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Educational Sessions sponsored by

Collision vs. Combat: Building Performance-Impacting Training Systems for the ‘Full-Contact’ Athlete
Presented by: Dr. Duncan French

This presentation will draw parallels between the various challenges experienced by Football Strength & Conditioning Coaches and those presented to Coaches working with world-class Mixed Martial Artists, fighters, and combative athletes. Most notably, the presentation will seek to address specific considerations relating to physical development of collision and combative athletes against a backdrop of highly complex training demands; truncated training phases and limited exposure to training impulse; and training around the compromising effects of injury, overreaching, residual fatigue, and sympathetic overload. The presentation will offer first-hand insights into the impactful diagnostic approaches used to build highly efficient decision-making and programming strategy, how truncated training phases influence exercise prescription, and explore the methods adopted at the UFC Performance Institute to prepare athletes for the most combative of sporting arenas.

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss the highly complex variables that impact strength/power training strategy in world-class combat athletes.
• Review performance-impacting diagnostic models that support decision-making and effective strength/power exercise prescription in elite level combative athletes.
• Use effective decision-making to identify key factors that ‘increase the probability of success’ (IPOS) within the strength & conditioning domain, then integrate performance initiatives to facilitate IPOS in fighters entering the most combative of sporting arenas.
• Evaluate the strategic benefits of ‘effective minimal dose’ approaches to the development of strength, power, and energy systems when challenged by finite schedule or training-phase constraints.
• Explore impactful training methods that target beneficial physical and physiological adaptations within athletes populations compromised by injury, non-functional overreaching, or chronic fatigue states.

About Dr. Duncan French

Globally recognized as a leading expert in high performance sport, Duncan has 25 years of experience working with elite professional and Olympic athletes. Presently, Duncan is the Vice President of Performance for the UFC Performance Institute. He is responsible for directing performance services to approx. 650 UFC fighters globally, as well as managing three state-of-the-art high performance facilitates in Las Vegas and Shanghai, with Mexico City opening in 2023. Prior to joining the UFC, Duncan was the Director of Performance Sciences and the Director of Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports at the University of Notre Dame. Before residing in the USA, Duncan was a Technical Lead for Strength & Conditioning at the English Institute of Sport. He has supported three Olympic cycles and has been the national lead for Strength and Conditioning to both the Great Britain Basketball Team and Great Britain Taekwondo. Duncan is the former Head of Strength & Conditioning at Newcastle United FC in the English Premier League. As a Strength and Conditioning Coach Duncan has coached a host of Olympic, World Championship, and Commonwealth Games medalists, as well as world-record holders from a variety of different sports. As a researcher, Duncan has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and nine book chapters and is the coeditor for the NSCA Essentials of Sport Science textbook. He was the chairman of the UK Strength & Conditioning Association from 2011-13 and received an Honorary Fellowship in 2014 for his services to the strength and conditioning industry.

Supplements with the Greatest Impact on Pre-Workout, Performance, and Recovery
Presented by: Eric Rawson, PhD, FACSM

About Eric Rawson, PhD, FACSM

Eric S. Rawson is Chair and Professor of Health, Nutrition, and Exercise Science at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania. Dr. Rawson received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he studied under the direction of Dr. Priscilla Clarkson. Over the past two decades, Dr. Rawson’s research has focused on the interactions between nutrition and skeletal muscle. In particular, Dr. Rawson has studied the effects of the dietary supplement creatine on muscle and brain function. Dr. Rawson has been an active member in the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) since 1996, has served on the ACSM Board of Trustees, on the ACSM Annual Meeting Program Committee, as Chair of the ACSM National Chapter Nutrition Interest Group, and is a past president of the Mid-Atlantic ACSM regional chapter. Dr. Rawson has delivered more than 180 professional presentations, is co-editor of the text Nutrition for Elite Athletes, co-author of Nutrition for Health Fitness and Sport, and has authored/co-authored numerous articles and book chapters. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and various foundations.

Managing Player Performance & Injury Data with Health & Safety Testing
Presented by: Tom Myslinski, MS, CSCS-D, RSCC-D

Potential and general topics to be covered:

• Guardian caps (initiated league wide in 2022)
• Dari markerless MoCap review (currently with 18 teams)
• Digital athlete (an external load management software)
• Pre-season training load review
• League injuries in 2022 (big picture)
• Sprinting mechanic screen
• Digital toolbox

About Tom Myslinski

Myslinski has worked in the NCAA and NFL as a professional athlete and strength and conditioning coach for over 25 years, finishing his career as the strength and conditioning coordinator of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Myslinski is now a Research Specialist with Biocore. Their mission is to provide the highest level of engineering and analytics expertise to clients dedicated to the understanding and reduction of injury. We do this by performing influential and highly-cited research, maintaining state-of-the-art testing capabilities, and leveraging a global network of leaders in biomechanical engineering and data analytics.

He holds a BS in Kinesiology from the University of Tennessee, and a MS in Exercise Physiology from the University of Pittsburgh.