There is nothing so terrible as
activity without insight.
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe
 |
| My opponent & I after our fight. |
As promised in my previous post I've
spent sometime thinking about the things that I learnt on the journey
to my fight (no, not the 55 miles down the M1 to Milton Keynes!).
Initially I thought that I'd be able to rattle off four or five
points, offering a little narrative along the way but it has
transpired to be a lot more difficult than this. It's not that I
haven't got stuff to say, far from it, it's that every time I come up
with an idea or a learning point it grows in to a whole post as of
itself. Or near enough. So, I've decided to pick out my personal
learning and reflection points and to write about them in a series of
posts, some longer, some shorter. We'll see how it goes...
#1 In the court of Combat,
Conditioning is King
“Conditioning
is my best weapon.” – Frank Shamrock
I remember reading
an interview with Pat Miletich in which he told the story of losing
his first kickboxing match due to being tired and pledging to himself
that he would never again lose due to his conditioning. In the
article Pat went on recount how he sought to 'find ways to make
himself more and more miserable' – ways of pushing his conditioning
through the roof – running until he vomited then carrying on
because he no longer had to worry about having anything left to throw
up, chasing down cross country teams, consistently training as a
welterweight with a heavyweight training partner. Seemed to work for
Pat and for his stable of fighters for a good while.
If there's a
hierarchy of attributes possessed by an amateur fighter I'm pretty
sure that conditioning sits atop it. It could be argued that
technique is number one, a view I'd have some sympathy for, but
there's a bit of me that feels you could have the quickest hands,
most devastating leg kicks or slickest submission combos but if
you're too knackered to lift a limb, you probably won't have much
success in applying them.
In his awesome
book 'A fighter's Heart', Sam Sheridan states that conditioning wins
Thai boxing matches, plain and simple. I don't know that this is
necessarily true but an ability to outlast your opponent can't hurt
your chances of winning a fight. Having the energy to be able to get
in to range and apply a technique on an opponent who hasn't the
energy to defend it could be the difference between a W and an L, or
at least a D.
Taken further,
gassing and being caught by an opponent who's got better conditioning
is worse: nobody wants a mark in their loss column with the note
'Submission – too knackered to continue'.
One of my training
rules – a set of principles that I have written down to refer back
to when I'm feeling lost – is that time spent on conditioning is
rarely wasted. The point of this is that on those days when I don't
know what solo training to do, when indecision may lead to time
wasted or worse, not doing anything at all, I can refer to my rules
and be guided to do something useful, probably conditioning. The
question then, is what is the best way to improve conditioning for
MMA or grappling?
Although there is
a place for Long Slow Distance (LSD) work in fight training, this is
primarily for weight management and building endurance in untrained
individuals. For those with some training and/or a base level of
fitness interval training seems to be the way to go:
It seems that, for athletes who
are already trained, improvements in endurance performance can be
achieved only through high-intensity interval training.
Laursen,
B & Jenkins, D (2002) Journal of Sports Medicine.
Logically,
this makes sense when we think about the way in which combat sports
are typically structured – burst of high energy activity followed
by periods of active/inactive rest. There are quite a few ways of
mimicking a fight or grappling match, some requiring more resources
than others which can be a key factor when considering what
conditioning to do. The other key considerations are:
- Time – How much have you got?
- Boredom – Can you do the same thing repeatedly? Do you need a menu of ideas to draw from?
- Congruency – How much will your choice of conditioning correlate with your sport/goals?
Below
are some of my 'favourite' forms of conditioning, please leave
comments, particularly on some of your favourites.
Sparring
Surely
there's no better way to condition for competition than to mimic it
as closely as possible, i.e. sparring. The downsides are the need
for partners and a suitable space. The bang for your buck factor is
huge given the right set up. Six three minute rounds with a minute's
rest in between has got to be a fantastic use of 25 minutes in order
to up conditioning in a wholly congruent way. My favourite way is to
limit the actions/behaviour of one or other of the sparrers, e.g. to
imitate a grappler, kicking or wrestler, etc. or to work on key
development points, e.g. takedown defense, sweeps from the bottom,
etc.
Circuits
Doing
fight related circuits is a good way to keep the boredom at bay. I
like to use a ten exercise, 1 minute each, 10 seconds between
exercises method, for example:
Heavy
bag boxing
Sprawl
Sandbag
shoulder
Sit-throughs
Floorbag
G'n'P
Floorbag
lift/suplex
Plank
Band
resisted shot
Floorbag
bodylock (isometric hold)
Heavy
bag boxing.
I
posted up a load of variations a while back....
You
can use a fair bit of kit or you can use mainly bodyweight exercises,
or you can mix it up a little bit (as a certain Mr Rutten would say,
more on whom below). The only downside is that if you do these solo
you have to be able to push yourself or you'll coast. And nobody
wants that.
At
Leicester Shootfighters the circuits involve 1 minute at each
exercise, 2 exercises at each of 6 stations. 30 seconds between
exercises at the same station, 1 minute to move between stations.
While there's more recovery time in this set up the paired exercises
work you hard and the group/coached environment really
pushes you.
Bas Rutten Workouts
If you don't know
who Bas Rutten is you should. Google him.
His workout CDs
are a collection of workouts based around boxing, Thai boxing, MMA
and bodyweight training. Each workout involves Bas shouting out
punch/kick/sprawl/bodyweight combinations for rounds of 2 to 25
minutes, 1 to 10 rounds. Check it out here.
I love these.
When I'm undecided about what to do I do these. When I'm lacking
motivation and feel I might coast I do these. When I need
conditioning but want to hit things I do these.
Awesome.
The only downside is that they can become predictable if you do them
a lot.
Sprinting
Up
hills.
Up
lots of stairs.
With
active rest between.
With a sled.
With farmers' walk implements.
Always outside. Sometimes puke
inducing. Definitely awesome/hateful in equal measure.
Other stuff...
Barbell complexes
a la Dan John, Martin Rooney, Alwyn Cosgrove.
My favourite:
6 reps each,
barbell never leaves hands, aim for under two minutes.
Romanian deadlift
Shrugs
Squat
Whip/ricochet
cleans
Snatch
Floor press
Bent over row
Press
Curl
Strongman medley;
worked the right way these can seriously tax the heart and lungs. I
like yoke carry, farmers' walk, stone carry, log press.
So that's the
first post on what I learned on the journey to take part in Combudo.
More to come. Keep checking in and please feel free to leave
comments.
Godspeed!
