MMA Specific Training

[Richie1888]

Hi Guys

I posted recently looking for jujitsu training advice but ive recently moved on to MMA training recently and wanted to train in the gym to help my preformance in training.

So I wanted to ask has anyone seen any good gym workout programs written for mma or can anyone offer any advice on what I should be training in the gym ?

I also wanted to ask I get neck pain from time to either from training or when I wake is there a safe way to work the muscles in the neck ?

Cheers

Richie

 

[CORUM]

full body circuit training with minimul rest periods (if any)

 

[gtbmed]

There's not one specific program I would follow for any sport. It depends completely on where you are as an athlete and what you need to improve. Make goals for which areas of the sport you want to improve, then tailor your training to suit those goals. Periodize your training based on how long you have until the season, what you want to improve, your current level of fitness, etc.

 

[VILBAUGH]

full body circuit training with minimul rest periods (if any)

agreed. metabolic conditioning will be your base. There are vast amounts of info on this stuff so go find it, research. I would personally recommend some heavy hammer training, hitting a tire works well, also a C2 rower can be very applicable, Chuck loves the C2.

 

[CORUM]

i personally like rich franklins workout.... though VERY brutal!!!ot everyone can do it, but i would recommend working up to something like that. i want to look into vitor belforts routine.... they say he is freakishly strong!!! broke ribs with a body lock!!!

 

[Richie1888]

I was looking to the Ross Enamanit (sp) books for advice on intense cardio and core workouts he seems to know his stuff and his ideas are good.

I was thinking more for specific explosive power strength and speed work in the gym

any ideas on my neck issue ?

 

[jehoverall]

prefabricated training ideas i can think of for mma include crossfit (may or not be useful, i don't have much experience with it) and, yeah, i've read (should say scanned) ross enamait's book. there's a lot of good ideas in there.

also, one would think kettlebell work would be very effective. pavel tsatsouline is the name to know, he has several books out. i read The Russian KB Challenge one and there were a lot of ideas in there as well. i think both enamait and tsatsouline said that if you can't afford KBs you can use dumbbells, meaning you should be able to do their workouts at your local bodybuilding type gym. but you should definitely look into KB training.

what i think enamait underemphasizes is the usefulness of pure strength for an MMA fighter. here's why: my best friend trains with a competition mma team and he and i started lifting together a little while back. when he started out he was doing circuits (which is the stereotypical MMA-type workout) with very little rest; it didn't improve his strength much nor do i think he got any results from it in general. i convinced him to lift the same way as me, going for heavy weight (85-90% of 1 rep max) on compound movements including deadliftand bench press. i don't know if he found going heavy useful or what, but i do know that he immediately stopped doing circuit training and lifts bench and deadlifts with me every week. that's on top of 4 day a week mma practices. so that leads me to assume that he saw some use in it, and you might benefit from heavy strength training too

 

[Richie1888]

prefabricated training ideas i can think of for mma include crossfit (may or not be useful, i don't have much experience with it) and, yeah, i've read (should say scanned) ross enamait's book. there's a lot of good ideas in there.

also, one would think kettlebell work would be very effective. pavel tsatsouline is the name to know, he has several books out. i read The Russian KB Challenge one and there were a lot of ideas in there as well. i think both enamait and tsatsouline said that if you can't afford KBs you can use dumbbells, meaning you should be able to do their workouts at your local bodybuilding type gym. but you should definitely look into KB training.

what i think enamait underemphasizes is the usefulness of pure strength for an MMA fighter. here's why: my best friend trains with a competition mma team and he and i started lifting together a little while back. when he started out he was doing circuits (which is the stereotypical MMA-type workout) with very little rest; it didn't improve his strength much nor do i think he got any results from it in general. i convinced him to lift the same way as me, going for heavy weight (85-90% of 1 rep max) on compound movements including deadliftand bench press. i don't know if he found going heavy useful or what, but i do know that he immediately stopped doing circuit training and lifts bench and deadlifts with me every week. that's on top of 4 day a week mma practices. so that leads me to assume that he saw some use in it, and you might benefit from heavy strength training too

funny you should say that Chad talk about going for maximal strength in this article and point out the bennifits of going for close to max but still ask fast as you can

TMUSCLE.com | MMA-Specific Strength

Is musclar endurance best left to circuit and alike that are done in training or cardo circuits ?

 

[T_man]

What about boxing routines? I want to get into boxing when I go to uni so I'm wondering what I should do to condition myself before hand.

 

[Doublebase]

Burpees, running, sprinting all that good stuff. Check out sherdog.com's training section. Also, look around on youtube for MMA training. You can get some good ideas from there.

 

[Elson]

hang/ power cleans. medicine ball stuff for your core.

 

[P-funk]

What is more specific for the MMA than actually training your fighting discipline?

The training program in the gym should be goverend by what your movement limitations our and should reflect a program thats goal is to enhance your overall movement capacity. From there, power and strength can be developed, with interval work reflecting work to rest ratios of what is taking place in an actual fight.

patrick

 

[CowPimp]

What is more specific for the MMA than actually training your fighting discipline?

The training program in the gym should be goverend by what your movement limitations our and should reflect a program thats goal is to enhance your overall movement capacity. From there, power and strength can be developed, with interval work reflecting work to rest ratios of what is taking place in an actual fight.

patrick

Agreed. I think trying to take your lifting routine and make it more specific to your sport has its limitations. Yes, you want to make sure you are strengthening the muscle groups, and in a very loose sense, the joint articulations and positions used in a given sport. However, trying to go overboard is detrimental in my opinion.

Use your MMA training sessions, and any supplementary conditioning work to improve cardiovascular capacity and efficiency with the desired energy systems. Use your weight training for improving muscular strength and power, and perhaps endurance to some extent. Just do less of it if you feel like the thing holding back the most is conditioning. Focus more on that if need be.

Think about how a football player trains, for example. They don't try to do things in the weight room with exact work:rest ratios specific to football. They save that for their practices on the field and supplementary conditioning work if their coach prescribes it to them. In the offseason, football players are trying to pack on size, strength, and power at various points. Once the season begins, they reduce weight training volume and increase sport specific training (Practices) in an attempt to maintain the improvements made during the offseason.

 

[CORUM]

Agreed. I think trying to take your lifting routine and make it more specific to your sport has its limitations. Yes, you want to make sure you are strengthening the muscle groups, and in a very loose sense, the joint articulations and positions used in a given sport. However, trying to go overboard is detrimental in my opinion.

Use your MMA training sessions, and any supplementary conditioning work to improve cardiovascular capacity and efficiency with the desired energy systems. Use your weight training for improving muscular strength and power, and perhaps endurance to some extent. Just do less of it if you feel like the thing holding back the most is conditioning. Focus more on that if need be.

Think about how a football player trains, for example. They don't try to do things in the weight room with exact work:rest ratios specific to football. They save that for their practices on the field and supplementary conditioning work if their coach prescribes it to them. In the offseason, football players are trying to pack on size, strength, and power at various points. Once the season begins, they reduce weight training volume and increase sport specific training (Practices) in an attempt to maintain the improvements made during the offseason.

there have been NFL football players say MMA train is WAY more grooling than NFL training

 

[jehoverall]

sure. in football there are a ton of positions which don't require athleticism, just pure brute strength. you can weigh 300+ pounds and be 30% bodyfat, without being able to run a single mile without passing out, and still make it in football.

in MMA pure strength is just one of many attributes needed to succeed. you also need to have good technique, to train in many different disciplines, to have fantastic conditioning, etc. in other words you need to have a much more diverse skill set than is required in football - you can't be a one trick pony. additionally, a football game has constant stops and rest periods; an MMA match is shorter, but with extremely low rest, so the conditioning demands of MMA are way higher than football. wanderlei silva does entire cardiovascular workouts in a fucking snorkel mask. that's intense. not to mention, football is simply not as hardcore as MMA. in football there are no KOs, no lights-out moments. the worst thing to happen usually is some guy tears his ACL or lands wrong on his ankle. not saying football isn't a very physical game, but MMA is on a different level.

so yeah. did you watch the ultimate fighter reality show recently? the new season is heavyweights, and they have a bunch of former NFL players in it. they put these guys through a cardio workout of like laying down on the floor and then jumping up continuously for 30 seconds or something, and one of the dudes had trouble breathing. he barely made it. this guy was in the NFL?!? not to mention, the first fight they had, they pitted a (smaller) wrestler against a (bigger) former NFL player - and the NFL player got completely dominated. the football guy got beaten the shit out of so bad that he got a cut on the head all the way to the bone. he was on his back the entire time eating punches.

not a big fan of football compared to MMA and i guess it shows

 

[CORUM]

i didnt think that big guy that got beat was a NFL player, he was like some finance guy or something. and yeah that guy was dying in that cardio workout!! he was the #1 NFL draft pick.... i cant remember his position, but it was no slouch position!!!

 

[CORUM]

and no knock outs in football??? i dont know where you have played!!! i seen guys laid out cold!!!

 

[Richie1888]

id be right in saying though to keep all gym movements as explosive as possible ?

i had a quick look at this but its talking about as slow as possible movements ive not heard anyone recommend that for a while

Article: Improving Speed, Power, and Explosiveness (E.A.T.S.)

 

[CowPimp]

there have been NFL football players say MMA train is WAY more grooling than NFL training

Depends on a lot of things, but in general I'm sure that's true. What does that have to do with anything though? I just used football as an example of a specific sport with specific demands.

 

[CORUM]

i was just making a statement, there is a difference

 

[gtbmed]

id be right in saying though to keep all gym movements as explosive as possible ?

i had a quick look at this but its talking about as slow as possible movements ive not heard anyone recommend that for a while

Article: Improving Speed, Power, and Explosiveness (E.A.T.S.)

What would be the point of lifting explosively for all movements? What are you trying to achieve by this?

As the article states, there are many ways to improve "explosiveness" (I hate that word, BTW) or power. Increasing maximal force can do this and so can increasing the rate of force development. As an athlete, you usually want to periodize these things. Lift to increase maximal force output, then do sport-specific stuff to increase rate of force development. This is exactly what pfunk and cowpimp said.

And I would never lift as slow as possible. The article talks about eliminating (or reducing) the effects of momentum when you lift weights. IMO momentum can be used in a beneficial way. The key is control. You can lift weights quickly or slowly, but the key is to always control the movement and ensure that your form is good.

 

[Yanick]

Cowpimp and Pat are basically saying don't use a hammer to screw in a screw. Conditioning and the other sport specific attributes are pretty much acquired during practice. You want to jump rope for 3 minutes with a 1 min break to simulate the rounds, for instance. There is no need to do circuit type training in the gym because you then start having to decrease the intensity to a point where you are basically doing more cardio. You are in the gym to work on stability/mobility aka injury prevention (and this is very specific to the individual) and to develop general strength/power. The caveat to the above statement being that you don't really want to take 3 min breaks between heavy sets (atleast all the time) because you don't get to rest three minutes between a maximum voluntary contraction during the match. So you want decently short rest periods but something that still allows for enough recovery for you to push iron and keep the intensity high.

This stuff also changes depending on if you have fights coming up and such. Obviously the sport specific training has to increase the closer you get to a fight and the general physical preparedness takes a backseat while the opposite is true when you are 'off-season.' You still practice and such but the off season is the time to work on mobility issues, increase absolute strength and power so you can then hone it with the specific drills/practices.

These principles pretty much hold true for any sport regardless of how "hardcore" one might think the training is.