Issue 110
January 2014
UFC light heavyweight Krzysztof Soszynski might have the remedy for your New Year body woes
January is staring you right in the face. All the hard-body, sleeve-straining promises of the New Year daring you to reach out and simply grasp them.
But it is conceivable that before you’re wrapping the Christmas presents again in 11 months’ time you’ll look more like the fighters you watch on TV – and all without requiring a mandatory
12-month mainstream gym membership, getting punched in the gut, or rag-dolled on the mats.
UFC light heavyweight Krzystof Soszynski is using what he calls the KSOS System (named after him) to transform the stamina, strengthand shape of professional fighters and public clients. The 26-12-1Polish-Canadian, who’s taking a quasi sabbatical from competition and working as a trainer at a California branch of UFC Gym, fine-tuned the program while running the strength and conditioning of top-tier fighters like Dan Henderson, Fabricio Werdum, Mark Munoz and others.
‘KSOS’ made both their physiques and their fitness fight-ready.
Seven years ago, he took his training and nutrition knowledge gained from his time as a bodybuilder and applied a more functional framework to it.
“I lost a fight due to basically being dead tired,” Kryzysztof tells FO. “That feeling was probably one of the worst feelings ever, not being able to hold up your hands in the middle of the third round when the guy was really in your face. That’s when I said to myself, ‘There must be a better way to get my body in shape.’”
And he found it, by doing push, pull and leg days where a relevant strength movement is performed in a pyramid style while being split up with steady reps of explosive exercise. Push days hit your chest, shoulders and triceps; pull days work the full back, upper back, middle back, traps, rear delts along with your biceps; and then there’s your leg day, which is glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves. It’s a bodybuilding-type approach to functional training.
Explaining a typical pull day, Krzysztof says: “We would start off with, let’s say, chin-ups. The repetitions are 12, 10, eight, six, four, two. That would be your strength move. Along with that I’d get a 20lb medicine ball and we would do an explosive movement right after that, which would be, let’s say, overhead slams. From the top position over your head all the way to the ground, you catch that ball, you pick it up and you slam it again. And we would start with 12 reps of the chin-ups, right into 20 slams.”
The chin-ups would then descend to 10 and so on, followed every time by 20 slams. When he’s done a push, pull and leg day, Soszynski ties a bow on it at the end of the week with a full-body conditioning circuit or two.
The 36-year-old says: “For that we set up different exercises and you go from one to the other, and in between we would also add the kicks, the knees, the MMA movements, the kickboxing movements to get your heart rate way up as high as you possibly can.”
How much you do of what depends on your ability and goals. For stamina and fat burn it’s an emphasis on conditioning and high reps using lighter weights. It’s the opposite for building muscle.
With this approach, Krzysztof thinks he’s come up with an ideal route to attaining formidable muscle endurance, because, as he says, it’s what a fighter needs most.
“It’s about being able to go as hard as you can in the first minute and being able to do the exact same thing continuously throughout the entire fight within those peaks and valleys that we have in mixed martial arts,” he tells FO.
Although his system is centered around fight conditioning, Soszynski has first-hand experience of it working for anyone from any walk of life.
“You could take an amateur fighter who’s never done anything like this and move on and build them into a professional fighter,” reveals Krzysztof. “Or I could do this with a stay-at-home mum taking care of the kids who’s just looking to get in shape and lose a few pounds and put a little bit of muscle on. You can do this with everybody… I have guys who started with me at 290lb, 300lb and are down 50lb in just less than three months, all because of what we’re doing.”
KSOS’ SUPPLEMENTS
Energy drink company Xyience has a range of sports performance supplements as well as drinks, and it has been instrumental in helping Krzysztof spread the word about his workout system and fueling all that gym time. Here are two of the fighter’s favorite Xyience products.
XYIENCE ADVANCED PROTEIN COMPLEX
“I’m very excited about the fact Xyience has revamped this and added a whole bunch of glutamine and amino acids to it. It’s just really good quality.”
XYIENCE + HYDRATION
“It’s a drink, calorie-free, with added B vitamins. It provides you with hydration via electrolytes during your workout.”
KSOS SYSTEM: NUTRITION
The KSOS System is mainly workout based, but creator Krzysztof also has nutrition guidelines. His primary rule? “Eat four times a day,” he says, “just to get your metabolism going. If you’re eating only two or three times a day, bigger meals with about five, six hours between them, your metabolism is really slow and it’s not burning everything you’re putting in.”
KSOS SYSTEM: ONE-DAY FULL-BODY CIRCUIT
The KSOS System is intended to be staggered over a number of days, but if you want a quick-hit workout to give you a taste of the full program then try this one-day workout from Soszynski.
WARM-UP:
“We do a proper 10–15-minute active stretch routine for loosening up the hips, hamstrings, quads, shoulders, back muscles and all that stuff,” says Soszynski. “We would obviously do a 10 to 15-minute warm-up on a treadmill, or a bike, or a rower right into another 10 to 15-minute good, active stretch routine because you want to stretch out properly.”
PUSH: Push-ups separated by medicine ball push passes
Push-ups: 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 reps
Medicine ball push pass: 10lb ball, 30 reps
KSOS TIP: “Elbows out, hands by your chest and you’re pushing that ball out as fast as you can. You’re probably about three or four feet away from the wall, you’re trying to get a good bounce off the wall.”
PULL: Deadlifts separated by sledgehammer tire swings
Deadlift: 40kg/90lb for 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 reps
Sledgehammer tire swing: 10 reps right side, 10 reps left side
KSOS TIP: “Depending on how big the person is, whether they’ve ever done a deadlift before, we’ll start really light at first.”
LEGS: Box squats separated by body kicks
Box squat: 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 reps
Body kicks: On a kicking shield or heavy bag, 10 reps right, 10 reps left
KSOS TIP: “Sit down on a box, pick up your feet off the floor slightly then stomp them onto the ground by about two or three inches and jump up as high as you possibly can.”
