Mixed martial arts, or MMA, is a combat sport that combines skills from different styles of fighting into one discipline. Competitors fight during a set period, which can vary depending on the federation to which they belong. Regardless of the length of round you fight over, develop both aerobic and anaerobic fitness to maximize your performance.
What Is Aerobic Fitness?
Aerobic fitness can be defined as your ability to take in, transport and use oxygen and is expressed as your VO2 max. Your VO2 max is the measurement of the volume of oxygen you can use while exercising. Aerobic fitness is developed by performing exercises such as jogging, swimming, rowing and cycling. Your body adapts to cardio exercise by strengthening your heart so it can pump oxygenated blood more easily around your body, improving your lung function so that you can extract oxygen from the air more efficiently, and laying down new capillaries, which are threadlike veins that allow you to diffuse oxygen from your lungs into your blood and from your blood into your muscles.
Aerobic Fitness Training
To develop aerobic fitness, engage in regular running, swimming, cycling or rowing. Although aerobic fitness is vital, avoid spending too much time training this way because anaerobic fitness is of equal importance. Exercise at between 60 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate for best results.
Aerobic Training Methods
In addition to the variety of exercise modalities you can choose for your aerobic training, you can use a number of different aerobic training methods. Long, slow distance training, or LSD for short, involves running, cycling, swimming or something similar for extended periods of time at a low to moderate level of intensity. Fast continuous running, also known as FCR, involves shorter workouts performed at a higher intensity and can be treated as time trials, during which you maintain as fast a pace as possible. Fartlek, Swedish for speed play, involves random changes of pace over a set distance or time and is a combination of LSD and FCR.
Anaerobic Fitness
Your ability to perform high-intensity work without oxygen is called anaerobic fitness and is a large part of MMA. In a typical bout, you will alternate between periods of high intensity anaerobic work with periods of lower intensity recovery when the action in the ring slows down. Sustained anaerobic exercise produces lactic acid, which is the substance associated with the burning sensation you feel in your muscles. Your ability to slow the buildup of lactic acid, tolerate the discomfort it causes and flush it out of your system effectively will be tested during an MMA bout.
Anaerobic Training Methods
You can increase your anaerobic fitness by performing interval training. Interval training involves alternating periods of high intensity exercise with low intensity recovery. Interval training closely simulates the demands of MMA. The typical interval training work-to-rest ratios are 1:1 or 1:2; in other words, for every period of work you would rest up to twice as long. However, to make your interval training specific to your needs, perform intervals equal in length to the rounds you fight, and only rest as long as you would be allowed to in a bout. Sprinting, circuit training and sparring are all examples of interval training. Interval training is much more demanding than aerobic training, but it is much more applicable to the demands of MMA.
References
- "Training for Warriors: The Ultimate Mixed Martial Arts Workout"; Martin Rooney; 2008
- "Workouts from Boxing's Greatest Champs"; Gary Todd; 2004
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