Perhaps best known for coaching MMA fighters such as Brock Lesnar Pat Barry, Cole Konrad and Tony Ferguson, Marty Morgan picked up most of his knowledge on training fighters as a wrestling coach at the University of Minnesota from 1993 until 2008. “During that time, we had several good teams. We were Big Ten champions seven times, NCAA champions, and had numerous All Americans and NCAA individual champions, as well,” he recalls.

Morgan’s own background includes wrestling and boxing in his youth. Along with his five brothers, he trained at the boxing gym his father ran for 20 years. Morgan’s three eldest brothers continued into professional boxing but he, along with his other two brothers, concentrated on wrestling in high school and college—all were NCAA All-Americans, and his brothers both represented the US in the Olympics in 1988 and 1996. Morgan also wrestled post-college, up through the Olympic level, finished third in the 1992 trials and second in the Olympic trials in ’96 to Dan Henderson.

Morgan began coaching full-time in ’96-’97 season at the University of Minnesota as the head wrestling coach. He holds an undergraduate degree in Education and a Masters Degree in Kinesiology. He answered some questions about training for peak performance. Although he specifically works with fighters, there is quite a bit of information that will be relevant for many competitive sports.

How did you transition your coaching to focus more on recovery and peak performance?

Well, when I was coaching at the University of Minnesota, we had an extremely good staff. It was run by J. Robinson and some other really good assistants. So, when you’re in a college athlete program of that magnitude, you’re constantly tweaking and working with the athletes in every realm whether it’s their conditioning and strength training or their nutrition and their technical training.

Because you’re constantly tweaking it. You’re constantly working on the best possible way to get the wrestlers ready several times throughout the year with the ultimate goal of peaking at the National Tournament.

So, with that in mind, I learned an extreme amount from the different resources of coaches and athletes that we had come through. I transitioned some of that training into the fighting world.

What are some ways that you measure recovery?

Really, when you’re coaching a specific athlete to get ready for a fight, a lot of it is visual, a lot of it is talking to the athlete, getting to know them and when their body’s responding and when it’s not. So really, it’s kind of a hard thing to explain because there’s a lot of feel that goes with it.

But then, when you get to the technical part of recovery, just knowing where they’re at as far as their strength and conditioning can be an indicator. For example, if you’re in the middle of a training camp and all of a sudden you notice a fluctuation in their strength training, whether it’s up or down, it means they are either fresh and strong, or maybe they’re at a point where they need to start pulling back on some of the aspects of their training.

Then, another major indicator is heart rate. An athlete that’s got a typical resting heart rate of say 50 and then, all of a sudden in day three and four of their training, they’re waking up and their resting heart rate is in the 70s, that generally means their body hasn’t fully recovered from the day before. At that point, you have to kind of watch it, be careful and kind of pull back a little bit to make sure you’re not overtraining at that point.

For professional athletes who have a certain amount of work they need to do each day to get the level they need to be at, so how would you adjust what they’re doing accordingly if they aren’t recovering?

If an athlete wasn’t recovering at a certain point, then the number one and easiest thing to do is a day off. But a lot of times, because they’re high-level athletes, that often in their mind may not work. So, a lot of times, you’ll adjust the workout to be more strategic or technically-based where they’re still getting something out of a workout, but they’re not straining their muscles or joints, or straining even their mind.

It’s kind of a relief day. You break up the monotony by doing something completely different than just coming in and going through the grind again.

Say you’re coaching a large group of people… how do you work with multiple people when some of them need more training and some of them less of it?

The hardest thing to do is to peak a team. At the University of Minnesota, in wrestling, our goal was to peak as a team to win the National Tournament. In order to win the National Tournament, you have to have all parts moving at the same time, and of course, all the parts are individual humans, which are all different.

Once again, because we were very successful and Coach J. Robinson had a plan that included enough assistant coaches that could watch over specific athletes so you could narrow it down to the individual. So, I would say if you’re ever in a situation where coaching numerous athletes, the more coaches and resources you can have around to kind of keep an eye on the certain athletes, the better.

Then, that way, you can individually break them off. I know at Minnesota we had a plan where we’d get towards the final six weeks and we really start individualization on each athlete; one guy might be doing something completely different than another one. One guy might need more, one guy might need less, so it’s a constant balancing act, but the overall thing is you have to have more eyes on the staff in order to be able to see that. One guy trying to coach multiple athletes would be very difficult.

Okay, so we’ve talked about over training, but how do you know if somebody’s not pushing themselves hard enough?

Once again, you have the feel factor and then obviously, the way they’re competing. You know the old Joe Frazier statement, “Everything comes out when you’re under the lights.” You can have an athlete that states he’s working hard and pushing himself to the limit, but then, when the lights are on, it comes out that he hasn’t quiet done enough.

So, once again, it’s an individual based mentality to where you have to look at each individual and what they can do and how hard they can push. Then, trying to find the way to push the right buttons so that you can get them to that limit. Some guys are willing to run through a wall and some guys aren’t. Some guys need to be pushed through the wall.

Interesting. So, it’s how they perform. And I’m guessing that’d be over time because you can’t tell as much from just one time, but in sports like wrestling, you guys compete constantly.

Yeah. In wrestling, you compete multiple times. If you know your athlete, you’ll know when they’re pushing themselves, and once again, a heart rate monitor is a great way to indicate whether they are working to their max potential. If you have an athlete that has a max heart rate in the 170’s, yet throughout a workout, he never reaches that point, say he is at the 120,130 mark, that generally means he’s saving himself. So heart rate monitors are a great way to be able to indicate whether a guy is really pushing himself to his max.

Okay. So, heart rate, feel and performance.

Right.

Are there any other tools that you use, or is that pretty much it?

Well, I think feel incorporates quiet a bit of coaching. Visually seeing what they are doing, there’s a lot to that. Usually, a coach that struggles to have success with teams may have a problem with the feel aspect of training an athlete.

We talk a little bit about how coaches can apply this. What if, for whatever reason, someone has to apply it for themselves? Maybe they’re not in a big camp or nobody around them really has the expertise. Would you just say they should just monitor their own heart rate?

Yeah. If you’re individually based and you don’t have a trainer or a coach that’s constantly on the top of you, you’d have to obviously learn where your limits are and know when you’re pushing to that limit and when you’re not. If it’s a cardio type of sport, obviously a heart rate monitor could be a good indicator. If you’re in a power sport such as lifting, the amount of weights that you’re moving per week and the improvements that you’re making would be an indicator. So, I guess varying on the sports, they should be able to tell that about themselves, but I highly recommend anybody that’s serious about competing hire someone that can oversee them.

Right. Yeah. Ideally, it would be, but I think some people don’t have that luxury, depending on their circumstances.

So, if you’re peaking, what is the length of the cycle that you’re using?

In the fight world, we generally use anywhere from an 8 to 12 week period. It just depends on when the fight is and who they’re fighting. I think as you set cycles, you’re more apt to improve in your training just because you’re building towards something.

You can find a lot of times that athletes or fighters, they’ll train at the same pace all the time so they never really learn what peaking is. Many athletes may have never been to the point where they feel great on a fight night or a fight week because they’re kind of in a monotonous training plan at all times. I think most fighters would definitely benefit from being in a cyclical type of periodized training.

What type of periodization do you use?

Well, once again, it varies on the athlete, but I use a couple different plans where we’ll go multiple weeks, take a few days off, then, come back, do multiple weeks leading up to a camp. Some guys can go five, six days a week. Some guys may be better off going less. It’s such a hard thing to say because each athlete has different individual needs.

So you don’t have a specific method, it’s all kind of individual. Generally, you would taper down a few weeks before? If you were going to draw an outline of what it looks like…

If I were going to draw an outline, I would say you would taper, generally, a week before. It’s pretty typical I think. The week of the fight, once again, individual based because each athlete responds a little bit differently on fight week. Some might need a little bit more; some may need nothing at all. It just depends on the athlete. Weight cutting a lot of times comes into play in fighting because on guy may have to get his weight down. If this is the case, he has to do less cardiovascular work, or muscle work that week because he’s already going to be working extremely hard to get his weight down. Fighting, it’s such an individual thing because of the weight classes and the possibility of having to make weight.

Now that you’re working in a sport where there’s not really an off-season, as opposed to, say, wrestling where there is an off-season, have you had to make a lot of modifications due to that?

Well, it’s similar if you have a specific fighter that is training for a fight because you’ll know the date and you can kind of set it almost like it is a season. If you’re training multiple fighters, it gets tougher because you have to be able to arrange each fighter’s cycle within each other. One guys fighting in one month and another guy is fighting the next month. Obviously, the first guy that’s fighting is going to be at a different period in his cycle than the guy would be in the second month. So, in that sense, you’re going all year because a guy could be fighting in July, another guy could be fighting in September. So each guy would have to individually have his own plan set up throughout the year. If you can avoid a guy who’s fighting in two weeks from doing the same training that a guy who’s fighting six weeks away, that would be the ultimate thing, but it’s not always easy to do if they have numerous fighters in their camp.

Right. Then, also for a lot of fighters, they don’t always get to get a full training camp. Sometimes, they just fill in. Do you modify their training to work around that?

Well, in my sense of it, I would never have a fighter that’s not able to go through a full plan. It’s like they’re either all in, or all out, as far as I’m concerned. If you’re going to be at the elite level and you want to make it to the elite level, you have to go through X number of weeks, anywhere from 8 to 12, in your cycle to truly be ready.

Do you make any modifications based on age?

Age could be an indicator depending on, once again, the individual. Some are able to keep going at certain ages; some younger guys can probably do something different. Because my fighters are all nearly the same age, it’s not as much of a difference, but just in the amount of workouts you would have and the amount of days you go would be relative to their age, I think.

You would probably use other methods, other than age, to determine whether they were overtraining or not, right?

When I was coaching college, even though they’re all 18 to 23, you typically can put freshman and sophomores through a higher pace and more of a grind than you can the junior and seniors who’ve already been through it two or three years. So, there is something to that. The college wrestling season is an extreme grind. There’s no better training ground for an up-and-coming fighter. It’s organized, structured, you have numerous resources, you have to show up, you have to compete and the training is like no other training.

Okay, let’s talk about working through injuries—especially for coaches or people who are kind of their own coaches. This comes up quite a bit—how do you know when to work through something, or when to take time off? Do you have a rule of thumb on that or is it all individual?

Well, injuries themselves are individual because if it’s a jammed finger, it would different than something wrong with your knee. The number one thing is when somebody is injured is the person taking care of themselves and doing the things that it takes to recover in rehab? Once again, when you coach college, you would get guys that would be injured and they would have to work around it.

If they had a bad knee, they would have to work their arms and their upper body and all at the same time, they’d be rehabbing their knee as much as possible. So they were constantly working on their strength conditioning for that meet, or icing, whatever the recovery was. So, you could still get something out of their bodies by using their arms and their other conditioning parts of their body, but at the same time, they were working to help rest that certain body part.

You just listed my two injuries. I had a partially dislocated patella and then, I have had a jammed finger for over a year now, but I think it’s because I don’t tape it up.

Yeah and did you ice today? Probably not. Flexibility training with it? Probably not. You know, if you’re diligent and you’re doing something twice a day to work on making the finger better, it’s going to get better. Most people don’t. They skip it. They skip days of icing. They skip days of working on the flexibility and strength part of it and the thing never goes away.

Do you have any resources or books or anything you’d recommend to people more interested in learning about peaking and how they can apply either to their own training or people that they coach?

There is one; it’s called The New Toughness Training for Sports by James Loehr. It’s great. Oddly enough, he’s talking about tennis players, but it hits the nail on the head. I’m a big fan of Vince Lombardi. I love Dan Gable books, wrestling coach from Iowa.