Why do accomplished Runners do so poorly at MMA cardio?

Phlog said:
True, but back then with the middleweights and now with the linebackers, bigger recievers and DBs, I set my goal as out working them. I always want to win, full stop whether they're bigger or smaller than me. That has always put me in a good position.

Distance running though, fuck that, they can have the more successful programs have heavyweight specific coaches that understand the different
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Having a heavyweight specific coach is a very smart thing there's a very big difference in the training Style
 
Ultra O’Dia said:
They should.
However.
Running is an even playing field. A race finds the winner simply due to cardio in running. The track is neutral, just as a bar is neutral for lifters.
If you have more talent or weight than a wrestling opponent, his system is fighting against more resistance and/or worse positions. The two guys aren’t playing the same game due to sport specific abilities.
Also - wrestling is anaerobic and muscular by nature. The creative-phosphate (burst of strength) pathway andthe anaerobic pathways are heavily at
play, nearly entirely those pathways, in fact. Running anything over 400m is nearly entirely aerobic.
On TOP of that - big dudes can be in great shape, but simply not be built for running just by carrying the extra body (short femurs also play into running stride)

Really, it’s apples and oranges.

Athletes should cross train, but if you want to become specific there are sports that you simply are not genetically built to reach any great heights in. Running is still good work, but you can’t simply judge a big or explosive athlete directly by his distance running times.

Funny enough, my old training partner and I, who between the two of us owned every bit of gym equipment and got into all kinds of cardio and resistance training, decided that you could work all systems with no equipment at all.
We never did this, as he moved away, but we wanted to simply run/swim/climb around over a long distance, stopping at good spots of grass or sand for a best of seven takedown contest, possibly throwing in some push-ups, pull-ups, burpees, squats, or lifting a big stone.
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Yeah but I have an elite track and field athletes gassing as quick as some kid that played football 2 years ago and works at the tire shop...
 
Just to clarify im not simply talking about elite track and field runners gassing against good wrestlers on the the wrestling mat

I'm talking about their
(the runners) performance compared to non runners AGAINST good wrestlers.

IE
I have 4 kids that show up to the gym...

one of them is an excellent elite runner

the other one is a weight lifter

the 3rd is a soccer player

and the 4th one is just a tough farm boy that did some bjj with his older brother who was a marine.

they all seem to gas about at the same rate against my talented wrestlers....!!

one would expect the cardio demands of running and at least soccer to give those athletes an advantage over the farm boy and the weightlifter but it doesn't seem to be the case.
 
Thorpedo28 said:
As someone who did a lot of BJJ/MMA for a few years a while ago and have just completed Manchester marathon last month all I can say is its a completely different type of fatigue.

MMA/BJJ is a short, sharp, max effort movements followed by sustained pressure
Running is a lot of slow, long multiple hour runs where low intensity

I do think someone like a 4/800 metre specialist would have the most efficient crossover but still nowhere near ideal
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Yeah but I would still expect some noticeable advantage over other athletes entering the grappling sports
 
Thorpedo28 said:
As someone who did a lot of BJJ/MMA for a few years a while ago and have just completed Manchester marathon last month all I can say is its a completely different type of fatigue.

MMA/BJJ is a short, sharp, max effort movements followed by sustained pressure
Running is a lot of slow, long multiple hour runs where low intensity

I do think someone like a 4/800 metre specialist would have the most efficient crossover but still nowhere near ideal
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A decathlete would have to crossover.
You are exactly right about the different requirements, aptitude and trained abilities of each sport.
I can tell you as a guy who did MMA for a few years, got injured, had a family and went into a sort of quasi-CrossFit routine wherein my big lifts went way up, my run times went down and my ability to mow through burpees and rowing machines at a hard pace while dealing with the heart rate went up like I couldn’t believe - when I went back to BJJ, I was noticeably stronger when standing in a clinch, my heart and lungs were bulletproof, better than ever before, but Damn nothing replicates that constant clutching, holding on, grabbing, pommeling, etc. My arms just couldn’t deal with the lactic acid like they could when I was doing that all the time. And my closed guard was so pathetic, butterfly the same.

Every movement is sport specific. You get good at ‘greasing the groove’ by greasing whichever movement you want to get good at.

The stuff I was doing lent itself very well to MMA and still fell short in some areas.
Just running distance... probably gives you a capacity to then learn and excel at boxing footwork, not much else.
 
fast twitch, strength, and static strength are all more applicable to mma than slow twitch.

too add to that, not that many people training mma recreationally are training for 5x5, or even really 5x3, where the advantages of exceptional endurance are more pronounced.
 
Phlog said:
When I kickboxed I never ran, all my cardio was from bodyweight exercises, pad and bag work. When I decided to try running for the first time I found I had endless endurance already and stopped after a few miles out of boredom.
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Do you think you could have run for more than 20 min? If the answer is yes, your pace was too low, way too low.

Running for 1 hr at 6-8 mph like most people do is like doing 50 pushups but with 1 min break between each single pushup. It's useless unless you're playing golf or something.

What you should do is maintain a 12-15 pmh speed. If you start getting comfortable, step it up a notch.

You can also skip running and do other exercices but if you're gonna run, at least do it right.
 
StopDucking said:
Do you think you could have run for more than 20 min? If the answer is yes, your pace was too low, way too low.

Running for 1 hr at 6-8 mph like most people do is like doing 50 pushups but with 1 min break between each single pushup. It's useless unless you're playing golf or something.

What you should do is maintain a 12-15 pmh speed. If you start getting comfortable, step it up a notch.

You can also skip running and do other exercices but if you're gonna run, at least do it right.
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Well I was running not jogging, but what I found to be interesting was that having not run more than 100m in 20 years I was able to set a decent pace and keep going.

It just was part of the picture I formed that running itself didn't provide anything that other exercises couldn't and that furthermore since other exercises I did were more sports specific it was near redundant.
 
on a side note that's why wrestlers are so dominant over everybody else in the grappling world

they don't have a lapel to stall onto

with anatomical holds your opponent can always work their way out so you have to constantly be in your cardio burn phase whereas with lapel grappling you can hold on and relax way more often this heavily reduces the cardiovascular demands of the sport.

We can all agree that if you have time to run you didn't grapple enough today.

I would suggest that you can get a better cardiovascular burn pound-for-pound hitting a good 6ft bag than any kind of running as long as you had the motivation to really push yourself on it...

Runnings for dummies LOL

I personally find that lazy coaches run their athletes so they can go play on their phone
Instead of getting down on the mat and coaching

I always sparred with my guys everyday there's no BETTER way to teach an athlete then to beat him
 
Gassing in fight sports is mainly due to newbies not being relaxed and the adrenaline rush.

I ve got a very athletic friend who sparred a few times with me and he gasses in a minute. Same goes to almost everyone. Once you learn to relax it becomes different.

I am not sure why people are shocked that some kids visiting a MMA gym are exited thus not relaxed and gas out when sparring good wrestlers. They need to teach their bodies to relax and that it is just a fight/spar.

I am saying this from the perspective of someone doing boxing and soccer. It took me an year to learn to relax and even now I ll still tire myself in a more intensive spar due to an adrenaline rush. I am pretty sure I ll die in a 3 round boxing match. Yet I run 90 mins every given Sunday at the amateur league I play soccer at.

It is not the level of cardio. It is the fact that at soccer I feel at my field and I ve been playing like 20 years, while at boxing I am feeling like I have to survive and my muscles are not relaxed.
 
No discussion of energy systems?

Running is mostly powered by the aerobic system. IIRC even a 5K is more than 90% by the aerobic system, and a marathon is 99.9% ish. The aerobic system's basic feature is that it produces a low to good amount of energy, depending on training, but can last a very long time.

Intense efforts, including lifting weights, sprinting and many periods in grapling, draw on the anaerobic system as well as the aerobic system. Use of the anaerobic system is inherently very fatiguing. Especially if you don't train it, as it is possible to increase not only the power ouput of the system but the amount of time you can draw on it.

People who do endurance sports, like running, and switch to grappling, will quickly become exhausted because they will be using an energy system they have barely trained. That's a very large part the answer.

As for what people *should* do... well, if you aren't gassing out, then probably whatever you are currently doing. But if you are, then it's worth considering developing your aerobic system. That's also been really well covered here over the years.
 
Phlog said:
It just was part of the picture I formed that running itself didn't provide anything that other exercises couldn't .
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Looking back at my experience with running for boxing; I didn’t notice any noticeable carryovers for conditioning. However, once I started doing sets of burpee while shadow boxing in between sets, I notice an improvement with my conditioning.
 
Same reason highly conditioned boxers get tired within minutes of grappling.

Its a different sport with a different intensity and different muscles being utilized.

That's why I'm not fan of running. I might sprint and jog for HIIT for 15 minutes or so. But no 10 mile runs. I'd rather spend that time in the ring.
 
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So what's the best cardio for grappling/mma besides matwork?

I would say hill Sprint if your in a hurry otherwise I would say mountain bike or swimming but with interval burst training.

I am an avid body boarder and if you run thru the surf and jump into shorebreak waves you get awesome cardio...(instead of floating out in the deep water and paddling in)

I like to Sprint in waist deep water and do all my shoot drills (giant step) in water.

Sometimes you step on a ray or a crab

Thats your reaction drill

You can get AWESOME standing grappling work in the water!

Amazing way to practice your big Greco and freestyle throws

You can easily get in on tie and shoot combos like 2 on 1 to snatch single.

Just no shooting from distance, otherwise the standing work is practally the same with almost zero chance of injury.

I always thought it was the best way to recover from injury.
 
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Your aerobic system allows you to do more work and recover better from it. It increases your total ability to train harder and then come back and do it again.

Your aerobic system is what allow you to recover from doing multiple matches in a day. Everybody gasses out at some point, but your aerobic system allows you to recover and come back from that.

Think about that person who kicks your arse during the round and collapses after they sub you. They then lie there for a min while you wait to get more reps in. they finally are ready to go and proceed to stall or have there arse kicked for the round. They lack aerobic conditioning and can't recover from the intense effort.

Once these runners transition over and learn some skills they will already be way ahead in their ability to recover from intense effort.
 
I've been considering something in the last 2 days after my response prior.

Not being a grappler, wouldn't the sport specific adaptions from the movements (we'll go basic and say more muscle to accomplish the movements) also mean that a grappler would require less effort (all things considered) compared to a runner. Therefore amount of effort is reduced resulting in less fatique.

I'm considering the frame of the runner (and their sport specific adaptions) vice the less lean non runner/person off 'da street'.

This is as an aside to my original response and the obvious energy system conversation.
 
track stars usually have great cardio one of the guys at att whos 11-1 atm has the best cardio iv ever seen and he broke all types of track records in college dude never got tired could go through a gauntlet of 4 guys and were all gassed before he is its insane
 
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