Those are a bit different examples though. Diaz runs marathons because he wants to run marathons. It shows in his fight game. He looks slow and sluggish in the ring and his cardio is only 'decent.' Fedor has always said he just loves to run and it mellows him out. Randy primarily does circuits and small amounts of LSD, even then his cardio is questionable.
Fedor is probably your best attempt at an example there and I get what you're saying. Most people only do LSD though because it's expected. You seem like one of those.
Tell me why LSD is better for you in training than anaerobic conditioning. 'Uh, it's good for you' doesn't count.
I won't go as far as to call it useless, but it's the last thing on the list.
Well what those examples was was a direct answer to the silly claim that you "dont see any fighter on all access do long slow running" of course meaning that good pro mma fighters dont do that kind of training. Since that was an obviously false and misleading statement I wanted to prove that wrong.
Now honestly I think its a bit bold to to claim that Sherk has better cardio than say Randy for instance. Its a different game dominating physically smaller men than to fight guys that have a lot of muscle and weight on you, as if your a natural light heavy fighting huge heavyweights like in the case with Fedor and Randy. Randy sure as hell outworked Tito that was known to have quite good conditioning...
Now what I does and what I believe is another thing altogheter. I am a -huge- proponent for intervall work like tabatas, 400m intervalls, etc, I also love GPP work and heavy lifting.
All those things are great but in a typicall training week its hard as fuck balancing MMA training with added skill specific work (like bjj, wrestling, boxing and muay thai) with adequate strength and power work and adequate high paced conditioning work (like 400 m intervals for instance) and gpp work. Since longer slower runs sure as fuck dont tax your CNS in any noticeable way its a good way of getting in some extra training where you otherwise would need to rest, that training wont directly transfer into your explosive anaerobic bursts but it will hower help you recover between them (both inbetwen ronds and on your feet in slower paced action in the rond). Furthermore medium long (2-5km) runs is a great fucking way of relieving extensive soreness and quicker getting you ready for another hard training session. So just like a butt load of other things it is a usefull tool with specific purposes.
Doing arguing about "should you do intervall OR lsd" is about as productive as a mma athlete asking himself "should I do grappling OR striking"...
And for a few years back when I did a lot of mma training I didnt do any running or similar lsd training so you are reading me wrong, I have no problem not doing it, I have just simply come to the conclusion that it does have a valid place.
"Tell me why LSD is better for you in training than anaerobic conditioning. 'Uh, it's good for you' doesn't count. " Almost missed this... Well if I did heavy ass squats yesterday morning session and followed that up with taking heavy fucking low kicks in thai training yesterday evening session, hard 400m runs (which for the record is 50% aerobic and 50% anaerobic making it a good tool for both but it -is- cns taxing) this morning with a rundown CNS and legs I can barely walk on is not a good tool that morning. A nice slow 4km run that gives you some bonus aerobic training while at the same time working as good effective "active recovery" is in that example the proper tool. Of course you could argue that rest would have been a better option but myself I would be crippled for 2 days if I couldnt use some active rest.
