MMA Conditioning Part 1

MMA Conditioning Part 1

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is becoming pretty popular these days, its following has grown from a small cult of wacknut wingjobs interspersed with some genuine sporting-connoisseurs, to a full-blown teeming horde of avid and knowledgeable fans. Instead of just the badly-covered and poorly-attended events, the UFC now hold massive events for tens of thousands of spectators in places like the MGM Grand, and Canada’s Bell Centre. The UFC isn’t even the only gig in town as far as professional MMA goes, organisations like Bellator and World Series of Fighting, even grappling-based Metamoris, are now doing very well for themselves alongside their major competitor in the UFC.

In addition to the sport getting more of a following in terms of spectators, it also has more of following in terms of participants. I myself even did some MMA training for a fairly long period of time, around 18-24 months or so, and I absolutely loved it. One thing I really found was that, no matter what weight I could lift in the gym, or however ‘swole’ I thought I was (I wasn’t), ultimately my performance hinged on how well conditioned I was.
Fighters such as Cain Velasquez, Benson Henderson, Frankie Edgar, Nick Diaz, all have one thing in common – their conditioning is top-notch, and they do not flag once in any of the 5 rounds they’re forced (or not) to fight.
So in this series, we’re going to be looking at the different types of training necessary for those who are training MMA. In this first instalment, we’ll be looking at improving the oxygen delivery to muscles, thus being able to maintain output capacity.

Interval Training for VO2 Max

VO2 max is basically the maximum amount of oxygen your body is capable of delivering to working muscles, and these intervals are designed to improve the strength of your heart in order to do that function better. In case you’re wondering, in order for your muscles to continue working throughout a round, or throughout several rounds, the more oxygen being delivered to those muscles the better your chances of continuing are.
Oxygen being delivered to the muscles = endurance, just think of it like that.
In order to improve your VO2 max, you need to get your heart rate up as high as it can safely go and maintain that for a short period of time. Obviously, it’s unsafe to keep a highly-elevated heart rate for a prolonged period of time due to stress on the heart, so that’s where interval training fits in, more specifically – high intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT is a useful tool, especially for a chaotic sport like MMA, because it taxes both the aerobic and anaerobic energy thresholds.
HIIT is a great tool for increasing VO2 max, a study some years ago by Tabata et al. (1996) showed that HIIT is preferable to moderate-intensity aerobic exercise when improvement in VO2 max is the goal.

So let’s consider some options for some intervals, and the timings we could consider.
In terms of timing of intervals, in the study already mentioned they used 20:10 splits (20 seconds working at a high-intensity – considered by the study to be 170% of current VO2 max – and then 10 seconds rest to recover). Now that works, I’ve implemented the 20:10 split in fat-burning workouts before now, and they are, frankly, torturous when done right. In terms of direct application to MMA though, I personally find the bursts are too small to be implemented as a regular option.
Instead, I prefer to use the 3:1 split, 3 minutes on and 1 minute rest, it’s far more transferrable to MMA and easier to fit into a conditioning programme (in my experience) as opposed to fat-burn.
Whichever you choose, there’s a set/rep-structure to consider – in the research quoted they did 7-8 sets of the 20:10 split, and the generally recommended structure for the 3:1 split is 3 (intermediate) to 5 (advanced).

The predominant exercises for the different splits are obviously going to differ between the two structures, for instance a sprint would be perfect for 20 seconds all-out, but I can’t see anyone sprinting for 3 whole minutes…

So for the 20:10 split you have options such as:

• ·         Sprinting
• ·         Battle Ropes
• ·         Prowler/Sled
• ·         Olympic Lifts (if you’re a crossfit-esque nutter)
• ·         Bodyweight exercises (with or without a weighted vest)

And for the 3:1 split you could consider some more MMA-specific exercises, as well as generic ones:

• ·         Running/Cycling/Rowing
• ·         Punch Bag drills
• ·         Striking Mitts
• ·         Rolling Jiu-Jitsu/Takedown Offense
• ·         Kettlebells (for the sadist)
• ·         Plyometric circuits

I personally love the 3:1 structure, we used to use it quite a bit in conditioning at MMA and it worked fantastically well when doing all-out Jiu-Jitsu drills (such as switching sides for armbars for 3 minutes solid – your obliques will not thank you at all at the time).

I hope that’s piqued your interest in this series, I’ll be putting up the next article soon enough and then tying it all together with an example of how to make a training schedule that brings it all together for your athletic conditioning goals!

See you next time…

References

Tabata, I., Nishimura, K., Kouzaki, M., Ogita, F., Miyachi, M., & Yamamoto, K. 1996. Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 28, pp.1327-1330.