Steve Maxwell

I’ve always enjoyed physical culture. My dad got me my first barbell set when I was in grade school. I was kind of a weak kid and I was getting picked on so my dad decided to do something about it and bought me a York barbell set. And we actually went to the York Barbell gym, where I watched a lot of the Olympic lifters. So, I actually got started into the more “functional” type training. I wasn’t like most guys who get started after reading a muscle magazine and do a bunch of bodybuilder exercises. Although, I did go through that stage where I wanted to get big and ripped and all that. But in the beginning, it was all about me getting better at my sport, wrestling. I just wanted to be a better wrestler. But as time went on, I went through all of the fitness phases; Nautilus became huge in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The shorter, briefer high intensity workouts were something that I gravitated towards; because as an athlete, I didn’t have the time to spend hours in the weight room. So the short, high intensity routines were perfect for me. Then later on, I embraced the whole Hammer Strength philosophy. From there, I moved onto the Super Slow training method. I was one of the first people to be certified in the Super Slow method when I had my gym in Philadelphia. But I was always searching and always looking and never satisfied. There were a lot of good benefits from that type of machine circuit training but at the end of the day it just wasn’t for me.

Then I started to look at what the great warriors of the past did for exercise. What did the Spartans do? What did the ancient Indian wrestlers do? What were these people doing back before there were exercise machines and infomercials? I started to discover quite a bit of interesting data about how these past warriors trained. I started to include their training methods into my own training. And I was always experimenting because I never felt that there was only one training method that was the end-all-be-all. My body became my laboratory and I kept what worked and discarded what didn’t. Not only did I start to get great results, it kept me interested because I wasn’t doing the same thing over and over. Zak was also one of my protégés because I tested a lot on him. My system has been successful because it has all been tested on me. Theories are great but when it comes down to it, you have to just do it. Just like Nike, haha. Just do it.

In the past, you have said that you like to tailor strength and conditioning programs to an individual’s needs rather than providing a “one size fits all” program. What benchmarks do you use to determine what kind of program you prescribe (i.e. max bench press, vertical jump, pull-ups, etc.)?It really depends on the athlete. I’ve worked with professional baseball players, professional football players, guys in the NHL, and countless grapplers. What I was always looking for was what the stresses of the sport were and what did these guys really need to emphasize to be better athletes. For example, when I worked with this one hockey player, I had never watched hockey in my life. But this guy came to me and he wanted me to train him. So I went out and watched a few tapes on hockey. I sat there and watched the tapes with a stopwatch and I discovered that hockey players usually play for about 3 minutes at a time, the longest play in a hockey game was somewhere between 5 and 13 seconds, there were lots of brief short sprints, and they would rest for a few minutes when the lines would shift. So I started to create a workout based on those facts that I knew. But I also discovered that my hockey player had a weak upper body and some of the strongest legs that I have ever seen. So I wanted to make sure that I would address the imbalance between his upper and lower body as well. And on top of this, he had imbalances from only shooting slapshots on one side; I decided that we would do some compensatory work to balance out his weak side. A lot of times, it’s not just the muscles that you use in your sport, it’s also the muscles that you don’t use in your sport. I think this is a key to avoiding injuries. An example of this was David Akers, the Philadelphia Eagles kicker. He had chronic hamstring injuries. He spent countless hours kicking field goals with his dominant leg but his other leg was not receiving the same attention which led to a huge imbalance. It’s not rocket science, if you kick 50 balls with your left leg every day, you had better do something with the right leg that is similar in nature or you are going to have problems. So in David’s case, I had him start kicking soccer balls with his other leg.

For a grappling-specific example, Saulo Ribeiro lost to Margarida in the finals of the Worlds. And it was basically due to his conditioning. I had heard that Saulo was never one who enjoyed pushing in training. He was so much more talented than everyone else perhaps he didn't have to train so hard. His skill set was so far advanced. The loss to Margarida in the finals was a bit of a wakeup call. Saulo came to me when he was getting ready for Abu Dhabi in Sao Paulo that year. Saulo had a history of gassing on the second day of the big competitions. So, we bunched all of his workouts in 2 or 3 day blocks. We got his body adapted to the rigors of competition by training in the same manner; we would have 2 or 3 days where we would train hard. When he first came to me, he was overweight. In jiu-jitsu, pulling is really, really important. So, I tested his pull-ups and his numbers were pretty mediocre for a world-class athlete. But after changing his diet from the typical carb based diet to a more ketogenic –type diet, he was able to drop about 15 pounds of fat and water bloat in a few weeks. This just about killed him, haha. Thank God for coffee! Anyway, his pull-ups went from about 12 to 21 or 22 in a matter of weeks. So, with a few tweaks to his training, we were able to prepare him for the rigors of high-level grappling. When he went to Abu Dhabi, his body was expecting 2 or 3 hard days of training. He had some electrifying matches and actually beat Jacare in the finals. So, I would say your strength and conditioning really needs to be tailored to your specific event and address your own weaknesses.