MMA Training Routine – Lessons Learned

Years ago I watched the TV show The Ultimate Fighter. In one season the training methodology of Master John Hackleman was spotlighted. "The Hack" was the mentor of Chuck "The Ice Man" Liddell, The most dominant UFC fighter at that time. It was interesting to note that the training methods used by the world's best fighters were undergoing a profound revolution. Back in the early 1990s, when the UFC first came on the scene, martial artists represented their respective traditions and trained exclusively using the methods of their particular fighting system. 

All that went out the window when the specialists started getting beat up by the cross-trained MMA adherents. If a martial artist was a judo man and refused to learn boxing, if a boxer refused to learn ground fighting, if a wrestler refused to learn how to apply submission holds, then those one dimensional martial artists were inevitably and eventually beaten by the mixed martial artists. Those who adapted and broadened their approach thrived; those who insisted on staying loyal to a particular school or discipline were swept aside. MMA fighting has truly become an amalgamation of fight styles. Those that are well rounded fighters become the champions and those who are doggedly and dogmatically one-dimensional don't make the cut.

A similar phenomenon occurred in the training of the mixed martial artist. Initially there were non-weight trainers. They began getting overpowered , manhandled and beat down mercilessly by heavily muscled men like Ken Shamrock, Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Randy Couture and Tank Abbott. Those big, strong powerful men were knocking smaller men unconscious with six inch punches or effortlessly body slamming weaker opponents. Resistance training is now practiced by every MMA fighter in every weight class: it's not an option, it's a necessity. At the top levels everyone is skilled, that's assumed. It's the weaknesses that determine who loses. Top fighters never play to the opponents strengths, they exploit their weaknesses. Why box a boxer? Why wrestle a wrestler? If man is physically weak, physically overpower him.

The modern MMA fighter needs absolute strength and sustained strength. They need sustained cardio capacity and burst cardio capacity; they need the ability to put out incredible amounts of power and strength over an extended period of time. This ability is not developed by simply sitting on a stationary bike pedaling along. Sustained strength is developed through sustained effort. 

Cardiovascular fight training has undergone an evolution. In the beginning, fighters would ride the stationary bike, perform roadwork or skip rope. That was considered all that was needed to create the requisite endurance needed for a fight. What happened was curious and mysterious: men in great cardio shape, men capable of entering a marathon and finishing a 26 mile run in less than three hours were "gassing out" ten minutes into a fight. "What the hell is going on? I can run all day long - yet I get so winded in an actual fight that I can't hold my arms up by the end of the third round."

What the best brains in the mixed martial arts world finally determined was that there were different types of cardio endurance. Though a man might be able to run or ride the stationary bike all day, that type of cardio was steady-state cardio. What was needed in a fight was a radically different type of cardio. The type of endurance training needed to train fighters had to have an element of muscular endurance involved. Top MMA coaches like John Hackleman and my friend, Mark Coleman, figured out that they needed to train differently. Continual, unrelenting stress and effort was melded with cardiovascular exercise. The modern MMA fighter might be found at "The Hacks" country training camp picking up heavy objects, lifting them and heaving them for reps and distance. Mark might force himself to flurry punch when already tired; practice powering out of a submission; run up steep hills; or sprint all out. The idea was to stretch and sustain intense physical effort for an extended period of time. 

Mark related to me one time a game he and his fearsome partner, Kevin "Monster Man" Randleman, use to play. It is an improvised game of "fetch" that involves a heavy medicine ball. They throw the ball as far as possible to each other then scramble on all fours at tope speed to retrieve it before heaving the ball yet again, over and over.

Mark told me once, "Marty, if I don't puke at least once sprinting up hills, I don't feel as if I've really put out."

Fighters needed to create a new type of conditioning in which a strength element is married to a cardio element to create sustained strength. Cardio fight training had to be amended and modified. In order to prevent fighters from fading, deep into a lengthy battle, a new training protocol was devised.

On the show Hackleman's training camp methods were spotlighted. He ran his elite fighters through a series of drills that were illuminating and instructive. In the first series of drills, five fighters stood at five individual stations. Hack would yell "Go!" and for 40 seconds each fighter would attempt to do as many reps as humanly possible at each of the five stations. The stations were: plyometric jumps up onto a 3 foot ledge, speed sit-ups, a row machine, a versa-climber and a treadmill. After 40 seconds, Hack would yell "Stop!" and the athletes would rest for 20 seconds at which point Hack would yell "Go!" Staying at the same station, the fighter would attack the same exercise again for 40 seconds. When Hack yelled "Stop!" a second time he would yell "Rotate!" and the fighters would immediately jump to the second station and without pause he would yell "Go!" They would repeat: 40 seconds all out, rest for 20, then 40 more seconds all out. This was repeated for several circuits.

Next Hack took his elite fighters, including Chuck Liddell, to his rural training camp. Her similar methods were used, but of a slightly different flavor. He started the six man squad off by flipping over a giant 500 pound tire for distance. Immediately after tire flips, each executed 50 speed punches. They all grabbed a sledgehammer and pounded the giant tire repeatedly. They pushed wheelbarrows loaded with dumbbell plates up a steep hill and as soon as they dropped the wheelbarrows they began medicine ball drills. They started off by throwing them to one another. The each man would fling, a medicine ball overhead as high as possible before letting it crash to the earth. They would do a squat thrust, pick the ball up and hurl it overhead again. This went on for many minutes. Then they threw medicine balls at a wall for five straight minutes. Finally they were rotated through parallel bar dips and pull-ups. Once they were done with this hellish session, they jogged to an outdoor cage and began nonstop wrestling and submission work. This was just another day at the office for this crew, nothing special for the cameras. Interested in implementing this type of training into your regimen check out this video by John Hackleman who goes through 11 different workouts averaging 11 minutes each.

This type of training builds the sustained strength needed to keep from gassing out deep into a fight. By infusing extended cardiovascular effort with intense muscular effort, an entirely new type of endurance strength is built. Interestingly Hack's approach is strategically similar to the kind of training Len Schwartz, Ori Hofmekler and John Parrillo advise their students to do in order to build additional mitochondria and create cardiovascular density. Each man recommends differing training strategies that ultimately do two things: build sustained strength, as opposed to absolute strength and build mitochondrial density into muscles subjected to each man's particular protocol. To learn more about the three men mentioned above check out these posts.

Is it better to lift 100 pounds 40 times or 400 pounds 1 time?

(The correct answer is, better to be able to do both)

If the goal is to construct mitochondria, cardio training needs to have an element of muscular effort. Cardio density is also improved by this type of training, creating additional blood vessels and larger blood vessels. More blood vessels mean nutrients are able to be rushed to muscles faster and waste products removed far more quickly. By developing cardio density, by building more mitochondria, nature's natural genetic limitations are extended and expanded. Schwartz's HeavyHands, Hofmekler's Controlled Fatigue Training or Parrillo's 100 rep extended sets are specific exercise protocols designed to build more mitochondria. All three methods fuse intense effort with prolonged effort and resemble methods used by Hackleman. 

It is intriguing that elite fight trainers are independently developing training regimens remarkably similar to those used to build 3rd Way hybrid muscle. Hack simply wants to keep fighters from gassing late in a fight - mitochondria building is the furthest thing from his mind - yet his methods, and the methods used by Mark Coleman, are building mitochondria and cardio density as surely as the methods of Len Schwartz, John Parrillo or Ori Hofmekler. They say that great minds think alike and never was that hackneyed cliche more appropriate than in this particular instance. 3rd Way cardio training deserves a seat at the training table. Be sure to include it in your cardio rotation. Start slinging some heavy weighted implements around for extended periods. For more info on cardio modes and synergistically combining absolute strength with sustained strength check out the posts below.

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