No, he doesn’t. He gets paid to train them in MMA. This poster is way off.
He has a ton of articles about strength and conditioning for MMA. You can easily google “firas zahabi strength and conditioning” and find it.
Incorrect. He’s one of the head coaches at Tristar Gym, and is an MMA coach. That’s different than a S&C coach. Guys like GSP have a different coach/coaches handling their S&C. Firas’ goal is specifically to coach fighters on their fight game, not get them stronger.
EDIT: He might be able to look at a fighter and realize that conditioning is a weakness, or that their muscular endurance is limiting them, but his primary goal isn’t to program these things, it’s to see the problem as a coach and find a way to fix it, which will generally be getting a dedicated S&C coach to work with the athlete.
I don’t discount his view when it comes to the basics of strength-skill, which can be useful for athletes (S&C is/should be GPP for athletes such as fighters), but that interview doesn’t pertain to this thread.
He is very involved in the strength and conditioning of those athletes. Like I said, google it and you will find a lot of articles and videos. I think you are getting too hung up on his official title vs the philosophy, which has been proven abroad.
Who cares? His focus is fighting and has stated many times that he prefers sub max training so as to not interfere with BJJ and skills training. I would not look to him when the goal is hypertrophy.
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I’m fully aware. He still is not an MMA S&C coach.
His title directly relates to his philosophy, so you shouldn’t remove one from the other.
Go back and watch the video again, and realize that everything he’s saying is in reference to athletes, so as to not let weights interfere with their skills training. You can’t take one snippet from that whole conversation out of context and claim something else.
Even Pavel, who’s a huge advocate for sub-max training and espouses the same advice as Firas here, states that slow reps to failure are needed for hypertrophy.
Also, keep in mind Firas is dealing with athletes who compete in weight classes. Now, ask him about weight training with regard to a fighter who wants to move up a weight class and maybe he says something different about failure.
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