Start Your Own UFC Fitness Regime

Jason Young

UFC Fighter

First off, you need to start with diet. When I’m cutting weight I tend to cut out all sugar drinks and I tend to drink a lot of water, anything from two to four litres a day. I also try to cut out carbs at about 6 o’clock in the evening and I make my carbohydrates brown, like brown pasta, brown rice. I will eat porridge for my breakfast and depending on how hard I am trying to diet I’ll add sugar or honey to it, but usually I’ll put raisins and nuts like a handful into it. Dried fruit is good because you'll need some sort of sugar. For lunch, I’ll have something like brown rice with chicken and salad or something like that.

Don't kill yourself in the gym
Now, once you start with the fitness, there are some key things to remember. You can't push yourself too hard. I would recommend going on a really slow run or bike ride for cardio. The longer you do something for, the more calories you're going to burn. It's not about simply killing yourself for ten minutes on a machine. Go nice and easy. Honestly, you can go just faster than a brisk walk and you'll still be burning fat. After about half an hour, around 20 per cent of your body fat begins to start burning. The longer you're active, the better. Split it up: I usually run for half an hour or 45 minutes and then jump on a bike for a similar time and won't go at a fast pace at all.

Hitting the weights
I personally tend not to do a load of weights, and I know for a lot of guys they'll simply want to get toned and develop muscle rather than become enormous. So, for me, it's about smaller weights with lots of reps. When I'm properly training, I'm doing weights around three times a weight and it's explosive work. I'll do things like tyre flipping and battle ropes. Battle ropes is really good for leg acid build up. You can hold them in motion to do hooks, you jump and down to do squats with them in your hands and you've got to try and actually make a wave in the ropes. A lot of work I do is for explosive energy, so pushing cars, and things like that.

Mistakes men make
Men concentrate on their upper bodies far too much. You have to concentrate on everything. Don't just use the weights, check out doing exercises for explosive energy, too. You can go to specific mixed martial arts gyms with the exercises for the actual fighters. They'll have the tyres, the medicine balls and battle ropes. I would really recommended training after work. I used to be a plasterer and get up at half six in the morning, so it just wasn't feasible to train that early. Your mind is working after a day's graft, too. When I train really early, my brain's not quite switched on, which can lead to mistakes and potentially injuries. I always try and make sure I try after midday. Early mornings are fine for running, but no gym work. If you're cutting weight, it's also good to run before you eat breakfast. Because your last meal before sleep is dinner, you burn off calories overnight and continue to burn more and more fat. Whereas eating before training gives you fresh calories to burn off.