Dec 28 2010

Marcus Davis Ground and Pound Training

Category: Agility,MMA,UFC,Uncategorized — Rob @ 7:34 PM

Fight Week is approaching and the card is UFC 125 on New Years Day.  The main event for the lightweight championship will feature Frankie Edgar going up against Gray Maynard.  The winner gets a matchup to unify the WEC title and UFC title  against Anthony Pettis and his crazy kick.

For the rest of this week I will be posting some interesting training footage from many of the different fighters on the card.  Another matchup on the card is Marcus Davis and Jeremy Stephens.  I have a feeling someone will be knocked out in this one.  A loss for either one could put their UFC career to a finish, so this fight should be a good one.

In my search to bring you some of the type of training that these MMA fighters do I came across Marcus Davis performing a different kind of movement to help with his ground and pound.  The movement was “created” by Kevin Kearns who is one of the top strength and conditioning coaches in MMA at the time.  Using a type of Bosu Ball and light dumbbells Davis lays on the ball and mimics ground and pounding an opponent.  As you can see the ball provides an unstable enviroment in which Davis needs to be firing on all cylinders to keep doing the movement correctly.  I will let Kearns do the rest of the explaining.

Train Hard! Train Smart!

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Jul 28 2010

UFC Fighters Conditioning Routine

Category: Agility,Conditioning,MMA,Power Training,Speed,UFC,Uncategorized — Rob @ 11:07 AM

Saturday night Dana White is giving us all a free UFC event on Versus. The card is pretty stacked, and if you are a big fan of the UFC you have been itching for the last month for some octagon action. The main event of the card is Jon Jones taking on Vladimir Matyushenko in the light heavyweight division. This can be a big stepping-stone for Jon Jones young career as many see him as the future champion of the division. With all that raw talent and youth on his side I tend to believe this as well. Jones is a pure athlete and the future of the sport.
Also on the card Mark Munoz will be taking on veteran Yushin Okami. Last April Munoz had a great come from behind victory over Kendall Grove defeating him with some vicious ground and pound. Munoz like Jones is a rising star in the UFC. Munoz is still going through some of the growing pains as all fighters do but he is well on his way up the ladder and becoming a serious contender in the near future.
As a treat for the site I was able to find some of Munoz’s strength and conditioning training. In this video he is doing a ten-minute non-stop conditioning circuit. In the circuit Mark is wearing a weighted vest. In this circuit you will see all different types of training going on. Each exercise is done for thirty-seconds. The circuit includes: speed and agility training, you will see him testing his core with medicine ball tosses, he performs plyometrics in the circuit to develop explosive power sledgehammers swings and some fight specific movements that you will see throughout the protocol such as ground and pound. So sit back and enjoy the next ten minutes and wish you were doing the circuit.

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Jul 05 2010

Ground and Pound Conditioning!

Category: Conditioning,Mental Training,MMA,Strength Training,Uncategorized — Rob @ 8:58 PM

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!

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