Issue 147

August 2007

He’s the most senior fighter in the UFC, yet Hall of Famer Randy Couture still remains a poster boy for health and fitness. Join his team at Xtreme Couture as ‘The Natural’ gears up for his 24th appearance with MMA’s elite.

At the ripe age of 47, you’d be forgiven for thinking that long-standing UFC veteran Randy Couture would be considering hanging up his four-ounce gloves. Even the comic book staple from whom Couture borrowed his ‘Captain America’ nickname suffered an ill-fated destruction at the hands of a deadly assassin and was effectively plunged into retirement.

Yet Couture is showing the stoic heroism that has seen him battle on through adversity and live to fight another day. On the back of a three-fight winning streak that has seen him out-wit Brandon Vera, destroy fellow veteran Mark Coleman and go some way towards settling the ‘MMA vs boxing’ war by trouncing the heavy-handed James Toney, Couture now immerses himself in an intense training regime in the hope of defeating a new nemesis, Lyoto ‘The Dragon’ Machida at UFC 129. Couture’s ability to survive in the MMA game is a testament to his willingness to adapt his training around the sport’s rapid evolution.

“As I’ve gotten older, less is definitely more,” Couture tells “I have tons of muscle memory already from years of wrestling in competitive sports, so I can get away with doing a little less and allowing my body to recover.”

That’s not to say the intensity at which ‘The Natural’ trains has diminished. Right now, Couture is currently immersed in a grueling fight camp at his own gym, Xtreme Couture. With the help of his strength and conditioning coach Jake Bonacci – also interviewed – the pair have created a training ‘complex’ by synthesizing Couture’s knowledge of strength and conditioning in wrestling with the demands of MMA.

“It’s a variety of aerobic and anaerobic, core strength and plyometric exercises put into a routine that simulates the time periods of an MMA fight,” says Couture.

“You’re simulating the rounds with the one-minute rests. It incorporates sprinting, whether it’d be on a treadmill or a stair step; footwork such as box, ladder and hurdle jumps; medicine ball slams and doing push-ups over the ball; and light weightlifting, like Olympic lifts with dumbbells which require more strength and stabilization from the muscles. 

“The complexes are usually broken into rounds of five-minute duration with a minute rest. As we get close to the fight, we cut the rest period down to 30 or 40 seconds so your body is forced to recover over a shorter time, increasing the intensity of the workout.”

As MMA has developed, Couture has also integrated more alternative methods into his exercise, some that aren’t usually attributed to hardcore MMA fighters.

“We’ve just implemented a yoga program at Xtreme Couture,” says Randy. “My girlfriend’s a big fan who’s done it for years. She can attain some of those positions that I can only dream of getting to one day. Outside of the downward dog [a basic yoga position] I’m at a loss.

It’s hilarious watching all these big fighters trying to achieve some of those positions,” Couture laughs. “I think it’s fantastic, the centering and the breathing. A proper balance between flexibility and muscularity is essential and I know I could certainly be more flexible.”

While many see incorporating yoga into a workout program as far-fetched, Couture believes that anything that can improve your performance is worthwhile. It is evident in his devotion to training the mental aspects of his game.

“At Xtreme Couture and particularly in my workouts, we focus a lot on visualization and training our mental skills,” says Couture.

“We do morphing exercises where you imagine morphing into something that represents your demeanor and approach to that particular fight.

I was exposed to it at the Olympic training center with the US national team in wrestling. Just look at Olympic skiers, they’re at the top of the hill making every turn down the slope and they haven’t even got their skis on yet. They’ve got their eyes closed and they’re visualizing it.

“It’s like every other skill: you have to condition it. The more you do it the easier it becomes and I think that guys don’t spend enough time developing those mental aspects and instead focus solely on physical skills.” 

Q: So how does Randy incorporate these visualization methods into his own game?

“I’ll visualize the fight and when I begin to tire I imagine that my opponent is destroyed and exhausted,” he says. “I know that if I’m going hard in my mind, then my opponent is ready to quit and that drives me to go even harder and faster.”

Couture’s work rate and love of pushing his body to the limit is even evident in his downtime, where he enjoys ‘active rest’ by swimming, mountain bike riding, hiking or playing volleyball.

“You’ve got to get away from the mats,” he says.

“You need to do something where you’re still sweating but also giving yourself room to recover in the fresh air. I think it’s about resetting your mind as much as your body.”

Couture embodies the modern health and fitness lifestyle that many aspire to inside and outside of MMA.

He’s an advocate of not only training studiously, but eating well too. While many view professional fighters as steak-devoring monsters, Couture prefers anything green and natural. His diet consists largely of vegetables.

“I’ll try to limit the red meat to a couple of times a month. It’s good for you if trimmed properly, but it has a tendency to make me feel heavy and slow,” he says. 

“Everybody knows what good food is. It’s not complicated.

If it’s pre-packaged, put on a shelf and will last through the apocalypse then it’s probably not that good for you. If it’s raw and wholesome the way God intended it then you probably don’t wanna cook the crap out of it, unless it’s a meat and you want to eat it that way.

That’s why I like the greens as much as I do. They’re very alkaline and just good for you. They’re high in fiber and full of all the things you need to counteract what we do to our bodies; the stress of working out and everything else.”

Couture’s love for vegetables largely stems from their ability to reduce acid build-up. He has an ionizer in both his gym and at his home in Vegas, which makes water more alkaline to combat acidity in the body. 

“Your whole system is set up on an acid-based level,” he says.

“As you get older, the ketosis in your muscles builds up more acidity. Diseases grow in an acid-based environment and lactic acid build-up from working out, stress or a bad diet are all negative to the ability of blood to carry oxygen.

Eating greens and increasing the amount of alkaline in your diet can counteract this and improve your fitness immensely.”

Sticking to such a rigorous health and fitness regime is already a tall order for many athletes. Yet as Couture bursts into prominence within the action movie industry following the US blockbuster hit The Expendables, he is nowadays finding himself stretched even further, having to juggle between a strict training and filming schedule.

“It was a challenge shooting The Expendables because as soon as filming finished I had to go into camp for the Nogueira fight,” says Couture. “I knew if I sat on my butt and ate bon-bons during the whole shoot I was gonna pay the price.

We worked nights the entire shoot, so every morning I went straight to the hotel gym to get my cardio in, doing basic exercises. 

“It was a ten-week shoot and I did that every single day. When I busted into camp I was actually in a lot better shape than I expected.

Now this month, I’ve been able to be at home in Vegas and build up my normal conditioning to a level I’m comfortable at.”

Now, as Randy prepares for his bout with Machida, he is working hard at Xtreme Couture to improve his game while training with a variety of MMA legends. His gym plays host to the who’s who of MMA, including the likes of Forrest Griffin, Evan Dunham, Tyson Griffin, Martin Kampmann, Gray Maynard, Mike Pyle, Todd Duffee, Frank Trigg and perhaps most notably Vitor Belfort, who Randy has fought on three occasions.

“I’ve never had anger issues with guys who I’ve won or lost against,” says Couture. “I’ve always had an open mentality that there is no place I can’t go and try to learn. I’ve been to Brock Lesnar’s camp and I enjoy training with Vitor despite our fighting trilogy.

I’ve always felt like Belfort is one of the most talented guys I’ve competed against, and that he’s been misdirected and steered wrong in a lot of ways during his career. 

“To give him a chance to steer him a little bit, give him confidence and create a training environment that he can thrive in has been important and fun for me. He’s a great guy so regardless of the three fights, none of that really matters. It’s not a personal thing.

What’s more important is that we’re all learning and we’re all better people for those experiences and we’re all on the same path.”

If the path Couture is talking of is the righteous path then he is well on his way. Going about his career with such grace and dignity has seen him become a worldwide sensation and a lynchpin to mixed martial arts. Yet as the old adage goes, fame does not come without a price.

“In a lot of ways in the past ten years my life has got more complicated,” Couture says. “While the fans are amazing and I appreciate every single one of them, I can’t go anywhere without people taking a picture and it’s hard to relax.

It’s a different world. I never had to worry about back routes and security before. 

“I remember when it all changed it was after the fight with Pedro Rizzo in 2000 in Vegas. It took me and my family three hours to walk from the Grand Garden Arena down the studio walk to get to the bank of elevators because I was inundated with fans.

By the time we got there my mom and sisters were pissed, but that’s life. You have to come up with ways to work around those circumstances.

I’m not gonna tell people, ‘No!’ and just walk off. I’m Captain America!”

It is this devotion to the fans that has made Couture such a popular MMA icon while years of hard work in the gym and a scrupulous diet have earned him both UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight championship belts.

As June approaches and his 48th birthday beckons, Couture’s devotees can only speculate whether he’ll finally closeup shop. Whatever his decision, one thing is for certain: to his loyal fans, the UFC’s very own ‘Captain America’ will always remain a real-life MMA hero.

SHAPING THE NATURAL

Neil Melanson is Randy’s grappling coach and valued rolling partner.

Q: How did you come to work with Randy?

Neil Melanson: “I started working with him at least two years ago at the beginning of the Nogueira fight camp. He asked me to train him as the ground fighting coach for that fight and we really bonded and connected as a great team. We’ve taken it pretty far in the last few years with both of us learning a lot from each other.” 

Q: What’s Randy’s work ethic like?

A: “He’s renowned for his work ethic. He just doesn’t quit. I kind of got spoiled with him because he’s the kind of guy you can tell him what to do and he does it. I always thought I’d be listening to him, not telling him, but he wants to be coached. 

“People can break easily, especially with my style. It’s very pain orientated with a lot of pressure and guys don’t like it. They don’t want to go through that. But if you stick it to Randy he will just get mad and the next round he’s coming after you growling and it excites me. If you get one on Randy he gets two on you. You have to kill him as he’s always coming 100%.”

Q: What is it about Randy as a champion that sets him apart from everybody else?

A: “His willingness to learn, his age and his experience all baffle me. I’ve worked with fighters who have only been training for a few years who think they know it all and I’m thinking, ‘Man you don’t even know what you’re talking about yet.’ Randy is always willing to learn and do what you tell him to, even with his experience, so it’s amazing. He’s far technically superior than he’s ever been, which makes up for the fact he’s much older than other fighters. 

“Another thing that sets him apart is all the mental preparation. There’s a lot of that morphing where he focuses a lot on imaging and trying to put himself in the fight. Everybody says the fight is 90% mental but no one trains it. He does and that’s why you can’t break him. Now he’s so confident on the mat it’s unreal. He’s my only black belt. I gave him his black belt after the James Toney fight in Boston as I was born there and I wanted to make it special for him and show the world his talent. His grappling is now through the roof. He takes people apart at Xtreme Couture. If you thought he was confident before you better watch out.”

Q: What did you see in Randy that was special?

A: “The first thing I noticed was how far he’d gotten away from his wrestling. It was really frustrating for both of us. I thought he was gonna be a little more technical at certain things. He was just so psychical and because of that he was getting away from a lot of the escapes. But the fact I was a bigger grappler meant he couldn’t just rip out of things anymore – he had to technically defend and win. That was a real challenge the first camp. 

“I think, especially as we trained more together, the things I wanted him to work on made him irritated at first because we used to do them years ago when he was doing wrestling and he’d realized how far he’d gotten away from that. I was always a very good submission artist and with Randy coming into the picture I was teaching him mat wrestling techniques and he’d teach it back to me even better. It was like I would jog his memory and he’d explain how he used to do it and we’d work on it. All of a sudden my mat wrestling shot through the roof and I could do a lot of things I couldn’t do before. So in the last couple of years my game jumped too!

“He now shows me a lot of stuff on the mat. I work turtle [a type of guard from the hands and knees] against him and we have a real good handshake of a relationship. He’s one of the few training partners I can really go hard on and have fun with. When we get together we go really dirty and nasty on each other. Most people you do that to they get upset, but we can both take it so we have a blast.”

Jake Bonacci is Randy’s strength and conditioning coach.

Q: How long have you been training Randy?

Jake Bonacci: “I’ve been working with Randy for nearly four years now. I came out to Vegas after graduate school and they gave me a chance to do a ten-week course for the members at Xtreme Couture for free, because I heckled them over the phone and the Internet. I did a workout with Randy when he was training for the Gonzaga fight and he told me after the training session I’d be in charge of strength and conditioning for that camp. I’ve been with him ever since.”

Q: How have Randy’s workouts changed over the years?

A: “Overall in terms of fight preparation, the wrestler mentality has burned a lot of guys out. The first year I came here I think more guys went into the gym and over-trained than undertrained.

“So we’re trying to keep a monitor on energy output. We monitor what Randy’s doing and what he’s putting out on a scale out of ten on a daily basis. 

We’ll make sure Randy’s gonna peak on the day of the fight.”

Q: What would you say the biggest difference is in your training with Randy now in comparison to when you started?

A: “Three years ago it was about leaving everything in the gym. We’re a lot smarter now and it’s about quality over quantity. I’m a lot more focused on injury prevention than I used to be, and I’m including range of motion training and flexibility, for example.”

Q: What’s a typical day doing strength and conditioning with Randy?

A: “I usually start with a dynamic warm-up and soft-tissue work. He rolls out on the foam rollers and mini balls. We’ll work on flexibility, the range of motion and stability training. We’ll also do a lot of progressive core work where he’s holding different loads on his body in different positions. 

After the warm-up we’ll get into strength work. Everything’s periodized 100% to a tee.”

Q: Is there anything he excels at?

A: “Yeah, he’s great during the isometric work with various exercises such as push-up, pull-ups and squats, different pull-up variation holds. The way he’s progressed from that is amazing because they’re really challenging. 

Mentally you’ve got to be strong to be able to be sitting in certain positions for a minute at a time with a 20lb vest on. While other guys hate it, he seems to 

like it.”

Q: Sure, Randy’s known for his strong mentality. Can you tell the difference in him than other fighters?

A: “Definitely. You play like you practice, and he comes into each practice focused for the job in hand and ready to work. Other guys’ attention may wander a little bit but it’s never been the case for Randy. We don’t really talk during workouts. He’s there to do work and that’s what I like. I think that attitude has gotten him to where he is today.”

Q: Do you think people can be taught that work ethic?

A: “I think a lot of that’s instilled into the person. With Randy it may have been driven into him when he was younger and he’s carried it with him. I think it’s also partly the way he’s wired. To be consistent across the board every single day and into every single workout like Randy? He’s just one of a kind.”

Q: Do you do a different strength and conditioning program for Randy when he’s fighting Brock Lesnar in comparison to when he’s fighting Machida?

A: “Yes. Lesnar was 25 minutes and Machida’s going to be 15. Lesnar was 265lb whereas Machida weighs in at 205lb so it’s very different. The Lesnar fight was nearly three years ago so I need to be a lot smarter with a body that’s nearly 48 years old compared to 45.”

Q: How do you work around his movie schedule when he’s not around?

A: “He’s on a movie gig right now. He’ll take pictures of whatever he’s got available at the hotel gym and send it to me on his phone and we’ll just work around it. We don’t really skip a beat.”

Ryan Couture is Randy Couture’s son and fellow Xtreme Couture fighter.

Q: What’s the greatest thing you’ve learned from your father outside of fighting?

Ryan Couture: “It’s a similar situation to how he’s inspired me as a fighter. He’s always looking for the best in every situation, whether it’s personal relationships, his career or anything else. He always gives people a fair shake and I’ve taken a lot of that from him and I try to approach life in the same way.”

Q: What’s the most impressive thing about your dad as far as his training goes?

A: “I think just how intelligently he plans out his training camp. He’s very scientific in his approach and he finds that line where he can push hard enough to get into peak condition without overdoing it. As he’s gotten older he’s had to find better strategies to take it easier on his body while still getting in top condition. I think I’ve been able to gain tips from him there on how to get in the best shape without beating yourself down.”

Q: As a professional fighter, if you could single out one thing you’ve learnt from your father, what would it be?

A: “I think his relentlessly positive attitude. Even after he’s gotten knocked out he’s still like, ‘It’s a part of the sport, these things happen and I’ll be back,’ and he just uses it to motivate himself and he doesn’t let anything get him down. He’s always got the right attitude and he’s always ready to get back to the drawing board and look at what he did wrong and correct those mistakes.”

Q: What is it about Randy that separates him from everyone else on the mat?

A: “His work ethic and his mental toughness are the two biggest things that have carried him to where he’s at. He’s the first one at practice and the last one to leave. He’s in there going 110% every round and really just pushing himself to the limit every single day. That obviously takes a lot of mental toughness and a lot of drive. In the ring, we’ve seen him fight through adversity and come back from being hurt while fighting out of bad positions time and time again. That mental fortitude and work ethic is what really sets him apart from everybody else. He’s maybe not the most naturally gifted guy in the world but he just grinds and wears guys down and breaks them because he’s mentally tougher and he’s going to keep working.”