A Big, Tough Baby: why MMA conditioning is in its infancy
When it comes to most sport-specific training, knowing the position of a player is generally enough for a basic plan. In football, an elite-level offensive lineman, for example, will be expected to weigh in between 280 and 330 lbs, demonstrate decent relative strength, explosive starts, excellent footwork and great agility. Done and done. Training them for performance may not be easy, but it is relatively straightforward. You’re working with a specific body type and set of attributes. Not so for MMA athletes.
While the first UFC introduced MMA to North America in 1993, it’s only been over the past few years that it’s began to gain widespread attention as a sport. It’s still young enough that we see a wide range of natural physical ability (with world-class genetics still being the exception, not the rule). Likewise, the sport-specific training necessary to maximize MMA performance is still a veritable baby. Training methodologies from Olympic lifting, wrestling, powerlifting, boxing and many more have infiltrated the scene. However, the best way to string things together is a challenge that no one seems to completely agree on. There’s a good reason for that: strength and conditioning for MMA is more challenging – and more complex — than for any other sport.
What makes training MMA athletes so different? The sheer number of variables for starters. Let’s break it down a bit.
Physical Base
Before we even get started, we’re going to have to look at an athlete’s physical status. A lot of people assume that you should jump right ahead to maximizing existing physical attributes. What’s missing from that equation, however, is a hard look at injury prevention. The truth is that sports generally emphasize certain attributes out of proportion to others. Are you a boxer? You’re doing a lot more pushing (that is to say moving your hands away from your body) than pulling. Are you a boxer that works behind desk (slumped shoulders and all)? Well, guess what? Before we get to even more of the same, we’re going to have to counterbalance both your training and lifestyle factors. That means increasing range of motion and balancing strength in all planes. That’s assuming that there aren’t existing injuries to rehab on top of everything else.
Mobility and injury prevention/recovery don’t make a lot of highlight reels, but they’re an essential foundation. Once established, they’ll contribute to the lifetime of an athlete by minimizing breaks in training due to injury. Only with this base can an athlete really begin to make dramatic improvements in their sport-specific performance.
Technical Base
Is our fighter starting out with a set of technical skills specific to a particular sport? What physical attributes are worth emphasizing and maintaining? What types of motor patterning have to be revamped? How can we assist this process? For example, if we were working with someone with a wrestling background, we may wish to emphasize maximal power through a range of motion that synchs up with their go-to takedowns and throws. However, we may find them working from a deficit in the area of striking. Perhaps they have persistent difficulty in not leaving their punches hanging in mid-air. An over-emphasis on pulling (from maximal to power-oriented) in the same plane may help them overcome unfamiliar or unnatural movements. However, it’s a fairly delicate matter when it comes to deciding whether a temporary diversion from a fighter’s primary gameplan will be worth the time and effort in the long-term.
Physical development
A fighter’s technical development typically sets the pace for strength and conditioning. Sometimes, though – just like in judo – things (and people) get flipped on their heads. We occasionally find that the physical attributes of an athlete are substantial enough to supersede previous technical gameplans; instead, it becomes worthwhile to maximize development of a specific attribute and adapt their game to that. A good example is Georges St. Pierre’s transition into wrestling. Although his background was in Kyokoshin karate and Brazilian jiu jitsu, he demonstrated a natural explosiveness that arguably lent itself best to wrestling. Continuing to emphasize this aspect of his conditioning, his coaches also made wrestling an increasingly important part of his game. In this case, St. Pierre’s technical skill set changed substantially to emphasize his physical abilities.
Technical development
What new skills are we going to need to develop? What kind of base do we need to ensure that the upcoming stages of technical training can be carried out safely and efficiently? Energy system training will set an initial base for injury prevention by staving off fatigue, as will adequate pre-habilitiation work. However, it’s strength training that can truly help bridge the gap when it comes to developing and perfecting new technical skills.
Weight Classes
Listening to commentary on an MMA event, a friend once asked, “What does it mean when they say a fighter is a big 170? It’s like saying he’s a tall 5 foot 10.” The difference is that while a fighter’s height won’t change between weigh-in and the beginning of a fight, their weight can change substantially. And while standard practices are a debate all their own, it’s known that there’s an art to making weight. Many fighters have fallen to technically inferior opponents who surpassed them in maintaining their strength and conditioning through the weight cutting (and re-gaining) process. It’s absolutely essential to manage a fighter’s weight and minimize any diminishment in strength or conditioning between the time they stand on the scales and set foot into the ring.
Short-term competition strategy
For an MMA athlete, the ever-present question is, “Who am I fighting next?” The answer can mean dramatic changes in training approach. I’ll use a fighter we’re currently training as an example. We’ll call him “Roman McGnomey” (look: I’m making up the names and that’s the name I made up!) Roman has a brawler’s approach to stand-up striking with a good ground and pound strategy. He has a lesser emphasis on takedowns and grappling. His next opponent’s primary strength is as a wrestler. In many respects this is a bad match-up for him. His opponent’s technical strengths neutralize many of his own. Without getting into too much detail, our job is to minimize the likelihood of Roman a) getting taken down and b) being kept down.
When we look at what we’re capable of in the short-term, we have to be pragmatic. Outworking a conditioned athlete within their comfort zone is unlikely. Instead, we want to maximize our figher’s performance in the areas that his opponent is weakest in. From a technical perspective, we can make some educated guesses about where and how opportunities will appear. From a strength and conditioning perspective, we want to facilitate getting to these situations and then emphasize the energy system appropriate to them.
Clearly, strength and conditioning can’t be performed in a vaccum. Strength coaches need to be in regular contact with instructors to determine what approaches will work best. Refinement of these approaches is an ongoing process that requires a lot of evaluation and communication.
Long-term competition strategy
In theory, a long-term approach should be straightforward. In practice, there are a lot of issues that interfere with this. Where is a fighter ultimately going? Their next fight doesn’t always have a lot to do with that goal. We’re frequently faced with the question of how far we’re willing to veer off track from our long-term gameplan. From a fight-to-fight perspective, this can be substantial. As such, we sometimes have to make some hard choices – from turning down a fight to showing up at less-than-peak condition. Technical development, physical development and all the hard-to-predict factors (from workload and lifestyle to injuries and changing coaches or teams) all have a substantial impact.
Summary
Truth be told, when I started this article, I was planning on giving a way more generic overview of sport-specific training for MMA (and why it’s so god-damned complicated). However, what I quickly realized that I — along with our other trainers — make it that complicated. Certainly, it’s possible to hand someone some weights (or a tire, for that matter) and tell them to go as hard as they can for as long as they can. Lord knows plenty of people do. And while going balls-out may feel right (that is to say adequately hard), it’s an approach that misses out on a whole lot of stuff. The details above, despite barely scratching the surface, should give you a sense of what some of that stuff is.
Geoff
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