In a typical MMA workout routine that focus’s on using body-weight, most people think of exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, bear crawls, etc.

Though these are indeed excellent bodyweight exercises, another method fighters should include in their mma strength and conditioning workouts are doing resistance exercises, such as with dumbbells or barbells, using actual bodyweight as the resistance.

Though it’s key to condition your body to get comfortable moving it’s own weight, it’s important not to forget that when you’re in a MMA fight, you’re not just battling your own resistance, but that of your opponents.

That being said, it is equally important that you include this type of resistance training in your mma workout routine.

Here are some of the most important exercises you should be doing in your mma workouts with your bodyweight as the resistance:

- Bench press’s

- Squats

- Deadlifts (both regular and stiff-legged)

- Lunges (both forward and reverse)

- Bent-Over Barbell Rows

- Shoulder Press’s

A good measure of relative strength, which is your strength to bodyweight ratio, is to be able to perform at least a couple reps of each of these exercises with your bodyweight in good form.

If you find yourself not able to do at least 3 -5 reps with any of these exercises with your bodyweight in good form, then you know a good place to start.

For exercises that you find relatively lighter, such as with squats and deadlifts, you can work on your strength endurance with these exercises through various mma workout routines.

Most people struggle with the lunges and the shoulder presses at this weight, so you may want to build up your levels of strength with these exercises first before working them into your mma workout routines for strength endurance.

After all, it’s called strength endurance, if you have no strength to begin with, what the hell are you trying to endure – weakness?

Next time, before one of your mma workouts, record the amount of reps you can do for each exercise above (remember to have a spotter) in good form, and make it a goal to increase these numbers every several months.

Don’t forget to share your results below!

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Workout Routine

MMA Strength Training with Death Sets

When most people think of training with heavy weight, they follow the mindset that it must be done with low reps. Same kind of thinking goes with the reverse: light weight, a lot more reps.

When it comes to MMA strenght training however, mma fighters are the rare type of athletes that need not only raw strength, but strength endurance as well, or the ability to exert maximum or near maximum effort over and over for a long period of time.

One way you can incorporate this into your MMA strength training routine is through power complexes, where you superset a compound exercise with heavy weight and low reps immediately with a light or body weight exercise for a lot of reps.

This is a very effective way of developing both strength and strength enduranace, and you can do this to develop your power and power endurance as well.

Death Sets

Another but much less known method fighters can incorporate into their mma strength training routine is called “Death Sets,” and by their name you’ll get a glimpse of how grueling they are.

The concept of death sets is simple: heavy weight for a lot of reps.

Huh? Isn’t that a paradox?

Maybe, but this can be done with a few exercises, mainly compound exercises for the bigger muscles.

The most grueling exercise you can do, but also perhaps the most beneficial as a mma fighter and complete athlete overall, are death sets with squats.

Here’s how you do them. Load up the barbell with weight you would normally do 10 reps with. How do you make this into a death set? Do 20 reps with it instead.

On paper, this may sound illogical and even impossible, but most people underestimate their capacity with certain exercises.

You can’t do this with every exercise, such as isolation exercises, but with the major compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, and bent-over barbell rows, you can definitely give it hell.

Try incorporating these into your mma strength training workouts a couple times a year. I usually don’t suggest doing them more then 2 to 3 times a year, 6 or so weeks at a time, as it’s too exhausting to do in conjuction with regular MMA conditioning and skills training and requires a lot of rest in between each workout (3- 4 days in between each).

You’ll not just discover it’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do physically, but you’ll be developing strength, strength endurance, conditioning, cardio, and mental toughness all in one.

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans.

Derek Manuel
MMA Strength Training

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.

Some people naturally have better looking builds then others, and some people are naturally strong but don’t look it. And then there are those gifted with both, such as the case with Georges St. Pierre.

However, there are some people who can train as hard as GSP and for as long as he has (though I seriously doubt that many do) but will never have the physique of the Canadian welterweight.

Again, everybody’s born with different physical genetics, and everybody develops at a different pace then each other both looks wise and strength wise.

The point is this: for combat athletes, it is much more important to develop one’s strength and conditioning in your mma workouts and not gauge you progress on how you look.

Of course, any athlete who follows a solid mma workout and has a good diet will most definitely develop a better physique then if they sat around on their asses all day eating Twinkie’s, but this should just be a by-product of your training, and not the end goal.

If you’ve read any of my past stuff, you’ll know how I emphasize power endurance as the main physical attribute mma fighters want to develop to be in optimal fighters shape.

Power exercises means moving resistance quickly. When you are moving resistance quickly, you are not necessarily building the muscle fibers that are ideal for muscle mass and definition.

This means you can be very powerful, but not look physically imposing (i.e. Fedor).

Now, I’m a guy, and I like having a fit and muscular and lean looking body just like the next guy, so I’m not saying that working out with the goal of looking good from your mma workouts is necessarily a bad thing.

What I’m saying is that if you are planning on fighting or competing in some kind of martial art competition, remember to follow the advice of Pat Riley, “the main this is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

And the main thing in a mma strength and conditioning workout is to further develop your strength and conditioning.

If you want to throw in an extra set of curls every once in a while or do a couple ab exercises that have absolutely no use other then building a thick muscular six pack, go ahead, especially if it’s the beginning of your “training camp” and your fight isn’t for a while.

But the closer it gets to your fight or competition, you’d better be focusing on your performance in your coach’s eyes rather then how you look in the mirror.

Hope this helps,

Derek Manuel
MMA Training Workouts

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 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:

Strength Training vs Light Resistance Training

Let’s say you can bench press 185 pounds for 1 rep, and I can only bench 165 pounds for 1 rep. In most cases, this means that you would most likely be able to perform more reps then me with 135 reps. Follow me?

Now let’s say you go on a MMA strength training program with a focus on just increasing your strength on all the major compound exercises – heavy weight, low amount of reps.

Meanwhile, I continue to build my muscle endurance by doing a lot of body weight exercises and high rep, light resistance exercises.

Fast forward 3 months. Through your strength training program you increased your bench press to 215 pounds for 1 rep.

Me on the other hand, didn’t increase any of my max lifts but I can perform more reps with 135 pounds in the bench press, and my cardiovascular and muscular recovery is much faster between sets with this weight…..

…. but so is yours with 135 pounds, right?

Think about it. Not only did you increase your strength, but you automically increased your muscle endurance as a by- product. Doing 10 reps with 135 pounds on the bench press is going to be much easier for you after you increase your 1 rep max from 185 lbs to 215 lbs.

But me on the other hand, although I can do more reps with 135 lbs, am probably still not going to be able to do much more then a few reps at 165 or  higher.

Did we both increase our muscle endurance? Yes. But what’s the difference and why is it important for fighters to include MMA strength training in their muscle endurance workouts?

Let’s say you and I weigh the same weight, and fought each other in a mma competition or grappling match (for sake of this example, let’s assume our skill and technique are equal).

Whenever we tie up in different positions such as the clinch, grappling, etc. and use physical force against each other, I have a much more likely chance of “gassing out” then you.

Why? Because since you are much stronger then me, your resistance against mine is much more work for me then my resistance against yours.

Looking at it another way, compare you doing reps with 165 pounds on the bench press vs me doing reps with that same weight.

Since I’m not as strong as you, I’m exerting MUCH more physical strength then you. Naturally then, my muscles are going to lose steam much quicker then yours.

Summary

In short, increasing your maximum strength is the foundation for all muscular conditioning. By developing your max lifts in your MMA strength training workouts, you will still be increasing your potential for muscle and strength endurance.

For mma fighters and trainers, it’s always best to mix these different mma workout routines so that you develop all the necessary attributes of a fighter.

If you’re looking for the best put together mma workout programs available, be sure to check out the top reviewed MMA Strength Training Workouts Here if you haven’t already.

Train hard, train smart, fellow fighters and fans,

Derek Manuel
MMA Strength Training

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.

When building strength with machines, a lot of the movement is guided and leveraged and the machine is doing what your stabilizer muscles would be doing without the support.

With free-weights, the movement is unstable, and when lifting the weight you are not only developing your stabilizer muscles by forcing them to keep your movement balanced, but you are training your brain to learn how to deal with resistance in an unstable environment, something mma fighters brain’s should become familiar with since they often find themselves in these positions.

Free-weights should make up the majority of exercises in your mma strength training program since they develop the type of raw and functional strength you simply cannot get through machines.

Balancing two heavy dumbbells will develop much more functional strength that will carry over to mma then trying to build strength doing bench presses on a smith machine.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I am totally against machines, there certainly is a time and place.

For example, if you are doing pull-ups and after a few sets your muscles are so exhausted you can barely squeeze out a few reps on your next, you can go over to the lat pull-down bar and reduce the weight to an amount where you can do the amount of desired reps.

This and other alternatives are great ways to build muscle endurance.

But for building strength, free-weights are almost always a better choice in you mma strength training workouts.

Once you are looking to develop other types of strength such as strength endurance and muscular conditioning, you can incorporate machines in your workouts along side of free-weights.

In summary, if you are looking to up your strength and power, free-weights should be the staple of your mma strength training workouts.

Mix it up with barbells and dumbbells, sandbags and kettle bells, doing exercises standing vs sitting, and even doing some exercises on the stability ball.

Each one of these methods are unique ways to increase your strength and stabilization muscles from various angles, something machines simply cannot do.

Train hard, fellow fighters.

Derek Manuel
MMA Strength Training

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.

So in the words of Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: first things first. Mixed martial artists should first off (and continuously throughout their career) build as much strength as their training and schedule permits.

One of the best and surest ways to build strength in an mma strength training routine is to use the slowly but surely method. Let’s say you want to increase your maximum bench press from 225 pounds to 250 pounds for 1-3 reps.

The surest way to do this is to follow either a singles program, where you do a high amount of sets with only ONE rep per set (such as 10 x 1) or a 5 x 5 program, doing two progressively heavier warm-ups and three sets of five with the same “working weight.”

Each workout, instead of increasing the sets, reps, or increasing the weight dramatically (even if you can) just increase the weight by ONE pound.

So let’s say the first week for the bench press you do:

1st set: 1 x 5 w/ 175 lbs
2nd set: 1 x 5 w/ 200 lbs
3rd, 4th, and 5th set: 3 x 5 w/ 215 lbs

After a few days of rest (at least 48 hours) you do the same workout for your bench press except you increase it by one pound, so it looks like this:

1 set: 1 x 5 w/ 176 lbs
2nd set: 1 x 5 w/ 201 lbs
3rd, 4th, and 5th set: 3 x 5 w/ 216 lbs

By following this routine two or three times a week, you’ll continuously increase your weight in the bench press by 2 or 3 pounds a week. It doesn’t sound like much, but after 12 weeks of doing this, you’ll have increased your bench press 1-3 rep max by 24-36 pounds!

This method is great for mma fighters because you never really increase the weight so much that you get sore, which isn’t fun if you have other skills and conditioning training to do throughouth the week.

You also run a very low risk of ever hitting a sticking point because you’re only increasing the weight by ONE pound, which makes it relatively easy to progress with not only physically but psychologically.

Give this a try with some of the other major compound exercises as well, and you will be well on your way of developing the foundational level of absolute strength needed for mma strength training.

Hope this helps,

Derek Manuel
MMA Strength Training

upper body in the clinch.

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.

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 development in 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 waist 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 athletes) 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.

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 including weighted pull-ups in your mma strength training workouts. If all you can do is 1-3 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 80 lb dumbbell around your waist.

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

Train hard fellow fighters and fans,

Derek Manuel
MMA Workouts

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:

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 takes 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 mma strength and conditioning.

There is a way, however, to save time by combining your mma 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 a proven mma conditioning workout developed specifically for aspiring fighters who have little time but still want the results, the program I would recommend is:

Eric Wong’s Ultimate MMA Strength and Conditioning Program

Eric does a great job in covering every aspect of strength and conditioning for mma fighters, and breaks it up into a customizable yet effective workout program for every individual and their unique schedules.

Learn more about his program here

Train hard fellow fighters and fans,

Derek Manuel
MMA Conditioning Workouts