About 10 years ago I was talking to a pioneer of early MMA. This fighter trained all the time, even between fights.
But whenever he had a fight coming up he’d go absolutely mental and grind himself down into an exhausted mess.
For example, he’d start training 3 or 4 times a day, which is already pretty hardcore.
But then he’d start doing even more. Like adding a long-distance run from his home to the training facility. And then training. And then adding a second run AFTER training back to his home. These runs added at least an extra hour and a half of exercise to his already excessive regime.
Not surprisingly he was continually injured. And continually sick. And sometimes he’d lose fights to guys he could’ve easily murdered in the gym!
This was all because of something called ‘overtraining.’
Overtraining is basically breaking your body down faster than it can recover.
Because of these conversations I ended up doing a lot of research about overtraining. I’m not sure that that any of this research ever helped changed this guy’s mind – as far as I could tell he continued with the status quo – but I certainly learned a lot for myself.
So I summed up my newfound knowledge in a couple of slightly egg-heady articles that I then published in ‘Ultimate Athlete’ magazine. Unfortunately this magazine is now defunct, and I don’t think you can get back issues. But you can still read both articles on my website…
Here’s how to figure out whether you’re overtraining or not, and how to organize your training so you don’t overtrain:
Part 1) http://www.grapplearts.com/Overtraining-Article.htm
Part 2) Peaking and Tapering for MMA and Grappling Competition
Like the old saying goes: “take my advice, I’m not using it!”
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