With Ultimate Fighter Coach Cleber Luciano

05/19/2010  7:00PM – 10:00PM

Don’t miss the annual No Gi BJJ workshop with Cleber Luciano.

Cleber is:
• …a 3rd Degree Black Belt under Royler and Rickson Gracie
• …a 3 Time World Jiu-Jitsu Champion
• …a 7 Time Pan-American Champion
• …a 5 Time Brazilian State Champion
• …an Ultimate Fighter Jiu Jitsu and MMA Coach

In this intimate workshop at OC Kickboxing & MMA Cleber will share with you the advanced techniques, submissions, combinations and escapes of No Gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Make sure to get your pass early, we are getting a lot of requests for this workshop and space may become limited.

OC Kickboxing & Mixed Martial Arts fighter and MMA Instructor Travis Thompson of Costa Mesa, CA finished Dan Fair at the Gladiator Challenge Vision Quest Pro Am MMA event via Knockout after only 16 seconds of the first round.

Thompson, a Purple Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu never got a chance to demonstrate his ground fighting skills in this Pro MMA bout at Soboba Casino.

Thompson (an orthodox fighter) scooped the right jab of Fair (a South paw) and returned a solid right hand of his own, stunning Fair. He then stepped in for another right cross sending Fair to the canvas where Thompson finished with more punches to his downed opponent’s head.

Click here for a video: Travis Thompson Wins !

Travis is THE MAN!

Come and try out one of his classes at OC Kickboxing and MMA in Irvine, California!

Written by Travis “the Gorilla” Thompson

Now we can dive into the topic of building muscles. As a grappler, kick boxer, or MMA athlete we want functional muscle strength. We do not want over-sized biceps limiting our range of motion. To do this we need cardio mixed into our anaerobic exercise routine. This is an example of metabolic conditioning or metcon for short. Consider metcon to be HIIT at its most difficult. The goal of metcon is to condition your heart. Conditioning your heart will allow yourself to continually pump fresh oxygen throughout your body and minimize your recovery time. Searching high and low with references I started to do the famous P90X, so let me explain its pros and cons.

For those unfamiliar with the workout “P90X”, it prides itself on the principle of muscle confusion and incorporates plyometric training as well as yoga into its workout. It also includes lots of bodyweight movements for legs, chest, back, arms and shoulders. I enjoyed P90X and my muscles gained significant endurance but I immediately noticed what it lacked. I finished the program but it lacked explosive, powerful exercises. I would catch people in submissions but not have the power to rip through their defensive grips. I began to write out my own program but then fell upon crossfit.com.

I had been told crossfit was intense and not to be taken lightly. Seeing it as a challenge and learning they post the workout for free on the internet, I began researching. Crossfit reviews are a love/hate relationship. The most common complaint on the internet is that crossfit builds too much muscle too fast. So I thought, “Sweet”. Then I heard that Crossfit can cause rhabdo (skeletal muscle tissue breaks down, enters the blood stream and can result in death). Nevertheless, I was excited.

Sample workouts include:
• For 20 minutes continuously sprint a ¼ mile followed by a max rep of pull-ups. Repeat with minimal rest for 20 consecutive minutes.
• 7 Max weight reps of power clean.
• Fran- 21 95lbs. thrusters, 21 pull-ups, 15 95lbs. thrusters, 15 pull-ups, 9 95lbs. thrusters, 9 pull-ups.

We are seeing the mix of muscles being incorporated here. These workouts are done at max intensity with as little rest as possible. As I stated with Tabata style cardio earlier, you do not conserve your energy for the end. The above workout is done by the best in less than three minutes. Those workouts are all the strength training that is done for the day. The secret is true muscle confusion and diversity. You use your muscles in different ways everyday instead of the traditional exercises like bench press. All of these exercises, even the 7 power cleans use several muscles and force the practitioner to explode through the movement. In three months, I built a ridiculous amount of power that was noticeable to training partners when it came time to grapple. The only problem, muscle weighs more than fat. I weighed 195 pounds and needed to weigh 170 in exactly 30 days. I have already explained cardio here and how to cut weight in a previous article. Dropping the weight was no problem. However, in order to do so, I had to quit lifting completely and went on the diet I described. Thankfully, muscle is easy to maintain through light exercise. As soon as I started lifting my weight jumped back to the 190’s.

To maintain a more consistent weight so I can fight at 170 without having to lose a crazy amount of weight right before the fight, I have come across another workout. From what I was told, this is the program a trainer prescribed for Tito Ortiz and other fighters. It is a fair mix of sprints and weight training. The goal is to tire out your muscles and then run, forcing you to fight through the lactic acid that has built up. By the end of the second round, you should be getting close to exhausted and the third round is brutal. The program is three days a week and is three rounds long. It takes about 45 minutes which is perfect because testosterone levels drop at roughly 60 minutes of anaerobic training. The workout is as follows: 2 exercises for each major muscle group being in the order I prefer, Chest-Back-Legs (1 quad, 1 hamstring per round)-Shoulders-Arms (1 bicep, 1 triceps per round) followed immediately by a 3-5 minute sprint. Resting one minute between rounds. I was told to do the legs first, however I have found that putting them in the middle of the upper body lifts allows me to sustain higher reps on the upper body exercises. This sport is heavily based on your body, your opponent’s body, and body control. I try to do as much body weight exercises as possible but am not ignorant to benefits of other exercises. I aim for high reps and less weight, although reversing them is by no means wrong. We want muscle endurance over a high single rep output, as mentioned before. I also try not to do the same exercises in any of the rounds so essentially I do 6 different exercises for each muscle group. Variations are very good as is substituting. Variations being round 1, doing regular push-ups, round 2 wide-grip push-ups, round 3 diamond push-ups. Here are samples for each muscle group.

Note: I prefer dumbbells and resistance bands over barbells to isolate muscles. Again mixing those up is never discouraged. I suggest using a weight so that you can do 15-20 reps on each exercise. Push-ups (variations included) can always be done in much higher numbers and pull-ups should be done to failure (as many as possible).

Again variation is key and substitute when necessary. Below is a table of Monday-Sunday. I have also seen great benefits as well from doing yoga and recommend Sundays to doing yoga or prolonged stretching. Go out and buy a 30-40 minute long DVD on stretching, if possible power yoga. There are several that come with 5-6 different 20 minute yoga workouts. Put your video in and once a week do one or two different yoga workouts. I always promote tailoring and using different variations every week to keep from boredom. Using your muscles in differing ways promotes the most growth. Feel free to change the order of any of the exercises on the prescribed Monday, Wednesday, Friday. For example doing back-shoulders-legs-chest-arms is ok. However, do not do 2 sets of 1 for each exercise. What I mean is not to do this: 1 chest-1 back-1 leg-etc. and then do the second set of each. Do both exercises for each muscle group back to back before going onto the next muscle group.

Many are going to quickly notice that I have not once mentioned abs. Everything you do following this workout and MMA related training is going to engage your core one way or another. Muay Thai kicks rotate and engage the core, grappling builds strong stomach muscles, push-ups, pull-ups, etc. all engage your core. The most common mistake is people over work their abs for results. Bodybuilders do not work their arms seven days a week and abs should not be done every day either. Some will insist on doing abs, keep it limited to 3 times a week, and with a day of rest in between, your abs need rest like any other muscle group. I do not do ab workouts very often. If ab exercises are something you are committed to then make sure you are equally working your obliques, lower back, upper abs, lower abs, and inner abs. People often think a six-pack is achieved by doing extensive ab exercises however that is wrong. Every person on the planet has a six-pack; most are just covered in a layer of fat which means you need to diet. Ab exercises will not get rid of the fat hiding them nor burn extra fat in that region. One of the biggest exercise myths is the belief that doing sit-ups will compensate for having eaten a poor meal. Fast food followed by 50 sit-ups will only make the stomach region bigger as its building both muscle and fat in that region. Fat and muscle are different tissue and cannot be converted from one to the other.

Don’t forget that what you do after your workout is as important if not more important than the workout itself. A workout at moderate intensity followed by proper nutrition will net better gains than an intense workout completed by a run through the McDonald’s drive-thru. Windows close fast. Immediately following a workout, your depleted muscles are going to absorb anything and everything they are given. You want to give them protein (protein shakes or protein-rich foods). Protein is the basic building block of life and the core of what muscles are made of. The most important windows for eating to my knowledge are as follows: within 30 minutes of completing a workout, 90 minutes after a workout and three hours after your workout. Essentially, these are the worst times to cheat. However, your reps and strength can go up on a horrible diet, it just won’t show so much physically.

Below is a rough weekly guide following my suggested program. Remember Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is for three rounds.

Written by Travis “the Gorilla” Thompson

The best cardiovascular exercise for any sport is sport-specific (engaging in the sport). It is also the best way to improve as an athlete. In the case of MMA, this means sparring. However, sparring occasionally results in injury and cannot be trained at max intensity regularly, so we must do additional cardio training (face the dreaded exercise machines). Again, we want sprints with short rest. For example, take an Olympic level cross-country runner versus an Olympic sprinter. The sprinter is stronger, quicker and more explosive or POWERFUL. As an added perk, sprinters have more desired bodies than a distance runner. Sprinters are chiseled while distance runners do not have as much muscle definition and sometimes have flab. This is because of the difference in how they train. When distance runners compete they run for hours and need lots of stored calories (fat) to burn while competing.

Speaking of the Olympics, Dr. Tabata is a Japanese Olympic coach who through trial and error found an optimal training style to maximize cardio gains. The goal according to Dr. Tabata, is to spike your heart rate which will boost your metabolism for up to 48 hours. (His principles can be applied to weight lifting as well. Google Tabata or Guerilla Cardio and you will find the scientific data). Traditionally, the work to rest ratio was 1:3 respectively. For example, one would sprint at max effort for a period of time (Let’s use 30 seconds) and then rest for 3 times as long as they sprinted for. In our example, the subject would rest for a minute and thirty seconds. Dr. Tabata revamped the method into a 2:1 work to rest ratio. He found that doing 8 rounds at 20:10 was the optimal range. The subject would exercise at max effort for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds of rest before returning to max effort for 7 additional rounds. The key is that every round is max effort (the subject does not go lighter in the first rounds so that they can complete the later rounds). By round 5 the subject should be at the point of exhaustion and struggling to complete the final rounds. This workout is preceded by a 5 minute warm-up and followed by a 5 minute cool-down totaling 14 minutes.

If we choose to use sprinting for our exercise of choice, our warm-up and cool-down will be jogging. The warm-up should be fast enough so that one does not tire, while at the same time they are sweating prior to the actual workout portion. If the subject is not sweating, they are not warmed up sufficiently and should jog until they are sweating. The cool-down should be at minimum a very slow jog (active recovery). This trains the heart to recover even while the body is still in use.

Here it is in short:
• 5 minute warm-up
• 4 minutes (8 thirty second rounds) of 20 seconds max effort, 10 second rest
• 5 minute cool-down

By following Tabata, I have seen my cardio excel quickly. This type of training is also better for burning fat. As first stated it burns fat rather than muscle but it continues to burn fat after the workout. On a slow paced workout, once exercise is ceased, so is fat and muscle burning. Working out at this intensity will skyrocket the heart rate and boost your metabolism. Dr. Tabata’s research found that the body’s metabolism remained high for up to 48 hours after the significantly shorter workout. Many people use the burned calorie counter on exercise machines as their “proof” of burned calories. They may burn 800 in their hour of slow cardio while I burn 350 in only a ¼ of the time but my body is going to continue burning calories and surpass their 800.

To keep the exercise challenging we need resistance. To do this set the treadmill at an incline, increase the resistance on the stationary bike, etc. When I first began, the treadmill incline was 7% and the first rounds were always at a faster speed than the later rounds. I prefer a running on a treadmill to running outside because it forces me to continue at a desired speed. When running outside, it is hard to know how fast you are running on the last set compared to the first so you cannot measure your progress as effectively. However, this cardio format may be performed on most exercise machines as well as by jumping rope or swimming etc.

Written by Travis “the Gorilla” Thompson

We all want to be bigger, faster and stronger right? Isn’t that what is pounded into our heads, or at least for males since high school football? Well the truth is, you can’t peak in all three at once. In combat sports, the key is POWER not strength nor speed but the right combination of both. This can be supported through basic physics:

POWER = MASS × FORCE

In the equation, mass is the same as strength and force represents velocity or speed. Consider the two extremes. Think of someone big and strong pushing somebody; it will not hurt nor leave a bruise. It will only off-balance the being for a moment. This example represents a large mass with minimal velocity. At the other end, consider a 65MPH gust of wind. This time the object is moving fast, but has minimal mass and again only off-balances but does not injure a being. Let us combine the two and use a baseball as our mass and set its velocity to 65MPH. Any volunteers want to go down to the batting cage and let the machine throw pitches at 65MPH at them? This is taking a mass, speeding it up in which case the power is increased as our volunteers’ bruises are going to demonstrate. So, what is the best type of exercise for combat sports?

First, let us clear up the discrepancy between anaerobic and aerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise is training at a higher intensity for shorter periods of time. It can include the training of the bodies various muscle groups as well as short bursts of cardiovascular training. Aerobic exercise is prolonged exercise such as running several miles at a moderate pace.

Anaerobic training at the right intensity can increase aerobic levels but the reverse is not always true. Firstly, anaerobic training is not restricted to weights but does need a form of resistance. Circuit training can elevate ones heart rate increasing their cardiovascular system while building muscle at the same time. More popular today is High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT. HIIT is shorter work-outs that leave the subject feeling completely depleted by the end of their work-out due to the fast pace which elevates the heart rate and cardiovascular muscles while simultaneously building the beach body muscles.

On the other side, committing exclusively to aerobic exercises can be detrimental to your beach body muscles herein classified as: the core (upper/lower abs, oblique’s and, lower back), legs, chest, back, arms, shoulders and neck. Going back to the evolution theories, human bodies are adapted to hold fat over muscle for two important reasons. First, early humans would often have to go several days without eating therefore the body adapted to holding fat for such emergencies. Secondly, fat requires fewer calories to maintain than muscle mass does. For example, if we take two test subjects, one being a body builder the other being an average person. If they both consumed the same number of calories taken from the exact same foods in a day while engaging in identical exercise, the body builder will have burned significantly more calories throughout the day as the muscles expend significantly more calories. Doing extensive periods of aerobic cardio will cause the body to begin breaking down muscle tissue rather than fat. An optimal time frame for aerobic activity should be about 20-30 minutes at a challenging pace, never an hour if you want to maintain muscle mass. This can be adjusted depending on the individual’s goals. For MMA, workouts should focus on sprints over distance running. Our breed of athletes need to be able to go max effort for the duration of a competition. This can range from a five minute grappling match to 3×5 minute rounds of MMA totaling 15 minutes with 2 minutes of rest. Being able to run at 65% for 45 minutes to an hour is wasting a half hour or more of your day and breaking down your muscles. With this in mind, what should we do for cardio?