05/09/2022
Long post. But one I've been waiting eagerly to make since UCP began.
What can I say? Oscar “Ginger Fury” Ownsworth the fighter is one scary dude.
Oscar Ownsworth the guy never stops smiling and is a ridiculously hard worker.
Oscar has just taken the Raged UK Lightweight title in a devastating fashion. His relentless pace pushed his opponent into a place he never thought he'd have to go. His opponent simply could not recover from Oscar's constant movement and driving forward pressure.
By the end of the fight, Oscar's opponent struggled to get back to his feet. Meanwhile Oscar turned to us in his corner and said, "I'm not even tired."
I think it'd be cheap to claim our four months of Strength and Conditioning training secured the victory. Oscar winning is testament to his grit and martial skill. He survived being dropped by a left hook and snatched back control from a nearly sunk RNC. The finishing combination was down to experience, timing, and sheer Ginger Fury.
For me though, the fact Oscar wasn't tired and essentially drowned his opponent with footwork and strikes is a second huge victory. We spent the entire time together rescheduling fights, working around niggles, and constantly changing the plan. Our training routines were live and sometimes we'd have to alter them on the bounce depending how Oscar was feeling.
Fighters, please take note. The longer you keep repeating camps after one another, the greater your injury risk (usually) is. The stress, caloric deficit, and hard sparring is a recipe for a broken body and hindered psyche. You MUST adjust and take time for the body to recuperate. You MUST remember that this is fight sports and injury risk is already high. You MUST remember that fighters are just people, and just because you've got X heavy front squats today, doesn't mean you have to do them at that intensity. The longer you're in this "in the trenches" mentality, the higher your cortisol is going to be too. This in itself will ruin sleep, recovery, and ramp up injury risk.
Getting to the fight in one piece can be more important than constantly chasing a narrow edged peak. Us S&C coaches have a job to keep you fighters on the mat and growing as athletes. I personally, as a trainer, tried to hit the Goldilocks zone for Oscar. We always monitored how he moved, how he felt physically+mentally, AND how old niggles were feeling. There's a great S&C coach local tonus called Jordan Webster and he says; "You can't un-burn toast." We borrowed that for the final few weeks leading up the Saturday night. Everything became a careful balancing act the closer we got to the fight. And it WORKED!
A second victory was Oscar's strength in the cage. He told me that his opponent did not feel strong at all. At no point did Oscar look out muscled, which is great considering we didn't leave the first round and his opponent would have been fresh as a daisy. So you should hope, anyway. I'll be brutally honest here. When Oscar walked in, I saw a smiling, friendly, six foot odd dynamite stick of power. (I'm quite stocky so think anyone over 5' 8" is a six footer 😅).
The first thing I thought of after checking his movement and potential, were the philosophies of both Louis Simmons and Chad Wesley Smith. Although famous as powerlifting coaches, they'd also both trained world calibre combat sports athletes. I'm paraphrasing, but both coaches have spoken about raising the floor by just getting the fighter stronger. When absolute strength improves, so does everything else, in theory. This is mainly talking about power, muscular endurance, and robustness. Obviously, we really wanted to improve these two aspects too in our training. Let's make this long and rangy gun slinger faster, stronger, and more explosive. About 8 weeks was spent building a solid base of strength and we started to sprinkle in more and more power based training. Then we added power endurance protocols, which Oscar really enjoyed!
We also spent some time working on Oscar's lactate threshold and his resilience to lactic acid buildup. I'd also argue that this could have helped Oscar keep pushing the pace, when his opponent started to become gassed and slow down.
Last thing. Oscar winning was down to him, his supportive team mates like Chris who came to corner, and all the hard work his coaches put in at AVT MMA Leeds etc. Our S&C is just the cherry on the top.
Thanks for letting me help you, Oscar. Onto the next one! Whenever you're ready my friend, we're good to go.
Being the soft bastard I am, I'll be sponsoring Oscar for his next fight too. I've got nothing but respect for this dude and I wish him all the success his hard work brings.
![Hometown hero Oscar “Ginger Fury” Ownsworth] will soon be putting on a show in Barnsley!No matter who, what, where, when...](https://img5.localgymsandfitness.com/920/069/396281739200690.jpg)
