We’ve spent the last nine videos talking about the theory of Muay Thai performance. But theory is useless until it meets reality. Reality is messy. Reality is a tweaked shoulder, a busy work week, or a gym that doesn’t have a landmine attachment.
Based on my previous career, I told you that Heavy Hitters is an ‘engineered system.’ But what does that actually look like for you in the trenches?
Instead of me lecturing you today, I’m going to let you be a fly on the wall. I’ve pulled four clips from actual coaching calls with Heavy Hitters clients. Before the doors close…You’re going to hear exactly how we solve the real-world problems that stop most people from progressing: Performance Testing, Scheduling, Injury, and Equipment.
This is what it looks like to have an Muay Thai engineer in your corner. Let’s listen in.
First up, let’s talk about the performance testing. This is exactly the kind of detail we obsess over inside Heavy Hitters. You’ll hear me explaining why we test, and specifically, how you can uknowingly ‘cheat’ the test. Which might boost your ego, but it breaks the data, and ultimately, breaks your progress.
Here I begin explaining why the full battery of performance tests are split over two days…
“Yeah, that’s why I have it split. Split over a couple of days, just so that you’ve got a fair test, brother. And I always say to people as well, I’ve got it structured with two different days, and I’ve got it structured with the tests in a certain order as well. So this sort of start with least fatigue into most fatiguing. And then as long as you, when you repeat the testing, as long as you do it the same, same order and everything, because otherwise, you know, just swap the order. And it’s like, oh, I’m really, I’m a lot better at this one, but now I’m worse at this one. It’s like, yeah, the fatigue was different. So you just try and control that as much as we can.”
When it comes to rep max testing strength exercises, we don’t need a 1-rep-max…
“I mean, if you’re scoring somewhere, if you’re doing between three to five reps on there, it’s a really good indicator of what the one rep max really would be. So it’s like, you don’t have to risk too much. And it’s why I always ask people as well, are you familiar with lifting already? Or have you been lifting recently as the other sort of important bit? And like, yeah, I might have a historical background of lifting, but I haven’t done it for a while. Then I’m always a bit guarded about just chucking you in at that performance testing, and maybe doing, doing some exercises you haven’t even done before, and then trying to rep max it.
Yeah, we don’t want you pushing into, I always look for that the term I use is technical failure. So if you can make a really horrible, ugly one, in terms of reps, I mean, every now and then test, it’s, you know, but it’s just making sure you don’t don’t damage yourself. That’s not the purpose of it. The idea is we just, and it is just as long as you’re testing the same way next time you do it. So it’s not like this time, this time I’m kind of sandbagging it a little bit. And then next time I really pushed it, we don’t, we can’t, we can’t control that then.”
And now onto the standing broadjump test, specifically. And what this means for your Box Jumps too…
“So yeah. We’re actually trying to measure how far your center of gravity travels. And yeah, so your, your center of gravity acts roughly, depends on your body position, but roughly around your sort of belly button kind of height and in the middle of your torso. And then you, that will travel a certain distance, but then your limbs can be orientated around that in a myriad of different ways.
So, and if you think about, right, where are my legs relative to my center of gravity when I land, you could have your feet way stretched out in front of you, that you could not balance and land because your center of gravity is behind you and you’ll fall backwards. So you could mark where your feet were, but your center of gravity didn’t travel that far you cheated and threw your legs out in front. So I got an extra half a meter because I put my legs out in front, but I fell backwards. So that’s what I’m, that’s why it’s kind of, let’s make it a standardized test. If you landed in balance, that’s what you got because you could change your technique a little bit, put your feet out in front, fall backwards and it’s like my center of gravity didn’t travel that far.
It’s the same with like box jumps. You see people jump up onto a box and I, you won’t have seen this video yet because it’s in the functional strength block. We start to do the box jumps. I try to encourage people not to get into the ego box jumps where it’s like, how high can I jump up onto regardless of what my form is.
So I sort of stipulate that the ideal technique we’re after is that when you go to jump, if we were, you could film yourself if you really wanted to look at it sideways on, you’ll naturally get to a degree of ankle knee hip bend before you take off. You don’t start right down in a deep squat. You start, there’s, there’s, you kind of like up out the bottom a bit. That’s your sort of springy position. When you land on the box, you want to land no deeper in knee flexion and hip flexion than you at the bottom of where you took off.
So if you’re, if you’re doing like a little slight little bend at the hips and knees to take off, because if you over squat it, you can’t jump that well. You won’t do that. Your body won’t do that. When you land, if you’re landing like knees up under your chin, feet, you know, really flex deep, that box height’s too high. You should be able to land that same little zigzag you had when you took off.
But it’s also down to the center of gravity only traveled up so high. So I could literally do like put a box in front of me. And if I’m really quite gymnastic, I could leap, but just enough, I don’t travel that high. And all I do is I get my toes up on the box. And I’ve got my knees in my chest. I’m really flexed up. I didn’t actually travel up that high. All I did was did like a knee tuck really fast and got my toes up on. I didn’t jump up. I didn’t, my, there was, if I was to do like a scientific work done calculation of how high did your center of gravity travel, it’d be like a centimeter. All you did was jump toes up on and I did a really almost like a somersault tuck, brought my knees up. There was work in that, but in terms of overcoming gravity, you didn’t.
So I want you to travel up. And I want to see your belly button. How high does your belly button go up in the air? If I was to measure that. So I don’t care if you landed, I don’t really want to see you tuck and do like a weird gymnastic kind of how flexible are you to get your, and fast can you get your toes up there? I want, I want a mechanical work done calculation.
Pay attention to that on the box jump as well. But it’s also, that’s also true on the broad jump. That’s, I don’t really, the technique of where you put your feet, it’s, it’s how far does your center of gravity travel. And that’s the way to kind of clean that up.”
Next, the biggest objection I hear: ‘I don’t have time.’ This ties directly into the weekly planning we do within Heavy Hitters. Here, I’m walking a client through the ‘Essential Training Model.’ You’ll hear me explain how to prioritize the one session that gives you the biggest return if your week falls apart. This is the systematic application of the 80/20 rule within the program.
“But so by default, two, two resistance training sessions that gives you everything you need. And then the standard structure is between one to three cardio sessions. Three, if you’ve got time for them all and the recovery capacity for them all. That’s the other thing. If not, you know, there is some conditioning with the Muay Thai training. So I’m like, I never want to rob you of any skill practice. That’s, that’s your focus. That’s like top of the tree, the Muay Thai. And then we’re kind of supplemental around that.
In each block you’ll see. There’s a, like a, whatever referred to it as the minimum training model. I’m going to change that naming to essential so that people kind of see the difference. But I’ve got some terminology changes. I’m going to start ripping through the program. But what you’ll see in that is that there’s of the three cardio sessions structured each week, there’s one that I deem to be the priority one. So if you can only do one, that’s the one to do. And that’s going to hit the major missing factor that the Muay Thai is not giving you that aligns with the goals of that particular block.
And that shifts as we go through, you’ll see, okay, yeah. So maybe for the, for the first block or two, we’re actually more focused on building your aerobic capacity up that reservoir of energy. So it’s more of the lower intensity bit, the soak to get that heart to stretch, get that left ventricle bigger so it pumps more each beat. So the higher intensity stuff we don’t want to be doing, you’re doing that in Muay Thai effectively, it’s it’s circuit training on the pads or bags or whatever you’re managing to do there. We want to stretch the ventricle with the longer soak of lower intensity. So that becomes the focus.
And then as you go through some of the more intense methods are the ones that that that’s the one session on now, now this feels different to Muay Thai in a different way. So you’ll notice that. So just go for that. If there’s only one session you can fit in, hit that priority session, and then just kind of pick which one either of the other two, if you’ve got a second session, and if you’ve got room for all three hit all three.
But the caveat is always am I recovering from the training? So the, yeah, don’t just chuck stuff in and just feel like because we’ve got the structure, it’s not quite the same structure in the movement mobility block, the weekly blocks, the weekly intensity levels. Normally, it’s low week, medium week, high week, and then a deload. And that kind of just allows you to reset before we hit another stepping four four week block.
But what you should feel is that with every cycle of the regular blocks are such with the deload, by the time you finish the deload and you start the low week of the next block, you should feel like, yeah, I’m good to go. Not like do you know what I’m still feeling pretty smashed from the last block? That means there’s too much going on in there. So it might be worth pairing back something or just looking at how you’re arranging your week.
That’s something else that we’ve got in the, there’s a module there for week planning, which helps you with that. And of course, of course, if you kind of need me to, let’s have a look, see what’s going on and see, should we be dropping something or just moving something or a different day and that that should fix it.”
When training around injury, precision matters. This is where personalized coaching makes a difference. In this clip, I’m helping a client with a niggly shoulder navigate the ‘Tolerance’ of his system. Listen to how we scale the load and modify the movement so he can keep progressing without ‘picking the scab.’
“Yeah, it’s entirely how you feel with how your body is responding. Like you say, if you’ve got a wrist and a shoulder that’s been a bit niggly, there’s certainly no harm with doing that movement or mobility block. Again, extending that process, especially as it’s, you’re relatively new to lifting and all that kind of stuff.
So sort of building that up is a good idea. But likewise, if you felt like, do you know what? I feel like I’m probably prepped enough now to go into that functional strength block. You certainly could as well. You just, it’s mainly because all of the exercises are rep max tested. You can always go in cautiously.
If you’re thinking, I’d like to start doing some of these movements, but I just want to be a bit cautious with how I load them. Then rather than doing a real true max load and max reps entry in there, you could say, okay, maybe I used 50 kilos on this exercise and I’ll record that I did eight when actually I probably could have done 10 or even 12 maybe, and that would just scale all the numbers back. So it would allow you to get into it.
So entirely up to you how you want to work that. If you feel like, do you know what? With my wrist and everything, I’m actually okay. I can load things relatively heavily. Then you could do your true rep max testing and just see and use those progressive loads. Because it’ll always just factor in… the calculations will be roughly… To respect in whatever levels you put in for high week should be maximal. But then if you say just scale the numbers a bit, just under report the number of reps that you did, then that will actually change then the progressive loads for you completely respective to that as well.
With, it’s difficult to know exactly what’s happened. I always kind of play it with… my personal preference is to try with an injury. And then I’ll find out has it made it worse. So that’s my default nine times out of 10, I get away with it. I say it’s more like seven times out of 10 now I’ve got a bit older. But quite often a little bit of load isn’t a bad thing. It might be just need to temper that one back a little bit. So you could always, if you’ve already rep max tested with it being uncomfortable like it is, you might find that the loading load progression you’ve got is fine.
If you feel like, yeah, I’m doing it and it’s still not right, then you can either reduce the load or just drop like a couple of reps off of what we’ve got in the program. Just to back it off a bit so it’s getting a little bit. But then just being very mindful then of the next… The next day, if it’s a little bit tender and sore from doing it, but then the following day it feels okay. That tends to be that you’re progressing. If it just feels like, no, this is just getting worse and worse and worse each time. Then you know, okay, I’ve got to take out of the program then anything that’s triggering it because it’s like I’m picking a scab now and it’s not healing. So I need to sort of back off and find my way around it.
So I would start by trying because very often you can get away with it and it’s like, yep, I literally haven’t lost anything. But if it is starting to get, it’s just progressively getting worse or not improving. Then I need to back off anything that’s starting to hurt it. I can probably do something that are about maybe a three or four out of 10 pain level or discomfort if you like. But anything that’s above that, I’m just dropping it out completely or modifying it so that it doesn’t hurt it.
What I was going to say, with the overhead pressing, rather than using a barbell, you could use a pair of dumbbells instead and keep the thumbs pointing towards your shoulders. So you’re sort of in the neutral position and you might find that tends to be friendlier on the shoulders. You might find that twisting the palms out is a little bit more external rotation. It pulls around on shoulder blades differently and that’s what gets me.
But actually, if I keep my thumbs towards my shoulders, I can press overhead pretty heavy here and it doesn’t niggle it. So just something to experiment with there. If you tested with a barbell, then because both hands are tied together by the barbell, it’s a little more stable than a pair of dumbbells that are kind of unstable and randomly going everywhere. You can’t literally go, “Well, I’m just going to take whatever I had in my barbell and put half of that weight in each hand and off I go.” It will roughly be, if you didn’t want to retest it, it will roughly be about 80% of what you had on the barbell. So knock 20% off of it, split it between your two hands and that’ll be pretty much a straight swap then. You could just use that same load, but with a pair of dumbbells, that will be the equivalent.”
Finally, logistics. You don’t have a fancy gym? Neither do most of my fighters. This is about applying the principles, not just having the perfect equipment. Here’s how we engineer solutions for missing equipment—specifically, how to build a landmine out of a corner or a plate, and why the height of your box jump doesn’t actually matter—showing that the system adapts to you, not the other way around.
“Yeah. Well, in that case, so you’re meaning like there isn’t a swivel attachment. Yeah. Okay. So there’s a way around that. You can just use a barbell, either stick it in the corner of the room, the end of the bar so it won’t go anywhere, or if you can get a regular weight training plate, put that on the floor as a base and then put the bar in the center of the, so it’s got a little hollow, it can just sit in. You just need to be careful. Obviously, make sure it doesn’t come sliding out, but that tends to work really well, especially if you’ve got like a fairly deep plate, something like a, ideally like a 20 kilo plate or something that’s nice and stable, that tends to stay there on the floor and you could just swivel in that. So you can give that one a go.
Otherwise, I mean, if that’s a no go, something I’ve been using as an alternative that’s, it’s not quite the same, but if you’ve just got dumbbells, the way we can get it to work, it’s like a plank drag. So you basically like get it to the top of a pushup position and then you have either a dumbbell or a kettlebell underneath one armpit and you reach across and drag it out to the other side, plonk it down, put your hand down, reach across under the armpit, drag it out and put it down and you’re just trying to plank and you’re just trying to keep your, your hips and your shoulders as static as possible. Don’t sort of start swinging around everywhere and really just lock through the feet and have the feet. So wider you go with your feet the easier it is. So you can sort of play around with that and how much weight you’re using to just sort of, but ideally what we’d want is if we were to have like a camera pointing freeze frame at your face and shoulders, it’s almost like we couldn’t tell which hand you’ve got off the floor. So there’s, there’s no loads of tipping and that going on all the time, every time you’re moving. So it’s like, I’m really trying to lock my core down as I do it. Just another alternative that you could use, but if you can use the barbell on the floor with a plate, perfect. That is as good as using one of those swivel attachments.
Box jumps? So is there a weight bench or anything like that? Just a regular weight bench. So you can literally jump up onto that. Now it’s up to you. The reason for the different height boxes is just to give you a target to try and jump to. So all we’re trying to do is to get you jump up into the air and the box is the equivalent of catching you at the top. So you don’t come back down and shock loading everything. So we just graduate everything adjusted to it and, and like your back. So it doesn’t really matter if the, it’s not like at your maximum height. It can be, you can jump higher than it and come down and land on it a little bit. You haven’t fallen all the way down.
So as long as you’re trying to get your head to the ceiling every time, doesn’t really matter what the box height is. And to be honest, people get a bit carried away with trying to get their toes up as high as they can. And they’re kind of like almost doing like a real flex and knees into the chest and landing in a real tucked position. And they haven’t actually jumped that high. All they’ve done is tucked into a ball and got the toes up. They didn’t really jump high at all. We’re more interested in you getting your central gravity up as high as possible.
Having said that, I have also done it, depending on how confident you are with the stack you can make, getting like a bench and putting a stack of like Olympic plates on top of that to jump up onto. A little bit more precarious though. It’s, it’s kind of whatever you feel like you need psychologically. Sometimes I need a bit of a target to jump to to get my full oomph. But as long as you’re going up in the air landing on top of a bench and you tried to get as high as you can each time, then, then that’s, that’s giving us everything we need. “
That’s the difference between a PDF, an AI chatbot, and a System.
A PDF can’t look at your specific shoulder niggle and tell you to switch to dumbbells, like you just saw us do. A PDF can’t tell you that your box jump technique is cheating gravity.
And while AI can give you convincing snapshot advice, it can’t see the big picture—your training history, your injury patterns, how this week fits into your annual cycle, or around fight dates.
That’s what a coordinated system does.
Whether you want the full done-for-you system with personal coaching, or the self-directed program, you’re buying into this logic. You are buying into a system that solves problems rather than creating them.
Doors are closing soon for this intake. If you want this level of detail in your training, click the link below. If the doors are open, get in. If they’re closed, get on the waitlist.
Stop guessing. Start engineering your progress. I’ll see you on the inside.
by Don Heatrick
