Fight Conditioning

[Jeff Bussey]

Hey guys and gals,
I think there was a thread close to this recently so sorry for the redundancy, but I'm interested in this.

What stuff do you do to prepare yourself for competitions?

Strength and endurance training

Or whatever it is that you train or don't train because it doesn't give you that 'biggest bang for buck' thing


We have a guy in our club that is training for comps and I'm just wondering what it is that you guys do to keep yourself in fight condition.

Really appreciate it.

Thanx,


J

[ghostofwingchun]

I am sorry Mr. Bussey but what kind of competition are you asking about . . . I am thinking that conditioning will be competition specific.

Thanks,

Ghost

[lawrenceofidaho]

Jeff,

You can get some great ideas by checking out the workout logs of Andrew S. on the main forum. (Combine his; education, practical experience, and the amount of research he's done specifically into those areas, and you're hard pressed to find a better resource for valid information.)

-Lawrence

[Jeff Bussey]

Hey Ghost,
I'm talking about sparring so anything that would keep / get you conditioned for that

lawrenceofidaho,

Thanks, I'll check that out.

J

[stricker]

ok basically i think the most important thing is to do with how your energy systems are conditioned (eg oxidative, glycotic, phosphagen). so no point going for 10 mile jogs etc. you need to work out specifically how you think your fights are going to be, eg round length and what your workload is during each round. so at my mma club if someones buiding up to a thai bxoing fight (3 min rounds) they'll do everything in 3 minute rounds (eg. 5 x 3 min rounds on pads) and that should go for your running etc too. for an mma fight (5 min rounds) again do say 3 x 5 min rounds. so it really depends on what sort of fight your entering etc. one really good thing to do is sprint work or intervals, so for 5 minute rounds do jog for 10s, sprint for 10s, sprawls for 10s. thats a pretty typical mma fight routine. also its really important to use exactly the same rest intervals as your competition, and something else we do is make sure the last 30s of each round you work as hard as possible, eg chain punch solid the last 30s or something.

again really it depends on what sort of comp your doing and your game...

strength, speed and technique are different. for strength you really want weights for best results etc but the above is good for your base fight conditioning. its what my mma club do anyway and has got results so...

ps if you do the sprint intervals eg several 5 minute rounds of 20s jog-10s sprint or whatever dont do too many times a week (probably 2x if your an am) as youll overtrain and mess yourself up.

hope that helped.

[AndrewS]

Lawrence,

thanks for the kind words, but I'd say the weakest part of my training approach is my conditioning work, partly 'cos I'm not actively training for an event now, and partly 'cos true high intensity conditioning work fries me to the point where I lose the ability to recover and get anything else done afterwards, and generally don't have the energy after 2-3 other sessions in a day to do it. I tend to get good results when I build energy systems work on top of lots of more mellow recovery-style GPP, then spar on top of that. This follows the classic GPP->SPP-> actual sport model.

A really good line from Adam Singer- conditioning should be directed to both the parameters of the event and the *style of the individual fighter*. Hence, an 'explode, rest, explode, rest' sort of fighter should base their conditioning on somewhat different patterns than someone who's always going, or, for instance, a grappler who basically plays python.

A few additional comments-

GPP-
basic conditioning to raise work capacity and help you recover from other workouts. I try to do my GPP so it works similar things to my strength or speed sessions, aiding recovery, and try to get some work on muscular imbalances and mobility out of it at the same time. I tend to do better with these sorts of workouts if they don't have any 'oh dear lord not tonight' factor- leaving that to SPP sorts of things.

SPP-
I throw energy system work under this category- lactic acid training, tabata intervals, bar complexes working similar force/time characteristics to the activity you seek to prepare for, as well as sport-specific drills done for conditioing purposes (ideally *simple* skills that won't decay under fatigue easily). With a larger group, isolation sparring working specific stuff for time would fit nicely under this heading).

So, in response to the initial post, before coming up with a program for this guy you might want to think about:
1). His strength and speed development (does he need work for strength or speed)
2). Injury prevention- i.e. if he's got a bad shoulder, then maybe jerks at a high % rm1 aren't a good exercise to select.
3). Characteristics of the event
4). The time he has available
5). His characteristics as a fighter - what tempo is he good at and how to play to that.

Hope that helps,

Andrew

[ghostofwingchun]

Originally Posted by Jeff Bussey

Hey Ghost,
I'm talking about sparring so anything that would keep / get you conditioned for that

Thank you for clarification Mr. Bussey! Would not sparring itself then be the best way to get in condition and stay in condition?

Thanks,

Ghost

[Jeff Bussey]

Hey guys,
Thanks alot for your suggestions.

Striker and Edmund,
Right now he's building his endurance punching for 3 minutes, kicking for 3 minutes and elbows and knees for 3 minutes with no break in between so he's going full out for 9 minutes straight (I actually think he's doing almost 6 minutes of punching but not sure)
I'll pass on what you guys said though.

Andrew S
I can't seem to find the workout logs that lawrence was talking about. Could you point them out to me?
Thanks

Ghostofwingchun
Sparring is a definite, but there are things you can build up outside of the ring or sparring session. The areas of where he should concentrate on will be brought out during those sparring sessions.

Thanks again

J

[Edmund]

As others have said, it depends of the format of comp, Jeff.

In our club, we do amatuer MT matches which are 3x2 minute rounds or 3x3 minute rounds. A single match not tournament. You need an even mix of strength and endurance. Long jogs can help due to the amount of nerves you have in the hours before the fight which can tire you out. But the majority would be rounds of padwork, bagwork and sparring.

If you were doing a TKD tournament, it would be 3x3 minute rounds per match and most times you can have up to 5 or 6 matches in a tournament on a single day. You need some serious endurance and speed work for it but a lot of strength and power is not required.