In the post fight interviews after the explosive and wild UFC 115 card, Mirko Cro Crop confirmed a great point regarding mma conditioning that I wrote about a few months back.

When asked about his training coming up to the fight, the Croatian native talked about how in the past he would be able to do 5 -10 minutes of high intensity rounds on the punching bag. But then, 3 – 5 minutes into a fight, he would still find himself gassed out.

This is when he stated a very important point when it comes to mma conditioning that I think few mma fighters realize when he said…

“a punching bag is one thing, sparring is another.” – Mirko Cro Crop

He admitted that he didn’t use to have sparring partners in the past, and in his latest fight he brought in 3 professionals in which they trained hard with an emphasis on sparring.

He went on to say after this change that his conditioning was much better in his latest fight against Pat Barry, where even in the third round he felt great and that this was the best he’s ever felt conditioning wise.

Bruce Lee once said that the best way to condition for an event is repetition of the actual performance of the event. A while back I wrote about how sparring is the absolute best way to mimic the mma conditioning of a real fight. Read it here

As simple and obvious as it is, not enough mma fighters actually spend enough time sparring.

MMA conditioning workouts of all sorts are great supplemental workouts to increase your strength and conditioning for mma, and they are also great to isolate and focus on a particular attribute, such as anaerobic endurance, power endurance, maximum strength, etc.

However, when it comes training your body to condition itself for a fight, there’s no substitute to the closest thing to the actual event, sparring.

But there’s no longer a need to take my word for it, a legend in the sport and still every improving mma fighter, Mirko Cro Crop said it himself.

I’ve always been told to only take advice from those who have the results you want, and what better advice about mma conditioning can you get from a living legend in the sport who’s been fighting for over a decade.

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Conditioning