girl back. It was a series of exercises with encyclopedias, so you would hold the encyclopedias out in a lateral position, overhead or out in front of you in a squat stance, so it was just an encyclopedia ‘big broke’ workout, and I remember at 12 years of age already having a structured program that lasted about an hour to prepare my body. I then got into kung fu and body hardening and just hard training like jumping over hurdles. At that point in time the Bruce lee movies where very very hot in the early seventies and all the kung fu movies where the guys would fly and jump high and put their hands through wood and all that stuff and I was fascinated with that and I wanted to do that, so I jumped over hurdles, my hands were ‘rock’ as I was digging into sand and rocks; my forearms were unbelievable, so as a youngster I got into kung fu, then I started wrestling at the age of 14 and a lot of the wrestlers on the team were judo players, so in the off season they would teach me judo, so I had a very good amount of experience in judo without going to formal judo classes. Then it was judo all the way through to about 18-19 yrs. old, so it was about 5 years of judo and wrestling. Then I picked up karate, shotokan and isshin-ryu, from there I got kickboxing and from kickboxing I got introduced to Muay Thai and so it was kickboxing and Muay Thai until about 28-30 years old and then after that I picked up Olympic weightlifting and then I went back into judo and competed until the age of 45 where I took a bronze at the masters open in Vegas, so I've kinda had a long, long 33 year career and the only non combat sport that I have really done is Olympic weightlifting, everything else has been combat.
MAI: Did Bruce Lee influence your martial arts career?
JC: Bruce Lee influenced my life. Yes he influenced my martial arts career, but he did that by influencing the way I learned, so if you look at my style of presentation, if you look at my style of training, if you look at my style of learning and even analyzing life which is totally separate from strength and conditioning, you will see a lot of the Jeet Kune Do type of style where you look at everything in a totally unbiased manner. When you don’t allow tradition and habits to come into your analysis, at look at everything extremely objectively, bring in what works, dare to ask ‘why,' dare to break the rules just to try it and you’ll find out that oftentimes it works, and then you’ll go ‘wow,' who made up this rule to begin with? And you’ll see more often than not, nobody did, just people followed things because thats the way they’ve always been done. So that whole philosophy that JKD and Bruce Lee brought when I first read the Tao of JKD, that whole philosophy resonated with me and it's the way I approach my life, it's the way I do things, I do what works, I am only obligated to success and thats my loyalty, its to success, it's not to any tradition, it's not to any one person and it's not to any one art. So yes he did influence me as a person first and then of course he influenced all of my martial arts, thats why we where doing mixed martial arts back in my late teens when I started with karate and kickboxing, I brought my judo and wrestling background to my instructor and we actually had sessions on Saturday mornings, which was the equivalent of what today would be MMA where I was allowed to take people down and throw elbows and throw techniques on the ground so we were doing MMA way back in the late seventies. Man, Bruce Lee was an unbelievable influence in the martial arts world and certainly in my life.
MAI: You seem to have endless amounts of energy, how do you keep motivated on a daily basis?
JC: I don’t know to tell you the truth. I can just tell you that I have a passion for life, for people and you know, believe me my life is not the partridge family, I bleed just like everybody else, I have doubts like everybody else, I have my challenges and my sad days and my days where I don’t wanna be talked to, I get grouchy just like everybody else, so I'm a normal guy, a very, very normal guy, however, I think I've been blessed with a manner of analysis, that Bruce Lee again impacted me hugely on, and that analysis allows me to see life a little different then some of my colleagues and contemporaries and I think that honest look at life is what keeps me motivated and gives me the energy, you know what, because I love life, I love people, I love helping people and I love what I do, so I think thats what allows me to stay with the energy that I have is because I don’t ‘work’ and my life is not a drag, it has its challenges like everybody’s, but it's not a drag, I don’t have to wear a suit, I don’t have a boss, I don’t have to go and sell stocks or sell insurance and go jeez I hate this job, and so even when I play I'm working, and when I play I make money and when I play I am creating things that people enjoy, so I think thats what allows me to stay energetic.
MAI: Can you describe a typical day in the life of JC?
JC: Sure, up normally around 7 am, I don’t use alarm clocks! If I feel I need the rest I will stay in bed until 9.30 if I don’t have an appointment. I will get to the gym and reply to my emails and then (btw, JC responds personally to all his emails)! I might have to train fighters and then try go for a long bike ride or do some hard training, and then get home at about 6-7pm and then I shut it down, thats family time, my phone doesn't go on and I don’t go to my computer..done...its hard but its done!
MAI: Thats not a typical day in the life of most personal trainers and strength coaches.
JC: I shrunk my work week down from 80-90 hrs to about 40-50 hours, but they’re good hours, when I'm working man I'm inspired, I work and I produce a lot more quality not quantity! I have the energy now, it's not just garbage work, which by the way transcends to the mixed martial arts style that I have with conditioning, I don’t believe in these 3 hours 2 a days, and 3 a days, forget it man, people say that they train between 6-8 hours a day, what the hell you doing? You ain’t doing nothing, you’re doing garbage work, because I know what it is to train, and the way I bang Monson(Jeff), Rhadi Ferguson, Marcus Aurelio and Pablo Popavitch, 25 minutes and they are begging to leave..begging to leave after 25 minutes...what are you doing for 6-8 hours?
MAI: So in 2003 you captured a 3rd place at the Judo open in Vegas?
JC: That was 3 years ago, I think 2005, I think I went 2004 and I didn't place, went 2005, if I'm not mistaken and placed third, I'm not sure on the years.
MAI: How did you train for that?
JC: Ahhh, very hard, especially for the first one. For the first one when I didn't place, I trained extremely hard because I had to drop 40lbs to make 197lbs, it was a 198lbs class, so I had to drop 40lbs to make that weight. The nice thing about the following year was that I went in the 100kgs, which is 220lbs so I didn't have to train the cardio and the dieting that hard. So the way I trained is my standard periodization model where I go hard for 16 weeks where I went conditioning, strength, power, power-endurance each one for 4 weeks and I was doing 2-a-days twice a week and 1-a-days the other three times, training 5 days a week.
MAI: It must have been pretty intense.
JC: Yeh it was intense, in my 40’s and I trained like an Olympic athlete, you know, so even in my 40’s I was banging pretty hard.
MAI: JC can you let the readers know about intocombat.com, what it is and your objectives with the website?
JC: Yeh, actually intocombat.com was a company that I started with Rhadi Ferguson and then Rhadi started his own company and went off on his own, we’ve since changed the name to ihpcombat.com, but if you go to intocombat.com or ihpcombat.com you end up in the same website. The whole purpose for starting that company was because the combat world has a great tradition but it's not up to date on training methods. We are still under the archaic philosophy that more is better and the more you punish your body the better you are in battle. The whole ego and testosterone driven thing...if it doesn't hurt it ain’t good for you’ and ‘pain is fear leaving your body’ and all this good stuff, and I said, “You know, nobody trains harder than we do at IHP” and all combat warriors are already bad-asses and you don’t have to prove your manhood to me in training. So I said why don’t we create a company that provides the cutting edge training methods that we have developed for the combat world so that guys can train harder with higher intensities and with less volume, and they wont have to spar as much because one of the things we have done is taken a lot of the sparring out, which is where 70% of all injuries occur, so if you are a combat athlete and you are going to get injured, I want you to get injured in the actual competition, I don't need you injured and not being able to compete. We are seeing that over and over again that people are not being able to compete because they get hurt in the last 4-5 weeks, so we wanted to educate the coach and train the fighters so that they would have better performance and longer careers with less injuries, so we set out to do that, and we’ve got something in the order of 14 great DVD’s, 3 or 4 books and new gripping accessories that are just phenomenal, so we wanted to be at the cutting edge. I wanna leave the same legacy in combat that I hope to leave in the fitness world; a huge body of cutting edge stuff that will be timeless. I hope that every video I do, and it's my intention to, to have every video or every book that I write still be applicable 20 years after. Of course things will change and we always learn but I want 80 - 95% of the meat to be logical and still hold its ground 20 years from now. So that was the intention of intocombat.com. Now ihpcombat.com is really rolling, we’re gonna introduce it to the UK with this interview and follow up articles and we’re gonna go to the UK with some of the friends (maybe JC will bring some of his fighters to the UK in the future) and see if we can put on a great conference, cause I know that the UK is hot, hot on the combat arts and I love the combat people, so I will go anywhere.
MAI: It seems that strength & conditioning for MMA is becoming a huge business, why?
JC: Because combat hits a vein inside of the human spirit that we can’t deny. As violent as MMA and other combat arts may be, there is something about hand to hand combat that attracts the human spirit, for example, if there’s a fight out on the street, everybody’s gonna look, people stop and look. The more violent it gets the more frozen they become, it’s just a human thing man. As the UFC says, “IT’S AS REAL AS IT GETS. Two people going at it man, in a freestyle type of environment where you can takedown, elbow, kick and the attacks are vicious and they can end stuff quick, there’s just something that’s just, just...it’s akin to the human spirit man, that it touches something that people just freeze. So I think that’s one of the reasons and its much more exciting man, it has the speed of hockey, the striking of boxing, it has all the thought process of football and the NBA (national basketball association) where there’s formations that you have to read and plays that you have to call. It’s a total sport man, a total sport. So I think that’s the growth and the UFC’s done a great job of bringing it into the mainstream but there’s some companies now that are coming strong; like today it’s Saturday and at 9pm, CBS is gonna have Elite XC. This is the first time that a major network has picked up MMA.
MAI:Do you think that traditional martial artists are also supplementing their training with strength & conditioning programs?
JC: No doubt, no doubt. Any sport right now that is not supplementing their sports specific training with strength & conditioning is archaic, and I don’t think there is anybody who has not acknowledged the fact that specific strength training techniques, whether they be traditional or whether they be a more functional approach, but with strength & conditioning there is no negating the facts that it helps. So I think most modern athletes are doing it, traditional martial artists have to know that stronger legs will deliver more kicks. Now with the essence of core training, where you can’t read Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Glamour, or any magazine without reading about functional training and core training and how the importance of a stable spine is necessary in delivering blows. Forget it man, all the traditional guys are coming on board with that.
MAI: Can you describe some of your key strength & conditioning exercises for MMA training?
JC: We have a ton, but for example, one of our favorites that we have is the reaching lunge, and thats kind of a cheated lunge where you take a big step forward and you flex at the hip and the knee and you kinda tie your shoe and come back out to mimic a shot, a change of level. The reaching lunge, whether sagittal plane, frontal plane or rotational is huge for us. The abdominal sequence that we use, which is a combination of leg raises, crunches and V-ups in different formations and sometimes using the medicine ball to exchange between the arms and legs is also a great, great, great exercise to develop a good guard strength and endurance. Of course all our rotations, whether it be rotating with a med ball or doing skiers or our favorite using the slam ball against a wall are great for developing rotational power. The band pressing and band punching allows for enormous work there and of course a lot of the pull ups and the recline pulls with our new grip dominator accessories, whether it be the clamp, lock down or the ropes are also some of our favorite. So those are just some of the many many exercise that we have that we kinda use as a staple of our training environment.
MAI: Carlos, your circuit training methods have become legendary in the fitness training industry, what would be your key elements in designing a circuit training routine for martial artists?
JC: That’s kind of a very interesting approach and interesting sequence of events, but it’s simple. What I always tell people is this..look, take a minute or 30 second exchange from which you think would be an ideal match, the match doesn't have to be real, it can be imaginary, all right, but lets say you take a good exchange, take the best minute or 30 sec of whatever match you want, whether it's boxing, mma, judo, no gi grappling whatever it is, sit down and study it, find out how many punches were thrown, how many changes of level, how many isometric contractions, what positions they were in and how long did they last, how many kicks, how many clinches, how many pushing and how many pulling and just come up with 3, 4, or even 5 different categories of techniques, like take down, clinching, punching, isometric holds for e.g. would be 4, say all right, in 1 min they threw 5 punches, 5 clinches, 5 kicks and 5 take downs, OK! If that was in a minute, what would happen in 5 minutes? Well, you just multiple that times 5, OK, now you got your circuit. It’s really really simple, now what I normally do, is I add 10 - 20 percent of the numbers of each, I add it to Y, because there’s a lot of transitionary time, there’s referee stoppage and I wanna fill in that time, so what happens is that my circuits fill in the time with reps, in the match you have transitionary movement, walking and like I said referee stoppage etc, so if my circuits just keep pounding you for 5 minutes, you are pounded at a higher level than any of the time in the match and you don’t have transitionary periods, because I'll transition you in 5 seconds from one piece of equipment to another. When you have that transitionary period, that rest that you get in an actual fight, you’ll feel you’re on vacation. So that’s basically it, look at the perfect 1 minute segment, categorize the skills, count how many movements in each skill category, and turn each of those into an exercise, so if you got punching, an example of that would be band punching, if you got clinches, an example of that would be cheated curls, if you got isometric holds from the guard, it would be isometric recline pulls, if you got Muay Thai knees, then you got Muay Thai knees on the lock down, so those would be exercises that I put in to train those specific combat skills.
MAI: When conditioning the different energy systems in the body, which do you emphasize the most when training martial artists?
JC: Forget about the energy systems man, they're built in. Here's how you apply it to MMA: If you're gonna go hard for 20 seconds, then go hard for 20 seconds and whatever energy system is utilized, so be it! I train movements, intensity and volume, and I let the energy system take care of itself. Obviously MMA and combat sports are high energy situations done intermittently, therefore high intensity intermittent work is very specific for the combat arts. Martial artists should focus more on pain tolerance; pain tolerance is one of the biggest factors we use for conditioning as there are really no metabolic adaptations but just a perceived notion of what is work and if you get used to the pain and don't quit, people say that you're in better shape; well you are, but not because of physiology, it's all through mind perception. When we were training James Thompson he tried to do our metabolic circuits and he threw up about 40 seconds into the workouts, and within 7 days, James was able to complete 3 full circuits, his adaptation was not chemical, it had to be all about the pain tolerance, perception of pain, muscle and movement economy. So let the energy systems take care of themselves and let's train combat!
MAI: JC, you’re a fan of using rubber bands, medicine balls and a whole host of functional training equipment, what is the difference between this type of resistance work compared to let’s say, weight training?
JC: The biggest difference, especially with bands and cables, which you know I love, is that I can load non vertical vectors. You know, if you drop a weight it goes straight down because of gravity, but with bands I can load diagonal vectors, so if I want to mimic a clinch, where you’re pushing me to the right I'm pushing you to the left, how am I gonna do that with weights? Weights break me down. So I can load that type of vector through band training and cable training in a wonderful fashion. The stability balls allow me different surfaces that I can deal with to mimic the human body so I can put you in positions that are very specific, for example, I can teach you how to drive your hips in, when you put in the hooks through doing extensions on a stability ball, and thats just one example. Using medicine balls, not only can I use it as a weight, but if you are doing rotational work, and you have that centripetal force or that tangent line acceleration, which is the ability to move when you rotate, to throw the object away from the circle through the tangent line, then that provides an enormous load in rotational mechanics with the medicine ball. I can also use the medicine ball to create level changes in push ups, which mimic being in a position down when dealing with a body that’s maybe 12-14 inches off the ground. So those are some of my favorite applications and that’s why I use those basic pieces of equipment, I can get so much out of them and mimic body and combat positions that are unheard of in machine training.
MAI: You have put together a DVD series for combative athletes. Can you share some insight into your philosophy about the DVD series?
JC: The DVD series is basically an illustration of the circuits we have used with all of our athletes. Before doing the S.A.I.D, I had already trained the American Top Team (ATT) from the year 2001 - 2005. Marcelo Silveira who is now my CO-coach in ‘Team Shock & Awe,' was the co founder of the American Top Team, came to me, because they did not know what they were doing on the strength & conditioning side. They were masters at Ju Jitsu, they were up and coming in the Mixed Martial Arts and very good wrestlers, but they didn’t know anything about strength & conditioning. So we started doing the training with the ATT and started designing specific circuits, now, the S.A.I.D circuits as we have them now, were really initiated by Marcus Aurelio. The story behind S.A.I.D (specific adaptations to imposed demands) goes back to 2003, when Marcus Aurelio was hurt and had a separated rib, again, in stupid sparring that should have never occurred, and he was getting ready for the ZST tournament, which is a $70,000 tournament, and if he won it, he was gonna get a contract with PRIDE, so bailing out was not an option. Then, the ATT called me and said that Marcus was hurt, but he needs to be in shape in 6 weeks, but he can’t spar. So I said, “Well, I don’t know what the heck I'm gonna do with him, but send him in and I'll see what I can do.” Well, I looked at the best match and I looked at some of the movements that I wanted to incorporate and saw which movements did not cause pain, and I put 5-6 movements together that didn’t cause pain that he could tolerate and we went at it. To make a long story, Marcus won ZST, not once but twice, and then eventually ended up winning the PRIDE contract, where his most notable win was his upset against Gomi. So without sparring for 6 weeks, Marcus showed up in great shape and went through the competition like nothing. So that was the beginning of the S.A.I.D, it wasn't that I designed the circuits out of my pure intelligence, but more like necessity is the mother of all inventions and I was put up against a wall, I didn’t know what I was gonna do, and kinda instinctually I reacted on the floor, came up with something, it worked, and from then on I did that with all of my fighters. So by the time the S.A.I.D series came out, I said why don’t we take all these circuits that we’ve been doing and show the kickboxers, gi & no gi fighters, mma fighters and boxers how we work with the circuits. So that’s how that whole series was developed, that’s the modern concept of our S.A.I.D circuits and that’s the story with Marcus Aurelio. It’s just pure recording of what we’ve done.
MAI: So are you saying, don’t leave your best in the gym and get into the ring all beat up? Are the SAID circuits allowing you to get into your best shape before the fight without getting injured?
JC: Yes, and that is part of the IHPCOMBAT philosophy. It’s lets find a way to train fighters without abusing their bodies. They are already in an abusive sport, so why train abusively? Lets train smart, let the intensity be developed through the strength & conditioning and let the technical & tactical elements be developed in practice. You don’t get in shape sparring! Do not try to get in shape sparring, you’ll only end up with cuts and injuries. Get in shape with your strength & conditioning and get technical & tactical with your specific art. That’s the key..I’m telling you. Why do you think Randy Couture still has a career at 44yrs old? Why can he still whip some ass? Because he spent time in Greco-Roman where he didn’t beat up his brain. You got these guys now with 10 mma fights by the time they’re 20 years old and they will not go until they’re 44 years old, by 30 they’ll be shot. We wanna see more guys like Randy Couture.
MAI: JC, you never stop creating, which is evident by your incredible list of books, DVD’s and training products. Your newest range of products are the ‘Grip Dominators’, why have these products been so important and successful for martial artists?
JC: Because gripping is everything. In mma you can’t hit what you can’t hold, in Judo you can’t throw what you can’t hold, in submissions you can’t submit what you can’t hold, gripping and holding is everything in mma and grappling. Now the question is..How do we train gripping? Traditionally its been grippers, barbell, dumbell work and finger rolls etc, but if you look at the wrist, it’s 2.5 inches, not 1 inch, so when you grab a 1 inch bar and a 2.5 inch wrist it’s two different things. Also, most training that is done is where the forearm is perpendicular to the bar, but when I'm holding your wrist, there are different orientations, (which can be seen in the Grip Dominator DVD and soon to be released book). Which put different demands on the wrist? If the wrist is unstable and any one of those orientations are angles, there’s going to be a neural inhibition that will shut down muscle contraction and you will let go of the grip. If you let go of the grip, stuff is over. So the Grip Dominator accessories are based on specific angles, and the way that the grip is developed very specific to combat. It’s not just grab a dumbell and go or do a farmer’s walk, you don’t farmer’s walk with people. When I'm trying to get wrist control from the standing position there’s different orientations, the very defense that you have when I try to grip you, circling in circling out, what we call the wrapping or the ripping which are some of the defenses against gripping and you have to train to be able to resist the rip or able to resist the wrap, cause if not, they’ll break your grip. Nobody has ever addressed all of these issues and nobody’s ever developed a line of accessories to deal with gripping issues, IHP are the first to write a gripping book, we were the first to do a grip development DVD specific to combat athletes.
MAI: JC, thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with Martial Arts Illustrated, it has been awesome speaking to you. Do you have anything further that you would like to add for MAI readers?
JC: Just to let them know that they should be very excited for many reasons, number 1: The combat arts are going to be very exciting in the years to come, especially with mma and in the Olympics I believe that submission wrestling is going to be a spectator sport and entry level demo sport and hopefully it may be a medal sport very soon. We may see mma one day in the Olympics, but whether its in the Olympics or not we’re gonna see mma become mainstream and we’re seeing it tonight (Elite XC - aired on CBS) and with mainstream exposure will come more professional help, and hopefully some of these training methods that we are developing will come to fruition, and be used by most of the fighters and coaches if not all of them. We’re going to see better fighters, better performances, prolonged careers, so the combat world now is entering an era of huge excitement. Number 2: you are here doing a wonderful job in getting great information from a great conference for Martial Arts Illustrated and number 3: This is the beginning of our association together and this is what is going to bring me to the UK for the first time, so for many reasons MAI readers should be very excited!!
MAI: Thank you JC
JC: It’s a pleasure my brother
Alan Orr is a disciple of Robert Chu Sifu and the European representative of the Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun system.
Teacher of Tui Na Chinese Massage Therapy
He is also the UK representative for Guro Mark Wiley in the Filipino martial
arts and Sensei Eddy Millis of Shark Tank in NHB/Grappling.
Web:
www.alanorr.com
www.thechinesemedicineacademy.co.uk
www.warriorfunctionaltraining.com
For further information Tel: 07958 908 196 or email: info@alanorr.co.uk