Issue 126

With retirement staring him in the face, UFC bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz is defying the odds and finally making his long awaited return to the Octagon. Midway through an eight-week strength and conditioning camp, We traveled to Alliance MMA in San Diego to see how much progress the champion had made since his second ACL surgery. Aundre Jacobs reports...

Take an athlete away from any sport for two years and people will naturally begin to doubt whether they’ll return and compete at the same level they once did. Take away a mixed martial artist for the same amount of time, plus throw in a couple of career threatening. knee surgeries, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who didn’t scoff at the mere thought of them even putting on a pair of fight gloves, let alone stepping foot back into the Octagon.

The fans and media have all questioned whether or not UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz would be able to return, and no one can really blame them. Injured midway through coaching the 15th season of The Ultimate Fighter last summer, most believed Cruz would eventually make his return at the start of 2013. Yet the initial surgery he endured to repair his left knee proved unsuccessful after the cadaver tendon fashioned to repair his blown ACL was rejected by his body. The setback immediately ruled him out for at least a further nine months; and the clock is still ticking. Most would have retired, especially if they had as many options as Cruz, who seems destined for a career as a UFC analyst once he eventually hangs up the gloves. But instead of walking away, Cruz, who turns 28 on September 3rd, went back to the gym determined to prove the doctors wrong, and show the world he could achieve the impossible by returning to the Octagon and once more to defend his UFC bantamweight title.

We went to visit the champ at Alliance Training Center in Chula Vista, San Diego to discover how the rebuilding process was progressing. And not only did we find him at near full strength, but Cruz believes he’s even on track to return stronger and quicker than ever. In this exclusive interview, Cruz reveals how he’s got his knee back to the shape it was before the surgeries, he shares his calorie chomping workout philosophy and explains how almost 24 months out of competition has allowed him time to tighten up his boxing and ensure his long-overdue return.

KNEEHAB

Tom Brady, Chris Paul, Tiger Woods: all elite athletes who have been a victim of brutal ACL tears yet managed to return to action and perform at the highest level of their chosen sport. Although commendable success stories, none of these men have to worry about being leg kicked into a wheelchair quite like Dominick Cruz does. However, daunting as it may seem, Cruz has found confidence in those who have made triumphant returns from similar injuries.

“You have to grab onto whoever has gone through this sort of situation and been successful at the end of it,” he says as he goes through his first warm-up of the day. “You hear the Adrian Peterson (Minnesota Vikings MVP) or GSP story and it makes me happy. However, if you take it to a whole other level, I’m trying to do something neither of them did and that’s double ACL reconstructive surgery. Back-to-back ACL surgeries, then going back into a title fight. What GSP did was absolutely incredible, what Adrian Peterson did almost seems impossible, and what I’m doing can be seen pretty much the same way. However, I’ve got to make it happen.”

As he energetically bounces onto the mats readying himself for another day of training, it’s difficult not to wonder how he’s been able to afford two surgeries. After all, he’s a professional fighter and if he’s not fighting he’s not getting paid. And if you listen to some corners of the UFC roster, even the guys closing in on title belts are chasing rent money. However, when asked about it, he’s quick to shower praise on the UFC’s insurance policy for helping him through this most difficult period in his professional life.

“If you really break down what the UFC is doing with its insurance it’s really incredible. Not only is it insuring me, it’s insuring over 350 fighters. What insurance policy wants to cover that?” reveals Cruz.

“If it hadn’t been covering guys like myself for the last two years, I would never have been able to get the extent of rehab or get healed as strong as I am. Even though it’s been forever I’m extremely strong and looking forward to getting back to my career, but it’s because of the UFC’s insurance policy.” He adds: “It’s been a long tough road but it’s not because I’m not trying hard, it’s because of the surgeries I’ve been through.”

CRUZ CONTROL

ERIC DEL FIERRO - HEAD COACH

How difficult has it been for him to be sat on the sidelines for so long?

“He was kind of depressed for a couple of months, which happens to a lot of athletes when they get injured. But once he accepted the injury and created a goal to move towards in terms of recovery he started to become his old self again. He realized there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Now he’s just trying to focus on that.”

Were you always in his ear, trying to give him encouragement?

“Of course. We’re all friends and family first at our gym so we had to support him and help him out as much as possible to get through the injury and everything that came with it.”

How have you designed an S&C camp around his injury?

“Dominick is an interesting kind of guy because if he’s not in camp or he’s not doing some sort of training to get better at a specific thing he kind of goes a little stir crazy (laughs). What I did was design a training camp around his injury. He has a physical therapist he’s working with who is a specialist who lets us know what to do on the knee. But I’ve created an eight-week camp that has certain goals which all help him feel he’s progressing whilst also ensuring his knee and his legs are getting stronger.”

Will the knee injury force him to change his fighting style?

“At this day and age the rehab for these type of injuries is just amazing. Dominick is doing his training with some of the best physios in the world alongside athletes from other mainstream sports, like the NFL and baseball. These guys look at Dominick and tell him that he’s going to be 100% because these guys live through these injuries and continue to play at a high level.”

LITTLE MAN POWER

Warm-up complete, it’s time for Cruz’s morning strength and conditioning session, which still leaves the few non regulars at Alliance perplexed and slack-jawed. While most of the MMA fan base assumes Cruz has been hobbling on with his life, he’s actually been doing the opposite, working tirelessly to get his knee back to where it once was.

“A lot of fans and media seem to always say to me, ‘Dominick, your footwork and your movement was the key to everything you do. What are you going to do? Your knee is messed up.’ And I’m like, ‘Duh. You think I don’t know that?’” he says with a smile

“If you can think of it don’t you think I’m thinking of it 10 times more? What’s crazy to me is that’s not common sense to the general public. Anything that any media source or any fan on the planet is going to critique me about, I promise you, I’ve heard it about a thousand times in my own head. I’ve already addressed it in practice to make sure that it’s not an issue come fight time.

“Eric Del Fierro – the mad scientist that he is – thinks exactly same way that I do. He’s going to torture me in all the areas that he believes I need to be tortured to make sure that I come back 100% fully strong and accurate.”

So what is he doing to strengthen his knee? Cruz explains: “I’ve been working with Gavin MacMillan from the Sports Science Lab down in Orange County. He’s the same physical therapist that GSP worked with. He’s gone outside of his comfort zone and out of his own way and built these machines that are similar to an Airdyne bike, the harder you push the harder it becomes to push the pressure around.

“I also make sure I do a lot of leg crunches, leg extensions, leg curls, pylometric weight curls, balance exercises, squat exercises and mixed with all of that I’m doing all my footwork patterns and footwork drills mixed in with my striking and shadowboxing.”

One of the more typical problems when someone injures a specific part of their body is they overcompensate on a different area, leading to body disproportion that not only looks weird but can be a hindrance especially to fighters. Luckily for Cruz he’s managed to buck the trend and work on his upper body and get strength gains without bulking up as well.

“To be honest, the key to this camp has been to not look like Joe from Family Guy (laughs). I’m trying to keep my upper body in proportion with my lower body, I’m trying not to overdo my upper body. Right now I’m doing a ton of speed work, pad work and using resistance bands. Everything is band work or pylometric work.”

Watching Cruz go through one of his workouts is a sight all gym fanatics should see. It’s painful yet impressive to watch as he systematically breaks his body down then continues to push on even though he physically can’t take any more. Drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, he explains his workout philosophy.

“The best way to explain how I do my strength training is that I do everything to failure and then I try to be as fast as possible when I fail. That’s a training philosophy I’ve had since the beginning of my career,” Dominick says.

If I’m working on my arms I’ll exhaust them to the point that it feels as if they’re 150lb. It needs to be to the point that they’re so on fire that I can’t even lift them up. Once I get to that point I force my body to be as fast as it possibly can. It could be footwork drills, non-stop straight punches, hitting the double end bag. Everything I do is about stacking up the lactic acid and then making my body assimilate the lactic acid and being as fast as possible when you can’t go anymore.”

He adds: “I’m also doing tons more bike work. Everything I’m doing cardio wise is on a bike. All my sprints are on a bike, all my intervals are on a bike, all the hills that I’m running I’m riding them on a bike. It’s low impact and keeps my cardio pretty high. Until I have no pain or stiffness in my knee any more I’ll be doing all of my cardio work on a bike.”

CRUZ CONTROL

DOUG BALZARINI - S&C REHAB

WARM UP

• Single- leg balance - 10x2 on each leg

MOBILITY

• Crawl - 40 yard
• Inchworms - 15 yards
• Instep stretch - six reps

ACTIVATION

• Ankle cuff walks - 15 yards
• Bird dogs - 15 reps
• Bridging patterns - 15 reps

STRENGTH

Group One

• Hip thrusters - 3x10
• Pull-ups 3x10

Group Two

• Chest press - 3x8
• Rear foot elevated split squat - 3x6 per leg

Group Three

• Single-leg dead lift - 3x6 per leg
• One-arm dumbbell - 3x8 per side

CARB OVERLOAD

After putting his body through an intense.S&C session it’s time to refuel, something Cruz admittedly loves to do. At five-foot-eight with a lean yet muscular frame you’d think he would struggle to get down to 135lb. In fact, earlier on in his career he fought and won titles up at 155lb and 145lb, even making his WEC debut against then featherweight kingpin and soon-to-be arch rival Urijah Faber at the weight class above.

While most fighters battle to keep the weight off due to their diets and their numerous gym sessions, Cruz is a completely different animal, struggling to keep weight on due to the amount of calories he burns everyday. “I haven’t bulked up at all since my injury which happens to a lot of fighters. I have a weird body in terms of how it deals with calories,” he says, while eating a burrito with rice and beans.

“I have an extremely fast metabolism so even when I’m in my worst shape possible I won’t get bigger than 162lb. To be honest, when I stop training I lose weight, I get thinner and skinnier. I’m essentially a skinny fat guy when I stop training (laughs).

“To keep the weight on I eat a lot of beef, chicken, vegetables, rice etc. I eat things that are high in carbs and I also need to have protein bars too. I also have two protein shakes a day, but they’re not regular protein shakes, they’re weight gaining protein shakes and they’re between 600-800 calories apiece.

“I usually drink one of those at 3am every day. If I don’t eat for eight to nine hours I’ll wake up in the morning completely dead and starving, so I have to get calories into my body throughout the entire evening.”

As he finishes up his lunch to make his way to his next session we discuss how different fighters have different ideas when it comes to dieting. Some believe you need to eat clean 365 days a year to be able to compete at the highest level, whereas others feel it’s OK to slack off here and there as long as you’re able to cut weight healthily. Cruz on the other hand is a firm believer that the two can coexist in some capacity.

He says: “The thing with my consumption is I need to make sure I eat something extremely healthy and put good food into my body before I put something bad on top of it. Do you remember when you were a kid and you ate dinner and your mom would say, ‘Don’t you dare eat that dessert before you eat your vegetables’?

“It’s the same idea for a professional athlete. I burn so many calories in a day I can literally eat up to 7,000 calories if I want to and stay in good shape. However, the key is make sure to put the healthy food in first. That way you make sure your body is using the healthy food to run it. Anything you want to splurge on top of it won’t do too much harm, because you’re already full from the healthy food. When I’m in camp it’s about eight to 10 weeks of perfection food.”

DOMINATOR DEFENSE

Fully refueled, Cruz returns to the mats to begin his second workout of the day. Wrapping his hands, he prepares for back-toback pads, bags and shadowboxing rounds. With the injury to his knee prohibiting him from doing much grappling, Cruz has been focusing a lot on trying to perfect his boxing technique, as the champ concedes the speed his feet move actually has an adverse effect on his punching power.

He explains: “A lot of the stuff that I do with my footwork can take away from the power I have because I move my feet faster than I throw my punches sometimes. I’ve been working on the fundamentals in my striking, to keep my feet underneath me, not move faster than my feet with my punches and really sit down on my punches a little bit more and move my hands back to my face. Those are the basics of boxing that everyone should work on, especially in MMA.”

Another aspect of his boxing game he’s trying to develop is his boxing defense. Whilst every fighter can make improvements to their defensive skills, Cruz is one of the more elusive operators in MMA, slipping and ducking 76% of strikes thrown his way, according to FightMetric stats. Cruz says, being able to avoid damage is an aspect of his game he’s incredibly proud of, thus his reasoning to focus on getting even better at it.

“A lot of fighters take pride in being able to take damage, but I take pride in making sure an opponent can’t lay a finger on me,” states Cruz, as he simultaneously shadowboxes across the near empty mat. “How do you fight someone who you can’t even lay a finger on? You’re taking away 90% of their game because they can’t even grab you, so they’re forced to play your game, which is catch you.

“And if they don’t want to catch you and they’re going to sit and wait for you, that gives you the option to be as offensive as you choose to be. Therefore, everybody is always fighting your fight.” Gliding along the floor gracefully, punching through the air in his own very unique style, it’s hard not to feel as if Cruz may not have lost a step. That he may yet recover 100% from his injuries and return. However, the naysayers are still the ones with the loudest voices and it’s something Cruz has picked up on. Before he leaves the mats to shower, he steps to one side to privately vent his frustration at those who believe he can’t come back.

“Renan Barao has already said he thinks he’s the champion because he’s training and defending the belt, but this is the way fighters have to think in order to get a mental edge over the things that I’ve done and the things they know I’m going to do when I get back. Anybody who thinks that I’m not out here training, I don’t know what’s going through their head, but it’s not intelligence.”

Then he adds: “The way I look at it is, I’ve got a lot of guys in my division and I’ve got a big target on my back. Renan Barao might think he’s the champion, but the way I look at it is I’ve got Mike Chandler in here every day and he’s a champion too (Bellator). If I can go three to five rounds with Mike Chandler, who’s a world champion and two weight classes above me, I can go three to five rounds with anybody in the bantamweight division.

CRUZ CONTROL

DOUG BALZARINI - S&C COACH

What has impressed you the most about Cruz as an athlete?

“His quickness, coordination, body awareness, and ability to pick up something new. He’s always had great footwork and quickness, and now we are working on ‘laying down’ a solid strength foundation to help him maintain that speed, and to help with injury prevention. “He’s one of those athletes who asks a lot of questions about the movements and drills we are doing. He wants to know why we are doing something and wants to know what muscles we are training and how it will make him a better athlete.”

What sort of exercises are you doing to help Dominick regain the strength in his injured knee?

“With Dominick and his knee, I am focused on a couple primary things:

1. Hip mobility: Six movements and stretches to help open the hips like crawling and hip hinging.
2. Glute activation/strengthening: Six bridging and dead-lifting patterns.
3. Ankle mobility: Six unstable surfaces to help with range of motion and proprioception.
4. Single-leg strength: Six single-leg squats and dead lifts.

In addition to some upper-body work and some conditioning, we make sure to accomplish these goals in every training session. This will help regain stability in that knee joint by mobilizing and strengthening the appropriate joints and muscles throughout the body.”

What kind of work will you be doing to help him regain his speed?

“A lot of his footwork and quickness in the cage will come from sportspecific training, i.e. getting back in the cage. At the end of the day, the best training for MMA is MMA. With our S&C sessions we are incorporating ladder drills and fast footwork drills in our warm-ups, and some plyometrics, change of direction and sprint work into our conditioning sessions.”