How to Get an MMA Workout

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody I'm John Graden for the Martial Arts Teacher's Association and johngraden.com. How do you get an MMA workout? It really depends on what level of MMA you are at. If you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced it is going to vary but here's the deal. when you choose an MMA school you have got to choose very carefully. Make sure that the school is not typically throwing all the beginners, intermediates and advanced altogether for one work out. You want to have a program that increases the physical demands as your skill level increases so they are rising concurrently. Typically a good MMA workout is going to be a mixture of calisthenics conditioning, core training so we are doing a lot of push ups, sit ups, balance exercise and then we move into the techniques of grappling, jujitsu, wrestling, application, escapes, submissions, we're working on grip strength because that is incredibly important in grappling and then we'll move into the striking area where we are going to be working on our hand strikes, our kicking techniques, our leg kicks and of course whenever an instructor teaches you how to fire a technique or how to attack with it, make sure they are also teaching you how to defend against that same technique then towards the end of the class we are going to put it altogether. Typically sparring in an MMA school is not often full power and full blast because they are simply too dangerous particularly with the strikes you want to gradually build the fighting intensity, gradually build the sparring intensity so that again your skill level improves and your conditioning improves with it and your ability to defend against these various techniques. I don't like to see a class last more than 90 minutes, two hours would be the top, more is not necessarily better. If that were the case a 4 hour class would be better than a 1 hour class. A 4 hour workout would be better than a 1 hour workout so I would like to see 60 to 90 minutes per class. It is intense, it builds, it has a good warmup, getting the muscles nice and relaxed, we're going through our techniques we are practicing, we are doing our drills and at the end of class we have a nice stretch, cool down, bring the heart rate down and make sure that we are taking care of our body to prevent future injury. That is an overview of how to get an MMA workout that you'd like to see in your school. I'm John Graden. I hope that helps. Thanks."