How to Train Like a UFC Fighter
Even if you’re not training for a fight, you too can tap into some of the same skills so that you can look, move, and perform like a UFC fighter.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Train Like a UFC Fighter
The topic of how some of the world’s top athletes—MMA fighters—get fit has recently been at the forefront of my mind. Not only am I, as opens in a new windowI recently posted on Instagram, personally training to step into the cage for a kickboxing fight later this summer, but I also recently watched one of the most hyped events of the past several years in the realm of athleticism, cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance, stamina, and stress control.
Even if you’re not training for a fight, you too can tap into some of the same skills so that you can look, move, and perform like these athletes:
1. HIIT
Fighting fitness begins with what I call a big gas tank. When a fighter in the ring is referred to as “gassed,” this typically means that they have run out of oxygen and are in the process of being forced to repay that oxygen debt.
When you exercise, your body uses oxygen to create energy. But when you reach a high intensity during exercise, your body’s demand for oxygen exceeds your ability to breathe in that much oxygen and deliver it to the muscles. When this happens, your body goes into an “oxygen debt.” Once you go into oxygen debt, not only do your muscles begin to burn and do you begin to breathe hard, but you also put your body into a state where it needs to “repay” that oxygen debt after exercise.
While repaying a debt may seem like a complex topic better addressed by opens in a new windowMoney Girl, it is actually quite easy for your body to repay oxygen debt. You simply need to breathe more and breathe deeper. And when you breathe more and breathe deeper, your body burns more calories. Depending on how hard you’ve worked, this oxygen repaying can help you burn anywhere from a few dozen to over a hundred extra calories each hour after you exercise, for up to 24 hours after you’ve finished.
This is where high intensity interval training, aka “HIIT,” comes in. Besides weight training, one of the best ways to create high post-exercise oxygen consumption is via the hard cardio efforts you’ll do during an HIIT routine. While it would be virtually impossible to create that oxygen debt by riding a bicycle as hard as you can for ten minutes, you can easily split those ten minutes into several 30-60 second efforts followed by long recovery periods, and still achieve the same calorie burning effect!
While riding a bicycle is just one example of an HIIT, a few more of my favorites include:
– 10 uphill sprints on a treadmill at maximum speed for 30 seconds each, with full recovery
– 10 50 m sprints in the pool, with minimal breathing during the sprints
– 10 sets of 20 burpees
2. Power/Plyometrics
In opens in a new windowHow to Train Like an American Ninja Warrior, I introduced the concept of fast feet. The ability to move quickly and explosively is not only crucial for a sport like obstacle racing or ninja warrior but also for fighting.
Some of the best ways to get your feet moving quickly include agility ladders that you can step in and out of (these ladders are popular among tennis players, football teams, etc.), sprinting down mildly steep grassy slopes like you’d find on a golf course, doing explosive alternating step-ups on a step bench at the gym, putting a treadmill on a very fast sprint speed and trying to stay on as long as possible, and doing lots of plyometrics.
I give you plenty of plyometric exercises and videos in opens in a new windowthis episode on superhuman strength, but the idea is this: you actually can trick your muscles into producing high amounts of power. By teaching your body how to have a faster cycle called a “stretch-shortening cycle,” you can make the protective organ in your muscle tendons less likely to send signals to limit force production when the muscle has increased tension. This allows for greater contraction force than you would normally be able to produce during a strength or power exercise—or even during an activity like punching or kicking.
The stretch-shortening cycle is simply the period of time it takes your muscle to transition from the eccentric phase (such as your foot landing on the ground during the running gait) to the concentric phase (your leg muscles contracting as you push your foot back off the ground). The cycle can easily be trained through explosive, powerful movements, which are often referred to as plyometrics, as well as via powerlifting and weight training exercises like the clean and jerk, the overhead push press, or the weighted jump squat.
3. Isometrics
If you ever watched an MMA fight, then you know that there are often long periods of time were competitors are clutched in each other’s grip, moving very slowly but with high amounts of force. For this type of fitness, isometric training, which I introduced in opens in a new windowthis episode, can come in handy.
The term “isometrics,” which combines the Greek words “isos” (“equal” or “same”) and “metron” (“distance” or “measure”), refers to a muscle contraction without any visible movement in the angle of the joint. This is in contrast to traditional moving “isotonic” contractions, in which your muscle length and joint angle change throughout the exercise.
If you’ve ever performed a opens in a new windowwall squat, in which you sit in an imaginary chair with your back against the wall for as long as you possibly can, then you’re familiar with isometric exercising! Your legs are certainly burning, but you’re not budging an inch. Other popular examples of isometric exercise are the front plank, side plank, and the “boat” abdominal hold in opens in a new windowYoga and opens in a new windowPilates.
If you really want to take isometric exercises to the next level, you can use a technique called “extreme isometrics,” in which you do indeed move your muscles, but you move them very, very slowly, taking as long as 5-10 minutes to complete a single repetition. As you can imagine, this takes intense focus. Go ahead and just try and do a 10 minute push-up and see what happens to your entire body!
4. Stamina
Although a fighter doesn’t necessarily need the extremely long enduring skills that a marathoner might possess, they do need to be able to bounce back round after round. And rounds are typically going to be lasting anywhere from three to five minutes.
While the concept of building endurance, commonly referred to as “road work” within the MMA community, is not necessarily rocket science and simply involves moving your body, if you actually shut down the ability of the baroreceptors in your chest to produce high amounts of cortisol, which tends to activate your sympathetic, fight and flight nervous system. If you are constantly engaging in shallow chest breathing, it’s very easy for this to happen.
However, as I introduce in opens in a new windowmy article on some of my top methods for reducing stress, you can actually enhance stamina and endurance without triggering this stress mechanism in the body—by engaging in deep nasal breathing, even when you’re exercising during a stamina effort, such as a weighted height, the three mile run, or a Philly bike ride. The concept is very simple: simply breech your nose instead of breathing through your mouth. If you really want to bring this concept to the next level, try filling your mouth with water, or, as some ancient warriors such as the Spartans did, small rocks, and then go out for your workout while trying to keep those objects or the water in your mouth. It’s much much harder than you might imagine.
5. Health
Finally, once you’ve introduced high intensity intervals, power and plyometrics, isometric training, and stamina without stress, be sure to take care of your health! Many gyms, and especially many fighting scenarios such as mats and turf, contain high levels of the type of germs and bacteria that can lead to a staph infection. I personally use essential oils, such as oregano and lavender, to kill these type of compounds after I finished training in this scenario. After all, you can build fitness like a fighter, but it will all be for not if you wind up in the hospital with a nasty infection. Remember that health and fitness go hand-in-hand, and you can read about opens in a new windowmy own personal experience with MRSA and staph here, and how you can avoid it.
Do you have questions about how to train like a UFC fighter, or your own tips to add? Join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.