Fast is slow, smooth is fast! How i build high performance fighters
If you're a fighter or any athlete, and you’ve trained under me for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard me say this:
“Fast is slow. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”
Sounds like a riddle, right? But if you’ve ever blown out a movement trying to rush it… if you’ve ever gassed out early in a fight because your form collapsed… or if you’ve felt stiff and injured halfway through camp… then you already know this is more than just a quote.
It’s a principle, believed to originate from military and tactical training, particularly within special operations communities like the Navy SEALs and Marine Corp, and it’s one that runs through everything I do as a strength and conditioning coach for fighters. It’s about respecting timing. Movement. Control. Precision. Patience!
And ultimately, it’s about building fighters who are strong, explosive, conditioned, and can hold their performance under pressure.
Let me take you deeper into what this means, and how I apply it inside every coaching program I write for fighters.
PRINCIPLE 1: MECHANICS → CONSISTENCY → INTENSITY
"You don’t get to go hard until you move right."
This is step one, and it’s non-negotiable.
Most fighters are in a rush. They want the sled pushes, the heavy lifts, the explosive box jumps, the conditioning circuits that leave them lying on the floor. That’s cool, and hell it looks so good on instagram right?! but it’s not how we start.
We start with mechanics. That means:
1 - You know how to hinge, squat, lunge, and press correctly.
2 - Your core is braced in every rep.
3 - Your knees and hips are tracking right.
4 - You move under control, not chaos.
Once you’ve nailed that, we move into consistency, meaning you don’t just do it once, you do it every time.
Then and only then do we add intensity, heavier loads, higher speed, more complexity, more fatigue.
This approach does two things:
Protects you from the kind of injuries that derail camps.
Builds a base that actually transfers to fight performance.
This is also a core principle we use in CrossFit.
PRINCIPLE 2: SLOW IS SMOOTH, SMOOTH IS FAST
"Being fast doesn’t mean rushing, it means being efficient."
Fighting is chaos, but great fighters move through chaos with control. That’s what I build in the gym.
When I say “slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” I’m not asking you to move slow forever.
I’m asking you to earn the right to move fast by moving with control. This is something. my own mentors have also drilled into me.
Here’s an example of what that looks like in practice:
1 - You pause in the bottom of a squat to own your position.
2 - You move through a split stance under tension without wobbling.
3 - You stop bouncing out of your reps and start controlling every phase of movement.
Because when fight night comes, and you’re tired, and your legs are dead, your nervous system won’t remember what you did fast. It’ll remember what you did right.
Training slow and clean builds neural precision. That’s what carries over to fast strikes, explosive scrambles, and recoveries after takedowns.
Fast without control is just wasted movement.
Smooth speed is what wins fights.
PRINCIPLE 3: PRACTICE vs TRAINING vs COMPETING
"You don’t need to win the gym. You need to win when it counts."
This is a big one, especially for fighters with ego (which, let’s be real, is most of you).
I divide the training mindset into three categories:
1 - Practice: You’re learning. Working on skills, technical drills, slow reps, low fatigue. You’re fixing imbalances, refining movement, and taking feedback. This might feel “easy” but it’s the work that matters.
2 - Training: You’re building. We’re adding load, volume, conditioning stress. This is where your body adapts, where we grow strength, capacity, and athleticism. The work is hard, but the form still matters.
3 - Competing: You’re testing. This is time to peak, or an intentional high intensity day. We go hard. We let you send it 100%. But this is rare, and only after you’ve built the structure to handle it.
Most fighters live in “compete mode” all the time, in sparring, in drilling, and in the gym. That mindset is a fast track to fatigue, injury, or worse, plateauing.
I train fighters to build the machine, not break it.
PRINCIPLE 4: VIRTUOSITY, DO THE COMMON UNCOMMONLY WELL
"I’ll take clean reps over big numbers, every single time."
Let me tell you something:
You don’t need fancy exercises. You need effective ones done exceptionally well.
I care more about your single leg step up than your back squat PR.
I want to see you brace your core in a landmine press more than jerk 100kg with a sloppy spine.
Im impressed with the air squat where you are nailing every point of performance over a half rep heavy back squat compromising your form.
Your split squat with perfect tempo tells me more about your fight readiness than your vertical jump.
Fighters who want to skip the basics end up skipping the results too.
I’m not impressed by chaos. I’m impressed by control.
Virtuosity means doing the simple things better than anyone else. And that’s what builds elite performance under pressure.
PRINCIPLE 5: SCALING IS STRATEGIC, NOT WEAKNESS
"I don’t care what the exercise looks like. I care what it does for you."
Too many fighters think that modifying a movement means they’re not good enough.
Wrong.
Scaling is one of the most powerful tools I use as a coach, and something all the top coaches in the world will keep close in their toolkit.
Why? Because fighters are human:
You’ve got tight hips, jacked up shoulders, or old injuries.
You’re in fight camp, or deep in a weight cut.
You’ve had four sessions already this week and you’re fried.
So yeah, I’ll elevate the trap bar. I’ll lower the reps. I’ll switch from barbell to dumbbells. I’ll slow you down. That’s not soft. That’s strategic adaptation. Those that train with me in person will get an aha moment here, cause id even do it on the fly while watching them move.
Scaling helps me meet your body where it’s at, and still get results.
There’s no ego in smart training.
PRINCIPLE 6: INTENSITY IS RELATIVE, BUT EFFORT IS EVERYTHING
"Your 100% might look different from someone else’s. That’s fine. Just don’t give me 70% and call it work."
Let’s make this clear:
Intensity doesn’t always mean gasping for air.
It means working at a level that drives adaptation for you.
For one fighter, intensity might be 90kg trap bar carries.
For another, it’s 12-second sprint intervals with short rest.
For another, it’s strict tempo push ups after shoulder rehab.
I program intensity based on:
1 - Your skill level
2 - Your readiness
3 - Your goals
4 - Your fight schedule
5 - Your recovery status
What matters more than intensity is effort.
Are you focused? Are you showing up? Are you coachable? Are you pushing in the right direction?
If the answer’s YES, that’s intensity I can work with.
My FINAL WORD: TRAIN SMART. MOVE CLEAN. EARN THE RIGHT TO GO FAST.
I’m not just here to beat you down or make you sweat.
I’m here to make you a better athlete, stronger, faster, more mobile, more durable, more explosive, more efficient.
Everything I do is built on these principles:
Mechanics before intensity
Control before chaos
Practice before performance
Scaling with purpose
Effort over ego
Fast is slow. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
That’s how I coach. That’s how I try train. And that’s how I get fighters ready to perform.
If you want to move like a pro and fight at your full potential, you need to train with intention. You need to slow down long enough to build something powerful. Doing this will ensure you advance way past your expectations.
