conditioning for an mma athlete

Mihailo Tomic

12/10/2015 at 17:30 #16547

Greetings.

I have two in shape MMA athletes who have matches in around 40 days. My job is to get them conditioned for fight.

They are both in good aerobic condition so I thought to do a interval type “sport specific” conditioning where there would be a:

grappling (gnp) phase
transitioning period (sort of rest inteval)
stand up phase
transitioning period

and repeat for 6 minutes, with one minute rest after that.

My thoughts are to start lighter, with maybe 10 rounds, and get it down to 3 rounds of 6 minutes a week before the fight.

So it would be a classic volume towards intensity. Any thoughts and recommendations?

Mladen Jovanovic

13/10/2015 at 09:47 #16548

Without deeper analysis, you could “attack” things from two directions.

1. Longer-lower intensity work toward 3×5 (or 5×5)
2. Shorter-higher intensity work toward 3×5 (or 5×5)

You can call this “funnel” method. Make sure to also check 8-weeks out program (fight prep phase) by Joel Jamieson (in his book), and you can also take some ideas from Block Periodization (Final Phase approach). Since it is 40 days to a fight, most conditioning and speed/power training should be “sport specific”, with occasional complementary GPP work (i.e. 1-2x gym sessions, small volume and recovery sessions in the pool). As always depends on your specific case and what one done before.

There could be numerous methods to hit 1 and 2 btw. With two you can start with 30sec hard intervals and try to extend it (or decrease rest), with 2min round and try to extending and so forth.

Hope it helps. Haven’t had much experience in this area so I am just brain storming using some known principles.

Mihailo Tomic

13/10/2015 at 17:32 #16563

Precisely the answer I was hoping for.

Thanks Mladen!