Results of an 8 week General Conditioning program on Amateur MMA fighter

by Bill Easlick

Hello, I just wanted to share a quick example of how we use Joel Jamieson's strength and conditioning (S&C) programming and his BioForce testing system to measure an athlete's overall performance.

Joe has been training MMA for about a year now at Fairfax Jiu-Jitsu, focusing on developing a solid base of fundamental skills in a broad range of techniques. Joe is a fairly active guy who has kept in shape most of his life with military duty, running, going to the gym to lift occasionally, and now training MMA 3-4x a week.

A few months ago Joe expressed interest in "stepping up" both in the focus and intensity of his MMA training, but also in his S&C to meet these new physical demands and we did an initial BioForce test to get his baseline fitness levels.

Here is how BioForce ranks the fitness numbers:
1-3 Beginner/Low
4-6 Average/Amateur
7-8 Professional
9-10 World Class

Joe's profile - 3/27/11

From this baseline test you can see that Joe's starting stats were pretty good for a novice student. Typically many beginning people have one or two areas of physical  abilities that they excel at (either thru training and/or genetic disposition) and they have low scores in other areas.

Joe was very well-rounded and this can be attributed to his MMA training and occasional running and lifting, though not on a formal program.

I am in a fairly unique position to help Joe with not only with his skill training, but also to help him develop the S&C training that will support these developing MMA skills. Quite often the MMA coach and the athlete's S&C coach are not always on the same page, The MMA coach does not have the time or the background to help the athlete and the S&C coach doesn't fully understand the complex energy system requirements of MMA. Too many people forget that the goal of S&C isn't it's own achievement, it is to support the MMA training to allow the athelete to sustain power through the entire duration of his fight.

I created an 8 week program for Joe based upon a few related goals: As his MMA coach, I knew Joe had good aerobic capacity, but that he needed work on his aerobic power (the amount of power he is able to generate at the maximum rate of his aerobic energy production threshold) and his muscular endurance. These fitness areas were also very important for the specific MMA skill training he was focusing on in his skill training. (Just another reason how the integration of skill and s&c is crucial).

Here are the results from his 8 week program:

Joe's profile - 5/29/11

The results:

• Joe was able to increase Aerobic Fitness, Muscular Endurance and Explosive Power, while maintaining all other areas of his S&C.
• Joe was also able to lose 11 pounds of bodyweight, yet maintain his strength (and gain explosive power), which actually increased his strength profile because he is now stronger/lb. of bodyweight. considering he was focusing on his aerobic fitness, this was very good!

Next up for Joe will be a program designed to increase his strength and yet maintain his new conditioning. This will be a great test of a proper strength & conditioning program and I'll keep you posted of his results.