Always looking for that extra edge, the stars of the NFL have found fresh inspiration: in MMA.

Then the modern era of mixed martial arts began in 1993, it was conceived as little more than an infomercial for the legendary Gracie clan to showcase the worth of their family’s brand of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But a strange thing happened in 18-plus years since the Ultimate Fighting Championship first revolutionized hand-to-hand combat: what started as a glorified ‘Toughman’ competition began to attract some of the world’s best athletes, and the spectacle developed into legitimate sport.

In the United States, mixed martial arts is widely recognized as the fastest-growing athletic pursuit in the country, and its popularity – especially among the coveted young-male demographic – already rivals that of several long-established professional sporting leagues.

Now, UFC and Bellator play host to some of the world’s toughest athletes. It’s a role that was long held by the rough-and-tumble American footballers of the National Football League, but things are quickly changing.

“I think I first got initially interested in martial arts just watching TV, and I thought it was just one incredible, incredible art,” former NFL great and Strikeforce heavyweight Herschel Walker tells Fighters Only. “Even when I started watching it, I didn’t see it as fighting. I saw it as an art, like a dance. You put together all the movement, and I thought it was just absolutely incredible watching it.”

Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner as college football’s finest player, as well as a two-time Pro Bowler (an elite squad formed from the entire ranks of the NFC and AFC leagues) during his tenure in the NFL, began studying karate during his high school years.

It would be more than a decade before the UFC would make its 1993 debut, but Walker was immediately enamored by traditional martial arts. While MMA’s current surge in popularity has made it a popular activity for today’s youth, it wasn’t exactly that way in Walker’s formative years. “I started studying taekwondo my senior year of high school,” Walker says. “I was a guy that just did it because I loved it, but I was the loner that did it. Nobody else was really doing it then. It wasn’t that popular.”

Undeterred, Walker would continue his martial arts training throughout a stellar 15-year career in professional football, as well as forays into Olympic bobsledding, track and field and even ballet.

Widely regarded as one of the finest athletes to ever compete in the game of football, Walker still maintains his commitment to personal fitness through a daily regimen of 1,000 push-ups and 3,500 sit-ups even though his playing days are well behind.

Walker also maintains his passion for martial arts and in 2010 at 47 years old became the highest-profile American footballer to ever make the transition to MMA.

“I had been watching mixed martial arts for years, and it was just something that I absolutely loved,” Walker says.

“It really wasn’t a sport. It was almost like a ‘Toughman’ contest; they didn’t have weight classes.

They didn’t have all the rules that they have now, so it was kind of tough to get involved with. When they started putting in weight classes and rules, it really became a true sport.

About five years ago, I started thinking, ‘I would love to do this.’

At the time, I was building my company, so it was hard to really get into MMA. I knew that if you were going to do it, you really had to spend some time at it.

I didn’t want to be like some athletes who say they want to do it and think they can just jump into the cage or the Octagon and do it. I knew you had to train. I knew martial arts, and I wanted to respect the sport. When I got my company to the point that it can do quite a bit on its own, I then decided to give MMA a shot.”

Walker earned a TKO win over Greg Nagy in the January 2010 bout at Strikeforce: Miami. The contest drew the attention of mainstream media outlets around the country, even though Walker was hardly the first player to make his way into MMA.

In fact, 2009’s reality-competition series The Ultimate Fighter 10: Heavyweights featured four fighters with NFL ties. Two of those athletes, Brendan Schaub and Matt Mitrione, are still competing in the UFC and have combined for a 6-1 record in the octagon.

Walker believes the transition from football to MMA is a natural one. “There’s a little bit of a connection in a sense that football and MMA are both very, very competitive sports,” Walker says.

“Not that other sports aren’t competitive, but MMA is such a fierce sport with a lot of contact involved.

I think that’s one of the things that attracts football players to it. At the same time, I think football players know MMA is one of the most competitive sports out there, if not the most competitive, and that’s why they want to do it. I think they want to test themselves to see where they’re at.”

But the road between football and MMA isn’t a one-way street.

In fact, while MMA has benefitted from the addition of some top athletes to the fold, some professional American footballers are seeking MMA training as a means of improving their on-field performance.

The aforementioned Jay Glazer, a longtime practitioner of martial arts, in 2009 partnered with MMA legend and UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture to form MMAthletics, a company that offers MMA-based training to athletes in other sports. Their main clientele thus far? Pro football players.

The process started after NFL star Jared Allen used some informal MMA training to better his footballing skills. “I was training at Arizona Combat Sports at the time with CB Dollaway, Aaron Simpson, Ryan Bader and all those guys Jamie Varner, Carlos Condit, Jesse Forbes and we had a great little thing going on over there,” Glazer says.

“Jared Allen and I were hanging out, and I was like, ‘You should come in there and start training with us.’ He came in, and the first day, I was like, ‘Look, check your ego at the door. Just shut up and get your ass whipped for a little bit in here.’ He went from 280lb down to 255 in a matter of months. We took bad fat off his frame and really loosened up his hips.

Jared went from seven sacks to 15-and-a-half and got the largest contract in the history of the NFL at that point for a defensive player. What happened was other guys starting calling me and going, ‘Hey, what can you do for me?’

That turned into me training [other pro football players] Matt Leinart and Patrick Willis.”

Glazer and Couture developed a program that includes modified MMA techniques designed specifically to help American footballers improve their performances in their NFL outings.

“What I did was partner up with Randy Couture, and we basically created this cross-training program that is specifically designed for your sport and your position,” Glazer says.

“We chose a lot of wrestling drills. Instead of shooting in for an arm drag as a takedown, we use an arm drag to get past somebody. A linebacker or defensive lineman can use that.

We do a lot of hand fighting drills that are designed to inflict pain and be violent – not just slap away hands like a lot of linemen do today, but violently strike someone’s forearm over and over and over in the same spot the same way you would use leg kicks on somebody in a fight. It’s starting to catch on.”

Indeed it has. The NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and St Louis Rams franchises each utilized the program this past off-season.

Xtreme Couture fighters Frank Trigg and Jay Hieron traveled to the Falcons and Rams, respectively, and coached a select group of players from each team through the MMAthletics program. Trigg said the program was well received by the players, who appreciated the individualized approach.

“Each position has to be treated differently,” Trigg says. “The offensive line doesn’t move as much. They’re a lot more stationary and have more static strength than the defensive line.

Meanwhile, the defensive line is trying get around the offensive line. The quarterbacks and wide receivers are the most athletic guys on the field. They have to run, jump and move all over in a very wide space.

You can’t teach a quarterback the same way you teach a wide receiver, even if they have the same body type.

The players were very receptive because at the NFL level, the players are always looking for any improvements they can make, even though they’re pretty much performing at peak anyway.

They’re always looking for the next best thing to gain even a slight edge.”

While the MMAthletics program is a no-contact approach (NFL executives understandably don’t want their million-dollar athletes in off-season fistfights), Glazer said the connection between MMA drills and NFL games is palpable.

And while he insists the physical improvements made by footballers during MMA training is measurable, Glazer believes the mental improvements that can be made are just as important.

“The main thing is, when the cage door shuts, you’re looking at the other fighter saying, ‘I’m going to break your will. It’s me against you, and I’m going to break your will,’” Glazer says.

“You can hear it when a guy’s will snaps. Even in training, when you’re going with somebody, you can feel it, you can hear it when someone’s will breaks.

We’re trying to teach these football players the same thing. When that game starts, that damn cage door is shut, and we teach these guys to own your space.

It is you against the guy across from you. You own your damn space. When you’re the quarterback, you’ve got to have that mindset: ‘I’m going to pick you apart.’ We want you to be violent, even as a quarterback. We want you to be sadistic.”

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart, an MMAthletics disciple, couldn’t agree more. “It’s about that will and the fortitude just to keep going and going,” Leinart says about the program.

“You go from football, weights and practice to this type of training, and these guys are animals.

I think it’s the perfect environment for me to get to where I want to go as far as being mentally tougher and stronger.”

For Walker, who wants to continue fighting as long as his body can take the training and his coaches and teammates believe he’s living up to their expectations, his professional footballing days are long behind him. As such, Walker will never know how much he could have personally benefitted from MMA training rather than the traditional martial arts focus he maintained during his playing days.

However, he believes more of the NFL’s elite should consider the possibility. 

“The conditioning in MMA is better,” Walker says. “I’ve been really getting my cardio up, my strength. In football, coaches always talk about getting that butt down and the head up.

Some of that MMA training is the same type of training. If you’re stuck in a triangle choke, and you need to get that head up to pull out of it, or maybe if there’s a punch that you want to sit down on, I think there’s a connection to both of those techniques.

I think a lot of players may benefit in the off-season by going to a good MMA gym – not just to fight, but to get that kind of training.

I think it would benefit their quickness. The footwork will improve.

The hands, the way lineman throw their hands out there to block and the defensive lineman has to push those out of the way, the punching training can really help.

For a running back, they can really improve their agility and quickness. I think it can help a lot of guys in a lot of different ways.”

It’s a bold new world for fighters and footballers, but one which Glazer believes should be explored to its fullest.

“We can all always learn something new,” Glazer says. “No matter what it is, we can learn something new.”

How MMA helps football

While the massive athletes of the world’s premier professional football league, the NFL, are widely recognized as some of the strongest athletes in all of sport, sports analyst and MMA enthusiast Jay Glazer believes pro footballers can learn much regarding functional strength with just a little bit of MMA training.

“We do an awful lot of wrestling with these guys,” Glazer says. “It’s all about how to use leverage. You can bench press 500 pounds, but if you can’t move me and I’m a 5’ 7” Jewish dude I don’t care how much you can bench press. We teach them how to use their hips and leverage.

It can certainly help them with what they do for a living.”

Glazer also believes that wrestling is an easy way for footballers to improve their strength in off-season.

“You go around the NFL and tell me how many popped pectorals there are from doing way-too-heavy bench presses,” Glazer said. “This is so much easier on the body than lifting weights.”

Tune into an NFL game on any given Sunday, and you’re likely to see a whole host of devastating hits and bone-jarring collisions.

But despite the violence often associated with football, MMAthletics head Jay Glazer said the players’ toughness sometimes leaves a little to be desired.

It’s a trait he believes is easily addressed by MMA training. “With the Atlanta Falcons, one of the thing they wanted was Sam Baker, their left tackle, to be mean and nasty,” Glazer says.

“He’s a very good player, very athletic, but they needed him nasty.

Their first mini-camp after working with us, I got a call from their GM, Tom Dimitrioff, just going nuts because apparently Sam shot a double-leg takedown on their starting defensive end, mounted him and beat the dog crap out of him and then jumped up after and looked at his team as of to say, ‘You’re damn right I just did that.’

Sam texted me and Frank Trigg and said, ‘Hey, I owned my space.’”