MMA strength and conditioning training is very important for all fighters
As UFC 130 rolls around Saturday night the importance of MMA strength and conditioning will be seen. One of the fights on the main card is Rick Story taking on Thiago Alves. In an effort to bring you the best in MMA strength and conditioning training, I found a few videos of Story training in the past for upcoming fights. In this segment of MMA strength and conditioning training Story’s coaches incorporate the use of dumbbells in his training.
Dumbbells are a great tool for fighters. Even though the trend is going towards the use of kettlebells, fighters should not forget about the importance of dumbbells in their training. In the two videos below you will see Story use the dumbbells in a complex fashion. You will notice as completes different exercises without putting the dumbbells down.
This type of complexes can be used as a warmup or if the combat athlete increases the intensity it can also be used as a way to condition. Whatever the case may be, when training coaches should use all the tools at their disposal to get the results that their fighters need.
Train Hard! Train Smart!
UFC 128 is Saturday night and the Urijah Faber will be making his UFC debut going up against Eddie Wineland. In the video below you will get to see the beginning of a strength and conditioning session with Faber. You will get to see pieces of a dynamic warmup as well some of the plyometrics his coach had him perform.
On the site I have not really wrote much about the way I warm my fighters up. After watching this video you will have a basic idea of the right way to warmup before a training session. The days of doing a bunch of static stretches and then believing your are not only warmup but are ready to prevent injury are over. Warming up dynamically has many benefits. First it get the core body temperature up as well as raising the heart rate. It also makes you stronger in different positions and works on your balance as well.
If you are still warming up the same way to train as you did when your parents were in elementary school then you need to stop now and start warming up the correct way. Another point I would like to make is that warming up does not have to take half the training session. All to often coaches warmup their athletes for way to long. Learn some of the basics of a dynamic warmup and start to utilize it in your training. So check out this video and enjoy the fights on Saturday. Next week I will post up a dynamic warmup I use with my fighters.
Train Hard! Train Smart!
Rob DeCillis (CSCS)
Being a father, a husband, a teacher and a coach keeps me plenty busy throughout the day. If I am not with the most important family I am working with the other. Some people call this juggling I call it life. Add to the list all of the fun things that you like to do with your spare time and it can make for a pretty packed life.
This post is for those combat athletes that love to train MMA, Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing for fun, love to hit the weight room and have the family and job to attend to. I for one am one of those people that love to train for fun. My passion is in the weight room but I love to hit the mats and Thai box every week.
I am also a firm believer of spending as much time with your kids as you possibly can. I always hear people say, “They grow up so quick!” The last thing I want to do is miss anything when it comes to my lil warrior. So how do I manage the family life on top of the full time job, starting my business and training? Well here is how I have set up my schedule to get all this in:
Monday
5:30 am: Deadlift and conditioning
8am-2:40 pm: Work
3:10 pm-8:00 pm: Family time (Best time of the Day)
8:00 pm-12am: Work on the strength and conditioning coaching biz
Tuesday
8am-2:40: Work
3:10 pm-7:20 pm Family time (Best time of the day)
8pm-9pm: Muay Thai Kickboxing class
9pm-10 pm Travel time, shower, eat
10pm-12am Work on the strength and conditioning coaching biz
Wednesday
5:30am: Power Clean and conditioning
8am-2:40pm: Work
3:10pm-5:30pm: Family time
6pm-7pm: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class
7:30pm-830pm:Thai boxing class
9:30pm-12am: Work on the strength and conditioning coaching biz
Thursday
8am-2:40pm: Work
3:10pm-5:15pm Family time
6pm-7pm: Teach strength and conditioning class
7pm-8pm: No-gi grappling , couple of rds of rolling
8pm-9pm: Thai boxing class
10pm-12am: Work on the strength and conditioning coaching biz
Friday
5:30am-Front Squats and conditioning
8am-2:40pm: Work
3:10pm-8pm: Family time
8pm-whenever I decided to sleep:
Work on the strength and conditioning coaching biz
Saturday
Sleep in until the little human alarm clock wakes us
Strongman Training
Family time
Sunday
Family Time
So here is how I am working the training schedule in right now. Thought I would write this post for those of you who are combat athletes out there and are having a hard time managing everything in your life. As you can see the days that I wake up at 5:30am I am only doing one lift and some conditioning. I pick a compound movement like the deadlift, power clean and front squat and train for about a half-hour to forty-five minutes just doing that lift. Then I add a conditioning protocol at the end. Hopefully you can pick up some tips on how to organize your training schedule if you lead a similar lifestyle but still want to have all your training fun in there.
P.S. I love to take the family out to the field when I train outside and just have fun out there. Usually when I am shooting video for the site, I take along my wife, to shoot the video and my daughter who you sometime hear in the background yelling or crying for mommy and daddy. It also keeps her active as she runs around the field. Here is a video of my daughter playing with the mini-hurdles the last time out! Good times!
Having strong, explosive legs is a key component in any combat sport. In MMA your legs can be a key component to victory. Your legs help you in every aspect of the sport from throwing a punch or a kick to driving an opponent up against the cage to attempting a takedown, your legs are the base of your success.
It is not enough to have just strong and explosive legs. In MMA you must be able to use that strength and power in your legs over and over again. Even in just moving around the cage with basic footwork can be taxing on the legs and can drain them of energy.
As a fighter, strength, power and muscle endurance in your lower body is important. Let’s take a quick look at how we can develop all three components. Performing squats and deadlifts are the sure way to build strength in your legs. These two exercises are surely the two best in my opinion to get the best results when it comes to strength gains. After developing a good base of strength or within the same training cycle you can turn that strength that you just gained into power. Utilizing plyometric training as well as using Olympic lifts such as power cleans, snatches, and jerks.
Now comes taking all the strength and power that was developed and being able to use it over and over again in a fight. A great way to develop this type of conditioning for your legs or any other muscles in your body is by using complexes. Complex’s is combining two or more exercises with a set amount of repetitions with minimal rest in between exercises. Complexes will maintain your strength and power but also give you some great metabolic conditioning.
The complex in the following video will increase your conditioning in your legs dramatically. It a complex taken from Dan John called the “Big 55”. With the use of a Kettlebell you perform two exercises. For this particular complex we used Kettlebell Swings and Goblet Squats. This complex is done a little different and will drain your legs. Starting with the swings you perform 10 reps followed by the squats for 10 reps, then you go to 9 reps of each then 8 reps all the way to 1 rep. That is a total of 55 reps for each exercise making it a grand total of 110 reps between the two exercises. All 110 reps are done without rest. This is great conditioning for your lower body and will allow you as a fighter to continue to use your strength and power. Give it a try!
One night in my search for training equipment I finally found some bumper plates that I had been looking for on Criagslist. When I arrived at the guy house he took me to his garage to get the plates. He had all sorts of great training equipment; clubs, sand bells, kettle bells, plyo-boxes and the list could go on and on. But we began to talk and he said that he and some friends get together on Saturdays and train in the parking lot of a local school and he asked me to swing by. So the training session came and went and it was great. Now I am hooked and go out to train every Saturday I can.
The last time I was able to train, he started to talk to me about a strength and conditioning coach by the name of Dan John. John is a contributor on the site T-Nation. In one of his articles he talks about former world champion hammer thrower, Sergey Litvinov. That day we did a modified version of what is called the “Litvinov workout”. Here is what Litvinov used to do. He would head out to the track, front squat 405 pounds, rack the weight and sprint 400 meters. He would do three sets and call it a training session. That’s a pretty brutal session.
So I now started to incorporate this workout into my training and that of my fighters. But this type of training needs to be adapted, for I do not recommend front squatting 405 pounds then sprinting 400 meters to start. So following the idea of Dan John, I take one exercise and have been using kettlebells to do this. Either a swing, a squat, a clean, a press. I perform the movement for the predetermined reps and then sprint 100 yards. I perform 3-5 sets and call it a session.
So this is how it would look on paper:
Kettlebell Swings 5-8 reps
Sprint 100 yards
Kettlebell Overhead Presses 5-8 reps
Sprint 100 yards
Repeat 3-5 times.
You can also modify it by adding more exercises and reducing the yards on the sprint for instance:
Kettlebell Swings 5-8 reps
Sprint 50 yards jog back
Kettlebell Squats 5-8 reps
Sprint 50 yards jog back
Kettlebell Clean 3-5 reps
Sprint 50 yards jog back
You get the point you can add more movements or add distance on the sprint. This is just another type of training to incorporate into your program or that of your athletes. Below is just a short clip of a movement and the sprint!
Nothing beats youth and determination when it comes to wanting to be an athlete especially an MMA fighter. That youth and determination can be found with Mike Savarese. This future MMA fighter has just started on his journey but you can see in his eyes that he wants nothing more than to be a fighter. Mike trains jiu-jitsu under Ricardo Almeida at RABJJ.
After speaking with his brother Patrick about strength and conditioning and MMA, I had the pleasure to meet Mike and his brother for strength and conditioning session. Mike and I hit the gym, this training session was used to test where he was at with strength and where his conditioning level was currently. As with any of my fighters or athletes I tested his one-rep max deadlift. The deadlift is one of the best movements that can be placed in any fighter’s strength and conditioning program. The deadlift builds strength along the entire posterior chain. As you know with any sport a strong posterior chain is very important in a combat athletes performance. Working on some tips to clean up Mike’s deadlift technique, he was able to pull 345 for his one-rep max. Not to bad since he had not deadlifted in quite a while due to injury.
Next we moved on to test his one-rep max on the bench press. Although I don’t use the barbell bench press in my programs that often I use this test and transfer it over for pressing with dumbbells. Mike put up 265 lbs for his one-rep max. After the one-rep max tests were done, I introduced him to Olympic lifting and taught him some of the movements in the power clean. If you have read some of the other posts on the site you know how important it is to have some of the Olympic lifts in the strength and conditioning programs of athletes. These lifts test the power an athlete can produce. Using only the bar I taught him how to clean from the top down. Pretty much this is how it went. I had him front squat to learn where his body will be at the end of the clean, then had him do jump and shrugs to teach how when doing this movement he should shrug his shoulders. This was followed up by cleaning from the thigh, then above the knee and finally below the knee.
After our training session we headed for the park to for some speed and agility work. Usually I will begin a training session with speed and agility work but I knew I was testing one-rep maxes and want Mike as fresh as possible. During this session I used drills found in some of my previous posts. Here are some of the drills we did…
Finally we ended our training session with some conditioning. He did two, three-minute rounds of the following circuit:
Super Legs
24 Squats
24 Lunges
24 Split-Jumps
12 Jump Squats
This was followed by a minute of Battle Ropes, using four different rope exercises for 15 seconds each. To finish off the three minutes he smashed away at a tire with a sledgehammer for thirty seconds alternating the grip on the sledgehammer with every strike.
Here are some things that I picked up during the session. Mike is very open minded to learning new ways to train in and out of the weight room. He is willing to do what it takes to achieve his goal. Mike is and exceptional athlete and is the future of mixed martial arts. So I would like to welcome Mike to the Combat Trainer team. He has a bright future in the sport of MMA and will be a world champion one day.
Usually Monday nights are set aside for jiu-jitsu training or speed work training, but today I was invited to one of the local high schools which my training partner works at to flip tires. This was the second time that I have had the chance to flip some tires. There was no plan as I headed to go train. Usually there is some type of plan even with the type of training my life has brought on in recent weeks. Recently I have not had a strict program going against all my beliefs but cross training and training when I can at high intensity’s has been working well. So when I got to the field we pulled the tires out and I made up a training session on the spot. Working with a heavier 300 lb tire, a lighter tire as well as regular car tire I was able to put together a pretty great training session, well at least my body says so. Here is what the training session looked like:
1) 300 lb Tire Flips
10 sets 3 reps
2) Lighter Tire Flips
4 sets 10 reps
3) Explosive Overhead Tire Throws
4 sets 5 reps
4) Conditioning
8 sets 100m Sprints
So as you can see in this training session I hit strength, power and conditioning. On the Explosive Overhead Tire Throws, I use clean and snatch technique to hit triple extension to be able to throw the tire overhead as far as I can. Next time the video camera will b on hand to show you the training session. If you have access to different size tires give this one a run.
For some more information on tire flipping also check out this cool site. Tim Hull, also known as the Strength Doctor, has a great post on his site on tire flipping. Tim is training for a strongman competition and is a great physical therapist so check out his site. http://thestrengthdoctor.com/
Many of you know that the new Karate Kid movie will be out this week in theaters. Yeah it will probably suck. That being said, I had the privilege of watching the original. While sitting there all nice and comfy on my couch, I had to rewind a few parts because of what Mr. Miyagi was saying to Danielson.
There are some important messages that can be taken from this movie especially if you train in any combat sport. The one I want to talk about in this post is when Daniel is at the tournament and he Mr. Miyagi looks him in the face and tells him…
Concentration, focus and power are key essentials in being a great fighter. Let’s break down these components for combat sports such as MMA, jiu-jitsu, boxing, wrestling. First off concentration and focus can be looked at as one in the same. Both concentration and focus are keys to not only martial arts but also life in general. If you are not able to concentrate or focus in life you will not be able to perform to the best of your ability. The same goes in martial arts and in the weight room. Life can be crazy at times and lead us to not be able to concentrate. Or focus on the tasks at hand. When you reach the place where you train be it your school or your even your garage or basement, once you walk through that door you need to forget about every thing else that is going on, focus and concentrate on what needs to be done. If the task is jiu-jitsu then concentrate on that, if you are in the weight room then concentrate on what needs to get done there. Many people bring their problems to the mat and it can effect their training sessions immensely. This can lead to poor performance not only in practice but in competition as well. Many times in combat sports concentration and focus are the keys to victory or defeat. If you want victory then you must learn how to find your concentration and focus and leave all else at the door. Check out my post on The “Secrets of Focus”, http://combattrainer.com/2010/03/29/the-secrets-of-focus/, they will help your performance in the weight-room. The other component Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel is power. Power as we all know is one of the most important physical attributes to have in sport and in sports like MMA and jiu-jitsu it’s no different. Power is the rate of doing work but in sports terms how fast you can use your strength. Examples of power how fast you throw a kick or punch, or how fast you can takedown an opponent. What I have found in my training and in training other athletes if you lack concentration and focus, your power will also suffer as well. These three components are dependent on each other. There have been many times where I have lost my focus while doing a power clean or a snatch and missed the lift as a result. If a martial artist does not concentrate or focus then their ability to land a kick or a takedown will be lowered.
Martial artists should train these three components. A martial artist that can use all three components will find themselves at the top of their game not only in a fight or competition but in life as well. As a little present I am going to leave you with a video from the Karate Kid and the song “You’re the Best”. This will get you pumped to Train Hard! Enjoy and remember “Concentrate, Focus, Power”…
As of Monday we are four weeks out from the IBJJF World Jiu-Jitsu Championships or the Mundials in Long Beach, CA. Training Camp has started for Jess and Monday was our first session of the four-week cycle. Since she has not been able to maintain a solid strength and conditioning program because of all the tournaments I am still using the same program I wrote up for her a few weeks ago. I am also going to be adding a speed, agility and quickness day to her training. We are going to turn her into super athlete.
The program I am using for Jess is based off the Canadian Ascending-Descending method. To save time in the weight room I have changed it up a bit to get in out. This program is perfect for Jess as it trains all different types of strength and power. As you will see below I have combined both upper and lower body sessions together. Day one we start heavy with the legs, deadlifting combined with explosive movement for the upper body. The program descends into explosive movements for the lower body and heavier movements for the upper body. Day two we reverse the order of exercises. As we start with heavier loads for the upper body and move our way down to more explosive movements and vice versa for the lower body movements. As the program moves on the volume and loads increase during week two and three and then she deloads week four. Here is the sample of day one and two of week one.
WEEK ONE/DAY ONE
1. Deadlift 4 sets 7 reps 75%-82%of max deadlift
1a. Depth Push-ups 4 sets 5 reps Bodyweight
2. Power Clean 4 sets 6 reps Be Explosive
2a. Medicine Ball Pass 4 sets 10 reps 10%-15% of max bench
3. Jump Squat 4 sets 10 reps 10%-15% of max squat
3a. Push Press 4 sets 6 reps Explosive
4. Broad Jumps 4 sets 5 reps Bodyweight
4a. Dumbbell Bench Press 4 sets 7 reps 75%-82% of max bench press
For Week One Day Two all we are doing is reversing the order in which we do the session. So we will start with the Dumbbell Bench Press and move our way down to Depth push-ups and from Broad Jumps to the Deadlift.
Watch out World Championships, Jess is coming to get you!!
We are moving ahead in Jessica’s training. Monday Jessica learned how to clean. This was the first time that she cleaned. She picks things up very quickly and power cleans will be put into her program. Then we worked on her deadlifts we did 4 sets of 4 reps at 75% of her max. For the conditioning portion of the training session I had Jess doing some Farmers Walks with the Hex deadlift bar. Now the gym we train at is small but I was able to have her go about ten yards. When she reached ten yards she dropped the weight and did five burpees. She then came back the ten yards and deadlifted the weight for five reps. She did five sets of theses with 30 seconds of rest in between each set. The look on the other trainer’s faces when she was doing this was priceless. It’s not like I was doing anything crazy with her just a little conditioning protocol. Hmm maybe next time I will have her just run on the treadmill, nah that’s no fun. Another thing I love when I ask her how she is feeling during the training session and she says,” I love it!” Right now Jessica is learning the right way to lift and getting her body conditioned for what is to come down the road in her actual program. A little GPP work, as we like to call it. This week I am planning out her program and going to be writing it out over the weekend.
Jessica’s next big competition is the Pan Ams in three weeks. She is gearing up for that. Strength and conditioning wise I will be focusing on getting her stronger in the next couple of weeks but really going to focus on her conditioning and muscle endurance. After this tournament she will be competing in some smaller tournaments. Her next big jiu-jitsu one after the Pan Ams is the New York Open this summer. We will be kicking it into hire gear for that one. Another thing we are looking forward to here at Combat Trainer is the possibility of Jessica getting her first MMA fight over the summer. That will be some exciting news and I will keep you up to date on when and where she will be fighting.
I will place video of Jessica training in upcoming post as well as some of her tournament footage. Here is another one of her matches in a jiu-jitsu tournament. Jessica is in the blue and gray rash guard.
