Do you think these principles are correct? Wisdom from boxing was long hours of cardio. Running 10 miles a day. The research is telling us something different.
http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=9418
How many times have you seen this? A more powerful guy with superior skills fails to close the deal in the first round... he comes out in the second round after leaving everything in the cage during round one, lets his hands drop and gets caught because he’s totally gassed.
In contrast, look at the guys you know have the cardio and the skills to get it done. Bellator 145-pound champion Joe Soto comes to mind – his skills are razor sharp, round after round, because those skills are built on top of phenomenal cardio fitness.
The bottom line is, to win consistently your skills need to be built on a foundation of cardio. Sure you can't win if you don’t have the skills, but if you don’t have the cardio, you’re going into the ring at a huge disadvantage and with limited options.
You might be thinking to yourself, “I’m not a marathon runner or a tri-athlete, why should I be focusing on cardio training?” While it is true that endurance athletes depend mainly on aerobic energy pathways to fuel their activity, fighting is a healthy mix of both aerobic AND anaerobic energy pathways. In fact, intense exercise lasting more than two minutes generally uses about 50% aerobic and 50% anaerobic energy systems[1]. That’s one of the things that makes MMA so challenging - the lack of specificity in the energy system used and as a result, cardio is often under trained in favor of speed and power.
The fact is, a well-structured training program should hit all of your energy systems:
-Low intensity/Long duration (during positioning and posturing)
-Medium intensity/Medium duration (needed for wrestling, ground and pound and combinations)
-Super high intensity/Very short duration (required for striking, sprawling and take-downs)
-And... everything in between
http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=9418
