One of the questions I think about a lot when designing strength and conditioning for MMA is when to stop doing general physical preparation and start making the conditioning more specific to the sport. It sounds like there should be an obvious answer. Build the general qualities first, then move into sport-specific conditioning. But in practice, I don't think it's that simple. MMA training already provides a tremendous amount of sport-specific physical stress, and if we aren

One of the questions I get from athletes is some variation of, “How strong do I need to be for MMA?” It's a reasonable question, but I don't think there is a single number that answers it. There isn't a squat number, bench press number or deadlift number that suddenly makes someone strong enough to be an MMA athlete. Strength matters, and for some athletes it matters a lot, but MMA requires much more than strength. The more useful question is not how strong you can become. It

Walk into almost any MMA gym and ask what an athlete needs to get better physically and you're going to get a lot of different answers. Get stronger Get faster Build your cardio Do sprints Lift weights Jump rope Get more explosive Improve your mobility Build your conditioning The funny thing is that almost all of those answers can be correct while still missing the bigger question. What does an MMA athlete actually need to be good at physically? I think this is an important q

If you are a young MMA fighter and you feel like you are getting tired too quickly during training, there is a good chance someone has told you to start running sprints. “Do some hill sprints.” “Run 10 × 100 meters.” “Sprint until you can't sprint anymore.” It sounds like good advice. MMA is explosive, right? You need to be able to explode into takedowns, throw hard combinations, scramble, wrestle, and attack submissions. So it seems logical that running as hard as possible w

If you are new to MMA, you have probably searched for a strength and conditioning program online. Maybe you asked ChatGPT to make one for you. You may have ended up with a six-day Push/Pull/Legs program, a long list of exercises, several different types of conditioning, and enough ab work to make you wonder when you're actually supposed to train MMA. The problem isn't that any of those exercises are necessarily bad. The problem is that a long workout is not the same thing as

Why nutrition should be developed progressively—not treated as an all-or-nothing skill If you spend much time on Reddit or other online fitness communities, you've probably seen this happen. Someone asks a relatively simple question about nutrition. Maybe they want to lose some body fat, gain muscle, improve their energy, or simply start eating better. They are looking for somewhere to begin. The answers often go much further than that. Before long, they're being told to calc

There is a strange idea in strength and conditioning that seems to show up everywhere, especially when people start taking their athletic development seriously. Someone decides they want to become stronger, faster, more explosive, and better conditioned for MMA, so they start looking at what high-level fighters are doing. They see heavy strength training, Olympic lifts, jumps and throws, sprinting, aerobic conditioning, intervals, mobility work, recovery strategies, testing,

Taking your first MMA fight is a big deal. You are going to do something you have never done before, against someone you have never fought, in an environment that is very different from your normal training. There is going to be adrenaline, nerves, an audience, officials, a time limit, a corner, and an opponent who is actively trying to impose their game on you. You can't eliminate all of the uncertainty. That's part of competition. What you can do is eliminate as many unnece