With all the training that goes into MMA sometimes it is hard to keep track of the progress you are making. This is where journal keeping comes into play. Journal writing is not for little girls anymore.
Keeping a journal for strength training progress is a basic coaching tool that has been often overlooked and seldom talked about. That Jiu-jitsu practitioners keeping journals of what they learned in training classes should be of no surprise when record keeping and statistics are a part of so many competitive sports.
When I speak of keeping a journal I am not just talking about keeping a record of what you learned in class. A journal should be of your experiences in training, weaknesses, strengths, mental impressions, triumphs and failures on the matt as well as your plan for your next trainings. Note how those moves worked for you in training, how you felt during a training session, if you have done back to back training session did you feel fatigued? If you train at different hours, when do you feel your best?
Keeping a journal helps enhance your training experience. When looking back at your journal you should look for the things that worked for you and the things that hindered you. Always look for the mistakes you have made and your specific plans to improve upon them. Write down your weaknesses and then a few months later go back and see if you have improved upon them or neglected them. Writing them down will help reinforce your need to work on them.
Go out and purchase yourself a small notebook that you can carry around and a pen. Start writing down everything that you experience in training and watch how your development become elevated. Your weaknesses will become strengths and your MMA game will improve dramatically by just having a more complete knowledge of yourself.
It is easy to find direction in your training when you are awaiting a moment in the near future when you will be fighting your next MMA opponent. A great challenge to any athlete, MMA fighters included is to make every single training session saturated with purpose, a fight nearing or not.
Training sessions for athletes and MMA fighters are an optimum time to actively train both your mind and body for upcoming challenges. If you are approaching training as one separate from the other then you are doing a disservice to both your mind and body. Mental hardiness as well as physical toughness is built in training. Without a purpose training can get lackadaisical, unfocused and in turn less effective to prepare an MMA fighter.
Deciding an achievement focus for your training session is a good way to keep your MMA session focused and goal driven. Every workout then becomes a way to reach success and address weakness. You must decide what your training achievement focus is and what will spell success for your workout. The achievement is up to the fighter, the person being trained and their corner to decide.
Finding a purpose for your training in MMA will also allow you to take full advantage of all of your resources. With purpose for your sessions you can focus on the different schools of training that make up your support training system. This is also the time to see if you are neglecting one facet of your training over another hence allowing you to prepare to add more of what you have been lacking.
Many times what we do most in our own training sessions will be what we are best at. This broadens the gap between our strengths and weaknesses. Our weak points will stay weak and our strong points will flourish until the weak negatively impacts overall performance. Making the purpose of a training session to identify your weaknesses and then making the purpose of following sessions to address such downfall areas will do wonders for your MMA performance. There is no option but to tackle what may be a weakness if you plan to. You just stick to your purpose daily.
Just as an Army plans for combat, so should the MMA fighter be training for their own challenges. There is no room for misdirection in training when you have a challenge to meet. Plan a purpose for training every time you train. Do not waste your own precious time nor energy both physically or mentally with undirected training sessions. You will find that the purpose driven training session will leave you feeling more efficient, accomplished, well trained and mentally focused.
There are not many times in the life of an adult that can send your anticipation wheeling like a child awaiting Christmas or a visit to your favorite theme park. When you are lucky enough to recapture these feelings of excitement as a “grown up” you would be a fool not to jump at the chance, or in this case, jump squat at the chance. Visiting Martin Rooney and taking part in the Training for Warriors Level 1 Instructor Course was just this type of experience for this fitness professional.
Upon entering the Parisi Speed School location in Paramus New Jersey you are immediately in training awe. The facility itself is impressive beyond most people’s training dreams and a feeling of wanting more is palpable. Within minutes will be some of the most impressive motivational as well as physical teaching and mentoring possibly in existence.
Martin has an amazing presence that makes you want to share both his belief in physical and mental fitness as well as pushes you to question the things that you have been sold by the fitness industry. It becomes obvious the difference between a job and a calling to this man, if it was just a job he would push you to think what he thinks, when it is a calling as he has he drives you to find your own meaning and place amongst greatness in the field.
When you enter a Training for Warriors Certification you will also find yourself amongst like minded people from places as far as Spain and Canada who have very purposefully landed in front of this man to gather all he has to know as well as challenge themselves physically. Personal Trainers, Army Rangers, Law Enforcement, and champions meeting in one location with intentions to absorb as much as possible.
The information both shared and experienced hands on is priceless. There is more given and received in two days at the TFW Certification Seminar than in most month long courses, including physical challenges that your body will not soon forget. No secrets kept, no fitness miracles just hard work and result oriented training, common sense and a willingness to question “why”?
Martin’s methods of evaluating client’s physical weaknesses are practical and vital to good training. The TFW concepts on addressing these weaknesses in “prehab” as well as warmup components are helpful and can instantly be added to your personal as well as your client training sessions. Martin explains the place new and popular workout gadgets have in a program and when the good old basics of fitness should be relied upon. Sprints, barbell complexes, and multiple challenges are explained to keep clients physically challenged and mentally engaged.
Be willing to release the Warrior Within, enter Rooney’s world with an open mind, a hunger to change both yours and the lives of others and not just physically.
Over the last few years I realized that I was missing something in my training. Now I was training hard and seeing results but there was one component that was missing. The thing that was missing was actually training for a purpose. In my mind that meant some type of competition.
So I was always looking for something to compete in. Then in December while I was on Facebook I came across an ad for the Spartan Race. So I clicked on it read that it was a three-mile race with obstacles and I was instantly hooked. I signed up as fast as I could. Finally I found something that I could train for that really interested me.
So last week I took the Spartan challenge in Tuxedo, New York. Did I do as well as I thought I would? Not a chance. So while I was in the middle of the race I just kept thinking about two things. Finishing the race and not quitting and how I could change up my training to do better the next time out.
When you try something new in your life especially something physical like this you quickly realize your weaknesses. Let me restate that, your weaknesses smack you in the face. My main weakness was my aerobic capacity. Running up and down a ski slope can make you realize this quickly. Now those of you that know me, I do not run long distances, just not my thing. So in my training I tried to run the least amount, plus the aggravating shin splints also restricted too much running. While running up those hills and crawling under barbed wire I was reminded of another weakness that I have known about but been avoiding. My hips were so tight, in other words I need to increase my hip flexibility. Running up hill as your hips tighten up, not so pleasant.
So after rinsing all the mud off of me and walking to the car for the hour drive home, I just kept thinking about the ways to fix these problems as I train for the next Spartan Race. So as I gear up for the Spartan Sprint in Massachusetts I am making the minor adjustments in my training. I will be adding a lot more single legwork in my strength training for my hips and adding some running to the program. But most of the running will be going uphill pulling a sled behind me. With these adjustments in training I will see better results.
If you are interested in competing in one of theses obstacle races and would like to know how to train for one please contact me.
The most basic necessity is that a fighter relax. He needs to relax during training and he needs to relax during the fight. True mental focus can not be achieved if he is too tense. Pacing, shot selection, power generation, and strategic decisions are all affected by being tense.
One aspect of this is the same as stage fright for performers; it takes repeated exposure to being on stage and performing in front of an audience to get over it. Some kids can never get over this and so they do not progress beyond the novice stage. However, boxing is full of stories of experienced fighters tensing up and blowing big fights. What we are really talking about is ways to manage adrenalin released due to stress.
In the mental game there are these different ego games and they can affect a fighter’s performance. They have to do with the fighter’s internal dialogue, or what’s going on inside his head during the fight. There is positive ego, “I am the greatest” but this usually only carries them so far and if the build up is too big it makes losing more painful than it needs to be. There is negative ego “I can’t do anything right” and this often leads to tentative, low energy performances. There is a third state, a neutral state, where the fighter “gets out of his own way” mentally and stops placing his ego between himself and what he is doing. This is “the zone” where all of the fighter’s training can come out, his reflexes are at their best, and he is able to stay relaxed and give his best performance.
The key to relaxing during training is to have a “happy camp” where the mammalian politics are held to a minimum and the day to day environment is relaxed. If the atmosphere is tense it uses up a lot of energy unnecessarily. Fighters tend to be high strung and they don’t need anyone at camp making this worse, especially handlers, sparring partners or management. In this rap star age many of today’s fighters are very prickly about feeling like they are being disrespected and so this has to be taken into account.
There has to be a level of trust among professionals so that open dialogue can exist between the trainer and the fighter. The trainer needs to be able to make corrections in a way that does not offend the fighter, and the fighter needs to be able to communicate to his trainer what is going on in his body, especially if he is hurt. If there is no trust in this crucial relationship it can lead to disaster.
When I watched trainers like Georgie Benton work with fighters in Joe Frazier’s Gym back in the day the instructions were always positive. “Do this,” they never discussed strategy or tactics during sparring and there was never any criticism. It was a public gym and the press and gamblers were watching the big names. Working in the gym was like a show and they never scolded fighters out loud there. A fighter can’t learn like that, it is all happening too fast.
I found out that they had a small gym, a room really, with mirrors and bags and this is where they worked on specific moves at slower speeds, if need be, in preparation. This work was done in the mornings after roadwork and breakfast, they didn’t start going to the big gym until the afternoon. Everything that needed to be said between fighter and trainer had been said earlier in private, everyone was on the same page, it was just work in the gym. This is how professionals like Benton handled themselves and their fighters with class and at the same time gave the fighter time to learn new skills without the pressure or any lose of self esteem.
The old time trainers were psychologists as well as conditioning experts and boxing coaches. They spent a lot of time with their fighters beyond the hours in the gym. Many of the fighters became dependant upon certain trainers to keep them calm as well as get them in shape. Anxiety decreases wind and so staying calm is an important part of peaking. They talked to them about boxing and played cards with them at night in the age before TV and video games. Even in the 1980’s Larry Holmes hired Ray Arcell, then in his eighties, to come to camp just talk to him about boxing!
Throughout history there have been many attempts to find a method for getting a fighter into the “neutral zone” mentally. Attempts were made in ancient China by melding meditation practices taken from Buddhism and Taoism with martial arts. Today we know that calm repetitive action increases Serotonin levels in the brain while reducing Cortisol levels which reduces stress. Cortisol inhibits memory retrieval of already stored information and is an important aspect of the brain chemistry of stage fright. If you are pushed beyond the level of your conditioning, “taken where you havn’t been before” your anxiety will increase as your energy level goes down. However, there are many examples of fighters who have done the work, are in the best shape they can get in, and still have poor performances because of stress. This is because their stress level has risen until it effects their brain chemistry negatively and they are unable to control their breathing.
Sugar Ray Robinson preferred ping pong for this mental training. It was a way to daily practice getting into that flow, to stop talking to himself and just react, in a context that was fun and had nothing to do with boxing. I recommend it to fighters today but they usually prefer video games. Great champions like Robinson tended to make this level of concentration, “mental energy” as Arcell called it, look easy but it requires daily training for many years to be able to do it under the duress of a fight.
Many fighters have been able to focus and stay calm in fight after fight against ordinary competition, only to “blow it” when they stepped up to a higher level of competition or got a title shot. This effect is especially noticeable when they step up to fight a great champion for the first time. These are the fights that haunt them in their old age, the ones where they know they didn’t give their best performance.
One of the best examples of this sad aspect of the mental game is Ernie Lopez, older brother of featherweight champion Danny “Little Red “Lopez. He was a very good welterweight who fought from 1963 to 1974 and had the misfortune to come along in the era of Jose Napoles, one of the greatest welters ever. At the time of their first meeting in 1970 Lopez was 36 6 1. Ernie was very smooth counter puncher without much power. The hype, the pressure of meeting a great champion, really got to him and he came in “tight”. You can really see this on the film of the fight. The tension is visible in Lopez from the beginning and so his punches fall short and seem to have nothing on them. He was knocked down in the first, the ninth, and KO’d in the fifteenth round. Lopez came back with ten wins in his next twelve fights and got another shot at Napoles’ title in 1973 but it was worse this time and he was KO’d in the seventh round.
For years at the Englewood Coliseum they talked about the night the real “Indian Red” Lopez didn’t show up. He ended his career with a record of 48 13 1 with 465 professional rounds boxed and a KO percentage of 38.71. Lopez passed away in 2009 at the age of 64.
I am livid. I’m standing in front of 33inches of hurdle and I am paralyzed and mentally unable to fling myself over it. I have carried 55lb sandbags, carried a 9 foot slosh pipe 50 yards, crawled like a bear 100 yards, done countless agility and pylometric activities, pulled a weighted sled and pushed a weighted prowler and these 33 inches are mocking me. “I cannot do this.” I utter. With those words my mind has decided defeat for my body.
“O.K., we are done with this,” Rob calmly says as he walks over to the stadium stairs and starts vertically leaping them three at a time. “Jump these,” he says. I do. I jump those stairs despite my pouting and inner grumblings about my own self defeat. The hurdles are not mentioned throughout the rest of the training session. He knows I am angry and that my anger alone is bad but paired with stubbornness and pride has me in a “bad head”.
As I leave to go home Combat Trainer simply says, “Don’t ever say you cannot do something because I would never tell you that you can’t do anything.” I am toast! Right then and there I fire myself as my internal coach and let him in as my new and improved internal coach. I learned this day that sometimes it is necessary to deafen the things you have been saying to yourself because they just don’t work for you anymore. Fear and the cannots have no use here anymore. I admit that having unwavering confidence and trust in another person’s view of your capabilities makes hiring a new internal trainer easier.
When I finally crawl into bed, hours after training had ended and what felt like a lifetime of doing other things though out the day, there was that damn hurdle again. My eyes closed I lay there with a head full of hurdles and saw myself jumping them, my newly hired internal coach with quiet confidence pushing me forward. I went to bed knowing that “Hurdle, your ass is mine!”.
I am urging you to go and hire an internal coach. Find someone who sees you in a way you always wanted to be seen, as a warrior, a competitor, an athlete, a doer, a light, a person who matters, whatever it is you need to stomp out fear and get you on your way to greatness. Find that person and make their words your new internal dialogue. It will help you jump hurdles and not just the 33 inch kind. I think that if you look hard enough, your life has a few good internal coaches, they may not be ourselves, but in time they should be.
My internal coach will be with me on the Metro Dash and that will only be its first of many things it will drive me over, under and through.
As you all know I specialize in MMA strength and conditioning training. Training fighters and turning them into athletes is what I do at Combat Trainer. However, I do train people like athletes as well to reach their full potential. For the next couple of weeks there will be some guest post from a member on Team Combat Trainer as I prepare her to compete in the Metro Dash. Not only is she competing but yours truly is also making a run at it. If you don’t know what the Metro Dash is then go check it out and see what fun we are in store for. She will be writing about her experiences training under the Combat Trainer System. So without further delay here it is…
The Education of a Makeup Artist
By Cathy Rivera
“But, you have such a pretty face, if you could only loose a little weight.” The dreaded phrases that every robust teenage girl has heard and most likely reruns through her mind through adulthood. A backhanded compliment only for the ears of a “curvy, chubby, thick, fat, girl.
This darkened compliment is what started my love of cosmetology and hatred for my own body. It became my mask and my blessing. I figured that if my face was all I got, let me slap some war paint on it and get moving.
Weight consumed me as I consumed less and less yet expanded more and more. In college, my weight stabilized due to two hour a day Rugby practices paired with working at the campus gym. Instead of gaining the frosh 15, I lost 20lbs. Rugby was where I first tapped into my own Warrior Spirit. The sport is dirty, strategic, competitive and physically demanding. I lived for the adrenaline and pushing the will and limits of myself and team members.
College ended and so did my involvement with athletics besides the gym and an occasional class. The pounds came faithfully calling despite my three times a week visits to a sports club where they don’t have nor promote sports. My weight obsession shifted focus to feeling defeated, complaining and self-deprivation. Depleted of calories and confidence, life still went on. I got engaged, started night school, worked a full time teaching job and started my makeup business and thankfully found my way standing in front of Rob of Combat Trainer, knowing that I had found what my fitness training needed.
My sneakers were on and I was ready, all my goals out on the table and the belief that true change takes letting go of past failures and a submission to someone who may just know better about what your fitness body needs even if you have been the one lugging it around all these years. I found myself once again being viewed as an athlete. I was again the capable, competitive, driven, athlete with a physical ability to push and grow strong. More than my muscles were understood that day. My Competitive Warrior Spirit was reignited.
I was not being insulted by female marketed promises of thin, pink weights, and glittery activities but treated as someone in control of both her body and fitness. I gained a trainer and a coach because I no longer “work out,” I train!
For me, the statement that launched a thousand deadlifts was uttered mid training during a basement session when most people are winding down their evenings and we are just starting to muster a sweat. “Do you want a sitter’s ass or a sprinters ass?” Rob said as I stood apprehensive in front of a weighted barbell. Four dress sizes, countless enjoyable training hours, increased strength and a sprinter’s ass and legs later it is clear what I have really gained. I have acquired a mentor who has paved the way to my own fitness career, a passion for the workings of my own body, a love for wanting a strong body and mind not simply a smaller one, and a deep desire for others to find a love for themselves. My Warrior Spirit has been reignited after lying dormant for so long.
What better way to pay respect to the trainer and changes I have been blessed with than to join Team Combat Trainer this upcoming May in New York’s Metro Dash! Train, compete, grow and evolve with me throughout my journey to the finish because this warrior is more than just a pretty Doll Face.
Tomorrow Fedor Emelianenko will be taking on Giant Silva in the Strikeforce Heavyweight Tournament. Coming off his loss to Fabricio Werdum it will be interesting to see how Fedor responds. I am thinking that he will be coming out to destroy Silva convincingly.
When I though about putting up some of Fedor’s training video, I was very surprised to see that there was actual stuff out there. Thinking about how he leads a pretty much private lifestyle I though it would be harder to come across some training material. But lucky for Combat Trainer I was able to find some!!
In this video you will see Fedor using different types of training to get stronger and more powerful. By the looks of things it looks as though Fedor had an outdoor training facility constructed for him and his team. I definitely would not be surprise if they used this strength training playground year round, even in the cold weather.
If you have never done any strength training outside, then this spring you should really get on it. I began incorporating a lot of outdoors training into my own training and it has not only made me stronger but it is also a lot of fun to train outside. So if you are looking to spice up your training get outdoors as soon as possible and train like Fedor.
Back in high school I competed in a couple of sports throughout the year. In the fall I played soccer, winter was wrestling season and in the spring it was track and field. The best part about both wrestling and track and field was the fact that they are pretty much individual sports. In order to win you need to depend on yourself to get yourself the victory. Sports like these can teach you a lot about yourself.
Well the one sport I want to discuss in more detail is track and field. You all thought I was going to say wrestling since yes this is a combat sports training website. But there is a lot we can take from track and field that can help us in our training as combat athletes.
As a track athlete I competed in two events, the 100m dash and the 400m. These all out sprints are some of the most grueling events I competed in high school. Yeah it’s one thing to get crossed faced on the mat and get a bloody nose while your mother looks on in horror and it’s another thing to sprint as fast as you can for 400m. The 400m has been said by many one of the hardest races and of course I picked it.
While training for these events I ended up sprinting a lot in practice. Back in those days I was not what you call a very athletic looking lad. That started to change a bit when I began to sprint nearly everyday. As a puny little high school kid I began to see some changes in power I had as well as the musculature in my legs. I was explosive and in great shape.
When I first started to train combat athletes I would use in my conditioning a lot of the circuit type training that “mimics” a fight. These circuits work very well and I continue to use them in coaching of fighters. Looking back though on how I felt after sprinting 400m and how I feel after some sparring I noticed the two feelings were very similar. Sprinting like many combat sports including MMA are anaerobic sports. So that being said I began incorporating sprinting into my fighters programs as well as in my own training and the results have been great.
With my fighters I also make sure that I coach them in proper sprinting mechanics. Now I know they are not going to be world-class sprinters but rather world-class fighters but teaching proper mechanics makes the athlete sprint not only faster but more efficiently. A more efficient sprinter will be able to last longer during conditioning and maximize there time in training.
For those of you that like to sprint or even want to give sprinting a shot to increase your conditioning I am going to give a four-week program below to help you achieve that goal. Each week there will be two sprint sessions. You will be surprised that these sessions are short and sweet but are very effective.
Week 1
Day One
6 sets 50m sprints
Day Two
4 sets 50m sprints
2 sets 100m sprints
Week 2
Day One
5 sets 100m sprints
Day Two
3 sets 100m sprints
2 sets 200m sprints
Week 3
Day One
5 sets 200 m sprints
Day Two
1 set 100m sprints
2 sets 200m sprints
2 sets 400m sprints
Week 4
Day One
1 set 200m sprints
4 sets 400m sprints
Recovery
As for recovery if you were training to be a track star then full recovery would be necessary. As forgetting ready for a fight I tell my combat athletes to sprint when they are ready. This affords them the opportunity to sprint when ready and recover but push themselves on there own pace. As they become used to the sprinting they adapt to the stimulus and take shorter and shorter recovery times.
Train Hard! Train Smart
Like with all weeks leading up to the big UFC cards I am on the prowl for some good training video’s from the fighters that are on the card. I have been on the lookout for some good George St. Pierre training video but instead came across a great interview done for UFC.com.
Since I am out to help many of those trying to break into the sport or those looking to get to the next level I pulled a few key points from this interview that will help with your fighting career. When you want to be great at something you look to the best and figure out what they are doing and how they prepare, Take the knowledge you gain from these top notch people and then tailor it to you.
In this interview with GSP for his upcoming fight against Josh Koscheck he talks about using the knowledge he gained and putting it all together. There are a couple of important messages to take from this interview. One was getting out of your comfort zone. Many fighters continue to train with the same team and with the same training ideas fight in and fight out. This may work for a while but eventually it will fail a fighter. The more often you take yourself out of comfort zone the more likely you will succeed in a fight. In a fight there is no comfort zone so the more you are used to being out of it in general the better fighter and person you will become.
Another important point I picked out is all the different people he trains with. This gives him an advantage because he is now a wealth of knowledge and he knows how to put it all together. GSP invests in himself and his pursuit for greatness. This investment in himself has made him the dominant fighter he is today. So if you are an amateur trying to make it or you are trying to get to the next level in your career, then make the investment and watch how successful you will become.
