Do Your Roadwork!

[Nomad]

You need to remember that Conor was an mma fighter in a boxing match with one the the greats of boxing.
You get Floyd Wrestling or doing BJJ and Conor would have the better conditioning of the two.
"Cardio" is sport specific and while there is carryover, nothing beats years of experience and flawless technique sport for being well conditioned to perform at that sport.

Absolutely, agree 100%. Regardless of how good his cardio could have been, the stress of competing at that level coupled with unfamiliarity, along with Mayweather pressing the assault, he would've gassed regardless. I have no doubt he went a full 12 rounds in sparring sessions leading up to that fight.

That being said, his cardio has been an issue outside of MayMac, and I really think roadwork is much more transferable to combat sports than cycling or swimming...

[DocOctagon]

You need to remember that Conor was an mma fighter in a boxing match with one the the greats of boxing.
You get Floyd Wrestling or doing BJJ and Conor would have the better conditioning of the two.
"Cardio" is sport specific and while there is carryover, nothing beats years of experience and flawless technique sport for being well conditioned to perform at that sport.

Absolutely, agree 100%. Regardless of how good his cardio could have been, the stress of competing at that level coupled with unfamiliarity, along with Mayweather pressing the assault, he would've gassed regardless. I have no doubt he went a full 12 rounds in sparring sessions leading up to that fight.

That being said, his cardio has been an issue outside of MayMac, and I really think roadwork is much more transferable to combat sports than cycling or swimming...

You guys might find this interesting, another perspective. Georges St-Pierre's coach Firhas Zahabi doesn't prescribe a lot of cardio or running for GSP. Reason being he has his fighters test vo2 max among other things, and it turned out that GSP had a naturally high vo2 max. So he has GSP spend more energy and training time on other things. Spending a lot of time on running or cardio would be an inefficient use of GSP's time.

BUT....his other "normal" fighters tend to have average baseline vo2 max levels, so they do a lot more cardio relative to GSP. So the takeaway would be starting point and personal strengths/weaknesses is really important when allocating training.

***Source of this is one of Zahabi's Tristar youtube videos, if anyone's interested I'll see if I can dig it up.

[DocOctagon]

Plus, if you lived in Vegas, you may want to run at 3 am too . . . it's the only time it isn't
above 90 degrees F!

Lol good point!

[Maxrip13]

You need to remember that Conor was an mma fighter in a boxing match with one the the greats of boxing.
You get Floyd Wrestling or doing BJJ and Conor would have the better conditioning of the two.
"Cardio" is sport specific and while there is carryover, nothing beats years of experience and flawless technique sport for being well conditioned to perform at that sport.

Absolutely, agree 100%. Regardless of how good his cardio could have been, the stress of competing at that level coupled with unfamiliarity, along with Mayweather pressing the assault, he would've gassed regardless. I have no doubt he went a full 12 rounds in sparring sessions leading up to that fight.

That being said, his cardio has been an issue outside of MayMac, and I really think roadwork is much more transferable to combat sports than cycling or swimming...

You are definitely right on all of the above. In the grand scheme of things a solid base of LSD running over an extended period would have done wonders for going the full 12 rounds. Sadly they only had 12 weeks and had to make do with the time they had.

That lack of conditioning seems to be a massive factor with all these recent "movement based fighters" lately. They look great and thrown some excellent odd angle type attacks, but if they don't get that perfect shot they are prone to being grinded out.

They just never get that exposure to constant hard work and grinding away at something because they are focusing on being all "flowy" and being"efficient." I notice this with BJJ and wrestling in my own training also.

[Maxrip13]

You need to remember that Conor was an mma fighter in a boxing match with one the the greats of boxing.
You get Floyd Wrestling or doing BJJ and Conor would have the better conditioning of the two.
"Cardio" is sport specific and while there is carryover, nothing beats years of experience and flawless technique sport for being well conditioned to perform at that sport.

Absolutely, agree 100%. Regardless of how good his cardio could have been, the stress of competing at that level coupled with unfamiliarity, along with Mayweather pressing the assault, he would've gassed regardless. I have no doubt he went a full 12 rounds in sparring sessions leading up to that fight.

That being said, his cardio has been an issue outside of MayMac, and I really think roadwork is much more transferable to combat sports than cycling or swimming...

You guys might find this interesting, another perspective. Georges St-Pierre's coach Firhas Zahabi doesn't prescribe a lot of cardio or running for GSP. Reason being he has his fighters test vo2 max among other things, and it turned out that GSP had a naturally high vo2 max. So he has GSP spend more energy and training time on other things. Spending a lot of time on running or cardio would be an inefficient use of GSP's time.

BUT....his other "normal" fighters tend to have average baseline vo2 max levels, so they do a lot more cardio relative to GSP. So the takeaway would be starting point and personal strengths/weaknesses is really important when allocating training.

***Source of this is one of Zahabi's Tristar youtube videos, if anyone's interested I'll see if I can dig it up.

I remember the video you are talking about. GSP was definitely ahead of his time and one of the first examples of an mma training camp being completely tailored to a fighter, similar to how boxers will be the sole focus of their own training camp. GSP travelled all over the place to get the best training he could and improved on every single weakness he had besides finishing ability .

I get the whole "iron sharpens iron " mentality, but it's hard to have multiple champions training together and not have egos come into things. I think that's why you have camps like AKA, with multiple champions sparring and getting injured before their fights. Seperate those boys and bring in their own sparring partners and I guarantee they have less injuries.

[Ten8]

I remember the video you are talking about. GSP was definitely ahead of his time and one of the first examples of an mma training camp being completely tailored to a fighter, similar to how boxers will be the sole focus of their own training camp. GSP travelled all over the place to get the best training he could and improved on every single weakness he had besides finishing ability .

I get the whole "iron sharpens iron " mentality, but it's hard to have multiple champions training together and not have egos come into things. I think that's why you have camps like AKA, with multiple champions sparring and getting injured before their fights. Seperate those boys and bring in their own sparring partners and I guarantee they have less injuries.

Interesting! I didn't realize multiple champs trained together like that during mma camp. Definitely can see issues arising.

[Maxrip13]

I remember the video you are talking about. GSP was definitely ahead of his time and one of the first examples of an mma training camp being completely tailored to a fighter, similar to how boxers will be the sole focus of their own training camp. GSP travelled all over the place to get the best training he could and improved on every single weakness he had besides finishing ability .

I get the whole "iron sharpens iron " mentality, but it's hard to have multiple champions training together and not have egos come into things. I think that's why you have camps like AKA, with multiple champions sparring and getting injured before their fights. Seperate those boys and bring in their own sparring partners and I guarantee they have less injuries.

Interesting! I didn't realize multiple champs trained together like that during mma camp. Definitely can see issues arising.

I am working off embedded videos and interviews and have no intimate inside knowledge of all MMA camps. Just a s a disclaimer haha.

It becomes an ego thing I guess. It's a bit hard to be a good sparring partner and let someone work something when you also have a fight coming up. AKA and Extreme Couture were two pretty famous gyms back in the day, known for so called "gym wars". They also had a pretty high rate of injuries and fighters pulling out.