The Best Mixed Martial Arts Conditioning Exercises
In MMA Conditioning Part 1, we talked about how to structure your conditioning workouts to make them specific for mixed martial arts.
Just to recap a bit, the simplest and perhaps the most effective way to organize your conditioning workout is to mimic the exact round length, rest periods, and number of rounds in the event you are training for.
If we assume you are fighting for three five-minute rounds, with one minute of rest between each round, your conditioning routine would have a similar work-to-rest ratio. You would pick several different exercises and perform them in five-minute circuits, resting only one minute between each circuit.
MMA Conditioning Drills
Now that you understand how to organize your conditioning workout, we’ll discuss some specific exercises and drills that are good for mixed martial artists.
Let’s examine what conditioning exercises and drills are used by some of the best MMA fighters in the world today.
We can start with Randy Couture, who is widely recognized as one of best fighters in all of mixed martial arts. Randy strength and conditioning trainer, Jake Bonnaci, said this of Randy’s training before his fight with Gabriel Gonzaga
We are setting up his strength training to simulate a fight. We are going five minutes of conditioning. It changes every workout. We will give him a minute break. We will run through a circuit of full-body exercises, improving his muscular endurance. Give him another break and we run through the cycle 5-6 times to simulate a fight.
Notice the mention of full-body exercises. This is important for mixed martial artists because in a fight you use your body as one integrated unit, not as isolated muscle groups.
Full-body exercises are a must for MMA conditioning and when you use them, you closely simulate the strength and conditioning you need as fighter.
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Randy uses a lot of explosive drills like plyometric push-ups, bodyweight squats and lunges, squat jumps, medicine ball squats and resistance bands. All of these exercises are important because they build explosive strength and conditioning in your entire body.
Even the basic exercises like pushups, pullups, situps, squats are great for fighters. They are especially great because you don’t need a gym or any expensive equipment to perform them.
Another great MMA conditioning exercise is sledge hammer training. This is used by a countless number of top fighters including Dan Hensderson, Tim Silvia, Fedor Emelianenko, Sean Sherk and Rick Franklin.
Here’s what Tim Silvia had to say about why he uses sledge hammer training:
“If I am on top of a guy on the ground, you know, I’m throwin hammer fists, I’m throwin big punches and stuff like that. It’s just building muscles that you can’t catch in a gym atmosphere where you’re doing bench presses and stuff like that. So I really try to incorporate things to simulate a fight and I really truly believe that this is the way to go.”
Tim hit the proverbial nail on the head with that statement. He explained the bottom line of why training with the sledge hammer is such an effective conditioning tool.
To start using sledge hammer training yourself, all you need is a sledge hammer from your local hard store and a used tire to pound on. You don’t have to get the heaviest sledge hammer available, just get whatever size you feel comfortable with. Obviously, the bigger you are, the heavier the hammer you should use.
Both the sledge hammer and the used tire will come fairly cheap. If you have the extra money to spend, you can get a few sledge hammers in different sizes to mix up your conditioning.
More Sledge Hammer Conditioning:
Quinton Rampage Jackson used a similar conditioning drill during his training camp at Big Bear before his UFC championship fight with Dan Henderson.
Quinton used a variation of sledge hammer training that incorporates the same chopping movement. But instead of using a sledge hammer and a tire, he used a giant piece of wood and an ax. The exercise is virtually the same although the sledge is more practical. It’s a lot harder for most people to pickup a used tire than to find a giant tree stump to chop.
The important thing is not the equipment you use, but that the swinging and chopping motions condition your core muscles in a way that is hard to duplicate with other exercises.
And of course, let’s not forget that Rocky pounded scrap medal with a sledge hammer in an old junk yard before his second fight with Apollo Creed. If that doesn’t get you pumped up about hammer training, nothing will!
The exercises and drills from above are just a few of the many that you can use in your circuit style MMA conditioning routines. These exercises work well for the best mixed martial arts fighters in the world, and they will work for you too.
More Mixed Martial Arts Conditioning Pages
Ginastica Natural Conditioning for MMA,
MMA Conditioning and Strength Training,
MMA Conditioning Part One,
Mario Sperry’s MMA Conditioning Routine
