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Hills Sprints, Long Distances or Somewhere In-Between…

Running is probably the most common conditioning tool used by combat athletes of all disciplines. Many boxers were known for getting up at the crack of dawn and performing long distance road work. Some trainers swear by it. Others curse it.

But is running a useful MMA workout tool?

Many people are still very confused about whether running makes an effective MMA workout or not. The answer may surprise you. Read on to find out how important running is for combat athletes and what you can do the make the time you spend running more effective and efficient.

Most people waste a lot of time running because they don’t know how to do it properly. So let’s talk about several basic tips that anyone can easily use to get started with a great MMA workout.

Earlier I said that many boxers were known for doing long distance road work. Some of them ran up to 10 miles every morning to train for an upcoming fight. This style of training did not begin with boxing. If you go back even further, to perhaps the creation of combat conditioning as we know it, you’ll see the Indian wrestlers running long distances every morning as well.

If you look at today’s mixed martial artists, many of them still run every morning. Whether it’s Tito Ortiz running two to three miles every morning up on Big Bear or Rich Franklin running on the treadmill in his basement, running is and always will be used by combat athletes.

The question then becomes, how often and how long should you run?

Let’s look at some of the running workouts used by today’s top mixed martial artists.

Everyone wants to know what Fedor Emelianenko is doing and how he is training. While Fedor and his trainers haven’t revealed exactly how Fedor trains, it is clear from several interviews that running is a big part of his training. He runs on a daily basis.

Maksim Pokutnev, who filmed a documentary on Fedor and his team, noted that they run ten to fifteen km (approximately six to nine miles) every day. Not on the flat open road either. The team runs from the base of their camp, through the forest and through un-level terrain, to the top of a local peak.

Former boxing Heavyweight world Champion Rocky Marciano, who is considered by many to be the best conditioned heavyweight boxer ever, also trained in a similar fashion. He ran approximately five miles per day when he wasn’t training for a fight and increased his running to ten miles per day as the fight got closer. It is important to note that Rocky also ran a lot of hill sprints in his training.

The Indian wrestlers would train in a similar fashion, often running five to ten miles every single day.

So does that mean running five to ten miles a day is the best way to train for mixed martial arts? Not necessarily. Let’s look at how some other successful athletes train.

When Royce Gracie was training for his no-time-limit fight with Sakuraba, he said he hardly ever ran more than two miles at a time. That’s notably shorter than fighters we just discussed. Royce also runs hills sprints in the sand.

As for Tito Ortiz, he runs two to three miles per day. Tito, like Fedor, doesn’t run on a flat road, but on hills that vary in steepness.

What about former middle weight champion Rich Franklin? He runs for about 20 minutes every morning on the treadmill in his basement. In addition, he uses a lot of sprinting drills as well.

Of course there are many others. For example, Keith Jardine uses hill sprints as well.

You can see that a lot of fighters are using a wide variety of running workouts to train for MMA. The reason is that combat sports, especially mixed martial arts, require a wide variety of physical conditioning. You should need a wide variety of running to help build that conditioning.

Sample Running Workouts for MMA

One important thing to note is that modern day mixed martial arts fights are shorter than many combative competitions in the past. Not too long ago, there was a 90 minute MMA fight between Royce and Sakuraba. There were also several tournaments where fighters fought multiple times in one night.

If we go back to the wrestling competitions in India, they have documented matches lasting for hours. Vale Tudo fights in Brazil often had no time limits. I remember seeing a video of Royler Gracie in a closed door, no rules street fight in Brazil. The fight went on for about 45 minutes, almost three times as long as a non-title fight in the UFC.

Those long fights used to be the reality of fighting. You either had no time limits or you were fighting multiple fights in one day. However, most MMA fights today are much shorter.

If you were training for one of these “no time limit fights”, you would need to adjust for that with longer training and longer running. Even boxing matches last considerably longer than modern MMA fights.

However, the no time limit fights of the past are not the reality any more. Mixed martial arts fights are becoming shorter and more intense. And rule changes are making them even intense with rules that penalize fighters for inactivity or stalling. So the longer, low intensity, ten mile runs that many combatants used to train with, do not apply as much to mixed martial artists competing today.

It more optimal to run for a shorter period of time at a higher intensity level to accommodate for the short time limits and intense nature of mixed martial arts fights. You can run very short distances at maximum intensity. You can run up hills. You can run in the sand. You can run up the stairs of a stadium. All of these things will improve your cardio.

You can also run medium distances at moderate intensity. Two to three miles is probably ideal. Most mixed martial arts fights last only 15 minutes. So running for an hour at a slow pace is not only unnecessary, it’s often a waste of your time and recovery ability. Instead of running ten miles every day, you can run two miles or so. Then you can run sprints two days a week.

Long distance runs are not a complete waste of time as some trainers would have you believe. There are still many benefits, especially mentally, for doing long road work sessions. You just don’t need to do them every day.

You can mix in one long roadwork session every 12 to 14 days. For these longer runs, try your best to run in the hills or mountains. This is what BJ Penn, Renato Babalu Sobral and Fedor Emelianenko do. You want to vary the intensity level so you run isn’t stagnant.

The wide variety of running should play an important role in your overall MMA workout routine. The thing to remember, as always, is that as the intensity of your running workouts increases, the rest time between workouts needs to increase as well. Don’t perform high intensity sprinting workouts on consecutive days.

Now you have the tools and knowledge you need to incorporate running into your MMA workout schedule. Just remember that most of the time, you should train the way you want to perform. You only have so much time to train and so many physical resources, so make the most of them.

More MMA Workout pages:

MMA Home Workouts
MMA Workout Routines
A Unique MMA Conditioning Workout
MMA Circuit Training Workout – No Equipment Required
Quick Mixed Martial Arts Workout
MMA Workouts and Agility Drills
A Mixed Martial Arts Conditioning Workout
MMA Circuit Workout Routines
Explosive Workouts, Sprints and other Training for Mixed Martial Artists
MMA Circuit Training Workouts
How Much Running for MMA – Hills and Sprint Training