Scientists who wouldn't look out of place in Marvel comic books helped revolutionize the UFC

• There are sports scientists at the UFC who wouldn't look out of place in Marvel comics.
• MMA once had a reputation as being a sport for skinheads.
• Work the scientists do in Las Vegas flips that reputation MMA once had on its head.

LAS VEGAS — Regardless of whether you're only casually interested in sports, or a diehard fight fan, there are probably a few things that come to mind when thinking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

There's the irrepressible figurehead Dana White — a 53-year-old renowned for his trademark look of a T-shirt and Air Jordan 1-Low sneakers, his no-filter press conferences, and for playing high-stakes blackjack in Las Vegas casinos.

There's the rise and fall of swashbuckling two-weight champion Conor McGregor, the popularization of the UFC's women's division because of ass-kickers like Ronda Rousey and Amanda Nunes, and then the stalwarts like current heavyweight king Jon Jones.

Of course, there's also the iconic Octagon and the palpable energy at live events that the UFC cultivates through slick and well-edited promos set to 'Teenage Wasteland.'

It hasn't all been without hurdles, though.

Top Rank boss Bob Arum — a historic rival of White as a promoter in boxing — once lambasted mixed martial arts (MMA) as a sport for knuckle-dragging "skinheads."

But, in recent years, the UFC has quietly been revolutionizing its business, and MMA in general, behind the scenes at its Performance Institute (PI) in Las Vegas.

It isn't a sport for skinheads like Arum once claimed, but it is overseen and safeguarded by scientists who wouldn't look out of place if they were building the next generation of superheroes in Marvel comic book labs.

Meet Roman Fomin, the director of sports science at the UFC

Before joining the UFC, Roman Fomin had almost 20 years of experience working in physiology, sports science, and innovation.

In many ways, he's the antithesis of what some might expect a UFC leader to be. He's not loud or in-your-face like White may seem but, rather, composed, cerebral, and, obviously, scientific.

Even before he moved his career to Las Vegas, Fomin's products — that focused on what he calls "trainability" — had found their way to the coaching staffs at the NFL, NBA, and English Premier League.

Seeing a vacancy at the UFC's Performance Institute intrigued him as he wanted to bring his "evidence-based approach" to a combat sports industry that was, even up until recently, still adhering to "old school" methods, he said.

When speaking to Fomin, it's like you can see the gears moving in his mind as his eyes light up, telling Insider about how he uses "scientific methods as key tools to manage training processes" at the PI.

He says his job is to "avoid any negative consequences from training — like injuries, and so on."

There was a "random approach" before his arrival, he told us.

After setting up tests, running diagnostics, collecting all kinds of data on athletes, including sleep patterns, nutrition, and integrating over 50 technologies, Fomin's approach to sports science quickly bore fruit for the UFC's athletes.

The PI is a piece of EPL, NFL, and NBA, according to White

The UFC boss Dana White couldn't hold back his laughter when we asked him how much more advanced the sports sciences are in MMA than when he first entered the business.

"Oh my God," he said. "There's no comparison! The training was so bad. It was unbelievable.

"Back in the day, we had so many injuries," White told us. "People were getting injured left and right just training for a fight.

"The reason to build the PI was to try and control as much as you could possibly control what you can't control if that makes sense."

White told us UFC executives flew around the world to learn from English Premier League clubs, NFL facilities, college football, tennis, and Olympic teams.

"We looked at the best there was, and the PI is a little piece of all of those," he said.

He continued: "You get the coaches and their fighters in with the best possible strength and conditioning, physical therapists, and you can take away a lot of what you can't control, which is these injuries that didn't need to happen."

Since the PI launched in 2017, there have been "less athletes missing [fights] due to injury, and less athletes are missing events due to weight issues," UFC SVP and COO Lawrence Epstein told UFC.

The key scientific pillars that prop up the Performance Institute

Insider spent several days earlier this year at the PI, which has been used by UFC fighters like Conor McGregor and footballers and basketball players.

Any athlete on the UFC roster gets everything inside the PI for free — from physical therapy to conditioning and meals. For non-UFC fighters and athletes in other sports, there is a cost.

Meanwhile, the PI's running costs for the UFC are north of $7 million — but the facility was never meant to turn a profit. It was always designed from an athlete-first position and to evolve the sport further.

Soon after walking inside the 30,000-square-foot facility, athletes will be taken to the physical therapy rooms for rehabilitation services overseen by Heather Linden, who previously worked for the United States Olympic Committee.

There's a full-service gym, a hypoxic chamber that can replicate any altitude on Earth, and a nutrition station for balanced and pre-prepared meals tailored to an individual's needs.

Though the PI does not offer actual MMA training, there are still full-size Octagons with stage lights and high-def cameras to replay footage for a fighter's training team.

There are then cryotherapy units, laser therapy for recovery, hydrotherapy consisting of hot and cold plunge for contrast pools, and an underwater treadmill that can monitor lower body injury recovery.

The four pillars of the sports sciences at UFC are:

• Physical therapy
• Nutrition science
• Strength and conditioning
• Sleep science

The numerous leaders at the PI, from VP of Performance Duncan French to Director of Nutrition Clint Wattenberg, combine to maximize the potential of MMA athletes and see how far that potential can be pushed.

For Fomin, a lot of it is about numbers. "We want to not just understand what was happening in the past but understand why it happened."

He said: "We can then use analytics to predict what will happen if an athlete does a certain amount of training today and how it'll performance on a fight day."

One of the innovations at the PI is the Oura ring — wearable technology that delivers precise, personalized health insights.

"It helped us understand how athletes sleep, how they recover and provided more adequate recovery solutions.

"We can adjust your training load," he said. "Instead of doing high volume, high intensity, let's reduce a little bit, and you will get benefits from training instead of getting negative consequences from training."

The kinds of athlete data that wearable technology provided PI staff touched on all aspects of nutrition, physical therapy, and strength and conditioning, Fomin said.

It even had advantages during the pandemic as it could show a spike in temperature days before any other coronavirus or flu symptoms emerged, allowing UFC to tell certain athletes to stay home, thus minimizing the threat of a breakout at the PI.

What the future could hold for the PI.

So, what is the next big innovation for the PI, the UFC, and the sport of MMA generally?

"Brain science, definitely," Fomin told us.

"We have a pretty good physiological component around cardiovascular systems, respiratory systems, but we don't have, at the moment, a neuroscience lab," Fomin said.

The benefits for Fomin would allow the PI to understand the brains of their athletes better. "How sensory systems work, reaction time, how you process information and make decisions."

"We probably will have a neuroscience lab in the future," Fomin said. "But not yet."

Considering the tech already in place at the PI, and the investments UFC continues to make at the facility, it probably won't be long before Fomin is overseeing data collected from his neuroscience lab.