MMA Workout Routines

Posts Tagged ‘strength training’

Whenever a professional fight commentator comments on Anderson “The Spider” Silva’s matches, underneath all their words, generally comes the term ‘unorthodox’. Many consider the middleweight champion the top pound-for-pound fighter in MMA when he is on his game, and as he has shown time and time again, he is always on his game when he steps into the ring. He has only risked loss in one fight, to contender Chael Sonnen, but Silva managed to pull out a submission with seconds left in the fight.

The middleweight fighter has not been defeated in his time in the UFC, even when he stepped up his game and put on twenty pounds in order to fight at light heavyweight vs. popular fighter Forest Griffin. He again showed his ability as a top fighter by taking out Griffin in the first round of the fight. Silva has also never been shy about his desire for a fight vs other superstar fighter George St. Pierre, the UFC welterweight champion.

With a fighting pedigree and record like that, Anderson Silva must have a training regimen that puts all other fighters to shame, right? Well, like the fighter himself, Silva’s training routine is comparatively unorthodox compared to fighters that show the same level of talent and conditioning. Silva does not punish his body with workouts that last all day, every day, he doesn’t spend every waking hour thinking about fighting, and he doesn’t carefully plan out his diet for meal after meal.

What Anderson Silva does do is try and maintain a balanced workout schedule between conditioning and technique training. He spends a great deal of time honing his knowledge of different techniques, so that he can always approach his opponents from different angles, and confuse them by never using the same types of techniques repeatedly. From UFC’s All Access show, Anderson Silva took them through a week of his training. His technique training has a specific schedule. He works Jiu-Jitsu on Monday, Muay Thai on Tuesday, and traditional boxing on Wednesday. For Thursday and Friday he repeats techniques he learned the early part of the week and puts them together in combinations built to confound his opponents. Sparring two days a week reinforces that training style, and gives him a chance to put it all together.

His diet and conditioning workout is just as unusual, in that he doesn’t pound his body every day of the week like some fighters. His strength training routine lasts two hours a day, four days a week, while he cycles through a thirty-minute training cycle. He also runs forty minutes every day to build his cardio. This workout is moderate compared to many other fighters, but it means he also doesn’t abuse his body and push things to injury. He doesn’t pay attention to the specifics of his diet, but he keeps his calorie intake at about three-thousand calories a day, and does his best to eat lots of high protein foods, such as one of his favorites, sushi. He does avoid alcohol and sugar intake, but other than that, he doesn’t specifically pay attention to his food intake. It is a very casual attitude towards his diet that many fighters don’t seem to share. In an aside about his life before fighting, Anderson Silva admits that during his time working at McDonalds, he developed a taste for the Big Mac, and so now before a fight he often indulges himself with a couple of burgers before fights.

Despite Silva’s unorthodox fighting style, and training style, the UFC fighter is obviously doing something right. He is the longest reigning UFC title holder with 9 title defenses under his belt, against some of the strongest middleweight fighters in the division, as well as two decisive light-heavyweight bouts that never went out of the first round. Anderson’s attitude, good humor, and unusual fighting style also make him one of the most entertaining fighters to watch, and he proves above all that it doesn’t really matter the specifics of how you work out and condition, as long as it works for you and how you want to approach the octagon.

If you follow MMA, you already know all about Frank Mir’s trouble rise to the top including a near death motorcycle accident and subsequent loss to Brock Lesnar. After taking some time off to evaluate his training strategy, Mir has put on substantial bulk as a result of a completely re-hauled workout plan.

Some of the basic changes made was to cut out the focus on bodybuilding and light conditioning many fighters choose to work with. In it’s place, Mir has added the principles of strongman strength training to add both strength and size to his arsenal.

The physical results are hard to deny as Mir is now a well defined powerhouse. How all his hard work will play out in the ring, no one yet knows. It is worth mentioning that some of the most successful fighters have followed this same plan.

Basically, strongman training focuses on lifting heavy weight in short reps many times over. Forget about just doing dead lifts and arm curls, the strongman technique will involve turning over tires, pulling cars and sending kegs barreling over your head.

Traditional strongmen aren’t necessarily known for their strength, but with Mir combining endurance building exercises and getting rid of most of his body fat, he will definitely be a formidable force in the ring again.

We all known Georges St. Pierre is super strong a complete animal in the cage, but how did he get that way? Most of St. Pierre’s regime focuses on weight and gravity based training. Whether he’s dead lifting, squatting with heavy barbells or climbing a rope, St. Pierre’s exercise regime either uses his own body weight or added weights to maximize his results.

Besides regular sparring matches, Georges does very little focusing on cardiovascular exercise, instead opting for heavy weights. Like many of his competitors, much of his actual regime is kept secret. What we do know is that he sweats it out, grapples and does as much weight training as he can muster to keep in shape.

Rashad Evans uses just about every fighting style allowed in MMA to take down his opponents. He already had a considerable background in fighting before entering the UFC, but he changed up his workout style in order to maximize his ring prowess.

When training for a bout, extensive workout sessions are spent perfecting his technique, getting stronger and quicker and examining potential weaknesses. Rashad Evans isn’t the time of fighter who comes into the ring looking for a knockout in the first round. Instead, he prefers to duke it out and really punish all those who challenge him.

Spending about as much time to train in the ring as we do working each day, he focuses on sparring, endurance building and strength training. Twice a week, Evans focus completely on strength training. On the remaining days he focuses on disciplines such as boxing, wrestling and takedowns.

After working out for several hours, Evans ends the day with supplementary conditioning and punching exercises. Like all serious fighters, Rashad eats a healthy, basic diet everyday.

Combined with a day off here and there, Evans gives his body the perfect balance of clean fuel and rigorous training necessary to be the best.