How to Improve Your Cardio Endurance For MMA

Your Body is a Very Specific Machine
The best way to improve your cardio endurance for MMA is simply to replicate as closely as you can the same repetitions, tempo, duration, weight and movements that you would do during competition. The body is very specific and improves, and gets stronger very specifically. Even the slightest changes in tempo, weight, repetitions, and or movement will change the results the exercise has on your body.

For example, we can do an exercise like running and simply change its duration, or pace and the results will be drastically different. A perfect example of this is a long distance
runner and a sprinter. Even though the bulk of their training is similar in movement which is running, their performance results from the training will be drastically different. In general, the sprinter never beats a long distance runner in a marathon and a long distance runner never beats a sprinter in a 100 yard dash.
Pushing Your Limits
Your body is a very efficient machine and only performs as well as it needs to. For this reason, not only is it important to do exercises with similar motions done in MMA with similar repetitions, durations, weight, and tempo, you need to always push your body harder than the time before. This is why just doing the same repetitions and motions of exercise may not ever increase your cardio endurance. If you did 30 squats in 30 secs every time and never tried to increase the amount, your endurance for this exercise would plateau very quickly and improvement in your endurance will soon cease.
Endurance Training Should Reflect the Fighter's Style
The proper exercises and proportions of each exercise one should chose to increase endurance for MMA fighter is also specific to each fighter and the style and strategy they chose in a MMA match. If you are a grappler and rely on takedowns to control and win the fight, then the bulk of your endurance should be focused on exercises that pertain to takedowns. If you are mainly a striker and plan only to defend takedowns and strike, then doing wrestling shot exercises would be a lot less beneficial then chosing padwork exercises which helps your endurance when it comes to striking. You may also chose exercises that reflect the movements and motions of defending a takedown. The different exercises should be done proportional to that of the actions done in a MMA match. For example, if you tend to strike 70% of the time, 20% of the time defending takedowns, and 10% on the ground getting up, then your conditioning exercises should reflect the same ratio.
Unfortunately fights don't always go according to plan so it would be wise to train for the most likely situations equally.
Some Great Exercises for MMA
Exercises that will best reflect the actions and tempo of a MMA match and best help in improving your cardio endurance for MMA are circuit training, interval training, plyometric exercises and powerful explosive exercises found in Olympic style power lifting. If you are planning on fighting 3x5 min. rds with 1 minute breaks, a good example of circuit training would be to hit pads for 1 min., defend takedowns for 1 min., attempt as many takedowns for 1 min., back to hitting pads for 1 min., and finishing the round with 1 min. of clinching and pumbling. This should be done for 3 - 5 min. rounds with 30 sec breaks. If this is your first time doing anything similar to this, you might want to work your way up to this point. Maybe start out with only doing 30 sec. intervals of exercise for a 2 1/2 min. round with a 1 minute break between rounds. A good example of interval training would be to sprint for 30 seconds and jog for 30 seconds doing this for a duration of a 5 minute round. Some great plyometric exercises would be pushup claps, box jump exercises, Russian lunges, and jump squats. Some great power lifting exercises include hang cleans, the clean and jerk, clean squats, and dead lifts.
Exercises To Avoid
Exercises that are very long in duration and low in intensity should be avoided for a MMA fighter. The exception to would be when a fighter is preparing for his fight and wants to either cut weight by sweating out excess water weight or burning calories to lean down to the weight class one is competing in.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6233090

No comments:

Post a Comment