Doing What It Takes

just like in fighting. Even more vital is to be training out of your comfort zone.

Train one hour at my facility and I will be able to tell you what kind of athlete you are. Are you slow twitch? Are you fast twitch? What are your strengths?And what are your weaknesses? Ask anyone of my guys, I'm brutally honest, even to a fault. But I'd rather guys know where they stand and not be coddled along. From there it's up to them to make the necessary changes and effort to improve or keep training in their comfort zone and face the consequences. I'm sure we all have recent examples of this.

Now the sport of MMA is so complex that building programs is so different than any other sport. These guys wrestle, roll, strike, and strength and condition every week. Sprinkle in some high intensity sparring and you really need to keep your finger on the pulse of your athletes. Programs need to be altered on the fly and changed around due to the constantly changing variables. My job is to keep the athlete injury free and performing to their highest level so that they can peak on that fight night. Just like a high powered race car, my athletes need to be powerful, fast, handle well (agile), and I need to find the right fuel to give them to be able to maintain those qualities for the length of the race.

Barring any major injuries or limitations, we need to work POWER (plyos, O-lifts, certain complexes), we need to work STRENGTH (classic compound movements, weighted chins, walking lunges, deadlifts, inverted rows, bench press, etc), AGILITY (drills, ladder, cones, etc). But it is CONDITIONING, where I see the biggest mistakes being made. Here is where guys don't like doing what it takes. Lifting weights is fun. But being pushed to your anerobic threshold by pushing sled, slamming med balls, and doing Tabata is a bitch. Thats why the old school boxing mentality of doing hour long jogs at a slow pace is still around. Listen, if your sport is an hour long, at a slow pace, then jogging is for you but that's not our sport. Even football which is a power sport, has a play that lasts 6 seconds on average and then you have up to 45 seconds to recover. Rest 45 seconds in the cage and there's a good chance you will be taken off on a stretcher.

So to all you young fighters coming up, do research on sled work, sprint work at a track, med ball circuits, etc. At worst, do intervals. One I give my athletes is the Tabata protocol. It's a 20-10 work to rest (2:1) and you can do it with anything. Explode for 20 seconds then rest for 10. Do it 8 times with either airdyne, incline treadmill, or even ground and pound. My athletes put a bag on the floor and go hard 20 seconds, change positions while recovering, then explode again. Suffer in training, not in the fight.