If your mixed martial arts training could produce the results you want, what would they be? Would you like to have more strength? Perhaps you would like to be more flexible. Or maybe you would like to fight until the final bell rings without tiring?

The answers you just found in your head probably depend on your current strengths and weaknesses. And I’m willing to bet that you have some area of ​​physical weakness right now that you’ve thought “If only I had something better (fill in the blank), my performance would improve tenfold. Recognizing this is a big step.” Go ahead because these weak areas are the ones that really hold back your performance.

For example, let’s take the fighter who is very strong physically. Whenever you have to train with this guy, you think to yourself, “I hate fighting this guy. He always dominates me.”

But then you remind yourself that while he is very strong, his strength does not last long. You know that if you can force him to exert some energy, his strength is quickly depleted.

In the end, it’s not his incredible strength that stands out, but his lack of stamina. Stamina is your Achilles heel, and pretty soon your strength doesn’t even matter anymore.

The other example that I have seen a lot is the fighter who has incredible flexibility, but very little strength.

Flexibility is such a good thing for a mixed martial artist because it gives you a very clear advantage over your opponents. But again, it’s usually the weak areas that show up the most.

There are some really cool fighters who are incredibly flexible, but they lack strength, power, and conditioning, or even all three.

Don’t let your weak areas overshadow your strengths. Don’t let your opponent deny your strength because your stamina is weak. Don’t let your opponent outperform your superior technique because your conditioning is flawed.

Strengthen your current physical deficiencies and your performance will improve tenfold.

Use an ideal MMA workout:

Just like a mixed martial artist training in fighting styles, becoming excellent at wrestling, Jiu Jitsu, submission, boxing, kickboxing, etc., you also need to “cross-train” your fitness.

Your ideal mixed martial arts training should accumulate all the physical tools you need.

You shouldn’t focus just on flexibility, just strength, or just endurance. You should improve all those things together, as much as possible. This way, you won’t end up like the guy we talked about earlier, who has a lot of strength, but tires too quickly. This way, you won’t be the type who can run a two-and-a-half hour marathon, but doesn’t have any functional strength.

In a fight, you don’t use flexibility, strength, or endurance separately. They all combine at the same time. And you will be more successful if you have a good balance of all of them. So the best mixed martial arts workouts train these elements simultaneously.

Rickson Gracie explains this concept:

“[In a] fight you must have speed. You must be flexible. You must have strength. You must have stamina. Everything at once. And the exercises I do I combine them all. “

So now I would like to give you a very simple, but powerful way to put this into action so that your workouts simulate a fight.

Choose five exercises or drills to do. (There are too many options to cover all of them in this article) We’ll just pick a few simple ones that you probably already know how to do.

We will use a variety of bodyweight exercises: push-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges, and leg raises. These exercises are very basic, but you can substitute them for different exercises in the future.

We have chosen five exercises that affect various muscle groups throughout the body.

Now you want to do the exercises continuously, in the form of a circuit, for five minutes at a time without stopping. To make the training even more specific to mixed martial arts, you can add 30-second shadow boxing sessions to the circuit. Here’s a quick rundown of the end result:

Minute 1:

30 seconds – push-ups

30 seconds – shadow boxing

Minute 2:

30 seconds – sit-ups

30 seconds – shadow boxing

Minute 3:

30 seconds – squats

30 seconds – shadow boxing

Minute 4:

30 seconds – leg lift

30 seconds – shadow boxing

Minute 5:

30 seconds – lunges

30 seconds – shadow boxing

Now, you have a very simple, high intensity, five minute workout that you can use anytime, anywhere.

This circuit-style MMA workout conditions your body to perform the same way it would in a fight, without resting for a full five minutes and using a wide variety of full-body exercises.

The training seems simple, but you will start to experience positive results very quickly if you use the process as I described above. And, as your conditioning improves, you can start implementing more advanced exercises and more MMA-specific exercises to increase intensity and take your conditioning to an even higher level.