After a short, intense sprint this evening, I sat in my car with burning lungs and reflected upon my level fitness (or lack of it). I’d like to be much more … everything.  I have a number of excuses to allay my dissatisfaction; I have been seriously ill, under pressure, injured, switching jobs, blah blah, blah and blah.  All of these things are quite reasonable explanations, and its not like I’m angry at myself for finding ways to cope with my challenges or put food on the table.

At the same time, I’ve harbored a secret chip on my shoulder against all the guys who have beaten me because they are better muscled, bigger, and in superior physical condition. I can almost hear the nagging ego explanation now. “If I were 15lbs heavier, had the free time to waste my life away at Golds Gym, or were genetically gifted, of course I would pwn these noobs. I’d have a flipping protein shake IV injecting fuel into my biceps 24/7. But I’m better than them, they’re just stronger.”

This, of course, is an lie. The bottom line is that your body’s strength, endurance and flexibility are under your control. Just like your favorite submission, your fitness is a technique.  You make decisions to spend time enhancing it. It takes discipline to take it to the next level. You use it to defeat opponents.

This hit home while was reading 20 Tips to improve your grapling, where it stated that your cardio was one of your techniques.  I can’t use my conditioning as an excuse to explain away my troubles as if it is somehow more honorable to lose because of a strength difference than a technical one.  Have to man up and see the truth.

Your fitness is a technique.  Sharpen it accordingly.

Of course in this case, when I say push ups, I’m not talking about a brassier or those most excellent rainbow ice-cream popsicles. I’m talking about the exercise that separates the men from the boys, the women from the little girls, and the hardcore from the sub-species of sissies known as wusstards.

Now that I’ve done some name calling, you probably want to know how push ups are going to get you cut, punch a hole through a brick wall, or just be stronger fighter. If you do want that,pay attention so you can forever leave the wusstard category, and join us over here at hardcore.

Relevance and Versatility

Push ups and variations are a staple of MMA training because they positively affect many of the things you do in the ring. Take down defense, punching speed, jujitsu escapes … push ups can even help with clinching power. Not only do they directly help specific MMA moves, but there are hundreds of push up variations. Variation is important to keep steady progress (or break through plateaus) and keep over-use type injuries at bay.

Strength Endurance

In MMA, you want to be able to generate high levels of body force for extended periods of time. The push up is one of the primary measurements – and builders of – strength endurance. Squeezing, pushing, etc. Even when you’re looking to develop speed, you need a strong core foundation of strength to reach higher echelons of performance. Without a proper base, you’ll be held back in many areas – regular endurance, max power, and top speed.

Plus, strength endurance goes hand in hand with grit and will power.

Hand Speed

Speaking of hand speed, you can develop sensitivity and hand speed with push ups. You just have to do them right. The right type of push ups can develop wrist/forearm strength and help prevent hand injuries.

Chest and Shoulder Development

Unless you put on a few pounds to make the next weight class, fighters shouldn’t be interested much in body building. When I say development, I mean increasing the muscles capacity to do work, and not increasing its size.

It’s nice to have big pec’s to impress the ladies, but they won’t make you fight any better. Certainly, if you need more strength, but just can’t get your nervous system squeeze any harder (fairly unlikely) putting more muscle on the bones will mean that you can lift heavier and generate more force. Like I said, “IF”.

With that aside, push ups are meat and potatoes chest, triceps, and shoulder developers. They will even assist you in punching harder by helping you keep shoulders relaxed, arms up. Relaxed shoulders = faster punches = more punching power. Depends on the type of push up your doing, but for most of them, that’s the general idea.

The Rules

Lets outline a few rules here.

Tempo matters.

Many people think they can crank off 20 or 100 push ups – but they are really just flopping up and down, head bobbing up and down super quickly.

Slow on the way down – don’t just fall down with gravity. *Lower* your self to the ground. Faster on the way up – forcefully push. It is optional to pause for a count at the bottom. No bouncing your chest off the ground like a trampoline.

The exception the this rule is when you do plyometric (explosive) push ups.

Quality over quantity.

It’s better to do 5 super strict push ups than 50 crappy push ups.

Hand position.

Appropriate hand positions include pushing up on your palms, fists (weight resting on your two knuckles closest to the thumb) or fingertips. When doing plyometric pushes, limit yourself to the palm on the ground style.

Fighters should prefer push ups on the knuckles because it strengths their wrists and teaching proper alignment when punching.

As for the position of each hand on the floor – like wide/narrow push ups – it depends on the specific variation. In general, keep your hands directly under your shoulders, the bottom of your palm about an inch closer to your feet.

Ears pulled away from your shoulders, neck long.

Your head should be in the same position relative to your body when at the top of the push up as the bottom.

Lats pulling your shoulders into their sockets.

Imagine for a moment that you are bench pressing. As you lower the bar, try to bend the into a horseshoe shape. When you do the push up, screw your shoulders into their sockets by “gripping” the ground and twisting two imaginary lids on a pickle jar. The lids need to be twisted towards each hands respective pinky finger.

When you’re doing this, you aren’t actually rotating the hands. You are just engaging the lat muscles with some mental imagery.

Stiff like a board.

Unless the variation requires it, your hips and torso should be solid and straight as a plank of wood.

Elbows in.

Don’t let them flare out. Keep your chicken wings down – ie: elbows tucked in to your ribcage.

The Exercises

The Basic Push Up.

Uppercut Push Ups

Your palms are facing your head, the fists are tight and positioned mid chest, close to your ribcage. Pretend you are doing bicep curls. This one hit the triceps, much like a reverse grip bench press.

One-Armed Push Ups

One armed push ups are pretty hardcore. Try them out after you’ve done a few weeks of regular push ups. They are an instruction on whole body tension. If you want some more specific training for the one armed push up, check out Pavel Tsatsoline’s book, The Naked Warrior. Here’s a video with a couple of variations. Note: In the vid there is about ten seconds of the dude doing kenpo karate, then he goes into the push ups, so don’t wig out.

Plyometric Push Ups: Clappers

Alright, that’s a little advanced, but you get the idea. To start off, lower yourself down and then explode up, pushing yourself off the ground. While in the air, make one clap, and bring your hands back underneath the shoulders to catch yourself on the way down. You absorb the drop of your body into the muscles, not your joints, so don’t have stiff arms and locked arms.

There are several variations of this type of push up. One of my favorites is getting one of those yoga blocks (see below) and putting it under one hand so it is elevated higher than the other. Hands are shoulder width apart. You explode up, flying up slightly to one side. As you come down, the opposite hand falls on top of the block. Like the picture below, but with a push up.

You can do this push up without the ballistic tempo and get a good stretch and range of motion in one side of your chest – similar to when you use push up handles.

Swiss Ball/Medicine Ball Push Ups

I was first introduced to these type of push ups by basketball players (they did them on a basketball, of course). The idea is that you’ll work your core and stabilizer muscles. You can put your feet on the ball or put the ball under your chest.

Hand Shuffle Push Ups

Here’s a video that shows a few examples of shuffling your hands while doing push ups that can help increase hand speed. These, in addition to clapping push ups, can boost your hand speed.

Gear

The push up handles that Chris uses in the video.

The yoga blocks that you can use to elevate one of your hands.

Ahh…. another new year. If you haven’t yet made some goals, go back and read the new year’s resolution post, and make some.

Two articles from the guys at FightPassport I found interesting were MMA Spotlight: Bench Press and Punching Power Workout.

The first one talks about how relevant the bench press is to MMA and punching power. It even has a nifty video of Tank Abbot lifting a crap ton of weight in the bench press. Which is heavy than a normal ton, if you had to ask.

The second one has a pretty decent treatment of punching power and exercises that help. First you get the form down right, then you increase your muscle power. Pretty solid. However, the best line of the article is in the last paragraph and sums up my thoughts quite nicely:

Perhaps even more important is developing the rotary strength of your core region. Core development is very important for not only your punching power, but also, about 90% of MMA related movements.

However, I didn’t see one mention of sledge hammering a tire (near the bottom of the article), or other such old school and hard core methods.  Still, it’s a good read.

One last thing, if you didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas, just click below. It’s what you really wanted. It’ll make all of your MMA dreams come true. I know you want to.

Most people understand that there is a difference between exercise for the sake of health and longevity versus exercise for the specific purpose of increasing sport performance.

Those who are interested in mixed martial arts and already have a dedication to working out should be commended. Your mental grit and willpower will make you a better fighter.

However, despite their good intentions, many would-be fighters are doing various exercises and performing work out routines that will have little or no impact on their performance in the ring. Worse yet, they may be doing things that are decreasing their MMA conditioning.

Ultimately, there are two questions that need to be asked for every exercise, drill and workout.

1. Why am I performing the exercise?
2. How will this exercise help my performance?

Body Building Vs MMA Training

I’ve heard it said that body building is the worst thing to happen to American strength training – and I tend to agree. In body building, your goal is to build a visually pleasing body – a sculpture. In MMA, any statuesque muscles and ripped abs are merely a by-product of training, not our goal. When we start the path of training to compete in fight sports, let us be careful to make sure we keep our goals in mind.

Muscles adapt to stimulus in some fairly predicable ways. It makes sense – do a few weeks at weighted bicep curls and you body will reorganize and change your body to be able to perform that exercise better. Not only do muscles respond to the weight lifted, but also the tempo of how they were lifted, the number of times lifted (sets/reps), the movement angles and the body positioning when lifted.

Now, in general, we don’t want to think about training body parts, but movements.  Kicks, punches, take down defenses – you know, the movements of MMA.

Be Specific

There are two definitive physical exertions in MMA – the burst of movement – like a flurry of punches – and the grind of strength-endurance  – like when a grappler is struggling to sink in a submission.

When you think of training the cardiovascular component of MMA, you need to think in terms of your expected output in the ring. Do you and your opponent have a foot race around the octagon before punching? More likely, there will be a few “feeler” strikes thrown, followed by a fast exchange of blows – possibly an explosive take down.

15-25 seconds of a ballistic fury of punches on your heavy bag, followed by 30 seconds rest models real cage fighting more than doing laps – especially from a energy output perspective. I’ve said it before, triathalon training isn’t proper cardio for MMA.

Also, in terms of the bursts of activity, MMA’ers want to be able to produce maximal power for their strikes. In part, the explosiveness comes from body’s ability to quickly recruit muscle fibers to help out with the action. On the flipside, maximal muscle contraction isn’t about quickly recruiting muscles fibers, but just about recruiting them period. Bench pressing your one rep max takes several seconds – and you know how grueling and slow that can be. However, that kind of exertion doesn’t really take place in MMA.

Now for the strength-endurance part. When you’re not striking, you’re grappling – clinching together, squeezing, pushing. Strength-endurance is the ability to exert your muscles at the higher ranges of tension for a length of time. This can be either one continious, long push, or a series of pushes in a lengthy series.

Two common tests of stregth-endurace are push ups and pull ups. “Drop and give me 20″ is just the start. It’s reported that Ken Shamrock had to perform 500 hindu squats to get into the Lions Den.

How Specific?

Certainly, we could argue that you should only be doing the exact movements present in the sport – sparring, heavy bag punching, weighted grappling.  That would be pretty specific wouldn’t it?

Well, there are problems with the “only do ultra specific exercises” mentality. Two come to mind immediately.

First, overuse injuries. Our bodies just can’t do the same exact thing every day for months on end. Rock climbers and tennis players alike know this. Carpal tunnel syndrome anyone?

Second, muscles and bones don’t grow to reach their max potential without multidimensional strength development. Plus, muscles can also develop synergistically in groups – like the biceps and triceps.  Strength in one body area can be throttled by lack of strength in another.

The truth is that there is a range of specificity – exercises that are close enough to the movement increase your proficiency. Earlier I mentioned about the speed of lifting your one rep max – I didn’t mean to imply that building your 1RM won’t be helpful – because it can – but that it isn’t the topic right now.

Body Positioning

The [study] results stress the importance of selecting exercises in which the posture closely resembles that of the movements they are attempting to facilitate.

- From the article The specificity of strength training: the effect of posture ; European Journal of Applied Physiology; Volume 73, Numbers 3-4 / May, 1996 (link)

For the purpose of skill enhancement, you want to perform exercises in the same body position in which you’d see them in the ring. Again, this makes sense. Even though it works the quadraceps, the seated leg raise doesn’t influence the squat max like a front squat does. You are pushing the weight in an entirely different plane, one against gravity one perpendicular to it. Seated leg presses should be good for your butterfly guard sweeps and up kicks – but not as much so for your standing kicks and knee strikes.

The study cited above did some work along those lines of thinking.

Specific Doesn’t Mean Isolation

Don’t get too hasty now – remember that your body is like a team of muscles. When the muscles are coordinated, they will all help each other out. Take punching, for instance. If you want to puch harder, you’re going to need to specific shoulder, lat, arm and chest muscles to move the fist to another dude’s face. However, if you have a weak base, your punch will lack the back up power to knock out opponents. Pushing from your legs increases the punching movement’s speed and power.

Some Odds and Ends

• Free weights model MMA much better than weight machines. When fighting, you’ll have pressure exerted on you in all different directions – training in one static plane is … let’s leave it at “bad”.
• Multiple joint exercises are a great way to go. Not only are they an efficient use of your time, but activities like punching use muscles from your feet all the way up to your shoulders. Squats, bent presses, side presses, turkish get ups, dead lifts, kettle bell swings, etc.
• Explosive movements should be done with care, under good supervision. I love plyometrics – box jumping, medicine ball throws, snatches, clean and jerks, etc – just make sure you’re trained to do them right or expect injury pains.
• You need some wit to add weight to certain movements. If you wear wrist weights when boxing, in what direction does this add resistance? Hmmm… how would you add non-ballistic resistance to those punches in the opposite direction of the punch?
• If you’re competing in a match with 3 rounds of 5 minutes, train accordingly. Training in a circut that has 5 sets of 3 minutes wouldn’t do the trick, nor would one continuous exertion of 15 minutes.

Of course, this is a throwback to basic goal setting. I am reminded of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

For further reading, check out the NSCA’s article of specificiity for sport – those guys know their stuff. Another good read is The Physical Needs of MMA part 1 and part 2.

If you can spring for it, below is an excellent book. Dense, serious, and scientific. I got my copy from the University of Utah library.

Warning: I’m no doctor. Train under the capable supervision. You are responsible for your own actions.

1. Get more sleep at night.  Studies have shown that sleep plays an important role in learning  – those moves you learned in class won’t stick in the brain without out it. Plus, no sleep = weak muscle recovery from workouts.
2. Stop running and start sprinting. I have mentioned this before – proper cardio for MMA isn’t just hitting the treadmill for an hour. Fights are generally a collection intense exchanges (strikes, take down attempts) and slower, grinding muscular endurance (ground and pound, wrestling for submission) – neither of which are well-modeled by running a marathon in the gym.
3. Go for positional dominance before submission attempts.
4. Video tape yourself shadow boxing and sparring.
5. Review the video and try to analyze what you’re doing well and what techniques need to be sharpened.
6. Send the video to me and I’ll give you a couple of ideas. (First come first serve!)
7. Review the video with your Sensei or coach.  They probably know way more than I do. Plus, they probably like you enough to help you out with moves on the mat.
8. Find an expert and see if you can pick their brain. There are a lot of guys who are very accomplished that would be flattered if you offered to take them out to lunch and ask them some questions.
9. Know the “behind the scenes” guys. There are only a few high profile trainers and coaches, but many more skilled professionals.  Just because they don’t have their names splashed on CNN or have an internet marketing team to make them well known on the interweb doesn’t mean they aren’t hardcore.
10. Interview fighters. You’d be surprised how many guys in the pro-amateur range are willing to talk with you and share insights.
11. Have specific MMA training goals.
12. Train often with people who are better than you.
13. Occasionally, spar with much heavier training partners.
14. Occasionally, spar with people outside your gym. Just keep your ego in check and be respectful.
15. Occasionally, spar with MUCH more advanced training partners.
16. Occasionally, spar with less advanced training partners and destroy them, figuratively. If you can’t run a  rubber-guard clinic on a white belt, you don’t know the rubber guard.
17. On that note, try out the rubber guard.
18. If you haven’t, join an MMA gym. And train there.
19. Listen.  Instead of talking about MMA, training, and weightlifting – try to make it a goal to listen about these topics. You might learn something.
20. Practice being more humble.  A lot of good information gets filtered out of your brain before you even get to think about it.  Some athletes become harder to coach the better they are. Don’t be one of them.
21. When you travel, plan a stop to the local MMA shrines / training facilities. Many places have open mat times and you only have to pay a small drop-in fee to train.  Call ahead to make sure they’re cool with it.
22. BUY instructional videos.  Seriously. Actually purchase them with money you made.  I understand the allure of the internet pirating and YouTube. However, there is a distinct psychological effect that happens when you use hard earned money to pay for something. You’ll take the instruction far more seriously and will be more likely to incorporate what you learn. Thomas Paine said, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”
23. Limit the time you search the internet for new techniques. Instead of watching 20 different vids, watch two and immediately try out the moves.
25. Workout without music. Let the sound of metal, sweat, and groaning be your symphony. Be focused, hardcore. Music is essentially a distraction or a crutch.
    
26. Increase the difficulty of your workouts in novel ways.
    
27. Try “micro-loading”  – adding only a few pounds extra to lifts and drills.
    
28. Cycle training punching with different weights of gloves.
    
29. Do your cardio with extra clothes on – or if you train naked, just put some clothes on.
30. 6 weeks before a competition, spar and wrestle with the exact rules that will be adhered to there.
    
31. Like the above, use the specific type of gloves, shorts and protective gear that will be allowed at the competition.
    
32. Shadow box in your car or when you’re out for a walk. Whats that? You have some illogical social fear about being seen doing MMA? Wuss.
33. Choose the stairs over the elevator. Then choose to sprint the stairs so you can beat the elevator.
34. Stop thinking that your cool Affliction t-shirt or Tapout shorts are making you any better at MMA.
35. Drink more water.
36. Practice deep breathing exercises.
37. Practice staccato, punctuated breathing exercises. (“Breath of fire” or “spitfire” breathing).
38. Make sure you are properly moving your head when striking. Fade your head to the right when you left jab, ect. Review the basics of mma striking.
39. Train specific moves in cycles like you would with body parts and exercises.  Tuesday is toehold day. Friday is omoplata only day. The idea is to structure everything you can for optimized improvement.
    
40. Practice feigning and baiting opponents in lighter sparring sessions, but be strictly assertive and aggressive in more intense bouts.
41. Stop wearing cushioned shoes when weightlifting. Get specific weightlifting shoes or go barefoot. Mind where you drop your weights and you’ll be fine.  This will help you better train your muscles and nervous system. I don’t have time to explain why, comrade. Search here and search for the barefoot section or go here to read why shoes are destoying the way you walk.
    
42. Occasionally train with tight clothes that squeeze you. This simulates an opponent grappling with you, limiting your breathing, etc.
    
43. Take six months off training at your current gym and learn something completely different. Go study Muay Thai if you train with the local wrestling team. Go learn ninjitsu, or boxing, or whatever. It might be heresy to train at you competing dojo’s, but it’ll do wonders for you and your perspective.
44. Watch MMA fights with a pen and paper. Make notes.
    
45. Start a MMA journal. Write down what you learned in class.
46. Be a re-runs guy. Instead of watching something new, re-watch something old and glean more knowledge about a move you already know. The saying goes – “I’d rather have 5 moves I can fight with than 500 moves that fight me.”
    
47. Train a little bit every day rather than a lot a few days a week.
48. Maximize your strength to weight ratio. MMA weight classes define the game – you need to add strength without body mass or decrease body mass without losing strength.  It may look nice to “get big” , but in competition with weight divisions, size doesn’t matter.
49. Cross train in yoga or pilates.  I know you may think they’re sissy. However, after a while you’ll find that you are more flexible, stronger (especially in strange positions), and have better body coordination.
    
50. Naturally increase your testosterone levels.
51. Keep your hands up.
    
52. Practice what you already know in as many different contexts as possible. An armbar can be used in no less than two dozen ways, in a myriad of positions.
    
53. Increase your mental toughness.
    
54. Have a vivid imagination – fantasize about being riddiculously good at MMA. Can’t get to your dreams if you don’t have them.
55. Practice visualizing success.  In your mental eye’s vision, see a movies of yourself pulling off moves in completion.
    
56. Mentally see, as if you were doing it, yourself hammering an opponent into submission.
    
57. When you practice your strikes, imagine that each of them is landing onto an opponent successfully.
    
58. Train your mind to focus like a laser.  Being 100% focused on the exercise or drill at hand will increase your proficiency.
    
59. Develop workout mantras to help you correctly breathe and stay focused. “Jab, jab, boom!”
    
60. Learn to give and take coaching directions phonetically. At first, coaches will have to break down each movement by saying things like, “Lift your knee an inch higher, engage your armpit muscles, straighten your spine, turn your fist over 90 degrees….”  At higher levels, coaches will say things like, “Stay rooted!”  instead of telling you to keep your center of gravity between your feet and under your hips, all the while keeping the knees slightly bent. “Push through the target!” “Drive from your hips!”
    
61. Pick only a limited number techniques and ideas to develop within one training cycle.
62. Have a fulfilling sex life.  Sex, in its proper place, is vital for a full and healthy life. It does many good things for you physically, psychologically, and emotionally.  Doing “it” can aid in healing, pain management, etc.
    
63. Predetermine whether or not to have sex before competition for the right reasons. Now as for the long standing advice to abstain sex before competition, my official opinion is “It depends.” There is a good article by National Geographic called “Does Sex the Night Before Competition Decrease Performance?“. Basically it states that physically, sex the night before doesn’t affect athletic performance but it could affect you psychologically. If you are restless and nervous the night before, it could help. This same calmness could weaken your concentration. Also, if you believe it that sex would release needed tension and aggression, refrain.
64. Become a fighter psychologically as well as physically.  Don’t be afraid of calling yourself a fighter. Get into it.  When you, deep down, associate yourself with being a fighter you’ll train harder and avoid those cupcakes at Christmas with ease.
65. Stop smoking.
    
66. Stop drinking alcohol.  Yes, I even mean on the weekends.  Among other things, it’s a worthless source of calories, dehydration, lost training time, and potential injury.  How many accidents start off with  just a few beers?
    
67. Don’t drink energy drinks.  If you’re having trouble with your energy it’s probably caused by bad nutrition, hangovers, poor sleep habits, over-training, or lack of willpower.  Treat the cause, not the symptom.
68. In that vein, lay off the juice you’d buy at the store. Packed with sugar. Eat fruit instead, or juice it yourself.
    
69. Be specific with your strikes. Instead of just striking the face, punch the specific knock out points and angles.
    
70. Systematically weaken your opponent.  Relentless punch the exact same spot on the ribs. Shin kick the same spot on the left leg. If an opponent gets a cut, exploit the area.  Like chopping a tree.
71. While you want to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses, don’t get sucked into a reactionary mindset. You’ll lose tempo and aggression if you sit around waiting for an opponent to show his weakness. As they say, fortune favors the bold – most often fights are won by the more aggressive of the two fighters.
72. Find where you can make maximum progress in minimum time. If you already have a 300 lb squat but a 100 lb deadlift, six weeks of focus will make a dramatic difference in the deadlift.
    
73. Avoid over training and know the law of diminishing returns. More training doesn’t always mean more benefit.
    
74. Don’t waste time making decisions where either choice is reasonably equal. Ex:  You’ve got a fight next month and you are just about as good fighting on the ground as you are standing up. Should you focus on wrestling, Muay Thai, or jujitsu?  Draw a name out of a hat.
75. Link to this article from your blog or in a forum, stating how cool it is.  It’ll make you 15% stronger, I swear.
76. Develop a specialty move.
    
77. Be a king at the rear naked choke. It’s a fight stopper – very hard to escape and effective.
    
78. Pick a fighting style that naturally aligns with your strengths.
    
79. Be good at a move that nobody in your area or weight division is good at.  After you attend a few competitions, you’ll get a sense of some under-used moves.  It’s always a shocker when a heavyweight lands a spinning back thrust kick. People don’t expect it.
80. Train in front of a mirror.
81. Occasionally train with a blind fold or in the dark.  If you fight long enough, you’ll be in a situation where sweat or blood is hampering your vision. Plus, wrestling in the dark helps you develop a body sensitivity where you can “feel” what your opponent is doing or about to do.
82. Physically, shore up your weaknesses.  It’s far more important to add 30 lbs to your military press if your one rep max is 50 lbs than to your 440 lb squat.
83. Technically, shore up your weaknesses.  Trust that an enemy will try to exploit them. If you can’t escape the most basic submissions, don’t try to make your decent left jab great.  Learn the escapes.
    
84. Train with pain.  There is a psychological skill to dealing with pain, be it sharp and sudden or dull and grinding. In a fight, your opponent is going to make winning as difficult as possible. You are going to be fatigued mentally and physically. You will have to fight against pain. Find ways to train increase your ability to perform under stress and pain.
    
85. Know the difference between discomfort pain and injury pain.
    
86. Tap out early, tap out often.
87. Train your nervous system, as well as your muscles.  Hand speed and reaction time have large neurological components.
    
88. Train in all 3 dimensions.  Use free weights, sandbags, and kettlebells. Work all the strange-named stabilizer muscles. Fighting is very non-linear, and no doubt you’ll find yourself ascew in dozen of odd positions in any given fight.
    
89. Always wear the maximum amount of protective gear. It’s like wearing a seatbelt. There isn’t a good reason to put yourself at risk and have to stop training for 6 months due to an injury.
90. When you do get injured or sick, get competent medical care ASAP. Being macho won’t make you a better fighter, being smart and logical will. If it turns out your rib isn’t broken, great. But if it is, you can put yourself out from fighting entirely by training while injured. Every gym has a guy who has some weird Chinese remedy or massage technique.  When alternative medicine can do nothing but help – sure, try it out, but don’t replace proven fixes.
    
91. Keep track of your opponents eye movements. Often, a fighter will flash a brief look at the area he is about to attack.
92. Never underestimate the jab’s usefulness. It sets up combination and takedowns. It hampers your opponents vision.
    
93. Keep your chin down.
94. Practice with your friends, family and spouse – but always keep it fun.  If they were into MMA like you were, they’d work out at your gym.
    
95. Practice controlling the distance between you and your opponent. Circle, jab, circle, jab, parry …
96. Let your instructors do their jobs.  Don’t back talk or try to teach other guys in your classes. Coaches can push you to new levels – even though you “know” more than they do.
    
97. Learn to “cut off” the ring with your strikes and angles.  Cornering your opponent is a tricky, but important thing.
    
98. If you are truly outclassed in all respects, try to keep the fight standing up. You still have “a punchers chance” or that is to say, you can pull off a lucky punch.  The more experienced your opponent, the more likely it is to pull off a lucky punch than a lucky submission.
    
99. Do your dirty work in the gym long before the fight and expect it come out in the ring. The last few weeks before a fight aren’t a time to learn new techniques. It’s time to cement what you do well and not get injured.
    
100. Don’t be overly pedantic about strategy on the day of the fight.  Train how you want to fight, and then trust your training. Sudden large shifts of gameplan, nutrition and exercise typically backfire.
     
101. After you have done your serious training, have some fun. Laugh and play – playing around can make you a better fighter. Plus, this is not the movie gladiator. You can smile if you want to.

Let me know what your favorite training tips are!

The Big Picture

Setting goals is by far the most important thing you can do when constructing an MMA workout. If you don’t have a clear picture of where you need to go, you won’t know how to get there, how long it will take, or when you’ve arrived.

Are you doing  MMA workouts to prepare for an organized fight? Are you just doing them to get in shape? What exactly are you looking for in your workout?

If you’re like me , you probably already have a long mental list of things you want from your workouts. Do you want to develop knock out punches? Learn to dominate the clinch positions? As a mixed martial artist, the workout is your vehicle to achieve these goals.

It Is Not A Goal Unless It’s Written Down

By now, you’ve got a mental list of some things you’d like to have as a fighter.  Now comes the brain work. Write your goals down, and prioritize them as best you can. Take the top two or three goals and for now, file away the rest. Later, you’ll need to choose exercises and drills that advance these goals, construct specific workouts, loads, rest periods, cycles … but like I said, later. My goal in this article is to talk about goal setting, capeesh?

Note:

If you’re starting out in MMA, exercising, or just martial arts in general, you’ll need to review your goals and adjust pretty often. You’re in a state of unconscious incompetence – you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s okay – we’ve all been there – but be prepared to shift gears often. It’s hard to determine how important something is, especially in relation to everything else … because you don’t know everything else.

SMARTY Pants

One way I’ve improved my goal setting is by using the SMART goals method.

“SMART” is acronym: that means your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

This works with the meta-goals in MMA and the workout sub-goals. A meta-goal could be, “I want to be the light-heavy weight UFC champion”  and “I want to be a superb striker” would be the chosen sub-goal you’d like to focus on.  But both of those goals are a tad too lofty – perhaps something like “I’d like to increase my leg power by 30% as measured by the squat and deadlift in 12 weeks” is “smarter”.

Certainly, you may not have enough knowledge to construction something like that yet, but wait grasshopper. It will come. Just remember: The workout is a vehicle to the ultimate goal.

If you’re trying to loose weight by doing MMA, pick and choose your activities to maximize that. If you want to be a great striker, your goal could be to increase hand speed.

If you know where you want to go, everything down the line will be much easier to figure out.

I often ponder what makes a certain workout routine good for mixed martial artists. While a workout may be good for general fitness and include fight type exercises, it doesn’t mean it’s a good MMA workout. In fact, I am becoming increasingly aware that the body of internet knowledge isn’t really helping guys understand MMA workouts at all.

Googling “mma workout”, I noticed that you get no less than 14 bazillion results. There’s an article where one fighter tells one of his routines, a youtube video of Bas Rutten or Ken Shamrock doing their thing, a link to a forum discussing some hot new MMA exercises. But all in all, it wasn’t helping.

What I seek to set forth in the MMA Workout Basics series is a collection of fundamental workout principles – sport specific information that may help you from becoming a collector of techniques and programs. Instead, my hope is that you get enough know-how and wisdom to guide yourself on how to put together an exercise program (long term) and an exercise routine (one workout).

Along the way, of course, I’ll post different factoids about someones training regimes, or I’ll give my two cents on specific exercises, just like I did with pull ups. However, within the posts titled “MMA Workout Basics” I’m going to stay true to my goal – to help you understand the fundamentals of mixed marital arts workouts.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, I’d love hearing from you.

Pull ups are a measure of your toughness – and lets face it, a barometer of your true manliness – whether you’re a fighter or not. Nearly since the dawn of time, the US military has been using pull ups to de-sissify recruits and weed out wimps. If you are a mixed martial artists, the pull up definitely needs to be in your rotation of exercises.

The Reasons

But why should you do pull ups in favor of other exercises? Glad you asked.

First of all, the pull up is a full body exercise when done right. It works your back, arms, abs, stabilizers … the works. It’s pragmatic, efficient. Second, the pull up has tremendous cross over in terms of sports performance in mma. To name just a few things, the latissimus dorsi are important for:

• Punching power – the lats help “ground” your punches, stabilizing the arm to the torso. Trust me. Boxers have been doing it for ages with this in mind.
• Keeping guard – lats help you pull your opponent down into your the guard so he can’t posture up, ground and pound or execute passes.
• Judo/Greco-Roman throws – While standing and clinching, lats assist you in dominating such positions as the body locks, over/under hooks control, the plumb clinch (Muay Thai clinch), etc.

Third, the pull up has a multitude of variations. On his blog, Mr. Low Body Fat talks about pull ups and explains:

Infinite variability is important, because it allows you to perform an exercise year after year, without burning out your mind or your connective tissue. So variability allows you to safely do what’s important—all the time, not just one week out of four, which means you never make any progress.

Doing it right

There are many ways to perform a pull up, but a few things are important throughout.

• Pull up from a dead hang. Every rep you pull off, go back to the fully extended hang.
• Stay hanging from the bar until the set is over. Don’t let go between reps. If you cant hold your grip, the set has ended.
• Don’t use gear to ease the pull. No arm slings, rubber bands, wristbands that hook up on the bar, etc. Pull ups are hard, they should be that way. Don’t use the assisted pull up machines either, for that matter. They typically don’t help you get to true pull ups any faster than a isometric contraction when hanging from a bar will. Plus, they don’t get your stabilizer muscles working, which means they’ll be a weak link when you do true pull ups.
• No cheating – swinging your legs or “kipping” up is a obvious no-no. Grind out the pull up.
• Keep your torso quiet ie: keep a firm, unshaky body on the way up and down. Don’t let your legs flop about.

The Fighter Pull Up

The ever popular “Evil Russian”, Pavel Tsastoline, talks about the difference of a fighter pull up and a body building pull up, saying

The pullup is the logical choice of an exercise to strengthen your lats. If you ask
an experienced bodybuilder how to work the latissimus most thoroughly he
will tell you to look up, force your chest open, and draw your shoulder blades
together on the top of the pullup. This may be okay for bodybuilders, but what
does this have to do with fighting? You move in the ring in what gymnasts call
“the hollow position” the scapulae flared and the chest caved in. This is the
way you should finish your pullups. Look straight ahead and hunch over the
bar. Touch your neck or upper chest to the bar to make sure there is no
question that you have completed the rep.

Variety, The Spice of Life

As mentioned earlier, the pull up exercise has many variations.

Grip:

You can narrow the grip position from wide to close. Just to get things straight, when you flip the grip, so the palms face toward your face, that’s a chin-up, not a pull up, but an acceptable variant anyway. If you can find the equipment, you can do pull ups on gymnastic rings or on rock-climbing hand holds.

Weights:

Once you can crank off a dozen or more in a row, (no sooner, comrade!) you can add a bit of weight. I’ve seen people strap on a weightlifters belt and hang a plate from it, but that has never suited me, but if does to you, go for it. Also, some people have those nifty adjustable weighted belts or vests, letting them slide in or out an extra couple of pounds. Most gyms I know have those ankle weight straps with the Velcro, but you may have to walk into the girly aerobic step classes to find them. To avoid such dishonor, I prefer the low tech method – a regular back-to-school backpack. If you get serious about stacking on the weight, a sturdy pack can accommodate quite a bit.

Taking a page out of Westside Barbell club manual, wrapping a heavy chain over your shoulders will add a good deal of weight, and if it’s long enough, it will become heavier the higher you are on the pull up.

One other thing – pinch a dumbbell between your feet or better, if you have one, use a kettlebell by slipping your foot through the handle.

Leg Placement:

Try doing a pull up with one knee tucked to your chest. Then two. Then extend both legs so your body makes a perfect 90 degree angle and the hips. Make sure the body is stiff throughout the pull.

Gear

After hearing that the famous “Super Foot” Bill Wallace did pull ups on vacation by opening the bathroom door in his hotel room, placing a towel on the top, and doing pull ups like he was climbing over a wall, I promptly broke my bedroom door in imitation. Here is some gear that I’ve used and liked to get the job done.

Below: The standard door jam pull up bar. Screws out and in to adjust in length, has two cups to position the bar’s ends.

The bottom of the two one is the top of the line model, and the top one is the cheapie. I personally think the pure silver one is better, because I don’t like the gripping situation and pads on the low price one, but to each his own.

This one slips on and off the door jam, needs no installation. Easily moved from door frame to door frame. On these two, I actually prefer the top one because of its multiple angles and grips.

For on the road pull ups, these are neat. The two handles slip over the top of the door with ease. You close the door – making it more stable – and proceed to do some chin ups. If you stay at a budget hotel, you can break the door with the “SuperFoot” method.

The permanent wall mounted version. Pretty decent if you can afford the wall space and know how to properly attach it.

The adjustable, weighted vest system. You can easily add resistance for you pull ups with this thing. Out of the few I know, I like this vest best. You can have it weigh 10- 100+ pounds. Some of the weighted vest are crappy and cheap-feeling, but this one is the real deal. Also good for push ups and resistance running.

It feels like you’re wearing body armor when you put this on. Which reminds me, if you’ve got a spectra or kevlar vest, you’re already got on of these.

Quoted Pages/Resources on Pull ups:

Mr Low Body Fat’s Blog . He can do 12-13 reps weighing in at 215 at age 49, pretty decent.

Begin to Dig blog. Some nice pictures and a video on the pull up, plus a couple of resource links.

Clarence Bass, Ripped. Article on how Clarence Bass interprets Pavel T.’s pull up ladder program. If you don’t know, Clarence can probably beat you up, even though he’s old enough to be your grandpa. Check his photos – he’s ripped.

Pavel Tsatsouline’s Fighter Pull-Up. Pavel’s “Fighters Pull up”. A few details on the pull up procedure itself, and a full workout plan. The schedule is kind of like a reverse pyramid, if that makes sense.

Military men do pull ups.

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/fitness-test-prep/perfecting-pull-up

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/fitness-test-prep/pullup-push-workout

For a long time now, I’ve harbored the belief that spending an hour on the treadmill is retarded. For MMA’ers, I think there are better things to do with your time. Personally, I love to hate fast as possible, puke-your-guts-out, sprinting.

It’s not that this notion is new, or without it’s detractors and misinformed proponents. An article that bring up the basic idea was put up recently at Men’s Journal, titled Cardio is Bunk. Essentially,

As opposed to aerobics, this type of exercise [anaerobic exercise] involves maximum-effort training, such as sprinting and lifting weights, in which the intensity of the exercise exceeds the body’s ability to supply oxygen to muscles. “Shorter, high-intensity workouts burn off glucose much faster than long runs, so you start burning fat at a much higher rate, your heart beats so hard that it becomes stronger, and you’re pushing yourself to such extremes that anything else you do feels easier.”

.. [I]n terms of sports performance, endurance training is no longer seen as the key to being a better athlete.

Now, I don’t agree with everything said there, but it’s a decent introduction to the idea.

For fighters, developing a bigger gas tank (IE having more fight endurance) is crucial. If you are considering fighting competitively, consider this: How long will you be fighting – total rounds, duration, and rest periods. Are your current workouts modeling the body workload and energy expenditure of a real fight?

If you’d like to ponder over endurance a bit more, I’d suggest reading a few articles at Gym Jones including Endurance V.2 Using Short, High Intensity Circuits and Intervals to Sharpen an Endurance Base and Strength for Endurance How Increasing Strength also Improves Endurance.

Interestingly enought, at the University of Utah, a friend of mine is beginning a study involving hypoxic training, ATP production and lactic acid thresholds. Essentially, try doing a round of shadow boxing/heavy bag hitting breathing through a snorkel and see how that effects you. Hopefully, this study will further develop a body of research to help fighters train better.

Between stand-up and ground fighting, there is clinching.  Maybe you’re a judoka looking to improve your throws, or an MMA’er trying to beat strong wrestlers – maybe you just want to be able to disable relatives with a fierce bear hug. These exercises will improve your ability to gain, control, and break clinch positions.

Basically Speaking

Clinch control is about controlling and manipulating balance. Without it, your strikes lose power, throw attempts fail, and your opponent can take you down to the mat with ease. If I had to give a highbrow explanation, I’d say that balanced clinching comes from having a dynamically strong, rooted stances that allow for you to actively manipulate your opponent’s balance. As such, clinch control primarily relates to three strengths: leg power, core stability/sensitivity, and griping/pulling. Perhaps a judo master could expound more – I’ll ask Vladimir Putin about it.

But enough about that, lets get to exercises that develop muscular strength and skill to control the clinching positions.

Tire Flipping

Old-school and awesome. If you’ve never done them, make sure you read about the saftey pointers and proper technique from the guys over at EliteFTS here. They’re not deadlifts, and doing them like a deadlift can injure you. Don’t give up on deads, I think they’re great – just different.

The transfer of power from your legs helps you sprawl with strength, as well as push through a sprawl put on you, among other things.

Car Pushing

Again, old-school. This will help you get rooted and keep a good stance while working for clinches like “over/under control” (you have one under-hook and over-hook at the same time). Also, when you compete it is important to be able to drive your opponent back while clinched up. Once their back is on the ropes/cage, you can use that lack of mobility to your advantage.

If  you have the access, train some drills with football linemen – the ones where they slam into each other and push right after the hike of the ball.

Crush Curls

I learned about this one over at the DragonDoor forums, and think this is a mighty nice exercise.  Normally, I hate bicep curls, partially due to the immature fascination of body builders with the biceps and partially because bicep curls don’t translate really well to most sports and performance. These are a tad different.

They’re great to produce full body tension, which you need to keep your root and stance while struggling in clinches. Think about it – if you have great chest power from bench pressing, but while standing you can’t back up that strength with a rooted core body, you’ll just get pushed over to your back.

This curl can be done with medicine balls, kettlebells, or rocks. Anyway, Chris Smith describes the exact process of doing them in an article on EzineArticles.com,

To perform the kettlebell crush curl, you simply grasp the kettlebell on each side with a palms-facing grip. Squeeze as hard as you can, like you would with a box of valuables while moving. This will serve to keep the kettlebell from falling to the ground. I perform the kettlebell crush curl with the handle on top, this seems to be easier for me.

Starting at the bottom position, your elbows will be fully extended and the kettlebell should be in front of the thigh area. Keep your back straight throughout this exercise. While squeezing the kettlebell, slowly curl the kettlebell up. Pause at the top and lower the kettlebell in a controlled manner, all the while “crushing” the kettlebell.

Also, if you have shoulder or elbow problems, this curl is friendly to your joints.

Pull Ups

Pull ups are challenging – they engage a lot of muscles to do them right. As a general rule, MMA training exercises should be compound, multi-joint movements that incorporate many muscle groups and link them cohesively together, mimicking some specific movement from the sport ( isolation training is a no no!). You want to be able to use your body as a whole, integrated unit instead of a collection of parts.

Anyway… you can do these with either grip – as shown above or by gripping the bar palms facing you. The key to good pull ups is to keep stabilized and don’t cheat kinetically.  Cheating is when you swing your knees to help you pull on the way up, or other such shenanigans.

If you can’t muster one full pull up yet, don’t fret. Over at The Art of Manliness blog, there’s a article on how to do more than one stinking pull up.  If you look at the picture there, you’ll notice a fun variation that I give two thumbs up.

**Update**

Due to popular demand,  I’ve put together a huge resource about pull ups called pull ups for fighters.

Beating Tires

Primarily, this exercise is used to gain rotational core strength. That core strength will help you pull opponents off balance and keep yourself rooted, not to mention it’ll help punching power.  Fedor Emelianenko and his team, the Red Devils, beats the crap out of tires with sledgehammers – its a big part of their training. Enough said.

Suitcase Lift

The suitcase lift is like a deadlift, but you are only picking weight on one side of your body. It strengthens the core. Just like the photo, squat down like you’re sitting in a chair and drive with your hips on the the way up. Keep your shoulder girdle parallel to the floor – you should stand erect like you don’t have any weight in your hand. The opposite side obliques will be hit hard! Additionally, it can increase your grip strength.

Sand Bags

Oooo…. this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can shoulder carry and practice body slams, put it on the ground and do over head throws (like a back suplex), or just bear hug squeeze for all you’re worth. Front squats, turkish get ups, it doesn’t end. Also, you can use medicine balls.

One I enjoy is the partner drill where you are in sit up position (at the top), back to back, and pass off the medicine ball to the side to your partner. If you’ve got Pavel Tsatsouline’s book, Bullet Proof Abs, his combat twist is awesome too.

For further reading, I’d sugguest Pavel’s Naked Warrior and Randy Coutures Wrestling for Fighting.