Prior to his highly-anticipated return at last April’s UFC 197, former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones had widely documented his journey into powerlifting, and how he was using his newfound love to prepare for his fight. While Jones made some serious changes to his physique, the effects may not have transferred over to the cage.
Jones ended up picking up a unanimous decision victory over Ovince Saint Preux, but it was far from his best performance. In fact, his longtime head coach Greg Jackson had said in the aftermath of the bout that powerlifting had led him to gassing.
Now just days away from his UFC 200 main event bout against champion Daniel Cormier, Jones admits that powerlifting played a factor in his last bout, hurting his muscle endurance:
“In my last fight, it definitely played a factor in me being conservative and conserving the way I used my energy. I felt like I was in good shape, my lungs were strong, but I felt like my muscle endurance maybe wasn’t in the right place,” Jones said (transcription by MMA Fighting).
For his title rematch with “DC”, however, the pound-for-pound king has taken a different approach to things. Appearing to have ditched powerlifting, Jones claims that his muscle endurance is back on par, although he has lost a bit of size because of it:
“I’ve actually been focusing in burning off muscle by doing overloading on endurance. I think you’ll be able to tell in the weigh-ins and during the fight that I’ll look a lot more like the way I used to look, a lot less bulky. My endurance feels amazing.”
Will Jones perform well enough at UFC 200 this weekend (Sat., July 9, 2016) to recapture his title?
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