Hi Guys,

This week I have been talking to Alex Gold from www.AbsoluteGoldPerformance.com. Alex is a personal and MMA trainer who has helped coach top athletes and wrote many excellent articles for magazines such as fighters only. Here is what he had to say about MMA and training in general;

First things first Alex can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved with strength and conditioning/mma?

I have always liked sports, but never been any good at them! After trying the usual sports in school, I started doing wrestling training and weight training with a guy I knew from the gym. This eventually got me into pro wrestling, and then powerlifting. I stopped that for a while due to getting chronic fatigue syndrome (yes, I am THE guy that actually managed to overtrain!) and took up Muay Thai/MMA when I resumed training. Somewhere along the line amongst that lot I got qualified to train people, and I was always fascinated by MMA training – I think it must be the fact that I like a challenge, since MMA is one of the hardest sports to program training for! I always read research with the slant of ‘how could this help a fighter?’

What do you think the main 3 mistakes that people make when starting to get in shape?

Well, I actually have a list of 6 in my article on my site! (www.AbsoluteGoldPerformance.com) Without reading it again and copying it, off the top of my head I would say – training too often, not training legs and not eating enough.

What three pieces of advice would you give them?

Train less, train your legs and eat more!

What mobility and recovery work would you consider vital to mma athletes?

Hmm, hard question. My answer is – a proper dynamic warm-up (especially focusing on hips and shoulders), foam rolling and contrast showers.

 Many people are now stating that steady state cardio is over used and not sports specific enough to mma anymore. Do you believe that it still has a place in mma training or are people just stuck in the past?

This is somewhat of an embarrassing point for me since I fell for the whole ‘steady state cardio sucks!’ bandwagon a while back and went around arguing about it…but my answer now is yes, of course it has a place in MMA training! For those who claim that it is not needed because MMA is an anaerobic sport, I have two questions. One - the ATP-CP system lasts for around 10 seconds maximally and up to 30 seconds in some situations, the anaerobic glycolytic system lasts for 2-3 minutes…a round in MMA lasts for 5 minutes, so how does it not involve the aerobic system? In fact, studies done on boxers and wrestlers have shown the energy production for combat sports to be 90% aerobic. The second question is – what do people do for the rest of the day? The answer is (or should be), rest and recover from training. This recovery is facilitated by the aerobic system providing energy. I like to use a money metaphor – if you have a job that pays 200 a week, you can only spend 100 x 2 (or 50 x 4 and so on) before you start to go into the red. By increasing the available money each week (adaptive reserves), you are able to spend more and still make a saving (progress). The way to increase these adaptive reserves is to have an efficient aerobic system, amongst other things. Of course, aerobic training should not be a priority around fight time, but that is a fairly simple programming issue.

Many mma and jujitsu athletes are still not strength training. How vital would you say it is?

To totally rip off Alywn Cosgrove here, I will ask a question he likes to ask – if strength isn’t important in fighting, why don’t men fight women? If you answered, ‘because the women would get destroyed’, you see the value in strength training for fighting! Plus - related to the question above - if one fighter is using 70% of his strength fighting for position and the other is using 100%, one will probably be in an aerobic state and the other in an anaerobic state. Guess who’ll tire out first!

What 3 things could everyone who trains mma benefit from doing supplementary to their training?

Simple things like soft tissue work, using supplements like fish oil to help recovery and also resting more are things that would massively help a lot of people.

What is the best 3 training products you can have in your house?

Bands (www.AbsoluteGoldUK.com/shop/bands.html),
a foam roller (www.AbsoluteGoldUK.com/shop/roller.html)
and a sled (www.AbsoluteGoldUK.com/shop/sled.html) !
Although I do sell all of those items, it is seriously a pretty good list, and one of the main reasons I sell the stuff – I believe it is useful. I would also recommend a barbell set (and a power rack if you can afford one).

What is your favourite aspect of training at the moment?

Personally I am getting back into strength training, can’t beat a bit of heavy weight! I am also a fan of kettlebell training, which I use a lot with fighters for conditioning and general-specific training.

What 5 things do you think are awesome at the moment and what 5 suck?

Suck:
1.       The economy
2.       Bodypump classes
3.       Soy
4.       Traffic
5.       The ‘entitlement’ mindset in today’s society

Thanks,

Check more of Alex and his great training ideas at www.AbsoluteGoldPerformance.com