By: Matt “The Law” Lindland – Elite Athlete, MMA Fighter & Coach, Olympic Wrestler
The most important part of training isn’t just the fight camp; the six or eight weeks before the fight when you are preparing to compete. The most important part of training is the strides and improvements you make in the times between fights. It’s when you don’t have a scheduled fight to motivate you to get in the gym every day. They say character is what you do when nobody is watching. The same goes for training. Your work ethic, your value to your team, is multiplied by the way you work when you’re not the guy getting ready to compete and nobody is looking or keeping score. Endurance, toughness, and the ability to recover quickly are keys to the fight prep training cycle (training camp), but those are the qualities you want to refine in the gym in between competitions. Fights are won when you are tired and fighting exhaustion. You have to learn to push through and build mental toughness. That doesn’t happen just in training camp it needs to happen in the gym when you don’t have a match you are preparing for. This is the time when you push yourself as hard as you can and don’t have to worry about over training. This is the time to build skills buy spending countless hours in the gym drilling over and over. Set specific goals—weight gains or losses you want to reach before next fight, positions and skills you want to improve on, your strength, your speed and endurance…what will help you perform better in your next fight? Work until you are tired—then keep working past that. That intensity you train with when you are tired will put you in the right mind-frame. This is when you develop mental toughness that you can draw from in your next bout. Realize this is the high volume training cycle that is more important than the fight camp in terms of becoming a better fighter. A lot of fighters think that it’s just staying in shape between fights, and that’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s really about becoming better every day. The fights are the time and opportunity to showcase how you improved from your last fight, but this is when you truly develop and grow as a fighter.
