MMA Training

This past Friday, one of my staff members, James Whiteman, was in the gym getting ready for his amateur MMA fight on Saturday December 4th. Since James does most of his strength and conditioning work on his own at his gym in Athens, he comes up to Soar on Fridays for some explosive training.

After full warm up, I had James and his partner do multi - directional single leg plyos in a ciruit format.

Box blast - 5each

rest 30 sec.

Lateral box blast 5 each

rest 30 sec

Lateral skater bound - 5 each

2 min rest and repeat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3jIF-DcZI


From there, we did some agility work that also involved explosive upper body MB throws. This is not something I normally do with athletes because it violates my principle of keeping drills simple. However, I like using the MB throws with agility for fighters since they are constantly moving and striking during there fights. We went with an approximate 3 to 1 work to rest ratio. The drills took about 10 sec and the rest was then 30 in between. The video clip below shows 1 set that James did. The actual workout was 4 sets in a row, then 1 :30 rest, then 4 more sets of a slightly different drill. We finished with forward and backward sled drags.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7UPFNhINyY

My Top 10 Exercise List

I hate the question...If you could only do just 1 exercise, what would it be? My answer to that question would be you are probably better off not working out.

Here is my top 10 favorite exercises for athletes in no particular order.

1. Trap Bar Dead Lift.

2. DB jump squats

3. Incline DB press

4. Vertical Chin ups or pull up variations

5. Horizontal pull ups with chains or TRX

6. 1 Leg Straight Leg Dead Lift

7. Sled pushes - or Prowler pushes

8. Single leg squats

9. Lateral single leg box jumps - to medial and lateral side of the knee

10. Prone and side bridging variaitions


These 10 exercises are not the end all be all to strength and conditioning. However, if you could only do 10 exercises in your weekly workouts, these would cover all the bases.