Former MMA Champion Embraced ‘Less Is More’ in Training After MS Diagnosis—and It Changed Everything (Exclusive)

Alberto Crane is a former MMA champion who won the King of the Cage and Ring of Fire lightweight titles. His successful fighting career was only the start of his battle as he continued to fight after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

With Crane's book, "All In: Lessons On and Off the Mat," about to be released, Men's Journal interviewed him about how his diagnosis changed his training philosophy. Crane told us about his belief in the TACFIT training system, how changing his workouts allowed him to become pain-free, and his belief that most people with chronic pain could get relief.

How an MS Diagnosis Changed Alberto Crane's Approach to Training

Men’s Journal: How did being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis change how you live your life and train?

Alberto Crane: It definitely changed my training and how I live my life. MS definitely gets triggered when you're stressed. It breaks you down. So, I’m really focused on not getting stressed about things. And it has changed how I eat. I became very careful with how I ate, and I adopted a really careful paleo diet because of how it makes me feel. If not, I'm not even able to train.

In a way, less is more, as well. If there is one thing that I have found that worked really well, it's less is more.  When I was younger, I would go hard. But now, I've gotten smarter with my training. TACFIT has definitely helped me find that balance, or the Goldilocks zone, where it is the right amount of stress, but not too much stress.

Men’s Journal: Can you describe what TACFIT is?

Alberto Crane: The world's smartest workout because it is focused on functional movement, and it's a recovery-based system. It focuses on how to recover from stress, how to recover from tightness, and how to increase mobility. It's definitely a recovery and mobility-based style of training. But it's also more than that. It teaches you about all the right things. It is also about building strength. It's designed to be balanced in a way that helps you be the best version of yourself, physically and mentally.

Men’s Journal: Do you believe that the ways that you have changed your training regimen would apply to people who aren’t part of the MS community? Would it help people with other health issues?

Alberto Crane: One hundred percent. For example, TACFIT teaches that you want to keep your heart rate at 60 to 80% of its max when you are training. That's where the magic happens as your body adapts. You want your body to be under stress, but not too much stress. That way, your body changes, and you get the neuroplasticity. But, at the same time, the cortisol levels in your body don't go high enough that it messes you up. With MS, it becomes more important that you don’t stress your body too much. Me learning these training techniques that allow me to hit that Goldilocks zone and practicing them really allowed me to optimize myself. That goes for everyone who doesn't have MS because that's the right way to train.

Men’s Journal: If there was one takeaway from how you’ve changed how you train that you wish people understood, what would it be?

Alberto Crane: It's all interconnected because we're so complex. So, I would focus on less is more and controlling your heart rate. But in addition to that, after you train, make sure that you compensate by stretching or pulling yourself in the opposite direction. If you go to the gym, and you squat, and just go in your car and go home after that, what happens? You get so sore because the muscles keep working. So, you have got to turn those muscles off. Little things that change the game. Understanding all those recovery tools has allowed me to train better.

I wish I had known these things when I was younger, even without the MS. But, it's because of the MS diagnosis and the things that I now have to deal with that I have learned. It's been a blessing in disguise.

Could you walk us through what your exercise regimen is now?

Alberto Crane: For sure. TACFIT is based on CST. There are three rings, and one of them is called into flow. We start every class by moving all of your joints. Most people don't know how to move all of their joints. Start with your neck, then your shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, all the way down your spine. Moving your spinal thoracic, lumbar, hips, knees, ankles, and everything. So, it starts out with moving all of the joints. That gives feedback to the brain about where you are in space. It wakes up the system as well, changes the synovial fluids, like you would with your car's oil. (Laughs)

That is better than drinking a shot of espresso. It just wakes everything up, wakes up your brain. A lot of that is your life experience. If your senses are stressed, you don't even know where you are. So, it kind of gives feedback to your brain about where you are in space, and everything kind of starts to work better.

Then, we do some kind of activation of the muscles before moving on to our workout, which is around 20 minutes, because we have learned that less is more. During the workout itself, we have different levels so you can regress and progress. You can make the complexity of the movement harder or easier because your brain becomes more stressed when the movements are more complex. We don’t want to take that too far. The 20-minute workout is not that much. But if you do it right, it's good. You want to have waves in your regimen. One day can be more intense while another can be lighter.

Now, with technology, we can track what we need to live our best life. Forget about whether you have MS or not. Just in daily life, it’s the same thing for everybody. It's the same pattern where we want to monitor how much stress we are putting ourselves through. As I mentioned earlier, we finish by turning off the muscles that you use. Because of that, you feel better for the rest of your day, and that's what we want. We want to feel strong and get better. We want to feel good throughout the day.

Men’s Journal: During the actual workout itself, what are you doing?

Alberto Crane: Our main tool is club bells. It looks like a bat. We have certain movements that we do with that for TACFIT. They're similar to yoga movements, bodyweight movements, and plyometrics. We use many tools, including kettlebells, pull-up bars, parallettes, steel maces, and our bodyweight, most of all. It's all a combination of gymnastic movements and, kind of, martial arts movements as well. Martial arts movements and fitness have connections to soldiers and the fighting people have done throughout history. So it combines the things that worked best throughout the past inside the workout itself. While using the tools, we do all these movements with them and our bodyweight itself as well.

Men’s Journal: Do you believe that movement-based exercises are superior?

Alberto Crane: Man! One thousand percent it is superior. You need that awareness to know how to balance yourself. Using free weights is so much better for your brain. We need those types of body movements to stay healthy. I don't have to make that argument myself. The information is out there. You can use the leg extension. I like that. But, overall, you need to do movement-based training, whether it's with a tool or with just your body weight, to optimize yourself 1000%.

Men’s Journal: So you like to avoid the big machinery for the most part?

Alberto Crane: For the most part? Yeah. When I do use them, I feel that. I start to get impinged. My shoulders and elbows start to ache. I was using them because I was going with my son, who wanted to. I took him to a different place because we have a gym. So, after I did that, and sure enough, I started getting impinged. I even did compensation and different things after using the machines. But still.

Movement-based is the best because you get stronger, not just with compression and pushing, but also with traction and pulling things apart. With a lot of those machines, you're not doing that right. You're not pulling and pushing the joints themselves. You can use machines to do pull-ups and pull on certain things. But overall, the machines don't calibrate your whole body. You just get locked in a position, and you're pushing or pulling. So, your brain and your body don’t have to calibrate and work the way they need to.

Men’s Journal: Do you have any advice for men who are getting older about how to stay strong, pain-free, and feeling good?

Alberto Crane: Scott Sonnon, the inventor and creator of TACFIT, says that you should move all of your joints and get your heart rate up to 60% once a day, every day. Then, lift something heavy once or twice a week. And you're good. That's all you need. To stay healthy, to be strong, to have everything work, and live your best life.

Men’s Journal: Do you feel better physically and in general, now that you've changed your philosophy on working out?

Alberto Crane: I had the MS stuff. But, on top of that, I was always in pain. I took ibuprofen for I don't know how many years. My wife was like, “What are you doing?” I was taking that just to deal and be able to train. After I started doing TACFIT, getting into flow, and all those things, I haven't taken it ever again.

Men’s Journal: Oh, really?

Alberto Crane: Yeah. I haven’t been in pain anymore. And if I have pain, I know what to do to take away the pain because it's a signal to the brain saying, “Hey, man, you need to move your stuff. You need to change it up. If we do these different movements, the pain goes away.

Men’s Journal: For me, I have a bad back. I've had it for years. I used to work at a very physical job, and that caused a lot of wear and tear. For someone like me, or anybody who has any kind of chronic pain, what would you suggest?

Alberto Crane: You want to move all of your joints, because everything's interconnected. We're like a big old tensegrity model, everything's connected. If you have a headache, maybe the bottom of your feet are tight or whatever. You want to move all your joints. But for you, depending on whether it's your lower back, we all sit down too much. So, maybe the butt muscles aren't firing as they should be. I would suggest moving your lower back forward and backward in space. Just that simple thing makes a huge difference.

I've had guys who are really strong saying, “Oh, my lower back. Oh my god.” They go to the doctor and talk about surgery. But, in many cases, you could just do some movements on the lower back and the pain goes away most of the time.