Why Are Some of the Biggest Names in MMA Turning to Nutritionist and Strength Coach Billy Rush?
Jorge Gurgel is forever grateful to him. Tim Sylvia continually sings his praises and will never fight without him. Joe Riggs, a former 315-pound man, fought at 170 pounds with his help. He's worked with UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin for more than four years. He helped get Jeremy Horn into the best shape of his life.
Billy Rush
Q: Did you enter the world of MMA with the intention of fighting and then switch over to training fighters?
A: Actually, it was the opposite. I was a personal trainer, and I had my own personal training studio when I ran across Jorge Gurgel back in 2000. We kind of struck up a deal in which I would train him and get him in good shape, and he would teach me jiu-jitsu. We kind of got started from there. I got into fighting, and he got into training.
Q: What made you stop fighting and focus solely on training?
A: Well, actually I have something called Meniere's Disease, which gives you vertigo. You get the dizzy, nausea feeling you experience when you get hit in a fight. Therefore, I was kind of actually forced out as opposed to stepping out.
Q: How long have you been working with Rich Franklin, Jeremy Horn, Joe Riggs and Tim Sylvia?
A: I started working with Rich in 2001. He was kind of a funny guy, and he was very disciplined. He came to me weighing 204 pounds with 11 percent body fat, and he said, "I can't get any bigger." Lo and behold, we got him up to about 215 at 4 percent body fat.
I started working with Jeremy Horn in late 2001 and actually just started working with Tim Sylvia a couple of years ago and Joe Riggs back in the summer.
IN DEMAND - In the world of MMA,
Billy Rush (left) is widely respected as a
nutritionist and strength and
conditioning coach.
A: Tim's great. He's a really, really funny guy. We have the best of everything with the guys who I train. They're all good, loyal guys, and they all have very, very different personalities. Tim's one of those guys who might be real gung-ho one day and might want to lie in bed the next. It's kind of funny. They all do everything that I say ... it just takes a little coaxing sometimes. Tim's a really good guy and a lot of fun to be around. I enjoy coaching him.
Q: How do you motivate fighters when they aren't feeling up to it? A: I do a lot of different things... things that some people might call funny. I usually wake everybody up at 6 a.m. When we're in Cincinnati, they stay at my house. When we're in Salt Lake [City, Utah], they stay at my apartment. In Cincinnati, I'll wake them up at 6 a.m. with the radio blaring the UFC theme song, "Face the Pain." That kind of stuff, and then I will say, "The guy you're fighting has already begun training. You better get your butts out of bed."
Q: What are the most important things for a fighter to eat while he is training?
A: There's no one important thing. We try to eat from all food groups. We basically eat 60 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent protein and 10 percent fat. Plus, of those carbohydrates, approximately 50 percent are starches, 25 percent are fibers and 25 percent are fruit. We decrease and increase all those adjustments depending on how the fighter reacts to them.
Q: Give me an example. Let's take the Nate Quarry fight in which Rich Franklin defended his title. What did he eat while training for that?
A: I don't make the guys eat fiber in the morning, so he'll wake up and eat about a cup and a half of oatmeal, 10 egg whites and drink orange juice. That would be his morning meal. His afternoon meal would be somewhere in the vicinity of 10 ounces of lean steak, a cup of rice, 4 ounces of broccoli, 1/3 cup of corn and half an apple. We eat a variety of food, and we eat very balanced meals. These are very precise portions so we know that our guys are getting leaner, whether they need more food, less food, whatever. But we keep it pretty exact and pretty precise.
Q: What percent body fat do you like to see your fighters at?
A: We try to stay in the 4-to-8 percent range. A few clients, of course, don't fall into that room. But we try to stay within 4 to 8 just because you've got to look good, you have to stay lean and you want every pound of weight that you have to be all muscle so it is all beneficial weight. As long as you're around 4 percent, your organs have enough fat and everything has enough fat so you're safe.
Q: What do you have your fighters ingest after a weigh-in?
A: Potassium and starches. It's about what your body is going to absorb and what your body's going to use. You need starches and potassium and, of course, electrolyte vitamins to keep everything in check. If you ever cut weight and you're a little wobbly and stuff, electrolyte vitamins, starches and potassium will fix all that.
Q: What do you think about Randy Couture's diet that includes a lot of greens?
A: Obviously, it's good; it works for Randy. There are different roads. It's just like boxing or wrestling or anything else. There are different roads or different paths to get to where you want to be, how you want to look and how you want to perform. I don't know that much about what Randy does, but obviously it works well for him, so I certainly wouldn't put that down.
Q: Joe Riggs was once a 315-pound man and worked his way down to middleweight, which was incredible. Even more astounding is that you helped him get down to the welterweight division at 170 pounds and make his debut against Chris Lytle. What was that process like?
A: It wasn't that bad at all. As long as Joe is staying with you, he is very, very, very disciplined. He does whatever I say. If I tell him to go outside and eat a tree branch, he'll go out and eat a tree branch. He's very motivated and very disciplined, but you have to stay on top of him. When he came in for the Lytle fight, we were about eight weeks out. When he got to my house, he was 207 pounds, and I thought, "Oh jeez, what have I got myself into?" When I worked with him back in the summer, he was in the mid-190s, so I thought this might be a little more difficult, but it wasn't that bad. We had him to about 180 pounds by the time we left for the UFC, so we just had 10 pounds of water to cut. It wasn't that bad.
Q: What are some of the things you do to help with the actual fight training?
A: First thing in the morning we'll usually do about an hour of conditioning. That will including running, plyometrics, sprints, medicine-ball stuff and a lot of funky stuff like that. Next, we'll spend about 30 minutes training specifically for the opponent. For example, if Riggs is going to fight a wrestler, we're going to spend 30 minutes with guys holding him down against the cage. Then we'll break, have breakfast, rest during the day and come back and do another hour-and-a-half session in the evening. That's typically how it goes.
HEAVYWEIGHT COACH - UFC
heavyweight fighter Tim Sylvia
(second from left) says he loves working
with Billy Rush because his knowledge
of training is immeasurable.
A: Everybody is a little bit different. For Jeremy Horn, we go dirt-bike riding, mountain climbing or shoot guns. Jeremy is professional, the utmost of professionals. The guy has had 150 fights, and he knows you win some, you lose some. He doesn't get too down or too up off any fight.
Somebody like Joe Riggs, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. He is 23 years old; he's a kid and he's kind of fragile, so you have to just keep reinforcing to him that he's young and he's going to have lots and lots of more title fights. He took this fight [with Matt Hughes] on 2-1/2 weeks notice. There's not a lot you can do to prepare for a fight in 2-1/2 weeks. Granted, he had just come off of a fight, but he had also spent three weeks at home chilling and not doing anything.
Q: Rich Franklin is an amazing champion. What is it that makes him such a special fighter?
A: That's very, very simple. He's a self-made man. [In all honesty], he is the least gifted out of anybody I've ever worked with, but he is a self-made man. When he graduated from high school, the guy weighed 135 pounds. Look at him now. When I had hooked up with him, he hadn't had a potato chip in six years. The guy is so disciplined. He's one reason I don't have to be in Cincinnati a lot, because I can put down on paper what I want him to do and he will do it to a tee; he doesn't need someone standing there, and he doesn't need somebody holding his hand. The guy wants it and every fight is just as important as the last.
Before he was in the UFC, he trained as hard as he does now. To him, training is training, whether it's for a fight or anything else. If he suits up to spar, he wants the best sparring day he can have. He's not thinking about anything upcoming, he's thinking about that sparring session. If we're running sprints, he's not thinking about the upcoming fight; he's thinking about each and every sprint that he runs. The guy is just incredible, and I can't say enough about him. He's as good of a person as he is a fighter.
Q: He's an amazing individual. Considering how he looks now, it's pretty amazing that Rich weighed 135 pounds at one point.
A: Oh, my gosh. We've got to get you some pictures of that boy; it was hilarious. You talk about looking like Jim Carrey. Boy, he really looked like Jim Carrey. Oh, man ... that guy. He's something else. He's very, very disciplined.
Q: Who is the most talented and most conditioned athlete you've worked with? A: The most conditioned is definitely Rich, and Jeremy is a close second. Before Jeremy fought Chuck Liddell, we really had his conditioning out of this world. But day in and day out ... definitely Rich Franklin. He's the most conditioned guy in the sport. The most gifted athlete is by far Joe Riggs ... there's no question. That guy is just incredible; he's done things that I've never seen anybody do.
Q: Do you expect him to be a champion at welterweight?
A: Oh yeah, eventually one day. He's young, he still gets really, really, really nervous before fights and he's just going to get better and better. He's going to get more relaxed as he gets more fights in the UFC. He's not going to be so nervous and things are going to change for him. Within the next couple of years the kid will definitely be a champ.
THE NEXT BEST THING - Billy Rush had
to give up fighting because he has
Meniere's Disease. As an MMA coach,
he's still close to the game.
A: I worked with Brad Imes for his last fight, so he's not really new, and I'm going to be working with Mike Whitehead. But that's it. I'm pretty overextended as it is, so that'll definitely be the end of it right there. No more people than that.
Q: Do you see yourself as an innovative trainer?
A: I think I'm kind of creative. I think out of the box a little bit. Considering what we've achieved with Rich, I think anything's possible. I'm not one of those guys who sits back and says, "Oh, that would be hard to do." When I first met Rich I said, "Why do you fight middleweight?" He was like, "Oh, man. I would never do that. I don't want to look little." So we put 7 or 8 pounds on him, and he still fights middleweight and doesn't look little.
Want More?
To check Billy Rush's Website,
go to www.billyrush.net
Why Rush is Tops?
"Just his knowledge of the sport ... he knows what everyone's weaknesses are, and he knows the body. He knows the human body so well. He knows how much training you can do without over-training, and he makes sure you eat six times a day, every three hours. If you're getting all the nutrition you need and you're getting the naps in the afternoon you need, your body can take three-times-a-day training for a total of five or six hours a day. You can do it as long as you're getting the nutrition and the rest you need." -Tim Sylvia, on what makes Billy Rush such an effective coach
What About Creatine?
"I have been asked if I recommend creatine to any of my fighters. I don't tell anybody to take it and a lot of people praise it, but I'm just not a big supplement guy. I could be wrong, but in my experiences we get everything that we need from a multi-vitamin, an electrolyte vitamin and potassium in food. I don't see where we need anything else. I'm not going to say that creatine is not beneficial. I just try to stay exactly with what we do and what works best." -Billy Rush
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