So I was on a mini-vacation for the Fourth of July, which of course is my favorite holiday. In any event I may have been away at the beach but I did not miss UFC 116 and it proved to be a great show once again. I went three for five with my picks and as my wife liked to point out Saturday night, “that’s pretty good for you.” But anyway, the main event at UFC 116 as you know was Brock Lesner going up against Shane Carwin. I had Carwin in this one and by all looks of it I thought it was going to be over in the first round when Carwin put Lesner on his back and pounded away on him.
As that was going on though Joe Rogan pointed out that Carwin could have easily tired himself out. If you are a fighter you know a relentless ground and pound, like the one that Carwin was displaying can take a toll on you physically as you need great conditioning to keep at it. As the round came to an end and Lesner survived the onslaught we could all see the physical strain it took on Carwin. Another thing that is affected when you cannot finish a fight when you have your opponent almost finished is the mental side of things. It’s almost a let down, but that is for another post.
As I sat and watched Lesner finishing off Carwin, I thought about the conditioning you need to have to sustain such a vicious ground and pound. A few weeks ago I had posted a conditioning protocol using a sledgehammer. In that same session I did a short one-minute “finisher” to my training session. This video was going to be used at a later date but after seeing the fight I had to put it up. Using mini-sledgehammers and the same car tire I did one-minute of straight pounding on the tire mimicking the ground and pound you find in MMA. Each mini-sledge weighs five pounds, the object here is to get out as many reps as possible in a minute. Obviously you can add time and see how many you can bang out. Check out the video below, you can see at the end I am a bit tired. This protocol will ensure that your ground and pound conditioning will be at top level. So go pick up some mini-sledgehammers and an old car tire and start your ground and pound conditioning today! Train Hard! Train Smart!

Tags: Brock Lesner, Conditioning, Ground and Pound, mixed martial arts, MMA, Shane Carwin, sledge hammers, tires, UFC, UFC 116