Are you finding it difficult to get on with your MMA training? We’ll show you how to train like a professional fighter.
As a rookie, training like a professional MMA fighter might seem like a mammoth of a task. It is no secret that successful UFC athletes are very consistent in their ‘rigorous training.’
This training opens them up to building not just their muscles but their mind. With all they go through during training, they develop endurance and strength.
MMA fighters are also very courageous. They face so many life-threatening risks during fights, but still, they press on defiantly, giving all they have got to combat an opponent.
It would be much easier to train like an MMA badass if you were a Division one student back in college or preferably a military officer.
None the less, even if you lack the aforementioned ‘qualifications,’ you can still become an MMA badass.
This article aims to help you with constructive tips that will make your MMA training sessions something to look forward to.
It would be completely unrealistic to expect to ‘transform’ into an MMA badass overnight. Well, with time and consistency in adhering to these tips, you will do just fine.
MMA Training Tips & Drills: Here’s How to Train Like a Professional Fighter
1. Choose an Art
The MMA is a combination of many arts, and rather than randomly learning any skill, it would be a much more efficient training if you settle decisively for one and become good at it.
Kung Fu, for instance, is a very beautiful martial art because it offers you a better-coordinated mind, increased physical strength, improved breathing, and an overall healthy body.
Karate could help increase your agility, flexibility, and reflexes.
Muay Thai, Judo, Ninjutsu etc. are all options available for you to pick from.
Choosing one to begin with out of so many could be quite tricky, but eventually, you will get the hang of it.
2. Start with the Little Stunts
It would be a wiser decision to start with the jump rope, side bends, hip rotations, chest expansions, neck rotations, wide arms stunt, and many other similar ‘introductory’ stunts.
The Jab, kick-outs, weight lifting, overhand, etc. should join the retinue much later. This is to get your body to relax and loosen your muscles too.
These warm-up stunts aren’t a waste of time. They are necessary to help get the blood circulating more freely about your joints.
They also prepare your brain for the work that you are about to engage in.
All these also reduce the possibility of developing a joint sore or a muscle injury.
3. Keep Using the Gym
Like all other rigorous sporting activities spending time at the gym is an excellent way for an athlete to get his body in ‘shape.’
As a matter of fact, you cannot become an MMA badass without the Gym because the gym is very consequential to the success of your aim.
Unlike what is obtainable in some other sporting activities, say golf, for example, here in mixed martial arts, your bodily fitness is key over most ‘other talents’.
How to fit you are in your body helps us to determine how much of a badass you will be and for how long too.
Therefore, if you continuously use the gym as the MMA athletes do, you will benefit in the following ways:
- Increased weight loss
- Increased energy levels
- Improved mental health
- Improved function of the cardiovascular system
- Improved memory
- Improved relaxation
- Sleep
Using the gym regularly reduces the likelihood of an ‘intending’ MMA badass, such as yourself coming down with health conditions like osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes.
4. Build Endurance
Endurance is the ability to last longer than your opponent within the ring. Or, in another form, endurance means the ability to withstand exercise for an extended period.
Most times, the winners of martial art combats aren’t the most skilled or most massive athletes. With backing from the history of similar games, we can now confidently say that ‘he who endures the most is more likely to win.’
Hence, if you want to become an MMA badass, you need to develop endurance by warming up, training at intervals, shortening the time for rest between each workout, training with someone, taking adequate meals, and drinking sufficient water too.
You can also learn some moves that will build your endurance, some of which are:
- Plyometric push-up
- Corkscrew plank
- Box jumps
- High lateral knees
- Lunge jumps
- Seated dumbbell
- Stability punches
- Dumbbell up and down
- Suicide sprint, and more.
5. Learn Shadowboxing
Shadowboxing entails combating ‘an invisible’ opponent. This may sound weird, but factually it helps in many fantastic ways you could not have imagined.
Unlike the way it is when you face an actual real opponent or a heavy bag, shadowboxing takes away the pressure from you and provides you the opportunity to practice your moves.
Shadowboxing helps build a formidable muscle memory drawn from when an athlete is in the ring. It also allows an athlete to focus on his body motion, the opponent, and his surrounding. It also enhances the speed of an athlete.
While practicing shadow boxing, an athlete should endeavor to work on his defense even if the opponent is invisible.
6. Build your Core Muscles
The most successful MMA athletes are characterized by these very ‘prominent’ and visible features, a well-developed core. This is because the core is primarily responsible for channeling energies from the center of the body outward.
It is as simple as saying that without a firmly built core, kicks and punches would never hit hard enough no matter how well you train. Therefore, building core muscles should be important to any badass in the making.
It is very relevant for every athlete to know that core muscles work in unity to transfer force from the lower to upper regions of the body.
Thereby increasing overall strength, increasing explosive output, maximizing movement, and minimizing possible injuries.
7. Learn The Ways Of Grappling
Grappling entails gaining a positional advantage, imposing a position on or just firmly seizing an opponent and usually grappling ends in take down.
Grappling doesn’t involve using a weapon, just the limbs, the core muscles, and mental tenacity.
Some grappling techniques include: turnovers, clinching, sprawling, controlling techniques, sweep, submission holds, escape e.t.c
8. Learn the Art of Take Down
A takedown is one of the essential skills every MMA fighter knows. It entails off-balancing an opponent and taking them to the floor.
A good enough takedown can destabilize an opponent causing him to be rendered defenseless and eventually granting you the victory.
Takedowns could be done through any of the following techniques: under hook, spin around, leg trip, Duck under, bear hug, single-leg, over hook e.t.c
9. Practice the Basic Strikes
Striking happens to be the most fun part of being a martial artist, especially when you are not the one being struck, right? Of course.
Some of the basic strike techniques are leg kicks, jabs, punches, round kicks, kooks, elbow strikes, and so on.
As a martial artist in training, you must become very well acquainted with the basic strike techniques, and also you must learn how to defend yourself against them.
10. Mental Reinforcement
Becoming an MMA badass can not happen overnight. It is a slow process that you can’t abandon halfway and expect to get the result.
Your mind must be made up and willing to go all the way and consistently giving it all you’ve got till you make your mark in the octagon.
Final Words
There you have it, our tips to make your MMA training seem less like a rigorous chore that never ends and more like stepping stones into a very interesting career.
Yes, it doesn’t make it any less difficult, yet if you’re willing to take our tips seriously, you will become a badass in no time.