Find yourself exhausted and left by the wayside even though you’ve only just finished the warm-up? Take some advice from the cardio kings of MMA and kickstart your conditioning.
The year is 2006. Strikeforce’s Shamrock vs Gracie card has pulled in some hungry spectators, yet despite the legendary status of MMA’s forefathers it is a grinding battle on the undercard that has the audience out of their seats.
Clay Guida faces a formidable challenge in the form of Josh ‘The Punk’ Thompson. Guida, a little-known regional fighter, has been flown in to challenge the heavily-favored Strikeforce champion and UFC veteran. Yet in a gripping five-round thriller, ‘The Carpenter’ blows through Thompson over 25 relentless minutes. Few gave the scrappy wrestler a chance against such a well-rounded opponent, but none of that mattered because Guida held a weapon that far outweighed anything Thompson’s arsenal had to offer, Guida possessed an endless gas tank.
In MMA, having superior cardio can push your opponent beyond their limits to ensure victory.
In Guida’s case, just six months later he got the call from the UFC, and with his frenetic, non-stop pace fight style he has since become a fan favorite, dominating higher skilled opponents via super conditioning and sheer tenacity.
“Conditioning is the equalizer in MMA,” Guida says.
“Without that, you might as well not show up. Around 90% of the fighters I’ve beaten were better fighters than me. But being able to push harder than them because of my conditioning is what allowed me to win.
I don’t know how someone can get tired after 15 to 25 minutes of fighting, or doing most sports. If you get tired, you should get into another business.”
Hall of Famer and former two-division UFC champion Randy Couture shares the same ‘suck in deep and grind out the win’ philosophy that has secured Guida success.
‘The Natural’ built a legendary career out of five-round title fights.
From his first five rounder against Pedro Rizzo in 2001 to his spanking of the much younger Tito Ortiz in 2003, and more recent fights like his decision over Brandon Vera, Couture credits his supreme cardio.
“Your conditioning and attitude are the only two things you have absolute control over,” says Couture.
“There are so many other variables in a fight, from skill to how your opponent is going to react to you. But the only thing you can control fully in a fight is your attitude and how well conditioned you are.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FIGHTER GASSES OUT?
Top strength and conditioning coach Kevin Kearns says that a fighter’s gas tank is what “makes or breaks” them in a fight.
According to Kearns, having gas in the tank is a result of training one’s “metabolic engine to go beyond a certain level.”
When fighters don’t have enough gas in the tank, they hit a wall and essentially shut down.
When that happens, the better-skilled fighter can lose to one that is simply less tired.
For instance, Mark Coleman losing to Pete Williams back in 1998. Coleman was a former champion, supposedly being fed a younger fighter to get back on track.
But when Coleman could not put the younger Williams away early, he tired and after 10 minutes, ‘The Hammer’ could only stumble around the cage, hands low around his waist and stooped over, hoping to land one big shot or secure a sloppy takedown.
But it was Williams, the fresher fighter, who landed the big blow, connecting his leg to Coleman’s exposed head and knocking him unconscious.
“As in the Coleman fight, what ends up happening is similar to when you get tossed in cold water,” Kearns explains.
“Your body pulls all the blood to your heart and essentially shuts down your limbs.
When you are going at a fast pace in a fight and you gas out, you hit a wall and run out of glycogen [molecules used to store energy in the body], then there is no power left.”
As a trainer, Kearns believes that all people can train to have a better gas tank.
Although both Guida and Couture seem to have a naturally high level of conditioning, both also spend incredible amounts of time working to improve it.
This not only includes an intense exercise regime, but also a very carefully considered and controlled diet.
AVOID GASSING OUT, FUEL YOUR BODY CORRECTLY
Former UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk is another big believer in the power of hard work.
“You get out what you put in,” he says of working out. But the most important thing Sherk does for his gas tank isn’t exercise. Rather, it’s his strict diet that takes his conditioning to new levels.
“My fight diet is the biggest key to my conditioning,” Sherk says.
Sherk all but eliminates red meat from his diet, sticking to easier to digest proteins such as chicken and fish.
Sherk has to eat almost constantly throughout the day in order to have the energy to train as hard as he does. So everything he eats needs to be nutrient-rich and digestible.
He eats 12–15 raw fruits and vegetables (bananas are a favorite because their high potassium content helps prevent cramping during training and fighting) each day because cooking them diminishes their nutrient content, and never goes more than 30 minutes after a workout without eating something, even if it is only a couple of jars of baby food. “The food I eat is what is going to help me a lot with recovery when I’m training two to three times per day.
And training that much is what allows me to fight without getting gassed out,” Sherk explains.
As for during the fight, Sherk admits he hates to stop moving at any point (his constant guard passing of BJJ black belt Kenny Florian at UFC 64 in 2006 is a testament to that) but occasionally he can catch a breather for a moment after he has landed a takedown.
PAUSE, NOW BREATHE...
While having a strong cardio base can prove fruitful when it comes to the throwdown, there are other ways to make sure you go the distance. Couture, ever the cerebral fighter, has used different tactics during fights to regain his breath and refill his gas tank.
“Brandon [Vera] kicked me in the liver. A lot of guys don’t get back up from those. He kind of bailed me out by falling on top of me because then I was able to hold him down for a while until I recovered.
If he hadn’t done that, I don’t know if I would have been able to get back up,” he admits.
In his title defense against Gabriel Gonzaga in August of 2007, Couture used a similar strategy of clinching up, but this time to wear down his opponent before dropping the bomb. “The strategy there was to clinch up with him, push him against the cage and tire him out, before going for the takedown,” Couture details.
One thing that Couture – who has alternated between heavyweight and light heavyweight throughout his career – has not noticed is the expected sluggishness at the heavier weight.
Bigger guys seem to gas out much faster than the average featherweight, for example.
“More muscle uses more oxygen,” explains Kearns.
Perhaps counter intuitively, Couture says that he has felt a better center of gravity at light heavyweight as opposed to heavyweight. But he did not notice himself tiring faster at heavyweight.
BLAME IT ON MY YOUTH
Sometimes even a hardworking, naturally gifted fighter can experience the effects of gassing out because of a lack of experience.
This is what UFC lightweight Gray Maynard says happened to him in his first title fight against Frankie Edgar. Maynard came out strong against the champion in the first round, dropping him hard with strikes and appearing moments away from finishing the fight and winning the title. But Edgar survived the round and Maynard found himself exhausted.
“It was an adrenaline dump,” he explains of the psychological output that left him feeling physically drained.
“All of my dreams and goals were there and then I thought I was done.
I lost my composure. You saw it when Brock [Lesnar] fought [Shane] Carwin and Carwin almost had him beat in the first round but then came out sluggish in the second.
You’re in there thinking you are almost done and that it is going to end at any second but then it doesn’t.
When I got back to my corner my legs and arms felt heavy. They felt like they were in mud.”
Maynard resolved to “pull back for a bit” to get back his energy.
He says that the pressure of being so close to becoming champion, combined with his relative inexperience (he began fighting in the UFC after just two pro fights) made him temporarily feel more tired than his body really was.
Gray, who trains alongside infamous cardio legends like Couture, says that form of gassing out can only be prevented by experience.
So the next time he’s in a similar situation (when he finally gets another shot at Edgar) he’s sure to have less of an adrenaline dump, simply because he’s been there before and the nerves won’t be as severe.
So to avoid emptying your tank early enabling you to take your opponent through five rounds and come out on top takes a grueling training regime, a draconian diet plan, an intelligent lay ‘n’ pray system and a strong mentality... Quite simply, Train Hard Fight Easy.
Couture-like cardio
Five-time UFC champion Randy Couture ensures his cardio is top notch to help ensure he can always assert his gameplan over foes.
Carwin’s Lactic Acidosis
At UFC 116 in July 2010, a heavy-handed blitz from Shane Carwin left defending heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar moments from a TKO loss. When Lesnar pulled through the sudden excitement drop left Carwin exhausted for round two, where Lesnar secured the arm triangle submission. Weeks later Carwin said doctors attributed his gas-out to lactic acidosis.
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