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Explosive MMA Conditioning

 

Demetrious-Johnson-Ian-McCall-UFC-on-FX

In almost every sport the ability to be explosive and powerful often goes hand in hand with success, and this is especially true in Mixed Martial Arts. Being a faster and more explosive fighter gives you the ability to overpower, outwork, and outgun your opponent from start to finish. The truth is that almost every athlete can dramatically improve their power with the right program, but very few programs get it right.

In this article, I will teach you the keys to doing it right. I will show you how to dramatically improve your explosive power, and most importantly, how to develop it specifically for MMA. I will also do much more than just give you a few exercises to throw together as many coaches often do, I will lay out the foundation, the specific methods, and the science behind explosive power development for MMA and why my program is different.

If you have no interest in the real science and philosophy of explosive power training feel free to skip to the end, but for those who want to know the how and the why of strength and conditioning, read on…

What is power? In the cage, power is more than just a physics equation, it’s your chance to knock your opponent out, ground and pound until the ref stops it, or grind out a punishing decision. You see power in MMA depends on not just how strong or how fast you are, but how well conditioned your specific energy systems are to allow you to produce power when it counts.

This type of power is not just a measure of muscular strength and/or speed, but rather a measure of the power of your energy systems. You can think of how high your vertical jump is or how hard you can punch or kick as a measure of external power, while energy system power can be thought of as internal power.

Understanding how to develop the power of your energy systems and how to apply this power to MMA is the result of intelligent planning, specific training, and is how you can succeed where other programs often fail.

The body has three principle systems it uses in an overlapping fashion to produce the energy your body needs to survive, to move around, and to try to punch, kick, or elbow people in the face. These systems are known as the anaerobic-alactic, anaerobic-lactic, and aerobic systems.

The three systems vary both in terms of how fast they are able to produce energy, and how long they are able to sustain that energy production. This means that each energy system has a power component as well as a capacity component. You can think of the power component as the size of the engine, the bigger the engine the more horsepower it can create and the capacity is the size of the gas tank, the larger the gas tank, the longer the system can produce energy.

The system I’m going to discuss in depth in this article is the alactic energy system, and when trained properly it is the key to devastating striking and brutal ground and pound. I’ll lay out for you the specific periodization plan needed to maximally develop your alactic power, and I’ll give you the principles and methods I’ve used to prepare some of today’s most explosive top fighters.

The Alactic System 101

Sets: 3-5 per exercise
Rest: 2-4 minutes between sets, 6-10 minutes between exercises (active rest)
Tempo: Max acceleration, 1-2 second pause between reps
Volume: 2-6 exercises per workout, 2 workouts per week.
Exercise selection: Squats, Olympic lift variations, Jump squats, Jump lunges, Presses, Explosive Jumps,
Heavy Med ball throws, etc.

The Complex Method is extremely effective at improving maximum explosive strength and can be used for a period of 2-3 weeks in the middle of the block.

Exercise A (max strength exercise): 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps @ 90-95% resistance
Exercise B (jumping, or ballistic upper body exercise): 3 sets of 6-8 reps @ 30%
3-4 minutes active rest between sets
4-5 minutes active rest between Exercise A&B
8-10 minutes active rest between groups of exercises (series)
2-3 series per workout

BLOCK B: Max Alactic Power

Reps: 8-15 per set
Sets: 6-10 sets per exercise
Load: 30-50%
Rest between sets: rest until heart rate drops to 130-140
Rest between exercises: 8-10 minutes active rest
Tempo: Approximately 1 second per rep
Volume: 2-4 exercises per workout
Exercise selection: Jump squats with KB, Explosive Jump exercises, Uphill running, Stair jumps, Explosive Push-ups/pull-ups, Med ball throws, Explosive wrestling drills, pad and bag work, etc.

BLOCK C: Max Alactic Capacity

Now that you’ve significantly increased your maximum explosive strength and alactic power in the first two blocks, it’s necessary to finalize these improvements by maximizing how long you can maintain your explosive power for and ensuring that it’s specific to MMA.

This is the final stage and at the end of the block your explosive power will reach its peak. In order to develop your alactic capacity, slightly longer work intervals will be used along with shorter rest intervals. By doing this, a maximal demand is placed on the alactic system’s capacity and thus it will adapt by improving.

Keep in mind there is a strong genetic component to this capacity and there is only so much it can possibly improve. You can improve your alactic capacity 10-20% with intelligent training, but your alactic system is ultimately limited by the amount of creatine phosphate and ATP that can be stored in the muscle so there will always be an upper limit to its capacity.

An important part of Block C is the finalized transition from general to specific exercises. This means you should only use exercises and drills that are specific to your sport. In MMA that gives you the option of doing pad and bag work, wrestling drills, ground and pound, etc.

The focus should be on maintaining proper technique in the drill at the highest rate of speed possible. You should continue monitoring your heart rate in between sets to gauge heart rate recovery and decrease the rest intervals over the course of the block until they are only 10-20 seconds as your conditioning and power endurance improve.

You will continue to notice your heart rate decreasing faster during intervals between sets as your explosive conditioning improves. By the end of this block, you should be able to keep your average heart rate under your anaerobic threshold. Block C should last 2-3 weeks and should end 1 week prior to fight or competition date.

For Block C, the following principles should be used improve maximum alactic capacity:

Reps: 10-20 per set
Sets: 4-8 sets per exercise
Volume: 2-3 exercises per workout
Rest between sets: start with 30-45 seconds, decrease to 10-20 seconds
Rest between exercises: 10-12 minutes active rest
Tempo: Max speed
Exercise selection: Explosive drills specific to MMA disciplines


Comments

  1. Hi there i have been weight training for a year now and have seen good gains, i have recently started mma and love it, i want to change my workout routine to give me fast twitch and stamina but also still want to gain learn muscle, is this possible? and can you reccomend a 3 day workout routine for me? soo confused right now, many thanks Lozzah

  2. With a genetic limit on alactic development is there a way to find out where this cap is?..or know when you have reached it?….I mean obviously any effort to extend beyond its cap would be wasted effort correct?

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