As a good rule of thumb, I don’t believe that cardio workouts should last more than twice the length of your competition. So, if you’re going to be fighting for 20 minutes, I wouldn’t recommend going longer than 40 minutes. I would also make sure that your cardio lasts at least as long as your competition. So, a 20 minute fight means at least 20 minutes of cardio.

If you’re getting your heart rate high enough, you shouldn’t need more or less time than that. Meaning, if your intensity (MMA Cardio: Intensity by Nate Moore on MMA Training) is too low, you won’t see much benefit to your cardio when you’re in the cage because your body won’t be used to getting your heart rate high enough.

Cardio sessions that last too long will decrease your explosive power. You’ll also become more fatigued if your heart rate gets too high during the fight because you won’t be used to extreme heart rates. If your body isn’t trained to handle extreme heart rates and intensity, it will not recover like you want it to in a fight.

Conversely, if your intensity is too high and your workouts last too long, you will likely be spending all of your energy on cardio training. You’ll also run the risk of overtraining injuries (When is cardio exercise excessive?). If you feel like you don’t have enough time and energy for sparring, technique training, and conditioning, just try to get the heart rate elevated and activate muscles with short, high intensity sessions. Save energy for technique training, and keep your cardio bouts from going overtime.

Just try to make sure that you progressively push yourself just past your limits.  One of the biggest reasons for injury is overuse. Either you’re going too hard too soon without giving your body enough time to adjust, or you’re going too hard for too long, and your body is getting worn out. Either way, you need to listen to your body and progress over time. Don’t go from no training right into hours of training a day. Start slow, and progressively overload your body.

Long distance, slow pace cardio like 5 mile runs or an hour on the elliptical will give you more endurance, but what kind of endurance?

Low intensity/long duration cardio is OK if you’re not going to explode and spike your heart rate during the fight, but MMA is an explosive sport. There are times of relatively low intensity and movement, but you rarely go a long time without having to explosively react to your opponent’s movements.

Every time you engage in a grappling scramble or striking exchange, you’ll spike your heart rate. That spike can deplete your endurance severely if your body’s not prepared to handle it.

Your body uses different metabolic systems to fuel your muscles, so your muscles can’t be trained with repetitive, low intensity contractions that are fueled by aerobic metabolism. You have to activate a higher percentage of muscle fibers with more intense contractions for a shorter duration if you’re going to successfully prepare your body for a fight.

Doing so helps to teach your muscles to produce more forceful contractions, and thus preserving your muscle. Higher intensity cardio work can actually help build muscle and increase strength, instead of killing it.

Sprints, circuit training, and intervals should be used to build cardio, burn fat, and increase muscular force. I like to do heart rate intervals, where I can spike my heart rate to a particular number, and then let it recover. Usually, I’ll try to get my heart rate up to 85-90% of my max heart rate (220-my age), and then let it drop down to 60%. I do this for about 8-10 reps, and it usaully only takes me 20 minutes. Here is an example of a cardio workout I did a few weeks back on an elliptical.

Long distance, low intensity cardio is to blame for “killing your muscle”. There is a reason that cross country runners have low muscle mass and football players have muscles on their muscles. Think of your cardio as how many times you can elevate your heart rate, instead of how long you can keep your heart rate up.

It takes a higher percentage of your muscle fibers to contract and work at higher intensities. At lower intensities, your muscles won’t fully contract. If you want your muscles to grow and burn calories at the same time, you need to activate your anaerobic and aerobic systems at the same time.

Try training with heart rate intervals. Do a bout of cardio at full intensity until your heart rate gets up to 85-90% of your maximum heart rate (max heart rate is 220 minus your age). Soon after your heart rate reaches it’s goal, take a rest, or significantly lower the intensity until you heart rate reaches 60% of your max heart rate. Repeat at least 8 times.

Here’s an example of an interval workout I did recently on an elliptical using my heart rate monitor to determine my interval length.

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Short and intense bursts also burn more calories throughout the day called Excessive Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC). The same is true for your resistance training.

2. Compound, Full Body Resistance Training:

Your resistance training should consist of moving heavier weights with your entire body, not lifts that isolate one joint at a time. Studies show that full body resistance training, using more muscles groups at once, can help your body to release more testosterone and other muscle building hormones.

Not only does this type of training build bigger, more functional muscles, but it also burns more calories. It’s pretty simple, the more muscles you involve in every movement, the more calories all of those muscles will burn, during and after a workout.

Make sure that your resistance training requires your core to support or move the weight. If you’re sitting on a leg extension machine, all you’ll work is your quads. Do some one-leg squats instead and work on your core balance to burn more calories and gain more functional strength.

3. Snack All Day:

I’m a vegetarian as well, so I know that it can be a challenge to feel full throughout the day without stuffing yourself at each meal. Try to make sure that you never feel really hungry or really full. If you eat intermittently throughout the day, you’ll also burn more calories, without starving your muscles. Your body “eats” your muscle mass for energy when it goes too long without calories.

You should always have fruit, nuts, protein shakes (vegan), and other snacks and meals on hand, in your car, or at the workplace, to keep you from starving or making bad food decisions. My gym bag always contains at least 2 pieces of fruit, a bag of nuts, and a protein shake when I leave the house.

Grains are also not helpful when it comes to dropping fat. Grain is what I consider to be more of a dead food. You don’t need to refrigerate grain, and it spikes your insulin if you don’t eat it with fat or protein, and offer little in terms of nutrients. Of course you can’t eat 100% fresh fruit and vegetables, but you can minimize the grain and starch intake. There’s a reason that Sushi and Chinese food leaves you hungry in an hour; it’s the rice!

Make sure that your foods also contain a good amount of fat too. Fat is essential for a lot of processes in the body, but it also keeps you from craving grains and other belly fillers.

4. Supporting Supplements:

If you’re not eating meat or eggs, you could have a B vitamin deficiency, among other deficiencies. While I believe meat to be unhealthy and raised irresponsibly, I do think that there are important nutrients that you can find in meat. I take vegan protein, B vitamins, fish oil, and the occasional shot of creatine to offset my lack of meat intake.

5. Variety:

Be sure that your exercise routines and diet has plenty of variety. Your body adapts easily to a repeated stimulus. You have to challenge your body to perform different movements with different intensity and varying duration.

If you’ve been on the same diet and training regimen for a while, your results may be plateauing.

If you’re eating the same thing everyday, you’re body gets bored and doesn’t get the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals it needs. I eat my foods seasonally, so that I get the spectrum of nutrients during the time of the year that nature intended for me to eat them. I don’t eat eggplant in the Winter because nature doesn’t make them then.

Read Quote of Jeff Wu’s answer to Fitness: How do I decrease my fat percentage without reducing muscle mass? on Quora

1. Balance- Work on keeping your center of gravity over your feet. If you’re heavy on one foot, and light on another, your ability to move in any direction is considerably diminished. Being ready to move, means being properly connected to the ground. Make sure that your head is centered above your feet. If it’s off to one side or the other, it will be harder to change directions.

2. Constant Movement- While standing in front of an opponent, your feet and head should be moving at all times. Constant movement means small, quick, and subtle movements in “random” directions. Not only does this make you a moving target, but it also makes you more responsive. Constantly shifting your weight from one direction to another, makes it easier to continue your motion, instead of starting from a stationary position.

3. Small Steps- Not too much, not too little, but just enough. Always make the slightest, smallest movements necessary. Doing so saves energy, but also gives you the ability to change directions, move your head, and attack. Small steps make you less predictable, but also give you the ability to stay connected to the ground. Imagine how hard it would be to throw or dodge punches while in mid air.

4. On Your Balls- Not that your heels should never touch the ground, but they shouldn’t touch for more than a split second. Humans are better at moving when your weight is concentrated on the front part of the foot. Think of the bottom of your foot as sticky; the more surface area that contacts the ground, the harder it will be to lift that foot up off the ground. Imagine how slow you would jump rope if your heels contacted the ground.

5. Practice- You must condition your muscles to make these frequent, yet small adjustments if you expect it to happen while someone is trying to knock you out. While practicing footwork, don’t concentrate on covering distance and maximizing movement, this is called running. Instead, work on moving your feet while throwing punches and moving your head at the same time. If you can stay in position, control your head movement, and throw long, solid punches while moving your feet, you’re probably an elite level boxer.

6. Core Conditioning- Think about all of the movements that have to made by your upper body. Your head has to move in all directions while your torso launches your arms violently. Doing so requires strength from the entire kinetic chain, starting with your feet and legs. All of the movements in your upper body origiNate from your feet, and travel through your core, so the muscle groups in your legs, hips, and core need to be able to work together. Avoid doing exercises that isolate muscle groups like crunches or leg press. Do core exercises while standing on both feet with weight in your hands or on your shoulders. While holding weight above your waist, perform twisting, turning, and circular movements, and concentrate on “using your belly” to move the weight, not your shoulders or arms.

Jumping rope, agility drills, and running are also a great exercises for improving foot work.

The bottom line, you can do ladder drills and jump rope until your feet fall off, but the best workout for improving footwork is shadowboxing. Apply all of the above principles while shadowboxing for best results. Concentrate on moving your feet and head immediately after completing a combination.

Read Quote of Nate Moore’s answer to Martial Arts: What are the best tips to improve overall speed and footwork for martial arts? on Quora

Calm- free from excitement or passion; tranquil: a calm face; a calm manner.

If you haven’t noticed, the very best fighters in the world maintain constant poise and control. Their faces always appear calm and relaxed even though they’re facing the second best fighter in their weight class.  In battle, the best combatants are always calm and collected because they’ve been there before. They aren’t scared of what might happen. They know that when you concentrate on what you don’t want to happen, it’s actually more likely to happen. Instead, concentrate on what you should be doing, not what might be done to you.

If you’re tense and fighting with high intensity, you’re wasting energy: mental and physical. Emotions are a waste of energy and don’t belong in fighting. Fear of failure paired with excitement is a bad combination for winning fights.

In life, keeping calm will be what keeps you from getting into a fight in the first place. Next time you’re in an argument or altercation, keep cool and you’ll win the verbal war. Like the old saying goes, “Cooler heads prevail”.

Strikeforce fighter, Nate Moore, gives his take on the ABC’s of martial arts. Using the principles of MMA training to be applied for everyday life lessons. B = Balance

Balance is the B-word used in this list of martial arts principles by a tai chi master.

Balance- a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.

This could be one of the most important elements to success in martial arts as well as life.

To learn how to balance one’s energies, focus, and effort is one of the most difficult things in life. However, once achieved, balance can allow you to be more effective and efficient in everything you do.

First, you must realize when you are and aren’t balanced. Recognition is the first step to progression, and will allow you to make corrections to your equilibrium for overall improvement.

In martial arts, your movements and weight must both be properly balanced. With your weight off balance, it will be harder to produce desired movements. Unbalanced movement will shift your weight off balance as well.

One must learn how to use his weight to counterbalance his own movements, in equal push and pull forces. For example, you can throw your fist forward with the right side of your body, but in order to maximize speed and power, you’ll need to pull with the left side side too. Doing so not only counterbalances your weight to ensure that you don’t lose your equilibrium, but it also doubles the power produced by the movement of your body.

Knowing when your opponent is off balance is also essential for taking advantage of openings and opportunities. Sensing an imbalance in your opponents stance, movement, attack, and defense is how you can know what your opponent is going to do before he does it. Think of imbalance recognition as seeing into the future.

Taking advantage of an opponent’s unbalanced forces can also allow you to also save energy by reducing the force you’ll need to move yourself or your opponent. This recognition is what allows for a smaller martial artist to take advantage of the heavier opponent’s superior force and weight and use it against him.

Mastering the balancing act of your weight and movement, as well as your opponent’s weight and forces is one of the most essential skills in martial arts.

Attentive is the A-word used in this list of martial arts principles by a tai chi master.

Attentive: characterized by or giving attention; observant

Being attentive indicates that your attention never takes a break and you’re constantly aware of the dangers of your situation. “Alert” and “Awareness” are words that would also fit in the ABC’s. They are distant synonyms of Attentive, but understand that you want to be on alert for anything that your opponent may throw at you. Knowing what what position you’re in and what offense your opponent is capable of throwing at you, is being aware. You have to be prepared for anything, not just what you think your opponent is likely to do next.

Not only do you need to be attentive and aware of your opponent’s offense, but you need to be attentive to your own position and offensive possibilities. Missed opportunities are symptoms of a lack of attention. If you’re inattentive to your hands dropping when standing in front of your opponent, you’ll eventually lose when you fight someone who pays more attention to your dropping hands than you do.

The best martial artists are ever attentive to their opportunities and dangers in any position. That means being aware of the positives and negatives of any situation. You have to be aware of you and your opponent’s positions, offensive and defensive capabilities. Knowing this will allow you to decide when it’s time to strike, defend, and move.

Try to be more attentive to the positives and negatives in your daily life. Practicing awareness and attention will improve your life as well as your martial arts skill.

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