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Posts Tagged ‘MMA Strength Training’

MMA Workouts are for Strength Building – Not Bodybuilding

August 24th, 2010

Derek Manuel

As the above image of the heavyweight enigma Fedor Emelianenko suggests, looks can be deceiving. At first glance you wouldn’t think he’s a very physically strong or conditioned human being, but anyone who’s seen him fight would attest otherwise.

Have you ever rolled with an opponent who, before clashing, you thought you were going to be able to manhandle – only to discover he’s freakishly more strong then you anticipated?

What about the other way around? If you train in MMA or some kind of grappling art long enough, I’m sure once you were intimidated by the muscle size of your opponent, and then realizing right after you start grappling that he isn’t nearly as strong as you thought.

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Tags: MMA Conditioning, MMA Strength Training, mma training workouts, MMA Workouts

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MMA Workouts with Odd Shaped Objects

July 12th, 2010

Derek Manuel

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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.

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Posted in MMA Conditioning, MMA Strength Training, MMA Workout Routine, MMA Workouts

Tags: MMA Conditioning Workouts, MMA Strength Training, mma training workouts, MMA Workout Routine, MMA Workouts

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MMA Strength Training for Muscle Endurance Part 2

July 6th, 2010

Derek Manuel

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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:

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Posted in MMA Strength Training, MMA Workout Routine

Tags: MMA Strength Training, MMA Workout Routine

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MMA Strength Training for Muscle Endurance

July 1st, 2010

Derek Manuel

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When most people think of developing muscle endurance, they immediately think of body weight exercises and light resistance resistance training for higher volume of reps.

Although this is indeed a good way develop muscle endurance, if this was ALL you did, you would actually be limiting the development of your muscle endurance tremendously.

You’d be developing just the same if not better muscle endurance by doing the exact opposite: lift heavy weight.

“What the hell are you talking about Derek,” you might say, “you’re trying to tell me lifting heavy weight for low reps is a better way to build muscle endurance? You’re crazy.”

Although I indeed may be a little crazy, there is some truth to what I’m talking about; let me explain:

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Posted in MMA Conditioning, MMA Strength Training, MMA Workouts

Tags: MMA Strength Training, MMA Workout

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MMA Strength Training: Free-Weights or Machines?

June 3rd, 2010

Derek Manuel

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MMA Strength Training: Free-Weights or Machines?

MMA strength training is much more complex then what most other athletes require. Though there is no one best way to develop mma specific strength, I often time suggest free-weights over machines at least 75% of the time.

The main reason being is that mma fighters need to develop not only the major muscles of the body, but they equally need to develop their stabilizer muscles as well, and machines take a lot away from this.

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Posted in MMA Strength Training, MMA Workouts

Tags: MMA Strength and Conditioning, MMA Strength Training

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MMA Strength Training: 1 Pound at a Time

November 29th, 2009

Derek Manuel

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Today I wanted to write about mma strength training. There are all different types of strength a fighter needs to optimize his or her performance in the ring or cage, but today I just want to go over absolute strength.

Most mma fighters know that absolute strength, or your 1-3 rep maximum in a given exercise, is by itself not very useful after the first 20 seconds of combat.

As soon as the lactic acid in your muscles build up and you’ve exploded with everything you had for a couple techniques such as a takedown, takedown defense, or a vicious striking combination, your absolute strength drops by a LOT unless you have develop strength endurance.

But what a lot of fighters fail to recognize is that strength endurance first begins with having a good amount of strength. Otherwise, you’ll just be continuously enduring a weak amount of strength.

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Posted in MMA Strength Training

Tags: MMA Strength Training

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MMA Strength Training: Weighted Pull-ups

November 24th, 2009

Derek Manuel

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MMA Strength Training: Weighted Pull-Ups

In a MMA fight, fighters often use more of their upper body pulling muscles rather then pushing muscles. Pulling your opponent in the clinch,

pulling your opponents head down, pulling your opponent while in your guard, pulling and defending from an armbar, applying the several choke holds,

are all scenarios mma fighters frequently find themselvs in.

One of the best ways to increase your upper body strength that I rarely see people do in the gym is weighted pull-ups. I have seen this exercise

in every mma strength training program I have ever recommended, and there is a reason.

“But I do lat pull-downs, isn’t that the same thing?”

Quite frankly, no. If you have ever read any of my previous stuff you know I am a strong advocate of free-weights over most (99.9% of the time) machines.

The reason being is that with free-weights you are developing more functional strength, such as your stabilizer muscles and balance. With machines, the plane

of motion is guided and assisted, limiting your stabilizer and supporting muscles.

Am I against machines? No, not by any means, but if you are looking to build real world, functional, and raw strength free-weights are your best bet. There’s

a time and place for machines, but I’m getting off topic and we can discuss that later.

Back to weighted pull-ups. By progressively increasing the weight tied around your weight in your pull-ups, you will build some real back and arm strength

that most other back exercises don’t quite match. You get the FULL range of motion, you are pulling your body weight (which is always a good idea for mma

fighters and combat atheletes) along with an addtional load, and their are a million different variations you can do.

In terms of your mma strength training workouts though, I would suggest you focus more on progressively adding more and more weight with just good old

fashioned pull-ups with your palms facing away or chin ups where your palms are facing towards you.

As you start to develop a good base of pull-up strength, such as reps of 5 with 50+ lbs tied around your waist, then you can start adding variables to your

pull-ups, such as different grips, pull-ups with a gi or towel to target your grip strength, widening or narrowing your grip, etc.

See below for a great example of 19 different variations for pull-ups.

[video here]

One last benefit with weighted pull-ups is that in my personal experience there is no pulling exercise better that carries over to all the other

exercises that involve your pulling muscles. When you continuously add weight and and can do regular pull-ups with heavier and heavier resistance,

you’ll also notice a huge improvement in strength with exercises like lat-pulldowns, t-bar rows, bent-over barbell rows, dumbbell rows, seated rows,

curls, etc.

Start included weighted pull-ups in your mma strength training workouts. If all you can do is 3 regular pull-ups without additional weight, then keep

at it until you can do 8 or more. Then slowly increase the weight just like any other resistance exercise and before you know it you’ll be

the only guy in your gym doing pull-ups with a 80lb dumbbell around your waist.

But more importantly, your next opponent in the ring or cage will have the fight taken out of him as soon as he feels the strength and power in your

upper body in the clinch.

Weighted Pull-ups In a MMA fight, fighters often use more of their upper body pulling muscles rather then pushing muscles. Pulling your opponent in the clinch, pulling your opponents head down, pulling your opponent while in your guard, pulling and defending from an armbar, applying the several choke holds, are all scenarios mma fighters frequently find themselves in.

One of the best ways to increase your upper body strength that I rarely see people do in the gym is weighted pull-ups. I have seen this exercise in every mma strength training program I have ever recommended, and there is a reason.

“But I do lat pull-downs, isn’t that the same thing?”

Not exactly. If you have ever read any of my previous stuff you know I am a strong advocate of free-weights over most (99.9% of the time) machines; at least when it comes to raw strength.

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Posted in MMA Strength Training

Tags: MMA Strength Training

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MMA Conditioning Workouts: How to Save Time While Developing Strength And Cardio Simultaniously

November 18th, 2009

Derek Manuel

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One obstacle even the most motivated fighter in world will often face is the inability to realistically sacrifice the time it takes to elite levels of mma strength and conditioning.

I mean, the average person has a job, a family, school, or some other major obligation that simply cannot be comprised for putting the time it takes to become a mma fighter.

If you aspire to become a fighter with a chance to compete with some of the best, you have to develop a certain level of mastery in three different categories:

Martial Arts Skill

Plain and simple, if you want to be a good fighter, you’re going to have to put in the man hours it takes to learn how to fight.

This includes striking, kicking, the clinch, throws and take-downs, grappling, and everything else in between; not to mention putting these altogether so that you can harmoniously transition from each of these distinctive techniques and their respective styles.

This alone can take YEARS to develop and requires a minimum three to five days a week of consistently improving your technique and skill.

There is no short-cut in regards to time when it comes to developing the skill it takes to become a mma fighter.

Strength and Power

Fortunately, because of the nature of the human body, developing strength and power doesn’t take several hours a day to develop. On the contrary, it shouldn’t take more than 4 hours a week to constantly improve your strength and power, and in many cases much less.

This is something most people can fit into their schedule without making any major sacrifices of time in their daily life.

Cardiovascular Conditioning

Developing your cardiovascular conditioning, like strength and power, doesn’t have to take too much time out of your day, but still requires consistent effort.

No more then 20 – 60 minutes of cardio 4 to 5 days a week is needed to develop maximum levels of cardio conditioning.

Again, developing your cardio doesn’t take too much time in your day by itself, but once you begin putting all three of these together, it can add up to several hours A DAY that many people simply don’t have.

Saving Time with Circuit Training in your MMA Conditioning Workouts

Once you factor in your strength, power, cardio and overall conditioning in, the hours start to really pile up.

Like I stated above, the average busy person just doesn’t have an extra 2 or more hours a day to dedicate to strength and conditioning, especially if they are heavily engaged in attending a mma school to develop their skill daily.

There is a way, however, to save time by combining your strength training with your cardio in your mma conditioning workouts. This is through circuit training, also known as complexes.

A circuit is moving from one exercise to another with little to no rest periods in between each exercise, not stopping to rest until one “circuit” is complete.

With each workout, you can either increase the weight you do for each exercise, or decrease the time it takes to complete a circuit.

The great thing about circuit training is that compresses the time it takes to develop strength, power, AND cardiovascular conditioning into one mma conditioning workout; and the best part is that circuit training normally doesn’t take longer than 25 minutes a day to complete.

Don’t assume that with circuit training you’ll work any less hard or get any less of a result. In fact, this type of training is one of the most physically demanding things you can do if you really push yourself, and is a staple in every fighter’s mma training workouts.

To learn more about circuit training and complexes for mma fighters, or to get started on proven mma conditioning workouts developed specifically for aspiring fighters who have little time but still want the results, the top two programs I would recommend are

circuit-training-room

One obstacle even the most motivated fighter in world will often face is the inability to realistically sacrifice the time it takes to develop elite levels of mma strength and conditioning.

The average person has a job, a family, school, or some other major obligation that simply cannot be comprised for putting the time it takes to become a mma fighter.

If you aspire to become a fighter with a chance to compete with some of the best, you have to develop a certain level of mastery in three different categories:

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