bodyfat percentage for mma fighters

[bowlie]

Having a great vertical jump, being a good trainer are all noble pursuits but it does not qualify him as an expert when it comes to this subject. The art of choosing and making the right weight class is something outsiders just dont understand and never will until they do it and do it regularly. Because at the end of the day its not about being at YOUR best, its about creating the greatest discrepancy between your abilities, your physicality and your size over your opponent. Just like how you dont fight your opponent where you're best, you fight them where you have the biggest advantage over them.

He does train boxers, but not boxers exclusively. He has also boxed im just dont know to what level. I understand your point though, and its interesting.

 

[PWR1982]

According to kelly bagget cutting is also bad. He suggests getting to fight weight about a month before the fight. His reasoning is that when you train your muscle fibers shift towards being more slow twitch, and that when you take a bit of time off and your body detrains they shift back to fast, and if you have been doing explosive / power work they go beyond the past levels. But apparently this only happnens with plenty of food, so cutting in the last few weeks before a fight is bad, apparently.


Also, the way I understood it, thats the place where you can best maximize muscle gain, but not necessarily athleticism. Anyway, I think you are right that training at a higher BF% seems like a good plan.

Can you post an article where Bagget says this?


About bodyfat %... I honestly can't think of a reason why you wouldn't want as little bodyfat as possible on the day that you're fighting, if it's within reason. What sort of disadvantage will someone have if they fight at say 7% instead of 10+% ?

 

[James Fuller]

He does train boxers, but not boxers exclusively. He has also boxed im just dont know to what level. I understand your point though, and its interesting.

And tbh I understand his perspective for pure boxers now that I think about it. As a power grappler having a big size, weight and strength advantage are extremely important to me and since I fight (ideally) from a top position carduovascular "wind" is a secondary concern. However for a boxer or a striker in mma whose style is predicated on speed, pace, cardio a drastic cut I could see being a detriment. good discussion.

 

[bowlie]

Can you post an article where Bagget says this?


About bodyfat %... I honestly can't think of a reason why you wouldn't want as little bodyfat as possible on the day that you're fighting, if it's within reason. What sort of disadvantage will someone have if they fight at say 7% instead of 10+% ?

If your body is below the weight it wants to be and feels starved it may hold back some energy as a survival instinct or something. Or you may have depleted glycogen stores or something. I dont know, these are just guesses, but having a bf% of about 3 is obviously going to negatively impact on athleticism, and so is 20%, so it figures there is an optimal level, not just 'as low as you can get' I will find the article now

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/fasttwitchmachine.html

there you go

 

[bowlie]

And tbh I understand his perspective for pure boxers now that I think about it. As a power grappler having a big size, weight and strength advantage are extremely important to me and since I fight (ideally) from a top position carduovascular "wind" is a secondary concern. However for a boxer or a striker in mma whose style is predicated on speed, pace, cardio a drastic cut I could see being a detriment. good discussion.

Both are important, but for boxing I would agree that being able to keep up a good pace is probably slightly more important than a few more lbs weight advantage

 

[Gfreak]

This is just me personally, I don't like cutting more than 5 lbs lol... Right now I"m about 15-16% body fat And feel great conditioning wise (when it comes to grappling) I could probably drop down to compete at 160 without too much trouble (i walk around at about 175-176, compete at 170) But I just haven't done it yet to see how much of a difference it would make in my abilities. I"ve cut 10 before, and I felt a difference in my cardio (I play a lot of guard, or atleast did at the time). And it definately hurt my performance.

Much of this could also be from being fairly inexperienced with weight cutting at them time lol (actually i can almost guarantee it) But yea. that's just what I do personally. One day i'll drop down to 12% BF or something and see how I feel at a lower weight.

 

[miaou]

Optimal BF% for MMA fighters = same as for any other sport with weight divisions = lowest they can attain without it substantially harming their performance.

According to kelly bagget cutting is also bad. He suggests getting to fight weight about a month before the fight. His reasoning is that when you train your muscle fibers shift towards being more slow twitch, and that when you take a bit of time off and your body detrains they shift back to fast, and if you have been doing explosive / power work they go beyond the past levels. But apparently this only happnens with plenty of food, so cutting in the last few weeks before a fight is bad, apparently.

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/fasttwitchmachine.html

there you go

Maybe I missed something, but I don't see him mentioning anything like that in that article.

 

[bowlie]

Optimal BF% for MMA fighters = same as for any other sport with weight divisions = lowest they can attain without it substantially harming their performance.






Maybe I missed something, but I don't see him mentioning anything like that in that article.

Type IIB Overshoot and detraining

As stated before, with training, IIB fibers convert into the slower contracting IIA. What is really interesting is that with detraining or tapering there is a IIA to IIB overshoot conversion that occurs. That is, IIA fibers "reconvert" into IIB and that reconversion occurs at a greater than expected rate.

For instance, a group of athletes started out with 9.3% FTIIB muscle which decreased to 2.0% during a 3 month resistance training period. During this time there was a corresponding increase in IIA from 42.4% to 49.6%. After a detraining period of 3 months, the amount of IIB reached values of 26%, which was nearly 3 times higher then before training was initiated. After this 3 month break training was reintroduced and there was less of a tendency to sacrifice IIB fibers.

That is the bit about the detraining, here is the dieting.

There is one caveat with this training and that is it must be prescribed in a dose so as to induce better proficiency without inducing efficiency. In other words, you don't want to be sending any signals to the body that would cause it to think it has to create adaptations just to better deal with the "volume" of training you're throwing at it. You also wouldn't want to send a signal that the body is under a lot of stress or food shortage, thus dieting is a no no. The message you're sending needs to be loud and clear but "stimulating" not "annihilating". Whether you're creating the proper adaptations should be manifested in your results.

The one month before time period is not it the article, he mentioned it in an email in response to me asking specifically what the effects of cutting are on an athlete tapering for a fight

Yes you are right that cutting at the very end can be counterproductive. A
>> fighter in my opinion best reach his fighting weight with a month or so to
>> spare

Of course I cant prove he said that seeing as its from a private email.

 

[FearTheBeard**l]

who cares.

 

[miaou]

That is the bit about the detraining, here is the dieting.

The one month before time period is not it the article, he mentioned it in an email in response to me asking specifically what the effects of cutting are on an athlete tapering for a fight

Of course I cant prove he said that seeing as its from a private email.

Nowhere in those quotes was it stated that cutting influences the type IIA to type IIX fiber conversion during deloading/tapering.

 

[bowlie]

Nowhere in those quotes was it stated that cutting influences the type IIA to type IIX fiber conversion during deloading/tapering.

You also wouldn't want to send a signal that the body is under a lot of stress or food shortage, thus dieting is a no no

He doesnt explicitly say cutting, but he no food shortage or diets. Do you not cut calorie intake while cutting? maybe not but I presumed so.

EDIT: re-reading the article that isnt explicitly about the detraining period as much as training, but I think the message is clear enough to infer it onto the detaining period as well. You will find it harder to shift towards fast twitch (and less efficient) fibers if your body is short on food.

 

[miaou]

^ the article specifically said that dieting down during a speed/explosiveness training phase would inhibit training effects on fast fibers, not that diet would inhibit the IIA to IIx transition during detraining/tapering.

Ι don't see why it would be the case that caloric restriction would inhibit IIA to IIx transition during detraining, and to my knowledge there is no data pointing to it. As a matter of fact, I don't even know why diet would have such a significant effect on the differential effects of training on muscle fiber types. I haven't seen any studies examining that, and none of that article's references supports such a notion.

 

[bowlie]

Well that was my interpretation of the article, and it was reinforced by Kelly when I asked him specifically to clarify about that part of the article. If under eating inhibits the expression of type IIB fibers while working to try and increase expression of them, I dont see why the lack of food would suddenly not matter when you take away the training stimulus.

Its fairly obvious why your body would do that from an evolutionary standpoint as well. If the whole point of your body shifting you towards type IIB fibers when you use alot of energy (i.e. do alot of exercise) is to make you more economical, it follows that your body would not want to cause adaptations towards being less economical and more powerful when its already short of food and energy. Like I said, that seems logical to me and its how I interpreted the article, but you read the same article and didnt come to that conclusion. It seems pointless arguing this further seeing as I have already pointed you to the bits of the article I think are relevant, Goodnight

 

[TeddyRoosevelt]

who cares.

Clearly people do care, regardless of whatever abrasive and/or stupid opinions you have on the topic.

 

[miaou]

Well that was my interpretation of the article, and it was reinforced by Kelly when I asked him specifically to clarify about that part of the article. If under eating inhibits the expression of type IIB fibers while working to try and increase expression of them, I dont see why the lack of food would suddenly not matter when you take away the training stimulus.

Its fairly obvious why your body would do that from an evolutionary standpoint as well. If the whole point of your body shifting you towards type IIB fibers when you use alot of energy (i.e. do alot of exercise) is to make you more economical, it follows that your body would not want to cause adaptations towards being less economical and more powerful when its already short of food and energy. Like I said, that seems logical to me and its how I interpreted the article, but you read the same article and didnt come to that conclusion. It seems pointless arguing this further seeing as I have already pointed you to the bits of the article I think are relevant, Goodnight

Lulz.

I pointed out the fact that your post misrepresented what that article said. I also pointed out the fact that the claim the article does make (about a caloric deficit inhibiting differential affects of training on muscle fibers) does not seem to be supported by the article's references, and to my knowledge by current research in general.

If you don't want your posts and the articles you link scrutinized, then maybe you shouldn't be posting in discussion forums.

 

[Eric Brown]

Lulz.

I pointed out the fact that your post misrepresented what that article said. I also pointed out the fact that the claim the article does make (about a caloric deficit inhibiting differential affects of training on muscle fibers) does not seem to be supported by the article's references, and to my knowledge by current research in general.

If you don't want your posts and the articles you link scrutinized, then maybe you shouldn't be posting in discussion forums.

What, you mean we are not all allowed to cherry-pick to support points that we like? I mean, what are we supposed to do? Actually research?

You will not get far in life with that attitude, young man.

 

[bioorganic]

my response to that would be: who is kelly bagget and who the fuck has he ever fought? Fitness "gurus" simply do not understand what they are talking about when it comes to the hows, whys and when's of cutting weight for combative sports.

Spot on.

First time poster.... James Fuller's comments merit a response. As a muscle biologist working in drug discovery, with extensive experience with both training (for other sports) and PED use, you should listen to him.

Don't get caught up with overly technical stuff like muscle fiber type, it's a clusterf*** (trust me, I've been working on a fast twitch drug for a few years now). As James mentioned, cutting weight for MMA is not something that the common "fitness guru" will understand. You won't get a valid science based approach from anyone. It will come down to personal experience, as everyone responds to bf% and weight cuts differently.

As a side note, I wouldn't get too caught up with elite MMA athletes bf%. Trust me, a ton of them are using GH or inducers of GH secretion. They're basically undetectable and have a huge impact on retaining performance while dropping weight.

 

[Midnighter]

What, you mean we are not all allowed to cherry-pick to support points that we like? I mean, what are we supposed to do? Actually research?

You will not get far in life with that attitude, young man.

What's funny is, sarcasm aside, you're right. :redface:

 

[apizur**]

I must be like Fedor then, because I perform much better now then when I was a super lean high school wrestler.

I'm gonna assume it has more to do with the fact that you're not starving and dehydrating yourself at this point in your life.

If you don't want your posts and the articles you link scrutinized, then maybe you shouldn't be posting in discussion forums.

Headshot.
Bowlie... you're not mad at miaiouaoiuaouu, you're only dealing [poorly] with something called cognitive dissonance.


I came here wondering what the hell 29 responses were doing in a thread with a question that couldn't really be answered with anything besides "Everybody's different". I'm glad to see there's actually some intelligent adjacent conversation surrounding such a... green question.

 

[Leify]

Maybe not entirely in line with what this topic is about, but has anyone seen any research on how varying body fat percentages affect fat oxidation in aerobic exercise?

I'm kind of curious whether the metabolic oxidation process begins to greatly slow, or even halt, during aerobic exercise in the presence of low bf%, and if so, when.