Combat Training Workout
Recently at Philippi Sports Institute we’ve had an influx of MMA (UFC) athletes. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to train many championship level boxers. Recently we have been training more elite level MMA fighters. We have not focused on training the MMA athlete in the past but word has traveled that we had great success improving strength and power in our team sport athletes and the MMA fighters lacking in these areas have started to sign up for programs.
I have several commonalities with the MMA athletes approach to training. Generally, although better than boxers, the MMA athletes approach to training lacks focus when they don’t have a fight approaching. In this “in between” time they lack an attention to improving strength and power, they carry too much weight in between fights affecting their strength on fight night. They tend to focus too much on skill work and not enough on strength and power development. The fighters we’ve trained tend not to get enough rest, and don’t take enough planned rest during their training week leading to chronic overtraining.
Before training begins at PSI we assess all of our athletes to determine weak areas, inflexibilities, previous injuries, athleticism, strength, and power. We have found that most of the MMA fighters are sufficient in their cardiovascular fitness and lack strength, power and explosiveness. To try and develop this area while preparing for the fight is not an easy thing to do, especially as a fight approaches and the focus of the training gravitates towards sparring and technical skill and away from heavy strength training. The trick is to leave some energy in the tank while strength training to allow for sufficient skill training in other training sessions. The following program consists of strength and power training with sets consisting of moderate relative intensity while also containing metabolic training to help with conditioning. We have had really good success developing both strength and conditioning with the fighters that we’ve trained. Some of the exercises are particular to our facility but can be substituted for others if the equipment is not available.
Week 1: Strength & Metabolic Conditioning
