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MMA Sandbag Training Workouts

Jimmy — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:18:34 +0000

This video provides an overview by of some great movements that benefit MMA fighters. Josh Henkin runs through 8 sandbag training exercises that you can do with a sandbag. The sandbag shown in the video is the Ultimate Sandbag.

The video goes through:

Half Moon Snatch
Overhead Chop
Rotational Lunge
Shoulder Get-Ups
Around The Worlds
Shoulder To Shoulder Squat Press
Grappler Sandbag
Explosive Body Pulls

MMA Training for Balance and Coordination

Jimmy — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:45:34 +0000

Every athlete needs well developed core and stabilization muscles, but perhaps no one needs it more than mixed martial artists. Strength in these areas is an absolute must for mma fighters for several reasons: increased balance, coordination, muscular endurance and stability – all which are very important attributes for mma fighters.

The ability to stay balanced and on your feet, such as BJ Penn’s almost impenetrable take-down defense, when you have strong powerful wrestlers and judo fighters constantly attempting single legs, double legs, and hip throws has a lot to do with how well you have trained your balance and coordination.

Balance and coordination is also the foundation for powerful strikes and take-downs, so developing these attributes in your mma training workouts will not only help you defensively but offensively as well.

The best way to develop your balance and coordination is to include core training and balance training in your mma training workouts.

Core Training

The core is perhaps the most important part of the body mma fighters must strengthen and develop. The reason being is that the core is the where the body’s center of gravity is and where all movement begins.

That means every punch, kick, take-down, throw, or any other offensive (or defensive) move begins at the core FIRST.

The core is also responsible for stabilizing muscle movement as well as initiate muscle movement. Without getting to much into details, all you need to know at this point is that you sure as hell better be developing your core muscles.

MMA Training Exercises for Developing the Core

Core Stabilization: Any exercise done on the stability ball will automatically develop core stabilization. Example exercises are:

Stability ball training of all kinds (both core and non-core exercises such as dumbbell shoulder presses)
Planks
Floor Bridges

Vertical Crunches: Any crunch exercise where you are flexing your core in a linear movement. Example exercises are:

Floor crunches
Cable crunches
Sit-ups
Leg raises

Twisting Movements: Along with standard crunches and sit-ups, twisting movements are vital for developing power and coordination in any movement that requires twisting your torso, such as punching and kicking. Example exercises are:

Cable Wood chops
Cable rotations
Medicine ball rotation chest passes
Bicycle sit-ups

Core Power Training: Along with strength, it is important to develop core power, which will contribute the most in increasing power in your strikes. Example exercises are:

Medicine ball slams
Sledgehammer training
Medicine ball pull-over throws from the stability ball
Medicine ball wood-chops

Balance Training

Balance training is the other half to balance and coordination training. Having good balance will keep you on your feet when it’s needed most, such as Anderson Silva’s going to need going up against Demian Maia next month for UFC 112.

MMA fighters often find themselves in unstable positions more often than not, so training your balance appropriately will ensure you’re comfortable and effective in the ring or cage when you find yourself in these positions.

MMA Training Exercises for Developing Balance

Stabilization Balance: The ability to stay on one leg without losing balance is key. Some example exercises are:

Standing on one-leg: practice holding your leg straight out
Single Leg exercise: Have your part attempt to take you down while he has you in a single leg
Have a partner throw a tennis ball at you while standing on a medicine ball

Balance Strength: Having balance strength is important for movements such as standing back up when you have your opponent’s leg to attempt another single leg. Some example exercises are:

Single leg squats with the TRX
Single leg Dumbbell Step ups

Balance Power: The ability to be explosive on your feet while still maintaining balance and posture is a must have attribute in mma. Some example exercises are:

Single leg box jumps
Side to side single leg jumps over a medicine ball
Shadowboxing with a 12 inch rope tied between your ankles (great exercise for footwork too)

About the Author

Derek Manuel is a personal trainer specializing on strength and conditioning for mma fighters. Check out his complete reviews of the top mma workout routines on the web today at http://www.bestmmatrainingworkouts.com/

Follow Derek’s MMA Strength and Conditioning Blog

Follow Derek on Twitter

Women in MMA

Jimmy — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:32:33 +0000

A Guest Post by my friend Nicole

Women in MMA. Say what you want but more and more women are taking up an interest in the male dominated sport. I am one of those women. I don’t have a background in wrestling. Never took a karate class in my life. I did, however, play sports growing up. Volleyball, basketball, softball, track & field, and soccer didn’t lead me on the path to MMA. How did I get in to the sport? Now that’s a story. I was 18 years old and met a boy who told me everything I wanted to hear. We ended up in a relationship together. For the first few months everything was fine. Eventually, he became very controlling and dictated who I could hang out with, what I could wear, who I could talk to and he had to know where I was at all times. If that wasn’t bad enough, he started getting physical and would hit me every time we got in an argument. I can’t tell you how many times I was thrown against walls and beaten. To make matters worse, I was a very religious girl and was waiting until marriage to have sex and he raped me for “the good of the relationship.” I was so weak and after 2 years of putting up with it; I finally left him. I was broken and scared but I knew I never wanted to be subjected to that again. I didn’t want to be a victim. I signed up at LA Boxing a few blocks from my house and started doing kickboxing. I became obsessed with it. For me, it was my therapy, strength and empowerment. I had been doing that for a couple of years when an old friend of mine invited me to train with her at De La O Jiu Jitsu. I had always loved watching MMA but I never knew where to go about training for it so I jumped on the opportunity. After one class, I was hooked. I cancelled my membership at LA Boxing and started training at De La O Jiu Jitsu. The rest is history.

Now getting started with jiu jitsu was very frustrating and uncomfortable for me. Having to make physical contact with boys and be in somewhat awkward positions was very hard at first. It was also difficult being one of the few girls. It’s like the guys wanted nothing to do with you. I had to gain their respect and show them I wasn’t there to try and hook up with them because they were fighters. I have also dealt with several injuries since I started training. I’ve had broken toes, sprained fingers, torn calf, cuts on my knees and elbows, fat lips, and even 2 shoulder surgeries. I’ve never let any of that hold me back.

MMA has been a blessing to my life in so many ways. It’s helped me with my self esteem. It’s made me stronger, faster, and more aware. It’s helped me lose a tremendous amount of weight. It’s helped with my anxiety and anger and has given me the confidence and strength to avoid terrible relationship choices like the one I made that got me into training in the first place.

Currently, I train 6 days a week: 4 days of MMA/Jiu Jitsu and 2 days of Muay Thai. I’m a blue belt under John De La O. It’s been about one month since I’ve been back from an 8 month hiatus due to 2 shoulder surgeries. I thought I’d be struggling more with my comeback but everything seems to be going relatively well. Granted, I still have my bad days but I’m getting better and better and I’ve never been more fired up to train than I am right now.

I hope to compete in the future but I still have to let my shoulder get its strength back. Just being a part of the sport has been life changing. I’m a completely different person. If you’d like to follow me on my journey check out my blog: http://nizzicole.unfilteredmma.com

Bodyweight Training for Combat Twitter Chat

Jimmy — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:54:04 +0000

This Wednesday, March 10th at 9:00pm EST there will be a twitterchat with being faciliated by The Mastermind behind Straight To The Bar, Scott. For individuals with Twitter, just add the hash tag #sbgym to your tag to participate. We will be discussing things such as:

• Bodyweight exercises for warming up prior to combat, and prior to training

• Bodyweight technique work for combat training

• Bodyweight exercises for strength-training, with combat in mind

• Ideas for progressing with bodyweight exercises (increase reps, decrease time etc)

• Various equipment which helps add variety to bodyweight training (TRX, VFFs etc)

More Info

Hope to see you there!

Changing MMA Schools

Jimmy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:24:34 +0000

I spent over 2 years at the same MMA gym that I started at. This school transitioned me from an out of shape, normal kid into a fighter. This school laid the foundation for my MMA training. It’s been 6 months but I’ve switched MMA schools to begin a new chapter in MMA.

Why did I switch MMA schools?

I barely saw the main instructor
No advanced MMA classes
No sense of “team”
No mentoring

I had a sour experience after my first fight. I had two training partners that helped me prepare for my first fight, but I feel like an instructor should of been there for me everyday. So I made the switch to a new gym. I see the main instructor everyday, learning many new things and improving every time I train. If you are no longer progressing with your skill, it’s time to move on.

MMA Link Roundup

Jimmy — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:32:16 +0000

The great thing about the internet is the wealth of information. Sometimes too much information, here is a round up of few sites that I find valuable and hopefully you will find use of them.

Find MMA Gym
This site is a great resource to those who want to start training MMA or need a new gym. What makes this site so great is the amount of information that you can find on it. You can look up MMA gyms based on zip code, city, or state. Once you type that in you get a nice list of gyms. Each listing features all the basic contact information of the MMA gym. There is also a very descriptive background, rating, and user comments area so you can get a better feel for the gym. There is also a section that goes over the Gym/School specialties (for example: grappling, stand up, mma).

Mixed Martial Arts
This website has a lot of information, such as MMA news and training articles. I use this all the time to look up records of fighters. Any person who actually fights will be automatically put into the database. You are able to modify your profile by verifying yourself via email.

Performance Workouts
This is a great resource if you want to throw together some sort of strength and conditioning plan. They show lists of workouts with videos according to: Strength, Stability, Power, Speed, Agility, and Flexibility.

What sites do you think are useful? Share them and tell us why!

Importance of MMA Management

Jimmy — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:34:57 +0000

Having a fight is great until you have to deal with all of the paperwork and promoters. Having no fights I wasn’t familiar with everything that needed to be done before you actually fight, dealing with promoters, athletic state commission, bout agreements, fighter agreements, MMA licensing and all that stuff.

Luckily for me, a good friend of mine Warren and his crew reached out to me to help me with my first fight. Everything I had to worry about between the promoter was taken care of by Warren and his MMA management company Mayhem365. I only had to worry about training, while Mayhem365 took care of everything else in a professional matter. If you build a positive image with a promoter and make a good impression, I can bet it’ll be easier to get on the card for the next promotion.

Here’s a little bit about Mayhem365:

Mayhem365 Athlete Representation is, first and foremost, focused on its fighters. As a relatively small management group, we are able to focus the attention of our team on finding fights that make sense for the athletes we represent. What does that mean? A lot of people holding themselves out as MMA Managers can find fights. It’s not that difficult. There are hundreds of promotions putting on hundreds of shows all over the world. Just because you can put a fighter on a card, doesn’t mean the fight makes sense for the fighter. There are a number of factors involved.

First, the fight has to make financial sense for the fighter. Strong management will get “fair market value” (FMV) for the fighter including reasonable travel and per diem expenses. Establishing a fighter’s fair market value is part art and part science. It’s a difficult figure to ascertain, particularly respecting new fighters. Mayhem365 does the work necessary to establish this number. Once it’s established, we constantly revisit it and make adjustments based on the fighter’s resume, experience and marketability. Our process for determining a fighter’s FMV is proprietary but we can tell you what it isn’t: your worth as a fighter is not necessarily what a promoter initially offers to pay you to fight. Be serious about your career.

Second, the fight has to make sense for a fighter’s professional development. A big payday with a bad promotion is not necessarily a good payday and our fighters trust us and understand this concept. In MMA, there are many promotions but there’s a much smaller group of promotions fighters should be focused on in terms of advancement, earnings, and longevity. Irresponsible promotions are not concerned about a fighter’s career trajectory or whether a particular fight fits into a fighter’s plan. Mayhem365 takes all of these things into consideration when engaging promotions for our fighters.

I mentioned the word “plan” and that’s important. Upon signing a fighter, we work with our fighters to develop and implement a two-year Fight Plan. Trying to become a professional fighter without a plan is reckless on the part of the fighter and negligent on management’s part. We won’t work with fighters who aren’t serious about accomplishing big things. Effective MMA management is time consuming and we refuse to waste time. Once you are a member of M365, you can be assured that we are handling all of your business dealings with promoters. We coordinate your travel to and from your fights. We offer financial planning to our fighters through strategic partnerships with financial planning experts. We work with our fighters on “second act” planning for life beyond the cage. You become part of a close-knit family and your professional fighting needs become our business. We take our business very seriously. If you do, too, give us a call.

Written by: Gary Wimsett

Find Mayhem365
Website / Twitter

MMA Training for Speed and Explosiveness

Jimmy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:12:46 +0000

This is a guest post by Derek Manuel

Before I get started explaining how to develop speed and explosiveness for mma fighters, It is important that you first know that there are different types of speed and what they are.

Perception and Reflex Speed: An example of perceptual speed is the speed of your eyes at seeing an opening in your opponent’s defense. Reflex, or reaction speed, is the duration of time it takes you to respond with a technique to execute (whether offensively or defensively) to when your muscles actually begin the movement.

Movement and Alteration Speed: Movement speed is your ability to physically accelerate any particular muscle or group of muscles, such as the speed at actually throwing a punch. Alteration speed is your ability to change directions during the middle of a movement, such as bobbing your head to the right after you dodged a punch to the left, or pulling your hand back quickly to defend after delivering a missed punch with that same hand.

What I’ll be going over is the last two types of speed: movement speed and alteration speed. This is the type of speed most people think of when they think of speed because it is something you actually “see” happening; such as BJ Penn’s hand speed when he’s throwing punches, Anderson Silva’s foot speed when throwing kicks, or Georges St. Pierre’s quick and explosive takedowns.

Although I’ll just be covering exercises and drills that primarily increase these two types of movement speed, it is important to note that increasing ALL four types of speed are crucial to developing. The reason being is, if you failed to develop the first two types of speed – how quickly you SEE and REACT to outside stimuli – it doesn’t matter how quickly you can throw a punch if you aren’t fastest enough to respond to an opening when you see one!

With that said, let’s get into some of the principles, exercises, and drills you can begin incorporating in your mma training workouts today to develop lightning speed punches, kicks, and takedowns.

Technique, Practice, and Repetition

The first and perhaps most important principle when developing speed is to learn proper technique. After that it just takes repetitions, repetitions, and more repetitions.

Just like you have to continuously do reps of progressively heavier weight if you want to increase your strength in a particular exercise, if you want to increase the speed of your punches, you have to continuously punch as fast as you can over and over. Rocket science, I know, and probably not what you wanted to hear.

But the plain and simple truth is this: if you want to sprint faster, you have to get your ass outside and sprint, day after day, week after week, month after month, with the goal of increasing your sprint speed each time. Advanced sprinters then later add resistance such as sleds or parachutes or sprinting uphill, and mma fighters can progressively add resistance to their exercises and drills as well to further increase speed and explosiveness.

One side note to always remember is to also develop your retraction speed, such as pulling your hand or foot back after you delivered a punch or kick. This not only gives the visual appearance of faster strikes, but it will remind you not to drop your hands or feet after a punch or kick, inviting your opponent for an easy counter.

Below are some drills you can add into your mma training workouts to increase the speed of your punches, kicks, and/or takedowns.

Speed Drills

Shadowboxing: Dancing around a mirror and sparring an invisible opponent is one of the best exercises you can do to increase your footwork, punches, and kicks. My favorite part about shadowboxing is that you have a lot of freedom in this drill; you can practice just one punch or kick at a time, practice combinations, or act as if you were facing a real opponent. Practice shadowboxing in rounds (such as mimicking the rounds in a fight). Later on for added resistance, you can add boxing gloves or very light dumbbells – no more then 2-3 lbs is necessary – to help develop that snap at the end of you punches.

Red Line Drill: This is a 4 part drill. Let’s say you are looking to develop speed in your leg kicks. In part 1, do 10 reps of slow and controlled leg kicks, working mainly on warming up and using perfect form. Part 2, after a minute rest, do 10 more reps at a little bit faster speed, still trying to maintain perfect form. Take another minute rest, and in part 3 you are to kick as fast as you possibly can with good form for 10 reps. In part 4, after your minutes rest, you are now to do 10 reps even faster – without any regard to keeping perfect form. The key is to really push your speed on this last one, attempting to make each kick faster then the last one. Practice this drill a few times a week with whatever punch or kick you are trying to develop.

Hanging Paper Drill: Bruce Lee used to perform this drill, and we all know how fast he was. It’s a drill where you simply hang a piece of paper by a heavy string or light chain so that the paper is hanging a little above shoulder level. Get in your fighting stance a little short of arms length from the paper, and simply practice snapping your jabs as fast as you can at the paper and back. Take your time between each punch – you’re not looking to throw punches as fast as you can consecutively like the previous drill, but rather working on really staying loose and developing quick and snappy individual punches. The key is to try to make every punch faster then the last; this is a mental exercise as much as it is a physical one. Work up to 100 punches each hand.

Focus Pads: If you’ve been involved in MMA for any length of time, you know what these are. Get a partner who knows how to use them, for they are some of the best tools in the sport to developing all four types of speed, especially in combinations.

Resistance Exercises for Explosiveness

Increase Relative Strength: Relative strength is your strength to weight ratio. In mma terms, someone who can squat 275 pounds but only weighs 155 pounds will have more potential for quicker takedowns then someone who can squat the same but weighs 185 pounds. You can increase your relative strength by either maintaining your current level of strength and losing weight, or increasing your strength and maintaining your current body weight.

Plyometrics: This is perhaps your best form of exercise when it comes to developing speed and power. Plyometrics are designed specifically to produce fast and powerful movements, so after you develop a good foundation of relative strength, it is a good idea to begin incorporating plyometric exercises to take that new raw strength and train your muscles to move those muscles quickly and explosively.

Medicine Ball Power Exercises: Medicine ball training is actually a form of plyometrics, but in the form of adding additional resistance instead of just using your body weight. Medicine ball power exercises, such as medicine ball chest passes, allow you to exert maximum power in a full range of motion, whereas with barbells or dumbbells you have to actually decelerate your motion near the end (you can’t safely throw a barbell or dumbbell in the air while doing bench presses, for example).

Uphill or Bleacher Sprinting: This is one of the best exercises you can do to develop the speed and power in your legs for shooting in for takedowns. Practice quick 10 second sets of uphill or bleacher sprints for several sets. If you want, you can make it into a hardcore cardio workout as well by training them in intervals.

Agility Latter: There are a whole bunch of drills you can do to develop foot speed with the agility latter, so I am not going to get into them here. In a nutshell, agility latter’s are one of the best ways to develop foot speed, agility, and quickness – and any mma fighter knows that footwork is the key to a good boxer as wells as grapplers who want to develop quick take-downs.

These are just a few exercises and drills you can begin incorporating in your mma training workouts. Remember to always do your speed and power exercises in the beginning of your workouts when you are fresh, otherwise you risk developing speed but with sloppy form, and remember to never lock out your joints when punching or kicking in the air, this is a great way to injure yourself.

Try these out for a while, stay consistent and always think progress, and you’ll notice your punches, kicks, takedowns will begin to take on new levels of speed and explosiveness.

About the Author

Derek Manuel is a personal trainer specializing on strength and conditioning for mma fighters. Check out his complete reviews of the top mma training workouts on the web today at http://www.BestMMATrainingWorkouts.com

Follow Derek’s MMA Strength and Conditioning Blog Here

Follow Derek on Twitter

Tony Jaa Muay Thai DVD Giveaway

Jimmy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:38:49 +0000

Starting today (September 25th) we are giving away Ong Bak & Chocolate DVD set to 5 randomly picked winners. This is a refresher course to get you ready for Ong Bak 2, which will be shown in theaters October 23rd. ONG BAK 2 is now available on VOD, Amazon and XBOX Marketplace!

How to Enter:

Hit the retweet button to the top left of this post and it should retweet this post. Winners will be picked at random. The contest ends Friday, October 2nd. You can also tweet this message:

RT @JimmyVo Tony Jaa Muay Thai DVD Giveaway | MMA Training Stuff http://retwt.me/hp4v

Synopsis:

Martial arts superstar Tony Jaa stars in and directs this epic tale of revenge set hundreds of years in the past. Featuring a huge cast and hordes of elephants, this prequel takes Jaa’s skills to the next level, showcasing him as a master of a wide range of martial arts styles – while proving him to be a promising director as well.

Visit the official site: http://www.ongbaktwo.com/

Ong Bak 2 & Blood and Bone

Jimmy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:54:10 +0000

We’re going to add a new dimension to MMA Stuff, which will cover other things outside of training that but still deal with MMA. We’ll just call it “lifestyle” posts that discusses clothing, movies, and anything like that. Anyway, there are two movies that will be coming out, one I’m more excited for then the other.

Ong Bak 2

Muay Thai martial arts master Tony Jaa returns to deliver a bone-breaking barrage of knees and elbows in this sequel to the 2003 hit that finds the action star not only delivering blows in front of the camera, but calling the shots behind it as well.

Blood and Bone

Ex-con Isaiah Bone (Michael Jai White, Spawn) is the new force in LA’s underground street fighting scene. When he takes down the reigning champ, the local mob boss wants to enter Bone in a series of high-stakes international matches. Bone’s refusal sets off an explosive showdown between two powerful enemies with everything at stake.

This movie features Kimbo Slice and my future wife Gina Carano. A good ‘ol straight to DVD release.