MMA Conditioning – 3 Tips to Winning Fights That Go the Distance

It’s possible that you’ve had the agonising sense of having nothing left to offer with two minutes remaining in a round if you’re a mixed-martial artist and you’ve been in a fight that’s gone the distance. If you haven’t gone the distance or fought in a professional fight yet, follow the five suggestions in this article to ensure that you are the one applying pressure and imposing will — not your adversary.

1) Do Sprints And Intervals Instead Of Long, Slow Runs.

When it comes to MMA, explosive, rapid actions and strength are required at different periods during a five-minute round of competition. If you’re in a clinch, you don’t know whether you’ll be on the defensive, fleeing the mount, or becoming trapped in a triangle. One thing you can count on is that you will NOT be running around the ring at a leisurely speed for the next half-hour or so. Training in this manner will assist you in lowering your time for the local charity run, but it will not assist you in knocking out your opponent.

If you’re going to be performing running exercises, stick to sprints and intervals rather than long distances. In order to get the most out of a sprint exercise, you should warm up for 5 minutes with a dynamic warm-up routine before executing 5 short 40 yard sprints where you progressively raise your speed from about 60% to 90%. Rest for one minute before doing a 100-meter sprint, walking back to the starting point, and repeating the process for a total of ten sprints. The potential of this exercise to increase your effectiveness in the cage will outweigh the ability of distance running hands down.

2) Take 2 Recovery Weeks Off For Every 4 Weeks Of Conditioning.

This tip is huge, and has helped skyrocket the conditioning of the athletes I train, guys like Jeff Joslin and Rory McDonell. Most fighters have a thing about working themselves to death – this mindset is what makes them tough, but also what keeps them injured and often overtrained, limiting performance in both training and competition.

You can avoid these problems by taking 2 weeks off of your conditioning workouts. You still do your MMA training and strength/power workouts, but let the conditioning go for 2 weeks. When you get back to it, you’ll be fresher and ready to take your conditioning up another notch.

3) Do More Specific Workouts In The 4 Weeks Leading Up To The Fight.

Sprints and intervals are great, but they’re not specific to mixed-martial arts. The workouts that I have my athletes perform include jumps, sprawls, quick feet drills, core stabilization exercises, explosive push-ups – all movements that are used in a fight, performed as quick and explosively as possible. I call these workouts NRG System Complexes, because they tap into every energy system of the body and are made up of a lot of different exercises.

Each complex lasts about 5 minutes, and your goal should be to do 4 complexes in a row with 1 minute of rest where you feel fresh and powerful in the last round. So the closer you get to the fight, the more specific you want to get with your conditioning routine.

Use the tips in this article and you’ll improve your conditioning and your opponents will wish they didn’t waste so much time training doing slow, hour long runs.