Keys to Great Cardio, MMA Style

The term cardio doesn’t include just one aspect of fitness, like the name implies, and if you don’t understand how cardio is developed, you’ll never be in great shape.

Luckily, I’m going to tell you what you need to do.

So here’s how developing your cardio is more than just running, or intervals, or 5 minute circuits, or CrossFit:

Now let me tell you that these things are in no particular order, because the order in which it’s best to develop these aspects is different for each individual.

The first key is general strength.

If you’re weak, then you’ll be working closer to 100% of max strength than a guy who is strong. You can only last a short period of time working at 100% max strength (like 20 seconds) so then you’ll gas out quickly.

If you don’t quite get it, let’s make it even easier to understand.

Let’s say you can Bench press 100 lbs for 1 rep (you monster, you).

If a guy is laying on top of you, and you need to bench press him off (because your technique sucks) , and he weighs 170 lbs, you’re using 100% of your strength to try to do this.

You’ll be able to push with all your force ONCE, then every attempt after, your level of force will go down, until your energy supply runs out and you can no longer lift your arms, unless you rest them.

Now let’s say you can Bench press 250 lbs for 1 rep and the same guy is on top of you.

Now, his bodyweight of 170 lbs is about 70% of your bench, meaning that you’ll be able to bench him up and down for at least 15 reps before starting to lose strength and tire out.

Make sense now? Good.

Now let’s say you’re strong, but you’ve never trained or don’t know how to train your cardiovascular system.

What do muscles need to recover after they’ve been spent?

You guessed it.... OXYGEN.

The second key is to get blood to the muscles. This is where your cardiovascular system comes in.

Your heart has to be fit enough to pump blood quickly to the muscles that need it.

To develop your heart to do this you need to increase the amount of blood it pumps with each beat in 2 ways: increasing the volume of blood the heart can hold and increasing the % of blood the heart pumps out with each beat (heart strength).

Dreaded traditional steady-state cardio training improves the volume of blood, while strength training and hard interval training improves the strength of the heart.

The third key in the process is that your muscles need to be efficient at extracting the oxygen from the blood and getting rid of the waste products developed from contracting.

This is where specific local muscular endurance training comes into play, where the muscles are forced to recover faster through progressively longer sets and shorter rest periods.

The fourth key is that your lungs need to be able to efficiently take oxygen from the air and they have to be trained well enough to avoid fatiguing.

This is a relatively new concept but there is some good research that shows that specific respiratory muscle training can improve endurance. I just make sure to incorporate different lengths of hard intervals to get the lungs working at high levels.

So now you understand that cardio requires general muscular strength, and it also requires a 3-pronged attack to make sure you’ve got all your bases covered from a cardiovascular point of view.

Make sure you’re not leaving yourself exposed by neglecting any of these important aspects of your physical fitness, and you’ll be sure to keep going if the fight goes the distance.

[via Eric Wong MMA]

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