If you are a mixed-martial artist and you have experienced a fight that’s gone the distance, then maybe you understand the terrible feeling of having nothing left to give with two minutes left in the round. In case you have not gone the distance or haven’t had a pro fight yet, then make use of the 5 tips in this article to ensure you are the only one maintaining pressure and imposing will – not your opponent.
1) Do sprints and intervals rather than long, slow runs.
Mixed martial arts is a sport that needs explosive, quick moves and strength at various times by way of a 5 minute round. You never know if you will be in a clinch, defending a shot, escaping the mount, or sinking in a triangle. The first thing you do know is that you WON’T be jogging around the ring at a slow pace for 30 minutes. Trained in this fashion will help you get your time down for the local charity run, but won’t do anything whatsoever to assist you knock the other fighter out.
Instead, stay with sprints and intervals if you’re going to do running workouts. One particualr good sprint workout would be to warm-up for five minutes doing a dynamic warm-up routine, then doing 5 short 40 yard sprints in which you gradually improve your pace from about 60% to 90%. Rest one minute, then perform a 100 metre sprint, walk back to the start, and repeat for a total of 10 sprints. This workout will beat distance running hands down for being able to enhance your performance in the cage.
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. Most fighters have a thing about working themselves to death – this mindset is what makes them tough, but additionally what keeps them injured and frequently overtrained, limiting overall performance both in training and competition.
You are able to avoid these difficulties if you take 2 weeks from your conditioning workouts. You still do your Mixed martial arts training and strength/power workouts, but let the conditioning go for two weeks. When you’re getting back to it, you will end up fresher and able to take your conditioning up another notch.
3) Do more specific workouts in the four weeks prior to the fight.
Sprints and intervals are excellent, but they are 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 which have been used in a fight, performed as quick and explosively as possible. I call these workouts NRG System Complexes, simply because they tap into every energy system from the body and therefore are comprised of lots of different exercises.
Each complex lasts about 5 minutes, as well as your goal should be to do 4 complexes consecutively with 1 minute rest where you feel fresh and powerful within the last round. So the closer you will get to the fight, the more specific you want to get with your conditioning routine.
Make use of the tips in this article and you should improve your conditioning and your opponents will wish they didn’t waste a great deal time training doing slow, hour long runs.
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