20 Ways to Get Stronger, Burn Fat & Never Get Gassed
from ukmma forum post
1. Master the Barbell Deadlift. The deadlift will give you intimidating traps, a thick back, and powerful thighs. If you want to be strong as a bull and throw your opponent around like a bitch, you need to be deadlifting.
2. Have a Priority. In MMA, you can aim to develop your Power, Strength, or Power Endurance (cardio). Trying to maximise all these qualities at once will get you no-where. If you try chasing three rabbits you’ll catch none. Focus on developing strength for 4-6 weeks, followed by explosive power, and finally increase your power endurance.
3. Don’t Train for Endurance First. Endurance refers to the endurance of either your strength or power ability. If you don’t have any strength or power (i.e. you are weak and slow) then training for endurance is pointless. In fact it will just help you be slow and weak for longer.
4. Always Train Standing Up. Lying and sitting on benches is for women who go to Curves. Performing presses and rows while standing will give you the advantage of strong, muscular legs, a stable pelvis and a rock-hard core.
5. Only Use a Few Exercises, but Do Them Well. My strength programs rarely consist of more than 4 exercises. Deadlift, lunge, lift something over your head and do chin ups. Do more reps or lift more weight each time. Simple. Effective.
6. Stop Running for Miles. Running gives you a 65% risk of injury and teaches your muscles to slow down and become weaker. Running is great for low-power marathon runners, but not for high-power martial artists. They are very different sports, folks. Maybe you should let your MMA coach know?
7. Excite Your CNS Before Lifting. Every warm up should ‘wake up’ your central nervous system. The more alert your nerves, the more strength and power they can exert. Perform a rapid and dynamic warm up consisting of mobility drills for your shoulders and hips, some medicine ball throws and jumping exercises.
8. Hold a plank and side plank for 2 minutes every day.
9. Use Loaded Endurance Training instead of traditional cardio. Most of your endurance energy during an MMA bout is spent trying to push, pull or lift your opponent. Jogging at a light pace doesn’t quite prepare your muscles for this demand. Aim to add a weighted load to any cardiovascular exercise. Farmer’s walks, bodyweight exercises with a weight vest and barbell complexes are my favourite choices.
10. Get Your 8 Hours Sleep Every Night. It’s not wimpish. Especially not when you grow a few pounds of muscle and gain more energy than all your competitors and training partners because of it.
11. Use your body. Never neglect bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, lunges and burpees. If you find them easy, find a way to make them harder. E-mail me for a FREE copy of my e-book "The Body Weight Bible".
12. Tense Your Core and Glutes on Every Exercise Possible. Your core will get stonger and your glutes will start to activate more easily, improving your thrusting power. For shoots and takedowns, as well as other things…
13. Increase Your Grip Strength. Use a thick grip or do some heavy dumbbell holds during every workout for chunky, strong forearms that will never break a hold.
14. Don’t Static Stretch Immediately Before Lifting Heavy Weights. Static stretching relaxes and weakens muscles. This is not what you want right before deadlifting your 3-repetition maximum load.
15. Stop Running. “What about my aerobic base???” What about it? Training anaerobically by hill sprinting and lifting weights will actually increase your aerobic fitness more than aerobic exercise will.
16.Always Lift Above 70% of Your Maximum. Using weights lighter than this will not build any strength or muscle.
17. Always Lift with Maximum Acceleration on Every Repetition. The faster you lift the weight the more motor units are activated. This means that your body contracts more muscle fibres. The more muscle fibres that are stimulated, the quicker you’ll gain strength, speed and size.
18. Make Sure You Can Row the Same Amount as You Can Press. Keeping your pushing / pulling strength balanced will prevent the most common shoulder injuries and give you harder punching power.
19. Include Corrective Exercises for Weak Areas. Any past injuries or weak areas should be strengthened as much as possible. If not, these weak links will slow down the rest of your progress.
20. Seriously, Quit Running. There’s no worthy argument for including it in an MMA conditioning program. If you want to lose muscle, get injured, suffer a loss of power and strength, and look like a saggy pair of lungs on legs then go for it. However, if being lean, ripped, muscular, strong, athletic, powerful and well conditioned for the specific demands of MMA are your goals then get sprinting and lifting instead.
Could almost have been written by me, it wasnt!, but a very good article
