Gear for MMA Fighters

When you are training in Mixed Martial Arts(MMA) you will have some different gear to fight in than you will when you are training. The main reason for this difference in gear is to keep you safe when you are training. Fight time is a different story.

Many MMA fighters will have at least two pairs of gloves on them. They will have boxing gloves and MMA gloves. The boxing gloves are for training kickboxing/boxing and the MMA gloves are for putting all the skills together.

A MMA fighter will also need to have headgear, a cup, a mouthpiece and shinguards. It should go without saying that you will always need to wear a cup when you are fighting. You won't be able to fight with out a cup, however, in some practices they aren't mandatory. It would be a wise decision to wear one when you practice though. You should also train with a mouth piece to keep your teeth safe.

The headgear is design to allow you to get hit but to dampen the blow of the strikes. This is helpful in two ways. The first way is that it keeps you safe when you are getting hit in the head. It will also reduce the chance that you will get a concussion when practicing. The benefit of the headgear is that it will help you ease into getting hit in the head and face. Getting hit in the face or in the head is not something that many can do willingly, so they have to learn how to do it.

The shinguards are to help you keep your legs protected when you are practicing your leg kicks. There are a few different types of martial arts that focus on kicking such as mauy thai and kickboxing. While they both teach kicking, they each teach it a different way. Although, they might teach it in different ways, chances are that you are going to be taking some punishment to your shins while you are learning.

When you fight you will not be able to have headgear or shinguards on. The fight promotion will also give you the gloves that you are going to use. This is to make sure that no one using illegal gloves. You are also inspected right before you hop into the ring, making sure that you have the proper gloves, a cup on and are wearing your mouth piece.

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Strength and Conditioning Workouts For MMA Fighters

Strength and Conditioning workouts for MMA fighters have not been around and tested for many years because the sport is relatively new. One of the biggest problems I have seen though, when watching guys being trained or training themselves to improve conditioning, is they virtually kill themselves for up to an hour in the gym with no carry over to either strength levels or conditioning!

If you have ever worked the corner for a fighter, one of the things I have never heard them complain of concerning their opponent was his conditioning. I have never heard a guy say, Man, the guy is so well conditionined. i just can't gas him out. But What I have heard time and time again, was, Man that guy is so strong.

Believe you me, especially if you are still in Bruce Lee mode, strength wins the day no matter how good your technique. You need technique, but unless you have perfected it, a stronger guy will blow open your shortcomings. We all have a choice as to the pace at which we fight. You do not need marathon runner endurance.

So what you see nowadays is a tendency to either stay old school and burn your fighters out during workouts, and keep them weak, or concentrate on continually increasing strength along with speed.

A lot of those MMA conditioning workouts you see on youtube do absolutely nothing for you except the following:

keep you weak as you are too busy changing stations to concentrate on strength workkeep you or make you prone to muscle and joint injury (they are usually performed far too often)fatigue your adrenal glandslower your testosterone levels

Where does that leave you? On the floor knocked out most probably.

So what is the solution?

Ok, so you want to train strength and conditioning. You like garlic and bananas too, but you wouldn't put them in the same sandwich. Separate the two for the most part. There is a place for workouts that mimic the timing of a fight, but you must never sacrifice strength, by concentrating on these so called strength and conditioning workouts which do neither. This is waht you have to do:

1. Work on strength all year, with heavy work and speed lifts.

2. Make the main focus of conditioning work, sparring, rolling and bag work.

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