Phil Daru is a strength and conditioning coach at American Top Team (ATT), an elite mixed martial arts (MMA) team. I decided to speak to Daru about his work with premier athletes for two reasons. First, he has competitive experience in MMA, bodybuilding and powerlifting, three very different sports that physically require hugely varied athletic needs. Second, in a sport like MMA where cardio is king, cardio training does nothing to prevent injury. Strength training does. As it turns out, training to prevent injury in MMA has lead to improved training overall. In this conversation, we discuss those developments, where strength and conditioning is headed and more.