The UFC’s Duncan French reflects on his challenges and lessons in 2024 before casting his eye towards the future.
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“If an athlete has gone through the fight pretty well and won, then it might be a very simple kind of cool down in one of the back rooms in the locker room and just do some light work to bring themselves back down again,” he says of the victor.
“If an athlete’s had a pretty significant amount of trouble, that’s a very different strategy.”
Mixed martial arts is, as he adds, “a sport of consequences”.
It’s all in a day’s work for French, who oversees the UFC’s Performance Institutes based in Las Vegas, Shanghai and, most recently, Mexico City.
There have been some teething troubles with the Mexican facility [4:40], but French took it all in his stride, as he tells us in the first of this three-part Keiser Series Podcast focused on some of the challenges faced and lessons learned by members of the Leaders Performance Institute during 2024.
French also discussed his evolving leadership style [6:20]; the personalisation of fight preparation plans [19:30]; and his use of data to inform those strategies [28:30].
Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.
MMA champion Dakota Ditcheva discusses her use of wearables, their influence on her training regime, and the benefits of playing multiple sports in her youth.
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Ditcheva, 25, is undefeated as a pro (13-0-0 with 11 wins by knockout), including August’s first-round TKO of Jena Bishop in their PFL [Professional Fighters League] semi-final match in Nashville. She is a Manchester, England native known for replicating Man City goal celebrations after winning bouts. Her mother, Lisa Howarth, was a World Kickboxing Association champion, so Ditcheva grew up in a gym and later won a gold at the 2016 International Federation of Muaythai Amateur World Championships before switching to MMA.
Now training at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, Ditcheva won the PFL Europe tournament in 2023 to claim a $100,000 purse and gain entry into this year’s larger PFL draw. She has rapidly gained a large social media fanbase after a video of her weighing in last December was viewed nearly 19 million times and gained her 100,000 new followers.
On getting started in kickboxing at her mom’s gym…
It wasn’t something that I would say I always wanted to do from being young. I was involved in it straight away because my mum had a gym before I was born. So as soon as I was born, I was in the gym, pushing my little dolls’ prams while she was coaching and things like that. So it was always something that I was around.
I did train when I was, like, four years old. These like videos and photos of me fighting and stuff I did two, three fights when I was four, and then from that point, I didn’t do it at all until I was 13. It wasn’t really something I was interested in. And my mum was never one to say, ‘I was a fighter. Now, I want you to be.’ She actually didn’t want me to fight.
It just so happened that I came back to it myself when I was 13, after trying loads of different sports. I did netball, football, I did basketball, I did gymnastics, I did everything. To be honest, I tried so many different things. My mom and dad are the type of parents that are like, ‘Stay involved in sport. And it doesn’t matter what you choose to do. Just stay active, stay fit.’ So that’s what I did. But then when I was 13, I was, like, starting to train again. Obviously, my mom, still having a gym, I was older, understood it a little bit more, and that’s where it just went from there.
On the benefit of playing multiple sports…
Definitely, 100%, especially in martial arts like this. You need so many different qualities for this sport. And you get that from other sports. [From] gymnastics, you need the balance. You need the weight, the sense of gravity in this sport you need, which I probably got from gymnastics. I got loads of different things from playing sport.
And I think, as well, it just made me realize how much I wanted to do it. That was the main thing. It was something that I came back to myself, so being able to try different sports, see what I enjoyed, what I didn’t enjoy, what I loved. And that’s probably why I stuck to it so much now, because I wasn’t forced to do it. Doing all different sports built me to the person that I am today and showed me what I love the most.
On choosing to sign with the PFL…
When I signed a few years ago, 2022, I was at a point in my MMA career, where I was fighting on different shows, and even though I was winning and getting a lot of exposure from the shows, I didn’t feel like I was building up a set fan base with a promotion. So I felt like it was the right time when they approached me, especially with them approaching about the European season.
First, I wanted to stay close to home and build good support closer to where I’m from, in the UK. So it just really appealed to me at the time. And obviously the tournament money, the format and things like that was good for me because I like to fight quite regularly. And obviously, with this tournament, it’s back-to-back fights throughout the year, so just loads of things that really appealed, and it was lucky for me to get a promotion that said they would get behind me and push me as the brand for myself and not just get me fights.
On moving to Florida and training at American Top Team…
I was going through quite a difficult stage in my career and in my life in general. This is a really tough sport, a very selfish sport. I was probably a little bit lost. I was having great success in my career, but I was struggling to accept the fact that it’s a very different life to what my friends have. A few things at home, like relationships and things like that outside the sport just weren’t working out. I was feeling like I didn’t know what direction I was going.
It was hard to get the balance inside the sport as well. I was traveling a lot to different gyms to get the right training up and down the country. So it was just perfect timing for me to go over to America before I sign with PFL and just find that one base that I really felt at home at. And as well, the sunshine — in the UK, we don’t get much sunshine. Now, this is a tough sport, and people like said to me, ‘You can’t make it easy for yourself just because you’re waking up in the sun.’ And I’m like, ‘But why would I not want to better my life if I’m still working just as hard, waking up in Florida sunshine and still having a few sessions a day and working really hard, like, why wouldn’t I do that?’
On tracking sleep and recovery…
I’ve actually got a Whoop on. I do [track] a little bit. I got out of a bit of a routine because it’s difficult to wear this under my gloves sometimes because it can be a bit hard, but I do like to track it, mostly the sleep and the recovery. I think that’s a really important part for fighters, rather than the actual exercise. We know we work hard and we burn the calories, there’s no denying that — that’s not necessarily what I use it for — but the recovery and how well I’m sleeping and things like that is what I tend to track. That’s why I try and get in a routine of wearing something like this or other monitor [devices]. People just think we base everything off training and how hard we’re working, but, actually, it’s the recovery that we need to get on point as well.
On a habit she has changed based on the data…
Caffeine probably being one of them. My nutritionist has put a cap on what time I’m allowed caffeine now. So I actually see a lot difference in the amount I sleep, and the way I sleep when I’ve had caffeine too late. So that’s quite an interesting one to see. But you can check if I tend to have this [Celsius energy drink] a little bit too late, then I see a little bit of a difference in my sleep pattern.
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