More on Training the MMA Athlete

While most sports have a pre-season, in-season, and off-season; MMA does not. Yes you do have training camps before fights where training ramps up and becomes a bit more intense, for the most part you are basically in-season all year round. This often brings up the question "how often should an MMA athlete strength train"? There are several variables to consider here but I would not recommend an MMA athlete strength training more than 3 days per week. Any more than that I would guarantee over training and not only would you sacrifice strength gains but your skill training would diminish also. For most, a three day total body program is going to lend itself the best training results. For some athletes that need more recovery or we need to back of on intensity we will do an upper body/lower body/total body split. This offers more recovery as it is less stressful on the CNS.

The thing I can never relay to coaches about training MMA is the ability to adapt to these athletes at any specific moment. This is the artist part of coaching these athletes and I believe only comes from time and/or actually participating in the sport. What I mean is, you can have a great plan for the day but if that athlete has taken too many leg kicks, is exhausted from 5 straight days of skill training, has a sore back from being stacked up in guard bottom over and over again, etc., your plan can quickly go to the garbage can. These are serious considerations to take into account and require good communication between the coach and the athlete.

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Reactive Pendullum

This is a reactive core exercise we use with some of our MMA guys. By reactive I mean that they have respond to the coaches order to stabilize without knowing when the coach will call it out. This is to mimic the unpredictable nature of MMA.



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TRX Warm Up

I know! You can't believe it right?!?!?! I am actually blogging. After getting hell from several people at the Perform Better Summit in Providence this past weekend, I figured I should work a bit harder to schedule time to update this blog. All I have today is a great warm up that we do at Impact Performance Training with the TRX. Try it out. I think you'll like it.....



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