If you had the opportunity to see UFC 90 and glimpsed Patrick Cote’s knee injury during his fight with Anderson “Spider” Silva, you may have felt disappointed when the two combatants weren’t allowed to finish the match.
I certainly was. It’s great to have a chance to see Silva working, and I also think that Cote made a good showing.
However, I want to focus on the kind of knee injury Cote had. When he hurt his leg, you could see his shin bone moving forward and then laterally. I think he hurt his ACL because that’s how it looked; however, sometimes he says it’s an old meniscus injury. The ligament will often become damaged during a buckling type of injury.
The function of the ACL is to stop the tibia/fibula (shin bone) from sliding forward underneath the femur (thigh bone). However, this is only the case if the muscles that are supposed to support the knee aren’t strong enough to work.
When interviewed, Cote said that he hurt his knee when he kicked Silva. This coincides with an average ACL injury. When kicking, the lower leg is whipped out. The shin bone slides forward on the thigh bone without opposing force from the muscles and ligaments.
To demonstrate for yourself, bring your right fist to the top of a bicep curl, and then place your left fist on your right fist. Now move your right fist forward toward your computer screen and you will see the sort of motion the ACL prevents. This will give you an idea of what happened with Cote’s knee.
Here’s where the ACL comes into play in a very fast, pivotal move. It resembles a running back cutting hard. It also happens during unexpected motion such as getting pushed immediately before landing from a jump or partially or completely missing a kick.
The ACL also works in stabilizing the joint in the event the muscles aren’t strong enough to perform the task. Regardless of whether or not you are expecting or planning a movement, such as a hard cut in football, if you haven’t got strong muscles, it’s possible you will tear your ACL.
If you want to avoid an ACL injury with your MMA workout routine, keep your hamstring and gastric (calf) muscles powerful and strong. You must prevent knee injury by being sure to do enough Swiss ball leg curls and Stiff-leg deadlifts. These exercises work the muscles that do the same job as they ACL. They prevent the lower leg from sliding anteriorly onto the upper leg.
Be sure to focus on two very important parts of the exercise: The transition from eccentric motion to concentric motion, known as the eccentric phase.
If performing the Stiff-leg deadlift, this means one must control the motion into the end range. At that point, one must change quickly from lowering the weight to lifting it. My MMA Strength & Conditioning program contains all of these exercises.
You have to keep the muscles both powerful and strong. Your muscles have to react fast. That’s why performing exercises such as explosive, repetitive jumps and lunges are so important.
In order to prevent ACL injuries in MMA numerous specific exercises are required. This will ensure that the muscles supporting and surrounding the knee joint are powerful and strong.
You can prevent your knees from buckling during a fight if you add these exercises to your conditioning and strength program.
As Bruce Lee states, the ‘centre of power’ resides in your core. That is where powerful throws, knockout kicks and punches and the advantage to dominate the other fighter on the ground originate. The initial stage in core development is acquiring static stability. In your MMA workout plan, the Swiss ball is the ideal equipment for achieving this because it trains on the three different planes of movement. If you can become expert in these exercise routines, you can develop into a fearsome competitor.
For the majority of folks, the core of the body means the six pack. However, the six pack or rectus abdominis is just a single muscle in the body’s core. There are a trio of regions that make up your core: the lateral, anterior and posterior. These different regions consist of assorted deep and surface muscles.
Is it possible to build your body’s core by performing endless ab crunches?
Unfortunately, that just won’t happen. Rather, you must build all three areas of your core in addition to training in these 3 planes of motion: frontal (sideways), transverse (rotational) and sagittal (front-back).
But you must establish a base level of stability prior to adding dynamic movements to your MMA workout routine.
Imagine the difference of possessing core stability as opposed to a core that lacks stability is analogous to volleyball played indoors versus volleyball played on the beach. Launching yourself from a hard surface in the gym, you can achieve much more height than you can jumping in sand.
If you fail to develop optimal core stability, you are pretty much delivering kicks and punches from a weak position. This is hardly ideal when you hope to deliver a knockout to your competitor.
The Solution…
Working out with the Swiss ball is the ideal method for developing a stable core. The Swiss ball is not stable and a moving surface, so to keep good form in your exercise, your muscles must provide stability where the ball is lacking. Not only does this work your regular muscles, but it involves deep muscles too, which are usually inactive when exercises are performed on the ground or stable machines.
Train your lateral, anterior and posterior core stability by utilizing the following three Swiss ball exercises, prior to progressing to more powerful movements like medicine ball tosses.
Prone Bridge
With your forearms atop the Swiss ball, hold your body in a position like a bridge. Maintain a neutral posture for your backbone, while keeping your body erect. Stop the set if you feel it in your back, as that means you’re either not in the proper position or that your anterior muscles are fatigued. Work your way up to so you can hold this position for an uninterrupted minute and a half.
Side Bridge
With the ball beneath your hip, place your feet flat up against the wall. Your top leg should be back and the bottom leg should be forward. The position of your body is on its side atop the ball. Next, be sure your spine is in neutral and hold straight like a bridge on the ball. Work your way up to a minute and a half on each side. Positioning your arms so they cross your torso is simpler, while positioning your hands at the sides of your head is more difficult.
Leg Curls
With your arms placed out in the form of a T and your palms facing up, place your feet on top of the ball. Now push the heels of your feet down to the ground (activating the hamstring muscles) and at the same time push your hips up towards the air. This move results in your feet being pulled into your butt. It is important that you don’t bend at the hips. Keep working out until you can do twenty repetitions of the exercise.
After you have utilized basic exercises like these to establish your core stability, it will be possible to do more advanced workouts with the medicine balls, Swiss ball and rope balls. However, unless you have achieved this fundamental stability, you risk damage to your backbone. Give your ring competitors something to worry about, and just keep practicing these exercises in your MMA workout routines.
The majority of lower body exercises in MMA workout routines performed in the gym involve two legs. Squats and deadlifts are two examples of these exercises. These type of exercises do not do much to challenge your balance.
You should not be doing leg extension and leg curls on machines because they accomplish nothing and can be harmful, so I am not even going to discuss them. Since you are a mixed-martial artist, most likely you already have some minor knee problems from grappling, so it is a good idea to avoid the leg extension machine or anything else that stresses the knee ligaments.
So a number of options are available if you would like to train your single leg balance. Lunges are an excellent example, but being a dynamic type of movement, you only use one leg for a very short time.
Instead, doing MMA workout exercises in which you are on one leg while other body parts are moving really works the hip and ankle stabilizers, thereby helping to really develop your balance. The one-leg-stiff-leg deadlift, one-arm row with one-leg and one-arm overhead press with one leg are three excellent exercises to accomplish this.
All three of these exercises are done similarly to those done with two legs. Instructions on how to perform these exercises can be found by simply searching the Internet.
Including these exercises in your MMA workout routine can help you develop the stabilizers around your ankle, hip and core.
But do not use these single-leg versions instead of your standard exercises, such as squats, deadlifts and presses, because the standard versions are more effective in helping you develop strength.
As a supplementary training method to improve balance and aid you in avoiding injury, just do these exercises following the big compound movements.
If you want to setup your own MMA workout routine, then this article will definitely help you out. I’m going to take you through my thought process when it comes to creating a routine if I were to meet a fighter for the first time. By answering these questions yourself, you can come up with your own program that fits your situation.
MMA Workout Routine: First Steps
- Do I have any injuries, pain, or movement limitations to address? These things should be worked on first before trying to build.
- Do I have a fight coming up? If so, how many weeks do I have? If not, just pick 12 weeks as a nice amount of time to program for. Work backwards from the date, setting up 2-4 week blocks to focus on one area of improvement at a time.
- What areas do I need the most work – body composition, strength, power, or endurance? If you’ve got a fight coming up, power-endurance will be the main focus in the 4 weeks leading up to the fight, aside from that it depends on your situation.
- How many days a week can I commit to strength and conditioning for MMA? For most fighters, 2-3 days a week is sufficient to get good results.
- What aspect of my mixed-martial arts technique training do I need to focus on the most? Whatever this aspect is, you want to be fresh for it, so you don’t want to do strength and conditioning on the same day.
- What exercises do I hate, that I should probably do more often? Most athletes stick to their favorite exercises, neglecting those that would probably give them the most improvement.
Now when it comes to choosing actual exercises, make sure you include ALL of the following:
- A dynamic warmup to improve your mobility before your workout
- The big compond exercises to build your general strength (squats, deadlifts, lunges, chinups, bench press)
- Unilateral exercises to develop your stabilizer muscles and maintain muscular balance (1-arm rows, 1-arm presses, 1-leg stiff-leg deadlifts)
- Static core stability exercises (planks)
- Dynamic core stability exercises (woodchops)
- Rotational power exercises (medicine ball throws)
- Injury prevention exercises for the shoulder (cuban press, external rotations)
When you’re putting these exercises together into a workout, ensure that you’re hitting the full body in your workouts, since you’ll only have 2-3 sessions to do. If you do a body part split, you just won’t have enough stimulus to cause adaptation.
Rep ranges, rest, and sets are beyond the scope of this article, because there is an entire science to choosing the proper schemes, depending on your situation and what you need.
So hopefully this has shed some light on the thought process going in to creating an MMA workout program for yourself.
