Although mma workouts weren’t the first to include odd shaped objects with various strength and conditioning exercises, the sport is certainly helping it grow in popularity.

Outside of being an exciting way to add spice to your mma workouts rather then the same old push and pull exercises with barbells and dumbbells, their should be a method to the madness.

Just because your flipping tires and throwing medicine balls and carrying around a sandbag doesn’t necessarily mean your optimizing your mma workouts if there’s no formula for progression to it.

The easiest way to make sure you’r still getting the best out of your mma training workouts with these various pieces of equipment is to follow a progressive program the same way you would with a barbell/dumbbell mma strength and conditioning workout.

If one of your exercises, such as deadlifts, in your traditional mma workouts requires you to either increase the weight, reps, sets, or decrease the rest periods as you progress every week, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t keep this same formula in mind when deadlifting a heavy sandbag, or keg, or railroad tracks, or whatever the hell you decide to get your hands on.

If after a few workouts you can perform a desired amount of reps with the sandbag, instead of using that same weight, changing the exercise, or pointlessly doing more reps…. ADD MORE WEIGHT IN THE BAG!

The same goes with any other exercise outside of the standard iron. If you’re doing an mma conditioning workout that involves tire-flipping, then make a goal to decrease the time it takes to complete a set or circuit.

In summary, don’t just think that since you’re working out with sandbags and tires and any other awkward piece of equipment that you’re getting a good workout.

You certainly wouldn’t let yourself bench press the same weight day after day, week after week, month after month, with no progression be it in weight, reps, sets, or shorter rest periods – so it doesn’t make any sense to forget this important key when training with any other form of resistance in your mma training workouts.

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Training Workouts

MMA Strength Training for Muscle Endurance

Last week I wrote about how increasing your maximum strength (ie your 1 rep max on the bench press) will actually indirectly increase you muscle and strength endurance.

This week, I wanted to add on one extra tactic you can add to your mma workout routine to really develop your muscle endurance in conjunction with newly added strength.

Let’s say you took my advice and really worked on increasing your maximum strength with a MMA strength training workout focusing on a few important compound exercises.

Although this will tremendously help increase your muscle and strength endurance, it is still important that you get your body used to moving its own weight repeatedly without getting tired.

There are two ways you can do this in your MMA workout routine:

1. Include a similar bodyweight exercise for every heavy exercise you do

If you increased your deadlift one rep maximum by 25 pounds, this is a huge step to increasing the muscle and strength endurance of the muscles used in this exercise.

Now, by adding a similar bodyweight exercise, such as hip thrusts or burpee’s, either by doing super-sets or adding it independently, and doing several explosive set’s of these, you’ll take your muscle endurance up an extra notch.

This way you are not only training your body to increase its capacity to deal with heavy weight, but you are now training your body’s cardio capacity to move its own weight quickly and explosively.

2. Perform different exercises with various equipment using your own body weight

Another way to spice up your MMA workout routine and increase your muscle and strength endurance is to not only train with increasingly heavier weight, and not just condition your body to handle its own weight, but to take it one step further and develop your muscles to it to handle the weight of your opponents.

If you weigh 170 pounds, in most cases your opponents are going to weigh roughly the same (at least if you’re competing in an organized event).

That being the case, it makes sense to get your arms, legs, back, and the rest of your muscles used to throwing this weight around and feeling it’s resistance.

By doing various exercises with 170 pounds (or whatever your body weight is) such as bench presses, deadlifts, squats, sandbag workouts, etc, and by doing them in a full MMA strength training and conditioning routine, you’ll be developing your muscles capacity to handle your opponents weight in various scenarios.

Hope this helps

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine

When conditioning for MMA, every second of exercises AND rest count

If you’ve been training with mma conditioning workouts for a while but you still find yourself gassing out in your training or competition, you may be making a mistake in your training  that can be fixed in 60 seconds or less.

One of the biggest but perhaps unnoticed mistakes that I’ve seen mma fighters or combat athletes make in their training is not enough attention to the time they “rest” in between sets, reps, intervals, or rounds in their mma conditioning workouts.

For example, have you ever followed someone’s mma conditioning workout, whether it be out of a book, video, coach, or magazine, and you see instructions on how long to perform each exercise as well as how long to rest in between?

Do you pay as strict attention to the time instructed to rest as you do for the time instructed to perform an exercise?

If you can honestly say yes, then pat yourself on the back. However, are you SURE you ACTUALLY rest for ONLY the time instructed in between exercises?

Next time you are performing your mma conditioning workout, (and if you need one check out the reviews of the top mma conditioning workouts here), I want you to pay strict attention on the rest periods between each exercise or round.

More often then not, unless you are training with a coach, athletes who do their mma conditioning workouts on their own will take a little extra time, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, in their rest intervals.

For mma fighters, this can literally make all the difference, in a negative way, in your conditioning.

Allow me to get a little scientific on you for a second. I’m not an advocate of using big words and I hate people who use them just to sound professional, so I’ll do my best to keep it as simple and down to earth as possible.

For any science freaks out their, I know I’m not using the scientific names for these systems, but the point is to educate the reader, not confuse them .

The 3 Energy Systems

There are three energy systems the body depends upon when it comes to cardiovascular conditioning. There is the ATP system, which is used for up to about 10 or so seconds of maximal output in energy, such as a set of lifting heavy weights, or an explosive movement such as shooting in for a take down and driving your opponent to the mat.

Then there is the anaerobic system, which is energy produced in the absence of oxygen, which usually lasts around 2 minutes. This is when you are using near maximal output for a relatively long period of time, such as sprinting or a fast paced grappling match.

Finally, there is the aerobic system, which is when your body uses oxygen to produce energy for lower energy outputs for longer periods of time.

When you’re training using well put together mma conditioning workouts, the rest periods are just as important as the exercise periods. Often times when doing high intensity exercises such as sprinting, rest periods can seem to go by extremely fast.

The mistake you don’t want to make is lose control of time during rest periods and end up resting 60 seconds when you’re supposed to be resting 20. Or resting 30 seconds when you supposed to rest for 10.

A lot of times athletes wait to catch their breath to move onto the next exercise or set, resting twice or three times as much as their supposed to. By making this mistake you may be failing to develop one of the the energy systems.

By not properly developing all three energy systems, especially the ATP system and the anaerobic system, you’re going to find yourself still gassing out in high intensity events, such as an mma fight or grappling match.

I’ve been known to ramble, so the moral of the story is this: If you are following a mma conditioning workout that specifically states to rest for 30 seconds in between intervals, make sure you ONLY REST FOR 30 SECONDS, and NO MORE, and so on for all of the rest of the rest period instructions.

Otherwise you may be cutting your mma conditioning potential short by just a few seconds.

Train hard (and rest hard), fellow fighters and fans,

Derek Manuel
MMA Conditioning Workouts

Sledgehammer MMA Workout

When you think of hardcore or old school training methods to develop raw strength and power, usually the picture of some bad-ass looking dude wielding a sledgehammer like it was Thor’s Mighty Hammer and slamming it on an old monster truck tire comes to mind.

Although this exercise goes back decades, to this day it is still a vital one to throw in your mma workout program. On top of the many physical benefits, it just feels damn good to swing a thick wooden stick with a big chunk of iron at the end with all your might.

It brings to the wielder a feeling a raw power and animalistic aggression that smith machines and sissy looking stability ball exercises simply can’t provide (nothing against these exercises, of course; they have their time and place).

For mma fighters, this is a great exercise to include in your mma workout program from time to time, whether it’s in the form of circuit training or one of your main strength and power development programs.

Sledgehammer training has many benefits that transfer over very well to mma fighters and combat athletes, depening on how you structure your mma workout program.

The main benefits of sledgehammer training are:

• Grip strength and endurance
• Core strength
• Rotational power (key for striking, kicking, and throwing power)
• Muscular endurance
• Full body strength and muscular coordination

Grip strength is key for both strikers and grappler’s. Executing the exercise correctly will also develop your core strength and rotational power, which is the basis for developing knockout power in your kicks and strikes as well as explosive and powerful throws.

If you follow a mma workout program that emphasizes repetitive slams with the sledgehammer, this will develop your muscular endurance, especially in your back, shoulders, and arms – muscles that are all used heavily in combat sports.

And finally, since this movement requires major movement muscles and stabilizer muscles from your entire body, it trains your body to coordinate movements into one powerful technique, rather then isolated movements that train your body to work as separate units.

In other words, in case you’re wondering what the hell that means, it just means that it develops your body as one unit, or one weapon, which develops maximum power output –  ideal for mma fighters.

Here’s a sledgehammer routine that you can add into your next mma workout program:

Round 1

• 10 seconds vertical slams from the right side
• 10 seconds vertical slams from the left side
• Rest 10 seconds

Round 2

• 20 seconds vertical slams
• 10 seconds rest

Repeat rounds 1 and 2 without any additional rest in between for a total of 8 rounds, making it a total of 4 grueling minutes. Add this to one of your mma workout programs and you’ll notice considerable gains in your rotational power within weeks.

Train hard, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Program

Bear crawls is a great mma conditioning exercise

Circuit training has been around for a long time. It is a staple in exercise routines for developing cardiovascular endurance and muscular conditioning.

As the sport of mma becomes more and more popular and the standards for mma fighters strength and conditioning continues to increase, mma conditioning workouts need to be more refined and sport specific then ever.

Traditional circuit training had trainee’s doing typical “old school” exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups.

Although these will continue to be staple exercises for any athlete, fighters and combat athletes need more sport specific mma conditioning workouts and exercises.

One limitation in traditional circuits is that typical bodyweight exercises do not overload the muscular system sufficiently enough to increase strength and power.

Though it is very important for mma conditioning workouts to condition a fighters body to move it’s own weight efficiently, it is also important that they include added resistance to really build tolerance to lactic acid build up that occurs in mma type movements.

Another limitation traditional circuit training has is not enough exercises that stress pulling movements, overhead movements, and side to side or lateral movements.

For a fighter to be in top condition, they must follow mma conditioning workouts that include exercises that work all of these movements.

Pulling is key for grappler’s pulling in the clinch or guard, overhead pressing important for building endurance in the shoulders for striking and other movements, and lateral movements are absolutely vital for developing power in striking along with core strength.

MMA conditioning workouts must include both bodyweight exercises, resistance exercises covering all planes of motion, and some type of power or plyometric exercise to really be complete.

Some examples of good bodyweight exercises to included in a mma conditioning workout circuit are:

• Push-ups
• Handstand push-ups
• Pull-ups
• Bear crawls
• Rope climbing
• Parallel bar dips

Examples of some good resistance exercises in a circuit are:

• Kettle bell swings
• Sandbag exercises (presses, squats, deadlifts, etc)
• Barbell complexes (every heard of the “Randy Couture workout?”
• Tire flipping
• Weighted sled

And finally, a complete mma conditioning workout will also include a few power or plyometric exercises, ususally in the beginning of the circuit and with just a few reps to focus on explosiveness and technique rather then fatigue.

Some examples of good power/plyometric exercises are:

• Box jumps
• Hurdle jumps
• plyo-push-ups
• Medicine ball throws (front slams, side toss’s, chest pass’s, etc)

Circuit training, like many other forms of physical fitness is constantly evolving. With the UFC and other big mma fight promotions becoming more and more popular, mma conditioning workouts are helping with this evolution to create the perfect athlete, whether in combat sports or otherwise.

For mma conditioning workouts that include the above exercises and more in complete and comprehensive programs specific for mma fighters, be sure to check out reviews of the top mma conditioning workouts here.

Train hard, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Conditioning Workouts

MMA workout routines, whether you are training in the various martial arts such as Brazilian Jujitsu, boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, wrestling, all of the above, developing your strength and power, or working on increasing your gas tank with intense cardiovascular training, one aspect that absolutely CANNOT be overlooked is the recovery phase.

Unlike many other sports where you have one session of skills training and then (maybe) a little strength and conditioning  on the side, mma fighters often times require more training then the average person even has time for.

Because of the training intensity and frequency of mma workout routines, mma fighters must also pay close attention to their post recovery or they won’t be physically ready for their next session.

Missing a training session, whether it’s grappling training, boxing, or hitting the weights means you may be falling behind your competition.

So what are the best post mma workout routine supplements for fighters and combat athletes?

1) Whey Protein: Almost everybody has heard of whey protein. As soon as your body is done burning up any carbs you’ve had prior to your training, it’ll start to use muscle tissue, which means a loss in strength. This is obviously not what you want, so it is important to follow up with a whey protein supplement immediately after an intense workout. The longer you wait after your workout, the more muscle tissue you’ll lose, so be sure to intake some immediately after your mma workout routine ends.

2) Glutamine: Glutamine not only assists in preventing breakdown of muscle tissue like whey protein, but will also help you recover much faster – meaning more training sessions. Since mma fighters often weight train and then follow up with a grappling, striking, and other skills training later on in the day, glutamine will help your muscles recover fast enough in between mma workout routines.

3) BCAA’s: These are three essential amino acids that the body cannot produce on it’s own, thus must be supplied through your food/supplement intake. These are especially needed when your mma workout routines consist of long cardiovascular workouts or if you are burning a lot more calories then you are consuming. It’s essentially for recovery in these two aspects but also helps replenish glutamine, so these two go hand in hand.

4) Creatine: Just like whey protien, most people have heard of creatine, and although it was questionable when it first became popular, it has been proven for over a decade now that it is a healthy and proven supplement. Creatine helps produce more “ATP”, the source of energy that is required for quick and explosive movements (such as strikes, shooting for a takedown, explosive weight training, etc). This means you will have faster recovery in between these explosive movements, which is key for more rapid development in all areas of mma.

Add these four supplements in your post mma workout routine recovery drinks and food intake and you’ll notice within weeks much faster recovery and improvement.

Combine this with a consistent, proper diet and at least 7 hours of sleep a night and your body will be a well oiled machine ready to take on the type of training the toughest sport in the world requires.

I hope this helps,

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine

GSP is an example of a strength and cardio machine

Anyone who knows the type of conditioning that is required to survive several rounds in a mixed martial arts bout understand that a high level of strength, power and cardio is absolutely vital.

Traditionally, when an athlete wanted to develop their strength and cardiovascular conditioning, these would essentially be two separate workouts. The athlete would strength train at one part of the day, then go run several miles or some other similar cardio exercise at another time of the day.

Surprisingly few are aware that you can develop your cardio, strength, and power at the same time in one mma workout routine.

In other words, how would you like to kill two birds with one stone (how the hell did this saying get popular, anyway?) by developing your cardio in your next mma weight training workout?

What most people think is that anytime you are resistance training or lifting weights that you are only developing strength and power in your muscles, and not your cardio.

The fact of the matter is, anytime you are breathing hard, where your heart is beating faster and you are huffing and puffing, you are developing your cardio.

This means that if you are lifting heavy weights for an hour long period, and your rest periods are short enough that you are breathing hard the WHOLE workout, then you are getting a cardiovascular workout.

However, lifting heavy weights, doing low reps, and taking long rest periods -though still may be a cardio workout – isn’t ideal for the type of conditioning required for mma fighters.

So in order to maximize your time, effort, and most importantly your results in your mma workout routine where you are not just developing strength and power in resistance training but you are training in a way that still makes it a great cardio workout, you’ll want to try circuit training.

There are many, many benefits to circuit training that in most cases actually develop your cardio far better then running around your block for several miles.

Some example benefits of circuit training are:

- More intense cardio sessions than running: meaning you are actually working your heart and lungs harder in a shorter period of time then simply running can do

- Trains the conditioning of your entire body, rather then just your legs as with running or cycling.

- Much more effective at burning calories and fat, thus a more faster and effective way then traditional cardio exercises

- Specific circuit training mma workout routines can increase your strength, power, strength endurance, power endurance, or all four all while increasing your cardio capacity

- More sport specific to mma (circuit training exercises are more similar to muscles and movements used in a fight, rather then just running)

These are just a few of the key benefits of circuit training. The bottom line is that you don’t have to train your strength and your cardio separately like it’s traditionally done.

In fact, it’s more effective to do them together, assuming you are following a specific mma workout routine with this purpose.

Not sure how to set up an effective circuit training workout? Eric Wong’s Ultimate MMA Strength and Conditioning Program contains a lot of different circuit training exercises in his book, especially towards the end after the main workouts he has in there.

Check it out here for more details on his book, I bought it over a year ago and still follow his programs to this day, all good stuff and I highly recommend it.

Hope this helps,

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine

Grip strength is important for many techniques, such as wrist control for setting up submissions

In the sport of mma, fighters need to maximize their strength and conditioning in all areas to the highest level possible. One type of strength that is often overlooked or undeveloped is wrist or grip strength.

Yes, exercises like grappling and weight training exercises such as pull-ups or dead-lifts will certainly help your grip strength, but a supplementary mma workout routine that specializes on wrist and grip strength is needed every so often.

When most people think of grip strength, they think of how well you can squeeze the hell out of someones hand in a handshake. However, this is only one aspect of grip strength, often known as the crushing grip.

Other forms of grip strength are the pinch grip, where you are holding or pulling weight between your thumb and fingers, forearm and grip endurance, how long your forearm muscles can endure a certain grip, and finger strength.

For mma and/or non-gi fighters, though all of these types of grip strength are important, the ones most relevant are the crushing grip and forearm grip endurance.

Besides the types of grip strength, another misconception is that grip and forearm strength is really only important to grappler’s. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The more solid of forearm strength you have, the more solid and powerful your punches are.

Think about the difference between getting hit with a club with a thick end vs. getting hit with a club with a thinner end. The thicker club will deliver more damage because it is more solid and has more mass.

Strong forearms to back a fist in a punch has the same effect.

On the other hand, (no pun intended) for grappler’s it is not just important to have a strong crushing grip but forearm and grip endurance as well for things like controlling your opponents wrist, submissions like the kimura, defending submissions such as arm-bars, and so on.

Below I have provided a solid mma workout routine specific for the development of grip strength and overall more developed forearms. Try this routine two to three days a week for a couple of weeks with the intent of progressing in weight and time for the appropriate exercises:

MMA Workout Routine for Grip Strength

When training for mma, it is not enough just to have strength. It is not enough to just have endurance. One of the most important attributes to develop in your mma workout routine is strength endurance.

Strength endurance is not the same thing as muscular endurance, though both should be developed in your mma workout routine. Muscular endurance is the ability to execute muscular contractions over and over again for a length of time, where strength endurance is the ability to execute MAXIMUM muscular contractions over and over again.

Think 100 push-ups as muscular endurance and bench pressing your 1-3 rep max for as many reps as you can in a 3 minute period as strength endurance.

Why Strength Endurance is Important in MMA

Put quite simply, if you don’t have strength endurance then being stronger then your opponent isn’t going to be an advantage for more then a few minutes into the fight or even after a few seconds.

If your muscular conditioning isn’t developed properly then after just a few maximum muscular contractions (such as picking your opponent up for a take-down, defending a take-down, or failing an attempt for a guillotine choke) you’ll no longer have that level of strength available for the rest of the fight.

There are many different mma workout routines to help develop your strength endurance. You can develop it partially by just increasing your maximum strength, or working on your muscular conditioning.

If you want a mma workout routine to build both simultaneously, then one of the best ways to accomplish this is strength and power complexes or circuits.

Here is an example of a set of power complexes from a typical mma workout routine:

5 reps of heavy squats followed immediately by 10 reps of burpees. This would be 1 set, and the goal is to do as many sets of these as you can in a given time-frame, such as 5 minutes.

1 Round = 5 min

1 Set = 5 reps of squats followed by 10 reps of burpees

Goal: As many sets as possible in 1 round

In a full mma workout routine you’ll want to execute several of these “rounds”, with each round a different combination of exercises (in other words, round 2 would be 5 minutes of two different exercises other then the squats and burpees, such as deadlifts followed by mountain climbers).

Variations of Progress for Strength Endurance

Depending on what you want to focus on determines how you want to progress with a workout like this.

So if you wanted to increase your muscular endurance and conditioning, you can use the same weight each workout but work on doing more sets per round and/or decreasing your rest period between sets.

On the other hand, if you wanted to increase your strength endurance, you could progress by doing the same amount of sets per round and/or keeping the rest periods the same but increase the weight in each workout.

In summary, always keep in mind that anytime you build new levels of strength, it’s is equally important as a mma fighter to take that new strength and convert it into strength endurance, otherwise 80% of your strength potential could become obsolete very quickly in the ring or cage.

Hope this helps,

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine

Before bringing in Philippi, Mir admitted that his previous mma workout routine for strength was just basic body building routines that made him look and feel good.

After incorporating many of the Strongman principles into his new mma workout routine, Mir’s whole perspective on strength training changed; along with his physique, strength and power.

In my opinion, a lot more fighters ought to take the same approach that Mir and Philippi have for their mma workout routine.

It still surprises me that serious fighters still lack basic knowledge and think that body building programs are effective mma workout routines for mixed martial artists.

Strongman Training and MMA

Although Strongman workouts are not 100% efficient in terms of carrying over to mma, they are a HELL of a lot better then body building programs.

Philippi knew enough to take many principles of Strongman training and incorporate them with the needs of an mma fighter, and the result was the beast we saw that put away the likes of Check Congo in a matter of seconds.

One of the best principles that we can take away from Philippi is the fact that he had Mir…

ADD WEIGHT TO THE BAR

He had him just focus on squatting, pressing, and pulling heavier weight. In one of their training video clips, you’ll notice that all the exercises he was doing – squats, farmer’s walks, sled dragging – all had HEAVY weight.

We as fighters often tend to over analyze sport specific training and some times forget the basics.

Although lunges, sprints, box jumps, air squats, take-down drills and many other more sport specific exercises for the legs of mma fighters are important, it is equally important to remember that your level of strength is the FOUNDATION for all the various uses of your muscles.

Think about it. Working on strength endurance when you don’t have a lot of strength is a waste and getting ahead of yourself.

Power is extremely vital for mma fighters, and power is simply strength x speed, which means without strength, your just fast, not powerful.

Think of strength as the basis of potential for all of your physical capabilities. More strength equals more potential for strength endurance, power, power endurance, muscle endurance, and so on.

Although a must for mma fighters for developing strength and power endurance and conditioning, things like circuit training, complexes, Tabata, body weight exercises, etc. all have a time and place.

Sometimes a Fighter Just Needs to Build Raw Size and Tire-Iron Bending Strength

I believe at least once a year a fighter should take around 2 to 3 months to focus their mma workout routine on increasing strength. One of the best ways to do this is the 5×5 system with just a few basic compound exercises.

Focus solely on adding weight to exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, bent-over rows, and military presses.

In increase of 20 – 50 pounds in strength for each of these lifts is not unrealistic if you do it right and follow a solid routine.

Take the Rocky Approach

Sometimes we need to take the approach Rocky Balboa took in his last epic series. I’ll end it with one of my favorite quotes from Rocky’s trainer when prepping him for his training for his last fight:

“…what we’ll be calling on is good ol’ fashion blunt force trauma. Horsepower. Heavy-duty, cast-iron, piledriving punches that will have to hurt so much they’ll rattle his ancestors. Every time you hit him with a shot, it’s gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train. Yeah! Let’s start building some hurtin’ bombs!”

Train hard, fellow fighters and fans,

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine