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