Alex Sterner Joins Charles To Talk Cardio, Camp Prep And Coming Back From Injury

Charles is joined by strength and conditioning coach Alex Sterner, making his third or fourth appearance on the show, for a wide-ranging conversation about preparing combat athletes for ADCC. Sterner describes a full training camp underway with several competitors, including PJ and Marlin, and makes the case for starting camp planning months out rather than cramming everything into a few final weeks. He also touches on the value of year-round strength and conditioning support, so athletes arrive at camp already strong and conditioned rather than trying to build a base and peak jiu-jitsu at the same time.

A good chunk of the episode covers Sterner's own return to heavy barbell lifting after back surgery. He walks through the gradual, graded process of reintroducing squats, hinges and Olympic lifts after years of avoiding them, and makes the point that the psychological side of rehab, genuinely believing an injury has healed, matters as much as the physical work itself.

Cardio is the episode's main throughline. Sterner and Charles discuss why jiu-jitsu on its own doesn't build a strong aerobic engine despite the elevated heart rate, and both describe deliberately adding structured aerobic work, steady-state sessions alongside shorter high-intensity intervals, and the effect it has had on recovery between rounds, sleep quality and confidence to push harder in scrambles. They also get into pacing and how a bigger gas tank changes decision-making under fatigue, plus Sterner's ADCC camp approach of building an athlete's aerobic base well before ramping up intensity closer to competition.

The conversation closes with nutrition, particularly the case for eating enough carbohydrate around training rather than leaning on high protein and fat diets, and a discussion of coaching philosophy, including why simple, constraint-based approaches to teaching jiu-jitsu often beat rigid, over-complicated curricula.

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