Fundamentals of Conditioning for MMA

In order to use all of your skills through a two to five-round fight, your body must produce the energy your muscles requires to do its job. There are certain periods in a fight where you’ll need higher power or lower power output. That said, your muscles will need greater or lower amounts of energy depending on the situation.

This means that ‘conditioning’ is a measure of how well your body system can create the energy required by your muscles to perform its work. If the systems involved in energy production can generate ATP – or your muscles’ fuel – fast and long enough to effectively execute your performance, thenyou have a good conditioning. Otherwise, you can quickly gas out.

Components of Conditioning

As you can see in the chart below, there are six primary components that determines you conditioning level. These components create the two sides of the conditioning equation: Energy Production and Energy Utilization.

How much energy you can produce and how fast, and how effectively you can use it identifies the difference between being able to outlast your opponent from one round to another and quickly gassing out. Understanding this principle and how they all fit together in the puzzle will provide you with a new perspective on how to develop your conditioning.