The stars of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are elite athletes with unparalleled physical abilities. From conditioning drills to functional lifts – your favorite UFC contenders share their go-to training techniques to fight their way into peak condition.
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00:00 Let's take a look at the most important part of the house for an athlete.
00:03 Let's head down to the gym.
00:04 My personal gym.
00:18 24/7 I can hop into my suffering sanctuary and get after it whenever I want.
00:24 How often do you work out?
00:26 I'm training mixed martial arts every single day.
00:28 Monday, Tuesday we're doing MMA stuff.
00:32 Wednesday I'll do my strength and conditioning.
00:34 Thursday night we do individual MMA stuff.
00:36 And then Friday afternoon I will do my strength workout.
00:39 How do you train to prepare for a UFC fight?
00:42 Do a lot of strength plus speed equals power.
00:44 We're lifting weights and then we're taking the weights off.
00:47 And then we're doing something explosive to create power.
00:49 My fights are always explosive.
00:51 I try to be as powerful as I possibly can.
00:53 So I've been trying to do that over the last 22 years.
00:55 And it's worked out really well for me.
00:56 How has your training evolved over time?
00:58 When I first really started lifting weights,
01:00 I really focused on just kind of static strength movements to get stronger.
01:04 And I've been lifting weights, shoot, for 20 something years.
01:08 I focus a lot more now on functional movements, fast, powerful, explosive movements.
01:14 So I can step into the octagon and be as fast, powerful, and explosive as I can.
01:18 Also, listen to your body.
01:19 I use a roller every single day.
01:21 I do think that my longevity in the sport is definitely attributed to my attention to detail
01:27 of myofascial release and using my roller every day.
01:30 So make sure you have a roller. Use it every single day.
01:32 I've been working this hard.
01:35 I've been working like this for a long, long time.
01:37 But now it's just a lot more calculated.
01:40 It's not like, oh, I'm just going to the gym to get in a lift anymore.
01:44 Now I'm doing the functional lifts that are actually going to help me in a fight.
01:48 So when I grab you, it feels like a gorilla just grabbed you.
01:51 What's the hardest thing about training for the UFC?
01:55 It's the fact that you know that you have to train for the world.
01:59 Everybody in the world is gunning for you.
02:01 They only have to train for one guy.
02:03 You have to train for everybody.
02:05 What's your favorite type of workout?
02:06 It would just be a wrestling practice, a hard wrestling practice.
02:09 There's this thing that we do, I used to do in college, called plate pinches.
02:13 So I would get two plates and I would pinch them together.
02:17 And I would try to hold them for as long as I possibly could
02:20 until either my fingers were about to fall off or I dropped the plates.
02:24 What kind of training would it take to fight Conor McGregor?
02:28 They should be asking Conor McGregor what type of training it would take him to fight me.
02:32 Just looking for someone to fight that would make him relevant again.
02:35 So, yeah.
02:36 Welcome to my gym.
02:40 Today we want to do some exercise to prepare for my fight.
02:46 Here, what we're going to do is like, I put the band resistance to Canelo.
02:53 I give the resistance back and he will do some steps for one minute.
03:00 That's the first exercise.
03:02 Here we do a little cardio.
03:04 We put the left leg in front and he has to go fast for 30 seconds.
03:10 Then he change the leg and then he go fast.
03:14 Here he work his quadriceps to have proprioception.
03:18 I go back, I pull and he has to run fast.
03:23 We do two kinds of.
03:25 One is like, take the knee up and go fast.
03:29 And the other one, explosive.
03:31 Run.
03:33 In boxing it's so important legs because the power comes in the legs.
03:40 The position is like that and all the resistance and the power of punch is in the leg.
03:48 Off-season training, I'm not really beating my body up.
03:51 It's more just about maintaining a good level of fitness.
03:54 Obviously, a good level of strength.
03:55 A lot of strength conditioning.
03:56 That helps prevent injuries also and improve my learning for mixed martial arts.
04:01 But outside mixed martial arts, it's more about my strength and overall fitness.
04:05 My first exercise will be bench press.
04:08 General strength.
04:09 You also get a little cardio element of it.
04:11 You pair the sets together and again, loads of high reps and heavy weights like chest.
04:16 10, 10, 10 and rest.
04:18 The muscle endurance translates into the ring of fire.
04:21 It's like mixed martial arts is a mixture of sports.
04:23 So when two muscles are firing at the same time, it can all be beneficial.
04:28 Into explosive movement, bow slam, which is basically a fight.
04:31 You go from being in a wrestling position with more tension,
04:35 then into explosive, which is striking, moving.
04:38 So I think the deadlift into bow slam mimics that a little bit.
04:42 My finishing normally is a sprint, 10 sprints, 20 reps, 5 times.
04:47 When I'm training camp, it varies.
04:49 In general, just maintaining that overall fitness.
04:52 I work out sometimes with friends.
04:56 Sometimes I work out with myself.
04:57 I love working out with myself.
04:59 That's why I work out at home, in my garage, in my backyard.
05:04 Being there, put some music or some headset, do some jumping ropes,
05:08 some fitness stuff, some exercise.
05:10 I love those stuff.
05:11 I've been doing that since I was a kid.
05:15 It's like every day, some day, twice a day.
05:18 It depends on the training section.
05:21 Sometimes it could be in the strength and conditioning
05:23 that you will find is intense workout.
05:26 Sometimes it could be in the wrestling section.
05:28 Sometimes it could be in the boxing section.
05:30 So it really depends.
05:33 At some point, you might say, "Oh, I was fighting because I was hungry.
05:37 I needed money.
05:38 I was fighting because I was so passionate about fighting."
05:43 But over time, when you get higher and higher,
05:47 your motivation, it evolves.
05:50 Today, my whole country stand up.
05:53 People from all around the world stand up to watch me, to support me.
05:56 So I have to do my best to give them the best outcome of their support.
06:02 That's kind of like my motivation.
06:07 I try to work out. I try to work out three times a week.
06:10 About an hour a day.
06:12 But I compact everything with jumping rope, hitting the speed bag,
06:18 maybe running or cycling.
06:21 What's your favorite part of working out?
06:23 Favorite part has to be the result.
06:25 Transformation in your mind, body, and soul is pretty crazy.
06:28 One thing about me is that I have to work out with somebody else.
06:31 I sometimes need that motivation. I need that push.
06:35 When I see somebody working out harder than me, then I can step it up.
06:39 The adrenaline kicks in.
06:41 It's fun working out with people, with friends, with family.
06:44 What are your fitness goals?
06:46 Just to keep feeling young.
06:49 As much as I work out, whether it's five minutes or an hour a day,
06:56 for me, it's all about maintaining that discipline.
07:01 He'll go for three repetitions of the deadlifts,
07:04 and then he'll go three repetitions of the box squats.
07:09 He'll repeat that for about five minutes.
07:11 Then when he's done with the five minutes, the goal is to re-emphasize,
07:14 to re-stimulate that neuromuscular system,
07:17 and to go on some high kicks and loosen up the body that was just under tension.
07:21 Then go into over-speed work and work his feet
07:24 so that they can get up and get ready to go.
07:26 So that, again, in a fight, when you're in that situation,
07:28 the mind kind of understands and the body what to do.
07:31 A little plyo swing here.
07:34 CJ's going to go about this for 30 seconds,
07:37 and then he's going to just mark for 15.
07:39 We're going to repeat this for five minutes straight as well.
07:42 Think of rebounding a lot.
07:44 This allows him to become more dynamic, more elastic in his movement,
07:47 more explosive with deeper movement.
07:49 If he's squatting down, coming up, throwing his body into someone's legs,
07:52 they're more dynamic here.
07:54 It's great for stabilization.
07:56 It's helped my knees out a lot more.
07:58 I've had a few knee surgeries throughout my career,
08:00 so this is one of my favorite ones.
08:02 I hate it the most. It's definitely one of the most beneficial.
08:04 In my opinion, by far, the greatest apparatus or machine
08:08 designed for the posterior chain, for the hamstring,
08:11 for your posterior cruciate ligament, all that back here,
08:14 it allows you--it just really creates the strength in your hamstring
08:19 based on the load that you put on it.
08:21 And so he'll do this for about five minutes
08:24 and we'll do a repetition every 10 seconds or so.
08:26 So we'll get about 30 repetitions in about a five-minute period.
08:30 Flexibility, we get fast twitch.
08:32 So it hits every angle, just shooting. We just don't lift.
08:35 We get our minds worked. We do 35 minutes of different workouts here.
08:39 We have what we have here, and it definitely helped my career.
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