MMA Isn't Built for Long Careers

My father is a farmer. He also taught me how to box. One of the expressions I heard from him growing up was, “Make hay while the sun is shining.”

It is good advice for a farmer because there are things you simply cannot do whenever you feel like doing them. When the weather is right and the hay is ready, you have a window. If you spend that window waiting for a better opportunity, you may not get another one. Eventually the weather changes, the field changes, and the opportunity is gone.

I've come to think there is something very similar about training MMA.

MMA is a difficult sport to stay in at a high level for a very long time. The training is hard, the physical demands are high, injuries accumulate, and maintaining the athletic qualities required to train and perform well becomes increasingly difficult as you get older. That doesn't mean you can't be a lifelong martial artist. It doesn't even mean you have to stop training MMA. But I think we should be honest about the fact that the window in which you can train hard, recover well, and aggressively pursue development is probably shorter than you think.

And if you're fortunate enough to be in that window right now, I think you should take advantage of it.

MMA Is a Demanding Sport

There are plenty of sports that are physically demanding. MMA is demanding in a particularly inconvenient way because almost everything that makes you better also carries some physical cost.

You need strength. You need power. You need speed. You need coordination. You need mobility. You need aerobic capacity and the ability to repeatedly produce hard efforts. You need to be able to wrestle, grapple, strike, scramble, get back to your feet and keep making decisions while you're exhausted. And unlike many forms of physical training, you develop these qualities while dealing with another person who is actively trying to disrupt what you're doing.

Even good training has a cost.

I'm not talking about stupid training. I'm not talking about getting into gym wars every night, ignoring injuries, or treating pain tolerance as a measure of toughness. Good coaching can reduce unnecessary wear and tear. Good training partners can make an enormous difference. You can manage sparring intensity, control training volume, choose appropriate exercises and build a program that allows an athlete to develop without constantly beating the hell out of him.

But you can't remove the fundamental physical demands of MMA without eventually removing some of what makes it MMA.

At some point, somebody has to resist you.

• Somebody has to try to take you down.

• Somebody has to try to stop your takedown.

• Somebody has to try to submit you.

• Somebody has to hit you.

You have to scramble when you're tired and make decisions when things aren't going according to plan. That's the sport. And doing that year after year takes a toll.

The Athlete You Are Today Won't Be There Forever

One of the biggest mistakes athletes make is assuming that the physical capacity they have today is going to be available indefinitely.

When you're young and healthy, it is easy to believe that this is simply what your body does. You train hard Monday night, you're sore Tuesday, you train again Tuesday night, and eventually you recover. You can lift, wrestle, spar, run, drill and do it all again. If something hurts, you assume it will get better.

Sometimes it does.

Eventually, however, the math changes.

As you get older, recovery tends to become less forgiving. Old injuries that were manageable when you were younger can start influencing what you can reasonably do in training, and the cumulative effects of years of wrestling, grappling, striking and lifting begin to matter. You may still be capable of doing the same things, but you may not be able to do them at the same frequency or intensity without paying a price. The difference isn't necessarily that you've suddenly become less tough or less athletic. Your margin for error has simply gotten smaller.

And then there is life. Work gets more demanding. Marriage and children change your schedule. Your responsibilities increase. You have less time to sleep, less time to recover and fewer opportunities to spend two or three hours at the gym every day.

None of that means you've failed. It means you're no longer operating with the same resources.

This Is Why I Think You Should Take Advantage of the Window

If you're twenty-five years old, healthy, motivated and capable of training MMA five or six times a week, I don't think you should spend your time worrying about whether you'll still be able to do that when you're forty-five.

• Train.

• Learn.

• Get good.

Find people who are better than you and figure out why they're better. Wrestle. Grapple. Spar. Lift. Compete if you want to compete. Learn the things you're bad at. Develop the physical qualities that will make you a better fighter. Put yourself in difficult situations and learn how to solve them.

You have a window. Use it.

That doesn't mean training recklessly. In fact, recognizing that your window is limited should make you more interested in training intelligently. If you only have a certain number of years in which you can tolerate a high level of training, you don't want to waste them injured because your ego convinced you that every sparring session needed to be a war.

The goal isn't to see how much punishment you can accumulate. The goal is to see how much development you can get from the time you have. There's a difference.

Longevity Doesn't Mean Doing the Same Thing Forever

I love the idea of being a lifelong martial artist. I'm less convinced that being a lifelong martial artist means doing the same kind of MMA training for your entire life.

There may be a period of your life when you're trying to become a fighter. You're training hard, competing, developing your game and finding out what you're capable of. Later, you may train because you love the practice. You may still spar, but you choose your rounds more carefully. You may spend more time drilling, teaching, lifting and working on technical problems.

Eventually, you may become more interested in helping other people become good than in proving how good you are yourself. That isn't giving up. That's another chapter.

I think this is an important distinction because martial arts culture sometimes treats longevity as though the goal is to maintain the exact same training practices forever. I don't think that's realistic. Your relationship with training should probably change as your circumstances change.

The twenty-five-year-old version of you doesn't need the same program as the forty-five-year-old version. And the forty-five-year-old version of you doesn't need to be ashamed of that.

Don't Waste the Good Years

There is another side to this, though. I've watched people spend years saying they're going to get serious about training someday. They'll do it when work settles down. They'll compete when they're in better shape. They'll train harder when they have more time. They'll start wrestling next year. They'll get serious about their conditioning eventually.

Eventually is a dangerous word. Because sometimes the window closes before you realize it was open.

You don't necessarily know when you're living through the best physical years you're going to have. You usually understand that in retrospect. At the time, it just feels normal. You don't realize how valuable it is to wake up without a collection of old injuries, have the energy to train hard after work, recover quickly and still want to do it again tomorrow.

Then one day you look back and realize that version of yourself isn't coming back.

That's not tragic. It's just life.

But it does make me think we should appreciate the opportunity while we have it.

Make Hay While the Sun Is Shining

That's what my father meant. The farmer doesn't control the weather. He doesn't get to decide when the field will be ready or how long the conditions will remain favorable. He watches for the opportunity and then he works.

I think athletes have to do the same thing.

There is a period in your life when your body, your motivation, your schedule and your circumstances line up in a way that allows you to train at a very high level. That period may last five years. It may last ten. For some people it may last longer. For others, injury or life may shorten it considerably.

You don't know. So if the sun is shining, make hay.

Train hard. Learn as much as you can. Become as good as you can. Take advantage of the opportunity to do something difficult while you're physically capable of doing it.

And when that window eventually changes, adapt.

Maybe you train differently. Maybe you teach. Maybe you compete less. Maybe you become the experienced training partner who helps the next generation develop. Maybe you find that you still have plenty left in the tank, just not in the same way you did twenty years earlier.

The goal isn't to freeze yourself in one moment of your athletic life. The goal is to make something meaningful out of every season.

My father taught me how to box. He also taught me that when the conditions are right, you don't wait around for them to become perfect.

You make hay while the sun is shining.