Wayne Fisher, better known as Scrapper, is one of the internet's leading authorities on fitness. He moderates the fitness board at mma.tv and has his own site, www.trainforstrength.com. Check it out and be sure to look at his free workouts.
	Scrapper demonstrates the divebomber pushup, one of the exercises used in his new Mod. 1 program..

I read that you were a Navy diver for 10 years. What type of training did
you do at the time? Is it similar to the type of training that you still
do?

The training I went through in dive school was designed, in the initial phases, to weed out those that didn't really want to be there or just couldn't handle the intensity of the physical and mental workload. PT (physical training) was every morning and it alternated with long beach runs for one week and then long swims the next.

The runs were usually no less than 5-6 miles and 95% of them were in the sand along Coronado Beach, California. The beach workouts were usually the same with regards to structure: we would run a certain distance or time, stop and perform tons of pushups, squats, and ab exercises. We would then continue this cycle until we were finished with the workout. The swims were either in one of the pools on base or timed 1000-meter swims in the harbor. The pool drills seemed endless with buddy tows, swimming with clothes on, underwater swims, sprints, etc. I didn't know it back then but we were primarily using high intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) to prepare us for the jobs we would face after graduation.

My training today is only different with regards to the distance running (and I'm not trying to make anyone quit). The classes that I run last 1 hour long and revolve around the same high intensity interval training principles.

I noticed that some of your programs are used by the military. What type of
fitness is important to soldiers, in your opinion?

It's difficult to have a "one size fits all" fitness standard due to the diversity of jobs in the military. I deal with many Navy personnel who are stationed on submarines and their out-to-sea workday can consist of a 12 to 14-hour work rotation and that time can be spent looking at a gauge. His or her fitness requirements obviously don't need to be as high as someone who would actually be engaged in combat.

If you could devise a fitness test for the military, what would it include?
What benchmarks would you set?

Going back to the last question I would have to look at the job requirements. If the military member held a somewhat sedentary job, I would enforce fitness criteria for good health such as body-fat tests, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, flexibility, along with simple strength endurance tests like pushups and a short run.

If the military member was in a combat specialty I would devise a test that challenged not only his levels of fitness, but it would also challenge his ability to perform his job while fatigued. If you've ever seen the Ranger Challenge on the Discovery Channel you know what I'm talking about; timed marches for distance, land navigation, obstacle course completion, problem solving while fatigued, etc. I think these types of challenges would build a more efficient fighting force than just seeing how many pushups a person can do.

As a diver, you were admitted into the Navy SEAL Hand to Hand Combat
Instructor course. This is pretty rare from the sound of it. How did you
get into it? What was the training like?

I was stationed with the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team in Hawaii and one of the SEAL operators was teaching a Hand-to-Hand course there at the Team. I asked if I could attend his classes and he said that since I wasn't a SEAL there was no way I could. One day a friend of mine who was a SEAL told me that there was going to be a weekend Hand-to-Hand class at the instructor's (Mark) house every Saturday morning. I asked him to "put in a good word" with Mark…I felt silly getting someone to "vouch" for me but I really wanted to get into some training.

If I felt silly getting someone to vouch for me, it was even worse when the classes started. I wasn't allowed to ask questions and was used as the demonstration model for every technique. Being held early Saturday morning didn't make the class very popular and the excuses increased as the attendance decreased until one day I was the only one knocking on Mark's door. We eventually became very good friends and before he transferred duty stations he asked the Commanding Officer to send me to the Hand-to-Hand Instructor course. This was fought tooth and nail by many of the SEALs that felt I didn't deserve to go (since I wasn't a SEAL) but the Captain made the final call and I got to attend the course. I think it sounds like something out of an old B movie myself.

The course was amazing! At the time the SEALs were just getting away from the S.C.A.R.S. system and were beginning to integrate Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, Tony Blauer, and were starting to do a lot more "reality based" training scenarios. To say the training was intense would be a major understatement: 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 30 straight days. Considering the make up of the class, 99.99% Special Forces and 1 Non-SpecOps trying to make his own statement and you had plenty of ego and testosterone flying around. The instructors were constantly telling us to take it easy with each other. Of course, we would for about 5 minutes and then it was back to trying to pound each other!

I'd have to say that attending that course gave me a pretty solid foundation for my later training.

I also noticed that you've trained with some big names in the mixed martial
arts community and even competed yourself. One of them was the incredible
Egan Inoue, could you share some things you learned from him?

Incredible is definitely a word I would use to describe Egan and his brother Enson. I met Egan after winning Futurebrawl 6, which was the precursor to the present day Superbrawls. I fought, and beat, 3 guys to win FB 6 and this was after attending the Hand-to-Hand course so I felt that I was pretty big stuff. The very first thing I learned from Egan is that the higher the pedestal you place yourself upon the further the fall and harder the landing when someone gives it just the right push.

Egan made me roll with everyone in his class the very first day and I found myself getting worked over by his junior belts. So much for me thinking I was big stuff. I wanted to train with Egan immediately but my Navy schedule wasn't very accommodating at the time. He eventually moved closer to the base and I started training every single day.

Egan was what I considered the perfect instructor. He never asked me or anyone else to do anything that he didn't do first. He truly lead from the front and it was incredibly motivating. I already had that kind of thinking from my training in dive school and subsequent work as a diver but Egan took it to a whole new level. This "lead from the front" mentality was something that I took with me when I started running my bodyweight conditioning classes and I still use it today to motivate class participants and those that purchase my bodyweight conditioning videos.

When you see someone else doing something you didn't think was possible and then they tell you to do the same thing you can either drop your self-limiting beliefs and give it your best shot or you can make an excuse and go home early. Routinely smashing through those limiting beliefs can change people from initially saying to themselves "I could never do that" to "I wonder if I can do that, too?"

How did you train for your first competition? Did anything change for
subsequent competitions?

Egan used to tell me that it didn't matter what I could do when I was fresh, it mattered what I could do when I was tired, hurt, etc. We would practice any new techniques fresh and then the conditioning would begin. We usually followed a training circuit that mixed Iron exercises with bodyweight exercises that had us performing a specific exercise for a specified amount of time and then moving to the next station for another exercise. The time spent at each station was split up so that you would complete a certain number of cycles through the circuit in the time for one round of your fight. The rest time was spent hanging on the heavy bag or skipping rope. This continued for the total number of rounds in your fight.

After that portion of training was completed we would work positioning drills and use the "Bull Ring" technique. This has a line of training partners waiting for their turn and you start from every position possible staying with each person for a specified amount of time. The drills usually started from standing and progressed to starting in various ground positions. You would reach the point of fatigue and that's when everyone would pull together and motivate you to keep moving, try submissions, escapes, etc. Those are times when you break through barriers and you learn to dig down to find just a little bit more to keep on going. They were amazing training experiences and I'll never forget them.

You use bodyweight calisthenics in most of your programs, what are the
benefits of this method?

I get this question a lot in emails and it's something that frequently pops up on the Internet discussion forums as well. It's funny to see staunch advocates of either side (Iron or Bodyweight) trying to bad mouth the other while claiming superiority for their chosen method. I think a lot of people question the validity of bodyweight exercises because they see completely ridiculous ads that place these exercises in an almost mystical, magical, or holy realm.

Many people simply prefer bodyweight exercises because they can be done pretty much anywhere, minimal equipment is needed, you don't need to go to a gym, and it's easier to get a group together to work out with (unless a bunch of friends have Clubbells or Kettlebells).

Another reason that people try bodyweight exercises is the search for a different kind of challenge. People who have done squats for years regularly email me about how hard Bootstrappers are after initially thinking they were "easy" because they were a bodyweight exercise.

These exercises aren't magic, I just put them together in a way that is extremely challenging for many people.

Have you tried Kettlebell lifting?

I swung a homemade version around but I'm sure it's not the same as the ones sold by Pavel. Shipping one of those to Hawaii would kill me so I'll have to wait for a trip to the mainland until I can swing a real Kettlebell around.

I noticed you employed Clubbells in one of your workouts, any thoughts on
them?

Clubbells are, without question, some of the most unique training tools I've ever used. I'm fortunate enough to have a girlfriend that loves to train with them as much as I do and I intend to incorporate them into plenty of workouts in the future. In fact, my girlfriend is the cover girl at Circular Strength Magazine.

You design a lot of excellent and very popular routines. How do you go
about designing them?

Honestly, I usually don't think too much about a routine until I'm on the field that I run my classes on. If I'm trying something new I'll get a good gauge of the people who are attending class that day and just let the workout flow, making adjustments as I go along. I have a fairly broad spectrum of participants so I can see how the workouts affect people of various fitness levels.

Sometimes I'll keep an entire workout and other times I'll take parts of several workouts and put them together. It really depends on how the class reacts to what we're doing. So, while my workouts are definitely challenging I know for a fact they are doable because I test run every single one before I post it.

Could you tell us a little bit about your new Mod 1 training package?

My original training package is the Volume 1 and it contains 5 workouts on two videotapes that you can just put in your VCR and follow along with right in your own home. After a while I started to get some emails from people that wanted to do the routines outside their homes, like in a local park or at the gym, but reading the exercises from a sheet of paper wasn't as motivating as following along with me on the video tapes. My challenge was trying to figure out a way to make my routines portable and then a friend of mine pointed me towards Bas Rutten's conditioning cassettes. I took the idea and ran with it.

The Mod. 1 contains 5 brand new workouts and 2 workouts from the Volume 1 videos and they are all on CD in audio format. This project actually got bigger as it went along and what started out as 2 CD's ended up being 3 and there is also a 2-hour instructional video that shows every exercise and workout in full detail, plus an exercise reference booklet, and a beaded jump rope is included.

When you pop in the CD it's like attending one of my classes. I call out the exercise and then every repetition, as well as the sprint intervals and rest times, while you follow along. Having followed along to the sound of my own voice is a bit weird for me but I can definitely vouch for each workout's effectiveness.