Training
Bob periodizes his training according to whether he’s trying
to put on muscle mass or is close to a fighting event. At all times Bob works on
building or maintaining his strength and muscle mass, while at the same time
working on his endurance, speed, and skill training. However he will vary the
emphasis he puts on the various components that make up his weekly training, all
depending on what training phase he’s in.
For the purpose of this article I’ll outline Bob’s present
training regimen, one that will last for the next few months. At that time,
there will be some changes made for his pre-fight phase where his training
routine will emphasize strength and mass maintenance and increased skill and
endurance.
At present, Bob trains with weights only once a week. He does a
combination of heavy lifting with some endurance body weight exercises. The
heavy lifting increases in intensity (weight lifted) week by week.
The reason for doing both high intensity and high volume work in
the same training session is to develop the functionally diverse muscle fiber
types that are involved in increasing Bob’s fighting strength and skills. I
feel that the adaptive response from this type of training maximizes the
training effect for fighting sports.
Bob does not follow the usual bodybuilding repetition scheme. I
feel that the lower reps are more conducive to increases in both strength and
muscle mass, contrary to what many bodybuilders believe. A recently published
study looking at the effects of high and low reps on muscle hypertrophy has come
to the same conclusion.
The heavy lifting comes first and comprises the three basic
power lifts to maximize his full body power. This gives him the strength to
brutalize his opponents in a way that no one else could, picking them up and
tossing them around with ease, or hitting them so hard that they literally
become airborne.
Bob squats first, starting with a relatively light weight (at
least for Bob – I’ve seen him warm up with a weight that would be a maximum
lift for most of us) and working up to a series of heavy sets for five reps with
a maximum five rep set as the last set. Depending on how he feels, he may make
an attempt at a three-rep max.
Bob does both front and back squats and alternates them in his
workouts.
Next comes the bench press, working in exactly the same way, with a series of
seven to eight sets of five reps. Again if he feels that it’s right, he’ll
do a three rep max. Bob usually benches using a narrow grip. That’s because
with his relatively long arms, and massive triceps and delts, he can move more
weight and gets more of an effect going narrow as against going wide with his
grip.
The final lift is the deadlift. In the deadlift there’s a
slight change with the same number of sets (seven to eight) with increasing
weights but fewer reps as the weight becomes heavier. Above the 800 lb mark the
reps drop to triples and doubles.
Once he’s done his heavy lifting Bob begins his high
repetition lifting using just his bodyweight.
This part of his workout includes body weight squats and
pushups. Both of these are done to exhaustion with many sets and variable reps.
The reps for any one set are chosen at random by using a special set of playing
cards that Bob has modified to represent repetitions. For example a Joker means
100 reps, some of the cards vary from 50 reps down to the actual number on the
card.
The reasoning behind this is to keep the body guessing and as
such simulate the randomness of fighting where you never know how long you’ll
have to go without getting a breather. Sometimes it’s after a few seconds,
sometimes after several minutes.
As such, sometimes Bob will pick a card where he only has to do
4 reps and sometime one where he has to do a hundred. The interesting thing
about this is that Bob will go through the whole deck, meaning he does dozens of
sets and hundreds of reps.
The whole workout lasts between two and three hours and the
final result is complete exhaustion from both the strength and endurance end.
But all the training in the world won’t do the trick if you
don’t train smart and the nutrition is not right on. In fact training hard can
lead to overtraining and loss of strength and muscle mass if you’re not
careful. The first thing you have to learn is that it takes time to recover and
if you don’t recover properly you’ll stale out and even worse, get injured.
That’s why Bob only does this intense lifting once a week, usually on
Saturday. He does no training on Sunday and resumes some light training, usually
for skill, on the Monday. Then on Tuesday to Friday Bob works on his endurance,
speed, and skill training, with the training on Wednesday and Thursday most
intensive.
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