The Three Amigos recently had the chance to sit down with George Lockhart's FitnessVT partner and MMA weight management specialist, Daniel Leith to discuss his work with AKA standouts like Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez. You can listen to the full interview on the podcast, but we have transcribed some selected highlights for you below.



Background



My background is in the military. I served eight years in the marine corps, and in 2010 I received orders to go to QUANTICO where i taught at the martial arts service of excellence for the last 3 years of my service. I met George Lockhart at the martial arts service of excellence where he was the head instructor for the combat conditioning program.

I had met George briefly back when I was a student and we hit it off, and he remembered me when I came back. We both saw the nerdy obsession about nutrition we have in each other. He went on to mentor me and the rest is kind of history.

Working with Daniel Cormier



Working with one fighter 24/7 is something I had kind of dreamed of doing. Being able to be solely focused on one athlete, especially someone as special as Daniel Cormier, was an ideal situation. It lets you make sure every aspect of their nutrition is perfect. You're monitoring everything they do from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to sleep. It really lets you focus on getting the most out of every training session and maximise their recovery. It was perfect.

While I was out working with Cain for the Werdum fight, I was doing some meal prep with Daniel and trying to rebuild the foundation for him as he gets ready for his next camp, but I was mainly focused on Cain and slowly working with DC. As I said, when I go out there to embed with one fighter my focus is just that one fighter. Although everyone at AKA is one the same team and they're very supportive of each other's success, I still try to really focus on the one athlete I'm there for.

Daniel and I have been talking and it looks like I will be back out there in middle of March, or maybe sooner, to get him where he needs to be for his next fight.

Working with Cain Velasquez

It was incredible working with Cain. He is a special human being, and that's putting it mildly. He is an absolute machine. We had spoke on the phone previously, but when I got out there we sat down and I asked him where he saw deficiencies in nutrition and what issues he has during training that I can help with. We came up with how I could play a role in helping him become more efficient and get a little bit more out of every practice.



I think we were doing a great job at it. Outside of the injury issues he was feeling fresher and fresher during sparring and everything was going really well. Working with Cain was an interesting change for me that I really enjoyed, in that I didn't have to worry about the weight cut with him because he's a heavyweight.

Normally I'm thinking about all of the things I have to cut out of a fighter's diet to get them to make weight, but here I could just keep taking this perfectly tuned racecar and keep giving him perfectly tuned fuel right up until he stepped in the cage. It was exciting for me and I'm really looking forward to when he's healthy and we can do a full camp together.

Cain's nutrition



There were specific things we were doing throughout the day, especially post-workout after the fourth or fifth round. If he couldn't fire punches as hard or as fast we would focus on simple concepts that get overlooked. Things like reloading glycogen in that window after training that optimizes recovery, so we increased how much sugar he was ingesting post-workout. We increased how much protein we were giving him before he trains.

Around training he was eating whole foods and we focused on increasing the volume of food and the frequency of his meals. When I got there he was only eating 2-3 times a day, so I had him eating every 2-3 hours instead and we started to see a huge difference.

He was having some issues with cramping after 2 or 3 a day sessions, which is understandable if you're not getting the necessary nutrients or eating as often as you should, so we were able to stop that almost immediately, which let him focus on training 100%.

I get a lot of crazy requests from fighters for specific foods, and I find myself learning from chefs as often as I am from dieticians. Cain had some very specific requests, like he asked for steak tartare which was great. When you're working with raw meat it's all about the preparation and keeping everything chilled. Raw meat is excellent in terms of nutritional value, since it's easier for your body to break down and digest; lost of the enzymes damaged during cooking aren't damaged when you eat it raw.

A few days after I got there he asked me if I had ever tried durian before. Durian is an asian fruit that looks like a watermelon covered in spikes, and it it the most foul-smelling food I have ever encountered in my life. For whatever reason, Cain Velasquez absolutely loves durian, but when you cut into it, it smells like rotten garbage. He had another fighter bring it to the house and he challenged me to eat it, and you know it wasn't as bad as I thought, but when you cut into it, it has these slimy custardy pods that you eat. I made it through maybe half of one, and Cain ate about four. It was unbelievable.



Cain's injury



Like Luke Rockhold said [on Inside MMA], I think it was a chronic injury, not a sudden one. I didn't see anything in training that caused an injury. I think it was just a culmination of a lifetime of wrestling and mixed martial arts at the highest level. Being embedded with Cain and seeing every day I saw him just reaching a point where his body just wouldn't respond any more. He was doing absolutely everything he could in practice to keep improving, and he was pushing through the pain, but his nerves weren't responding and his muscles weren't firing like they should.

He's one of those guys who, even though his body isn't responding any more, he's so mentally strong that he'd be throwing punches even though they're not as hard or fast until his arms are literally hanging by his side.



He was limited in his movements in his training, and he was in so much pain he was giving up rest and couldn't sleep through the night. When he was training two or three times a day and wasn't recovering it became a cumulative thing. He was limited in every way, and that's not the Cain Velasquez I think he wanted to go out there and show fans.

You can listen to this great interview HERE or via the embedded player below. His interview begins at the 10:35 mark of the audio.

You can follow Dan Leith on twitter @Daniel_Leith, he is also a partner with George Lockhart in FitnessVT.com, which is a nutrition service for both fighters and members of the public.