Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr Duncan French the SVP of the UFC performance institute.
Duncan has 25 years of experience working with athletes from over 40 different professional and Olympic sports. As the Senior Vice President of the UFC Performance Institute, Duncan is responsible for directing high performance services to 700 UFC fighters globally, and managing three state-of-the-art facilities in Las Vegas, Shanghai, and Mexico City.
Prior to joining UFC, Duncan was the Director of Performance Sciences and Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, Duncan was a Technical Lead for Strength and Conditioning with the English Institute of Sport. He has supported three Olympic cycles and has been national lead for Strength and Conditioning to Great Britain Basketball, Taekwondo, and Paralympic Swimming. The former Head of Strength & Conditioning at Newcastle United FC in the English Premier League, Duncan has also coached Olympic and World Championship medalists, and world-record holders.
He has authored or co-authored over 60 scientific manuscripts and nine book chapters and is the coeditor of the NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science textbook. He was chairman of the UK Strength & Conditioning Association from 2011-13, and presently serves as Vice President of the National Strength & Conditioning Association. He received an Honorary Fellowship in 2014 for his services to the strength and conditioning industry.
📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, and his role at the UFC Performance Institute. We also touched on what his typical day looks like. We also discussed his approach towards innovation and biofeedback, and how important technologies are to help better train his athletes and help them recover faster. We also touched on some of his favorite technologies and what he is looking for when him and his team are looking to adopt a new technologies. Duncan also shared his thoughts on how he sees technologies impacting the UFC Performance Institute from a performance training, and recovery perspective in the future. Lastly he shared his thoughts on what makes world’s class MMA fighters like Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov special.
You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Duncan located at the top of this blog post.
Here are the quotes from the interview with Duncan:
Q1. Please tell me about your background and your role at the UFC.
"I’ve been in elite or professional and Olympic sport for about 26, 27 years. I did my PhD at the University of Connecticut, focusing on endocrinology of resistance training—looking at different stresses, how strength training can promote performance and stress the body."
"I was part of the English Institute of Sport for 14 years, working across multiple Olympic sports—boxing, basketball, swimming, taekwondo, cycling. I’ve worked with over 40 different Olympic or professional sports."
"In 2016, I was recruited as the inaugural director of performance sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and then I became the first employee at the UFC Performance Institute, building it from scratch. We started in 2017 with six staff members and one facility, and now we have 69 staff across three facilities in Shanghai, Las Vegas, and Mexico City."
Q2. What does your typical day look like at the UFC?
"For me, there is no typical day.""We have staff out on the road for fight week support, others providing in-person coaching, sending out supplements, preparing meal kits for fighters, and even creating educational content for athletes and coaches. It’s a diverse and dynamic system."
"Whether it’s a fight week in Las Vegas or on the road, there’s always pressure and stress. But we think flexibility is key to optimizing performance."
Q3. What is your approach towards innovation and biofeedback? How important are technologies to help better train your athletes and help them recover faster?
"Technology is not essential. We’ve been training athletes for years without it. But it can absolutely enhance the experience for athletes and coaches."
"We want an objectively informed system—real-time or captured data to guide decision-making. Whether it’s sports medicine, nutrition, strength and conditioning, or psychology, technology is deeply embedded in everything we do."
"We’re using motion capture, thermal imaging, isokinetic strength assessments, EEG for brain analysis—always looking at new ways to inform and improve training and recovery."
"The competitive advantage in sports today is speed of learning. We’re overwhelmed with information, but the key is how quickly you can process and apply it to improve performance."
Q4. What are some of your favorite technologies that you use? Why?
"In strength and conditioning, I love new equipment for eccentric loading and mechanical stress. But I also value simple diagnostics—force plates, linear displacement transducers, dynamometers."
"One challenge in MMA is that our athletes wear minimal clothing, so we can’t use traditional GPS trackers like in soccer or American football. We’ve had to innovate with impact-monitoring mouthguards and computer vision systems to assess fatigue."
"We’re excited about wearables like the Happy Ring, which just got FDA clearance for sleep monitoring, and other technologies that help us assess performance and recovery remotely."
Q5. When looking to adopt a new technology, what are the most important criteria?
"First and foremost, the technology must be valid. I want to put my hands on it, try to break it, and make sure the data it provides is real."
"Deployability is huge for us because our athletes are spread across the globe. If we can collect data remotely and transmit it through the cloud, that’s a massive win."
"Cost matters. Some technologies are low-cost and give us simple but valuable metrics, while others are major investments with a big impact."
"Integration is key. Can this technology stack with others we use? Can it connect wearables with performance metrics and athlete management platforms? If it works in isolation, it’s less valuable."
Q6. In the coming years, how do you see technologies impacting the UFC from a performance training and recovery perspective?
"We’re already pretty far down the rabbit hole of technology, but we continue to look for innovations."
"I believe the brain is the next frontier. We understand muscle physiology, lactate monitoring, biochemistry—but neural monitoring and autonomic regulation are still largely untapped for performance and recovery."
"I see more and more movement in technologies that help regulate the nervous system, track brain function, and improve recovery through neurological interventions. That’s where I see the biggest advances coming in the next few years."
Q7. What makes MMA fighters like Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov special?
"I appreciate you acknowledging that because I do think these individuals are special. They're different."
"Some of it is just their grit and their ability to tolerate heavy and high training loads—going to deep, dark places that other athletes, psychologically or physiologically, just won’t get to."
"The other part of that is obviously world-class skill acquisition. The skills at the elite level are exceptional, and in MMA, skill development is complex compared to more straightforward physiological sports like Olympic rowing."
"One athlete might succeed because of their athleticism, another might succeed because they’ve just got mental fortitude."
"I can’t say Khabib and Conor are just better athletes than everyone else. That’s not the case. Some might be technically better, some mentally stronger. That’s the puzzle of this sport. And that’s why technology helps us gain more insight into what makes a fighter truly elite."
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