Alex Volkanovski reveals how LaMelo Ball’s personal training team saved his career
UFC fighter Alex Volkanovski reveals how the personal training team of NBA prodigy LaMelo Ball took him from possible retirement to a title fight at UFC 245
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Not so long ago, Alex Volkanovski would panic even when picking coloured pencils off the floor of his family home.
Same deal with soft toys.
Or anything, really, his two young girls would occasionally leave lying about.
“I’d hold my breath,” he recalls. “Tense right up, too. My back was just that bad.”
Then, it got worse. “And to the point where I actually feared retirement,” the UFC featherweight contender reveals.
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“I was getting problems all the time. Bulging discs. Sciatica.
“My back would lock up so badly in training, I began fearing one wrong move at the gym and I’d be in a wheelchair.
“Worse, I had no idea what was causing it. My back would flare up in training and I’d be out for weeks at a time. Even months.
“Then I’d come back, return to the gym … and it happens again. I thought my career was over.”
Seated now with The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of UFC 245 in Las Vegas, Volkanovski is opening up on the remarkable overhaul that — in a space of just 15 months — has transformed him from the cusp of retirement to a hyped title fight with featherweight king Max Holloway.
Apart from happening in little over a year, the 31-year-old’s yarn is also surprisingly linked to LaMelo Ball — the US basketball prodigy who, currently with Illawarra Hawks, is tipped to go No.1 in the 2020 NBA draft.
Indeed, for the past five months Volkanovski and Ball have trained most mornings together in, all of all places, a bush footy grandstand on the outskirts of Wollongong.
For this is where you find the BaiMed Performance Centre.
That, and the private team of physios and exercise physiologists charged not only with helping Ball become an NBA megastar, but Volkanovski the world’s greatest UFC featherweight.
“And with Alex, we’ve taken a guy who had no faith in his body and created a machine,” BaiMed managing partner Mick Baines says.
“When it comes to his strength and power now, there isn’t a player in the NRL who would beat him pound for pound.”
And given BaiMed staff have worked not only with the NSW Origin team but also the most recent premiership squads from Cronulla and St George Illawarra … well, you reckon they’d know.
Based inside offices on floor two of the Collegians footy club grandstand, Team BaiMed have been quietly overhauling Volkanovski since last September — in the process watching him secure upset wins against American favourite Chad Mendes and Brazilian great Jose Aldo.
Sure, before joining the group this rising Shellharbour featherweight had won all five UFC appearances. But outside the Octagon, he was a mess.
So continually plagued by bulging discs and severe nerve pain, this father of two would often go days where he was almost unable to move.
Over one particular period, the former concreter even went 14 weeks without completing a single workout.
When Volkanovski arrived for his first session with BaiMed last September, he wasn’t even deadlifting — the featherweight so fearful that one wrong lift would leave him in a wheelchair.
In fact, it was only in February this year that the Aussie, who weighs in at 66kg, started deadlifting again — and even then only with 70kg on a trap bar.
Now on the eve of his Holloway showdown at UFC 245, Volkanovski isn’t only deadlifting 150kg — and in three sets of eight repetitions each — but also pushing 160kg sleds, completing barbell hip thrusts of 150kg (in repetitions of 10) and also adding 8cm to his vertical jump.
“Going into the Chad Mendes fight (12 months ago), Alex had stopped deadlifting because he’d become fearful of it,” says Chris Jaffrey, the exercise physiologist who not only trains Volkanovski, but has been credited by Ball as a key reason for his choosing to sign with Hawks.
“Now though, he’s doing 150kg for reps. Doing it with confidence and plenty left in the tank.”
Importantly, the BaiMed team have also helped Volkanovski overhaul his mental approach to injury.
“When Alex first came here, he hadn’t been able to train for more than five weeks at a time,” Baines says.
“But since joining us, he hasn’t had a week off — including post-fight — in the entire 15 months.
“He’s stronger and fitter than ever because we’re training him differently to all other UFC fighters. He’s also completely changed how he views his back problems.”
Which isn’t to suggest this is a yarn about the boy who cried wolf.
“Oh, Alex had some real issues with his back,” Baines says. “The problems he was having, I’ve seen NRL players miss games because of it.
“But pain is also allowed to flourish in an environment of fear and worry.”
Says Volkanovski: “Within a week of joining the BaiMed boys, I was in a whole new space — physically and mentally.
“First time I got on to the massage table with them, I was holding my breath, that’s how bad things had got with my back.
“I was holding my breath and doing all sorts of other stuff because I thought that’s what was needed to protect it.
“But the guys explained to me that what I was going through, it wasn’t uncommon.
“And for treatment, I just needed to understand the issue, relax and actually get my body moving the right way.
“They said to me, ‘if you want to pick up a pencil, pick up the f … ing pencil’.”
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And the result?
“Chris has taken a chronic-pain patient and turned him into a UFC monster,” Baines says.
Volkanovski isn’t completely free of the back issues he once feared would put him in a wheelchair.
“I actually had one the other week during the last days of training camp in Auckland,” he says. “And once, that would have been a huge problem.
“It was the type of flare-up that would’ve previously seen me needing two weeks’ rest.”
But instead?
“I rested that afternoon and returned to training next day,” he says. “Within 48 hours, I was sparring again.
“Honestly, nothing is a problem for me anymore.
“I’m ready.”