Author: By Mike Carlson

When certified physical therapist Russ Dunning of Results Physical Therapy and Training Center in Sacramento writes strength and conditioning programs for athletes like Urijah Faber, he relies on plyometric exercises that improve speed and explosiveness without adding size. Below are four moves using a medicine ball that you can implement today. Start with two sets of 10 to fire up any strength and weightlifting program.Medicine Ball Chest Pass Hold
the medicine ball with both hands at chest level. Get  into a squat
position and then explode forward, throwing  the ball to yo … Read the Full Article Here

Robert McMullin, owner of AMPD FitCamp, has done strength and conditioning regimens for athletes including Vinny Magalhaes, Sam Stout and Mark Hominick. He has also appeared on The Biggest Loser, training some of the worst-conditioned folks on the planet.

For both demographics, he feels that the key to burning fat and improving overall conditioning is the high-intensity circuit. “Some people can’t work out for hours, but you can burn a ton of calories doing circuits,” he says.

The trade-off for the relatively short duration of a circuit workout is intensity, and intensity is the secret to melting fat. That’s because a lung-busting workout boosts something called EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, which refers to the increased oxygen intake that comes with intense exercise. The process of restoring the body to its rested state can boost the metabolism for hours after a hardcore workout. That means that even when you are sitting on your couch after training, your body is still burning calories at an accelerated rate.

For Magalhaes, the payoff  isn’t just single-digit body fat and a nearly bottomless gas tank. It is a relief from long boring workouts. “There is no way to be bored with this workout,” he says. “It is not like you do 12 reps and then sit down and check Facebook. It is intense.”

The Workout
McMullin, owner of AMPD FitCamp, created this circuit combination for anyone who is coming back from a long layoff or who just wants to change up their training.

“If someone is doing a regular ‘four sets of 10’ weight program, they can do this to kick-start their fat-burning progress,” McMullin says.

Perform the Total Body circuit, rest for one minute, and then perform the Core circuit. Rest for one minute and then repeat both circuits. McMullin recommends performing this circuit twice a week, but no more than three times in a seven-day span. After the first week, increase the work interval to 40 or 45 seconds. Remember, there is no rest between exercises. You must move immediately from one exercise to the next.

WARM-UP   EXERCISE TIME
Cardio 10 min
Dynamic Movement (side shuffles, Cariocas, back pedals, jumping jacks)  5 min

CIRCUIT 1: TOTAL BODY  EXERCISE TIME

Pull-Up 30 sec
Bodybuilder 30 sec
Plank Jacks 30 sec
Farmer’s Walk 30 sec
Lateral Lunge 30 sec

CIRCUIT 2: THE CORE EXERCISE TIME/REPS
Crunch Punch 30 sec
Hanging Leg Raise 30 sec
Side Plank 3–5 sec/10 reps
Super Man 3–5 sec/10 reps
V-Sit 30 sec

Circuit 1: Pull-Ups
Grasp an overhead bar with a pronated grip (palms facing away from you.) From a dead-hang position, contract your lats and biceps to pull yourself up until your chin comes over the bar. Slowly descend until your elbows are completely straight. Do not swing back and forth or use momentum to get your chin over the bar. To regress this movement, tie a thick rubber band around the bar and step your foot or knee into it for added support. You can also practice the motion, holding the top position of the pull-up and then lowering very slowly.

Circuit 1: Bodybuilder
Grab a pair of relatively light dumbbells (20 to 30 pounds) and let them hang at your sides.  Stand in a clear space with your feet just wider than shoulder-width apart. To begin, drop into a deep squat so that the dumbbells rest on the floor. Kick your feet out behind you so that you are now at the top of a push-up position, with your hands holding the shafts of the dumbbells (shown). Lower your body into a full push-up and then come back up. Jump your feet back underneath your hips and come to standing. Curl the dumbbells up to your shoulders and then extend them overhead without using any drive from your legs. Slowly bring the weights back down to your sides. That is one complete rep.

Circuit 1: Plank Jacks
Get into a classic plank position, with your weight supported by your forearms and your toes. Your body should be in a straight line. Do not let your hips arch upward or cave in. Begin with your forearms and feet close together. Explosively jump your hands and feet away from each other while maintaining the plank posture. Hold that position for a beat and then jump them back together.

Circuit 1: Lateral Lunge with Dumbbell
Take a single dumbbell and hold it straight out in front of you with both hands. Begin with your feet close together and your head in a neutral position. Slowly step your left foot directly out to your left side. Come down as low as you can while keeping both heels on the floor. Push back up through your left heel to the starting position. Then, step to the right side. Continue to hold the dumbbell at arm’s length from your chest as you lunge from side to side.

Circuit 1: Farmer’s Walk
Mark off two points that are
approximately 10 to15 yards away from each other. Grab a very heavy set
of dumbbells and hold them at your sides (shown above). Slowly walk from
one point to the other and back, weaving around the points in a
figure-eight formation. Keep your shoulders back and an erect posture
for the whole walk. If your grip is not close to giving out by the end
of the interval, use a heavier pair of dumbbells.

Circuit 2: Crunch Punch
Grab a pair of relatively light dumbbells (5 to 7 pounds) and lie on the floor in a classic crunch position with your feet in the air, knees bent 90 degrees and shoulder blades on the floor. Hold the weights above your front delts, with your elbows bent and tucked into your side. Contract your abs and crunch upward. As your torso curls up, shoot your right hand to the outside of your left knee, as if you are throwing a punch (shown). Come back down so your shoulder blades are flat on the mat. Now crunch up and shoot your left hand across your body to your right knee and return.

Circuit 2: Hanging Leg Raise
Hang from a pull-up bar with a palms-forward grip. Keeping your legs straight, slowly raise your feet as high as you can. To target the abdominals, the feet must come above the height of your hips. Lower your feet in a slow and controlled motion before starting the next rep. An easier, yet still highly effective, option is to bring your knees up as high as possible.

Circuit 2: Side Plank
Lie on your right side with your legs straight, your feet stacked on top of each other, and your weight supported by your right forearm. Your right shoulder should be at a 90-degree angle from your body while your left hand is resting on your left hip. Keep your right elbow directly under your right shoulder. Your legs and torso should form a straight line with no sagging in your hips. Drop your right hip and let it touch the floor. Pause for a beat and then contract your abdominals and push through your feet and forearm to come back to the starting position. Hold that pose for three to five seconds before performing dropping your hips again.

Circuit 2: Super Man
Lie facedown on the floor with your legs straight and your arms extended in front of you. Contract your spinal erectors and simultaneously lift your legs and torso off the floor. Hold your extremities off the floor as you balance on your pelvis for three to five seconds. Keep your neck and arms in line with your spine. Slowly lower down to the floor for a beat before coming back up. More advanced athletes can work up to holding the position for 60 seconds.

Circuit 2: V-Sit
Lie on the floor with your legs straight and your arms extended so your body forms a straight line. Contract your abs and bring your feet up, keeping your legs straight the whole time. As your feet rise, bring your straight arms over your head, lift your torso off the ground, and reach for your feet. At the top of the movement you should be balancing on your sit-bones with straight arms and legs and your body forming a V-shape. Come back down to the starting position with your heels, glutes, shoulder blades, and head all making contact with the floor.

These exercises originally appeared in issue 20 of UFC 360. Click here to subscribe to UFC 360, the official magazine of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, available now in print and digital editions. Photos by Josh Hedges

Most full-time fighters aim to step into the Octagon three times a year, maybe even four if they’re a workhorse. That means these athletes train nearly year-round. The upside? More paychecks. The down? A busy UFC fighter has almost no off-season, no opportunity to heal his joints, invigorate
his muscles, or rejuvenate his mind. This is where the mini off-season
comes in, otherwise known as the “deload week.”

A deload period is typically a one-week stretch utilized scheduled into a fighter’s strength program. It works like this: Every four to six weeks,
the fighter takes a break from pushing heavy weights and lets his
muscles and central nervous system recover, but without falling into
total lethargy. He’ll still perform many of the same exercises, he’ll
simply cut back the weight by 50 to 60 percent.

“When I do a deload week I have a lot of energy,” says middleweight contender Alan Belcher, who is set to rematch Yushin Okami at UFC 155 December 29. “Everything is firing a
lot better. I feel a lot stronger. If
you keep on training hard with a ‘more is better’ mentality then you’ll
always plateau.”

Making It Work for You
For the average weightlifter who works out but isn’t a professional athlete, a deload
strategy can take many forms, says Andy Hennebelle, NASM-CPT,
CSCS, USAW, a strength coach at the UFC Gym in Corona, Calif. Bodyweight exercises can
be substituted for lighter weights, or the deload can be performed on a
smaller scale, such as utilizing one deload day a week.

The key is to
stay ahead of the overtraining curve by purposefully easing off before
your body is forced to take a break.  “The most important part of the deloading strategy is to make sure you don’t plateau,” says Hennebelle.

“The biggest success stories I have seen is when an athlete is coming
off several weeks of big lifts,” he adds. “I have seen guys bench 285, 295, 305 but
they can’t hit 315. They go through a deload week and take a break. They don’t feel like they are breaking themselves
down and they have more energy. The next week they go back to the bench
press and they put up 315, no problem.”

Deloading is the Difference
Belcher’s trainer, Lyle Henley, who owns The Athlete Factory in Daphne,
Alabama, has Belcher on a block periodization program. That means this
his training is split into multi-week blocks that focus on individual
athletic assets.

First they build a base of strength, then they work on
power, then speed, and then conditioning. Belcher, who
trains with some of the heaviest weights among the fighters in his
division, will perform a deload week between blocks to reboot his body and mind. It is a
tactic that can pay dividends for any type of athlete or gym-goer, but
works best when the training is specific in terms of the
loads that are lifted.

The fight between Belcher and Okami will be an interesting testimonial to Belcher’s training methods. The Japanese fighter took a decision from Belcher back at UFC 62, back when Belcher was adhering to a helter-skelter regimen that jammed striking, grappling, and strength training into nearly every day of the week. The Mississippi native feels that adopting a smarter, more organized approach to strength training, has helped him constantly improve.

“The only way to take it up a notch is through recovering and then building on that. Then you recover again and build a little higher, and keep on taking it up and up and up,” says Belcher. “I am trying to take it up just a little bit more because I am already at the highest level. Most people consider me a top-five contender. If I can take it up just a teeny bit on my strength or speed, then that will be enough to be a world champion.”

Starting a workout regimen can be intimidating enough without looking around the gym and feeling overwhelmed by the kettlebells, Reformers, rings, bars and climbers. Yet a growing number of fitness fans are rediscovering the basics and relying on no equipment other than their own body mass to get in shape.

“The primary muscle groups in any program are the chest, back, quads, and hamstrings,”
says Andy Hennebelle, NASM-CPT, CSCS, USAW, a strength coach at the UFC
Gym in Corona, Calif. “You can hit all of those without so much as a
weight or machine. Just do squats, lunges, push-ups and pull-ups. If
you want to add in the core you can do sit-ups as well.”

And this isn’t just an option for beginners — some professional athletes eschew bells and whistles for bodyweight exercises. UFC welterweight Mike Swick is one of those. “I feel way stronger when I lift my
own body. When I do max reps for push-ups and pull-ups I am doing so
many reps,” he says. “When you lift weight the
most reps you do is probably 20 or so. I am doing upwards of 100 reps.
That is a lot of repetitions and a lot of weight.”

Swick’s Story
When Swick entered the Staples Center in Los Angeles last August at UFC on Fox 4 for his first fight in two and a half years, the crowd was on its feet. Not only has Swick been a fan favorite since appearing on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, spectators were curious about what Swick might look like. He had battled a gauntlet of injuries and a well-publicized esophageal disorder that made it difficult for him to consume proper nutrition. Would he be the same Mike “Quick” Swick?

If anything, Swick looked better than ever. He was a ripped-to-the-bone four percent body fat with cheese-grater abs and muscles that looked strong and fast. Early in the second round Swick, crushed his opponent with a single punch and then dropped a bomb from above that had more velocity on it than Felix Baumgartner. It earned him the Knockout of the Night bonus.

Swick was back.

What is most surprising about Swick, both his chiseled-granite physique and his sonic-boom punching power, is that he doesn’t lift weights. Swick relies solely on bodyweight exercises.

“For me, this is what works,” he says. “When you use your own body weight and work hard and do the reps you get a lot of results out of it.”

It’s not as if Swick is stuck in 1985, emulating Sylvester Stallone preparing for Ivan Drago by running in the snow and performing endless push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups. The welterweight fighter has been involved in martial arts since he was a
kid, and has been in gyms for 25 straight years. He has seen dozens of
different training methods, tried most of them, and decided that moving
his own weight works best.

Easy as 4-2-1
Every day, Swick will do five sets of as many push-ups as he can do, repping out until he reaches muscular failure. He will recover for about 60 seconds and then begin his next set. Three days a week he includes five sets of max rep chin-ups. He will usually reach 35 chin-ups on his first set alone. A few other times a week he does two sets of 100 reps of body weight squats. At night, he performs neck raises using a sandbag as resistance. Despite its simplicity, it is a remarkably balanced program.

When training a member at UFC Gym who is relatively new to fitness Hennebelle will often start them off with a regimen of bodyweight exercises. This not only prepares their muscles and tendons for eventually lifting heavier loads, but teaches people how to manipulate their own bodies in space, which is the basis for athleticism.

For anyone who scoffs at the challenge of bodyweight exercises Henebelle has them perform what he calls a “4-2-1” push or squat: Take four seconds to lower your body, hold the bottom of the rep for two seconds, and then come up to a count of one.

“It is comical to watch even the fittest person struggle with holding their body weight up for longer than it takes to do a quick rep,” says Hennebelle.

Training without Tear
For Swick, who meets Matt Brown in Seattle at UFC On FOX 5 on December 8, an added bonus to his training methods is the relatively low risk of injury. While it’s not impossible to get hurt performing push-ups and pull-ups, especially with the volume Swick does, bodyweight exercises do not inflict the type of wear and tear that lifting weights can.

“My elbows are always really sensitive so I have to be careful with anything else I do with my arms. I started doing curls and triceps extension and after just one month I started having problems with my elbows. It is just too much for my joints. We do so much mitt work, sparring, and bag work that when I start cranking out curls and extensions, it is just too much,” he says. “Push-ups work the arms anyway.”

Even when he fought at middleweight, Swick relied on his strength in almost all of his fights. At welterweight, he feels physically dominant. His last performance, and the body he lifted to prepare for it, speaks for itself.

“I felt amazing for my last fight,” he says. “I felt strong I felt in shape. I had four percent body fat and I didn’t lift weights. I just don’t need them Some people might be different, but after 25 years in martial arts I have a good feeling for what works for me.”

If you thought that the fastest-growing sport in the world was an individual pursuit that demanded strength, flexibility, and concentration, and it entailed sweat-soaked bodies being contorted into awkward positions, you would be exactly right.

If you think we were talking about MMA, you’re dead wrong.

Yoga is experiencing the most rapid growth in participation of any physical activity in the U.S. According to research published by MRI, the number of yoga participants in 2001 was 4.5 million. By 2011 that number jumped to 14.5 million(1). At least a few of those participants are UFC fighters.

“I like it because I know I am absolutely the toughest guy in my yoga class. There is no one in my yoga class who can take me. Well, almost nobody,” laughs UFC middleweight contender Nick Ring.

Like all fighters, and most elite athletes in any type of sport, Ring must constantly balance his training with adequate recovery time. The high-impact nature of sprinting, sparring, and weight training place a massive amount of stress on the joints, muscles, and central nervous system of an athlete. A “more is better” approach will inevitably drag a fighter into a nasty spiral of overtraining and injury. So how does a fighter continue down the highway when he has to give his engine and tires a rest? This is where yoga comes in.

“Yoga can be that extra workout. It has a strength component but it doesn’t have that breakdown affect that weightlifting or speed training has on the body,” says Andy Hennebelle, NASM-CPT, CSCS, USAW, a strength coach at the UFC Gym in Corona, Calif.

“It is a way for me to work out but it is not really a workout,” says Ring, who meets Costa Philippou at UFC 154 on November 17 at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. “It doesn’t break me down. It gets me limber and it is something that is not beating the hell out of my body. After I leave a yoga class I feel rejuvenated.”

Ring practices Bikram yoga, commonly known as “hot yoga,” where participants perform a series of poses in a room that is heated to 105 degrees. For his fight against Court McGee at UFC 149, the unorthodox Ring chose to cut weight at the yoga studio instead of suffering in a sauna or sweating it out on a treadmill. He took a 75-minute yoga class and a few hours later stepped on the scale at exactly 185 pounds.  

“I was going to be fighting 24 hours later so it was an excellent chance to put all the chatter out of my mind,” says Ring. “I could visualize the fight and what was going to happen. I gave myself that mental peace. That was a great way to cut weight. I know exactly what I am going to be doing in Montreal [at UFC 154] when I am cutting weight.”

Ring isn’t unique when it comes to experiencing the profound relaxation that yoga offers. Countless studies have shown that even short-term yoga practice helps diminish stress factors that contribute to a wide variety of chronic diseases. Athletes may benefit from yoga’s health-promoting powers even more than the middle-aged accountant who is looking to knock a few points off of his cholesterol numbers.

A study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine(2) showed that subjects who incorporated yoga into their life reduced levels of circulating cortisol after just 10 days. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is like Kryptonite to fighters; it breaks down muscle, suppresses the immune system, and promotes the storage of body fat. Another study(3) showed that just one single yoga class significantly reduced the muscle soreness that results from intense exercise.

“Attendance is growing more and more in the yoga classes at UFC Gym” says Hennebelle, who often teaches the yoga class at the Corona location himself. “I work with up to 30 members a week and I drive them into those classes. That is part of their homework.”

Whether athletes appreciate the art for its peaceful zen factor or its unique blend of lengthening and strengthening muscles with no cost to their stress equity, yoga seems to be that missing piece of their regimen. After all, who couldn’t benefit from an hour of stretching tight hamstrings and clearing out some mental clutter?

“As an athlete you have to be finding different ways of moving your body and keeping yourself loose and limber. Yoga is a good avenue for that,” says Ring. “And besides that, there’s a lot of girls.”

References

1.
http://thecoastnews.com/2012/07/yoga-industry-continues-upward-facing-trend/

2.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22830969

3.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15574074

When it comes to fitness, what is old will invariably become new again. Most modern MMA gyms have a pile of kettlebells and a huge tire that gets whomped with a sledge hammer. Russian athletes have been lifting kettlebells since the 1700s while American boxers have been getting in shape by chopping wood and swinging a hammer since the beginning of the 20th century. Similarly, the agility ladder is the latest fitness device to be rejuvenated for MMA training.   

Composed of nylon straps and flat plastic rungs, the agility ladder has traditionally been used to develop foot speed and lower body coordination in football players. Due to its versatility and the entertaining challenge it presents to both coordination and conditioning, the ladder has been popping up not only in MMA facilities, but all over the general fitness landscape. It is even included in the latest edition of the blockbuster “Insanity” home workout DVDs. There are two simple reasons for its recent boom in popularity:  it’s fun and it’s flexible

“The progressions are endless,” says Andy Hennebelle, NASM-CPT, CSCS, USAW, a strength coach at the UFC Gym in Corona, Calif. who uses the ladder twice a week with his clients. “There are 1000s of movements you can do on it. You can go forward, backward, laterally. You can do upper body and lower-body exercises on it.”

UFC middleweight stand-out Chris Weidman performs a drill his trainer calls the “Dizzy Ladder.” The 185-pound contender will spin in a circle before zig-zagging in and out of the ladder in order develop agility even while his equilibrium has been affected.

Doug Balzarini, strength coach for the Alliance MMA Fight Team in Chula Vista, California, and trainer to the likes of UFC light heavyweight Brandon Vera and current UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz, likes to use the ladder as a warm-up for his fighters because of how quickly it prepares the body for training

“In just a few minutes it increases heartrate and raises body temperature, preparing the athlete for what is to come in terms of the workout,” he says.

The ladder presents a challenge to even the most hardcore fighters. Even UFC light heavyweight contender Phil “Mr. Wonderful” Davis, who is set to meet Wagner Prado at UFC 153 in Rio de Janeiro, has struggled to master the smooth and easy movement the ladder demands.

“Phil is pretty good on it but he is all about being explosive and powerful and the ladder is about being light with more emphasis on footwork,” says Balzarini, who trained Davis for his high-profile match against Rashad Evans earlier this year. “Phil is one of the craziest athletes I have ever worked with in terms of being explosive but on the ladder he is not as lightning quick as say Dominic Cruz, who is all about footwork and being fast”

The motto at the UFC Gym is “train differently” says Hennebelle, and whether he is working with an average Jane Doe or putting  Strikeforce’s Ricky Legere Jr. through the paces, he means it. That includes flipping the script on the agility ladder.

“We will put fighters in a push-up position and utilize the same principles in which we create the fast-twitch movement with the feet, but this time with the hands,” says Hennebelle. “The in-and-outs, the lateral movement, the forward and backward movements, can all help create strength in the shoulders and flexibility in the wrists.”

Hennebelle starts out his athletes with a simple numerical progression on the agility ladder. The first drill is a two-count, where both feet make contact one time in each square. Then comes a three count, in which the left and right foot touch the square and then one comes out in an alternating zig-zag sequence. Next, both feet come in and out of each square in a four-count pattern. It is a workout for both the mind and body as the brain struggles to make the muscles obey what seems like simple commands.

When training on the ladder, be sure to keep the weight on the balls of your feet and your head up, advises Balzarini, who will often hold up numbers that must be called out or throw his clients tennis balls to catch while they are on the ladder to ensure that they are not staring at their feet the whole time.

“The value of the agility ladder is in the variety,” says Balzarini. “It is a great plateau-breaker, a way to change things up. If you do the same routine over and over, things are going to get stale.”