The Ultimate Fighting Championship organizes, oversees and promotes fight sport competition. It isn't a fight team or authority. This means that individual UFC fighters each have their own training regimen with which they prepare for a fight. Although there is a literally infinite variety of training regimens possible for UFC fighters, most of them involve the same five factors.
Road Work
Cardiovascular endurance is key to success in the ring. As a fighter runs out of gas, his technique grows sloppy. This gives a better conditioned opponent openings to take advantage of, and limits the amount of resistance that can meet those attacks. Like their philosophical ancestors the boxers, UFC fighters use "road work" -- jogging and running -- as their most common cardiovascular exercise. UFC fighters run and cycle for miles every day to maintain the peak cardiovascular fitness they will need in the ring.
Bag Work
Striking skills are vital to a UFC fighter. Any training session to prepare for competition includes practicing those strikes on punching bags. Because of the variety of strikes available to a UFC competitor, they often use different bags for different purposes. Heavy bags build power, while speed and jitter bags work accuracy and speed. Some fighters use padded training dummies shaped like a person to practice some of their wrestling and grappling techniques.
Resistance Training
A successful fighter is strong, and resistance training makes you stronger. No UFC training regimen is complete without resistance training, although different fighters use different techniques. Many use traditional weight training to build strength. Others use kettlebells, medicine balls and other more esoteric fitness equipment. Still others use body weight exercises, including plyometrics and yoga. According to Troy O'Connor, Oregon-based mixed martial arts coach, the best programs rotate through several methods of strength training.
Skills Focus
All successful fighters spend hours every day working the skills they will execute in competition. This take the form of working with expert instructors, followed by hundreds of repetitions of the new skills. UFC skills training shifts daily between building on the strengths of the fighter, mitigating that fighter's weaknesses and working on skills specifically chosen to take advantage of the habits and weaknesses of the fighter's next opponent.
Sparring
Live competition with a highly trained partner is part of every fighter's regimen. In some cases, the fighter trains with friends and classmates. In others, he will have a personally chosen, professional sparring partner for whom this is his only job. Some sparring is simply mock combat, while in others the fighter will be instructed to work with specific disadvantages or to take every opportunity to try out a new skill in a competitive context.
References
- Dave Coffman; martial arts instructor; Hillsboro, Oregon
- Troy O'Conner; mixed martial arts coach; Hillsboro, Oregon
- "UFC 118;" Ultimate Fighting Entertainment; 2010
- "Fight Science"; National Geographic; 2004
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