Cardio Capacity - The MMA Gas Tank

Cardio Capacity Is Only Half the Equation

Cardio capacity is only one half of the equation.

Hammer Time: Mark “The Hammer” Coleman is in the UFC Hall of Fame. I worked with Mark on ten training articles during his UFC and PRIDE days. His “coconut bop” was banned by the UFC. He would pin an opponent’s wrist to the mat and hammer his forehead into the opponent’s face. “They took away my best submission!” he lamented.

Human performance and racecar performance have many common benchmarks. In elite auto racing, Formula 1, power-to-weight ratios, fuel capacity and rate of fuel consumption are critically important factors. In human performance, power-to-weight ratio is expressed in the relationship between lean muscle mass and body fat. Fuel capacity and rate of fuel expenditure are related to cardio capacity and how fast that capacity is exhausted when stress is extreme.

Power-to-Weight Ratio in Fighting

In elite fighting, the UFC and MMA in general, power-to-weight ratio, fuel capacity, and rate of fuel consumption are critically important. To put a finer point on the analogy, power-to-weight ratio is evidenced by the need for weight classes in MMA. Weight classes exist because radical disparities in size and strength cannot be ignored. A good big man beats a good little man.

On paper, BJ Penn beats his pal Mark Coleman in every category — speed, skill, experience, agility, flexibility, cardio capacity — save one: size and strength. And for that reason alone, the 260-pound Coleman would manhandle BJ like a petulant 12-year-old. Overwhelming strength cannot be overcome, ergo, weight classes.

In racing, they have engine-displacement limits. Elite engineers and mechanics squeeze out more top-end speed by reducing the car’s bodyweight while increasing horsepower via supercharging and turbocharging.

Power-to-weight ratio is improved when the fighter adds muscle, with concurrent increases in strength and raw power, while reducing excess body fat. The ideal is to reduce unnecessary body fat while increasing muscular horsepower. Better to fight weighing 220 with 9% body fat than to fight weighing 220 with 20% body fat. Hardcore athletes — fighters, lifters, and ballplayers — always seek to improve their power-to-weight ratio: add muscle, reduce fat, increase useful horsepower.

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The MMA Gas Tank

Fighters spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to improve the size of their gas tank. The goal is to increase the length of time, during a fight, that the fighter can put out at or near 100% of current cardio and strength capacity before fatigue, oxygen debt, muscular exhaustion, and sheer physical distress shut down the effort.

The old gym phrase is “lactic acid,” and every fighter knows the sensation. More precisely, fight fatigue is multi-factor. It is not one simple chemical. It is energy-system stress, neuromuscular fatigue, oxygen demand, pain, skill degradation, emotional stress, and the terrifying realization that the other guy is still coming.

Some fighters have “great gas tanks,” meaning they can still put out near-maximal effort late in the fifth round of a championship fight. This capacity can be improved with training.

If the effort is sufficiently demanding, total depletion of available energy can occur. The body’s fuel is spent. When this occurs, the fighter’s body shuts down. In a do-or-die exchange of blows with a capable opponent, exhaustion, even in highly conditioned athletes, can occur in a matter of minutes.

A bigger gas tank increases the length of time the fighter can exert hard. After an all-out effort, the fighter must recover quickly and be prepared to exert maximally again, and again, and again, as demanded by the ebb and flow of fighting a skilled and powerful opponent.

UFC fighters must punch, kick, grapple, push and tug. They exert in isotonic and isometric fashion. They must shower an opponent with rapid-fire punches and kicks. They must absorb blows, deal with pain, struggle, gasp for oxygen, and remain dangerous. Their body rips through fuel like an F-22 Raptor kicking on the afterburners.

Metaphorically, MMA fighters seek to increase their 10-gallon gas tank into a 15-gallon gas tank. Just doing what an MMA fighter does — training in the sweaty intensity of fighting drills, skills and disciplines — will, over time and with repetition, increase cardio capacity. Some feel this is not enough.

Mark Coleman, Pete Williams, and the Cost of Gassing Out

I had an acquaintance named Bob. He was a high-level bodybuilder, an NPC national champion and hardcore gym owner. Bob was approached by an up-and-coming UFC fighter. The fighter, who was quite bright, sought out Bob to help him build a bigger gas tank. Above all else, cage fighters fear gassing out, that awful point where a fighter has expended every bit of energy and is now helpless against any onslaught waged by an opponent.

One terrific example of gassing out occurred when my friend Mark “The Hammer” Coleman gassed out in his UFC 17 fight against Pete Williams. Mark flurried and attempted to overwhelm Pete, who withstood the barrage. Coleman became so exhausted from his onslaught that, standing, he could not hold his hands up to protect his face. He was so gassed out that he could not react in time to block a powerful head kick that hit him square in the face and knocked him unconscious.

Mark Coleman is a friend. He and I talked training for many years when he was competing in the UFC and in PRIDE. One of Mark’s favored ways to build his gas tank was to wrestle four Ohio State heavyweight wrestlers, one after another, two minutes each, no breaks until one of them pinned an exhausted Hammer or submitted him. Each session he fought to last longer.

He also told me that in his “gas tank building,” he favored steep hill running. He did not quit until he had thrown up.

Bob’s Bigger-Gas-Tank Experiment

The quest for a bigger gas tank is one of the strongest commonalities among MMA training strategies. Bob and the UFC fighter would get together three times weekly. The strategy was to have the fighter go through an excruciating, never-ending series of exercises, high-rep sets, forced reps, and drop sets, mostly using progressive resistance machines.

The never-ending exercises were performed one after another with zero rest. The fighter would take every exercise to positive failure, at which point Bob would either administer forced reps or oversee drop sets. Every set of every exercise was high-rep and taken past capacity. After 40 nonstop minutes, this gruesome regimen routinely ended with the fighter reduced to a ball of exhausted fatigue. This was the goal: beat him down.

They did remarkably well. The UFC fighter became a world champion and held the title for more than a year. He was defeated for the title twice in devastating fashion. In his final fight, he was so overwhelmed that he gassed out in less than four minutes of the first round, this after being beaten badly and TKO’d. After the fight, Bob asked him, “What happened?”

“I gassed out!”

“In less than four minutes? That’s impossible!” Bob said.

What Bob was missing was the rate of fuel consumption. While Bob and the dethroned champion had no doubt increased the fighter’s gas tank, the fighter burned through every bit of energy he had in less than four minutes during his “getting my ass beat” emergency. During a mad scramble in the middle of a fight, you burn through available energy like a drag racer flipping on the nitrous oxide switch.

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Fuel Consumption Matters as Much as Fuel Capacity

Having a big gas tank is fantastic, but the rate of fuel and energy consumption is critical.

You can burn through your monster 20-gallon fuel tank far faster than the guy you are fighting burns through his 10-gallon tank. If he has a better handle on his rate of consumption than you, he can make his smaller tank outlast you.

Bob had reasoned that by taking the champion past his capacity, his cardio capacity would be enhanced. In a vacuum this is true. If the UFC fighter had been untrained, a regular person, this approach would most certainly have improved that person’s ability to exert harder and longer. The normal person would increase his gas tank.

In the world of the champion, this was the wrong prescription for the ailment. Bob did not consider the sheer amount of cardio-capacity training the modern MMA athlete must already undertake. Atop all that, Bob beat the fighter into the ground three times weekly.

The fighter was already doing roadwork, performing stand-up American boxing, practicing Muay Thai leg and hand strikes, spending time on mat work, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, submission training, jump rope, medicine-ball work, hill running, loaded wheelbarrow pushes, and all the other general conditioning drills fighters do.

On top of all that, Bob purposefully crushed him three times weekly in 40-minute sessions designed to grind him down, all in the name of building a bigger gas tank.

This was flawed thinking. Bob would counter, “Well, we won the UFC light-heavyweight world championship and successfully defended the belt three times before being dethroned.”

I believe the thrice-weekly resistance-training body-flogging sessions cut into recovery in an athlete already in dire need of recovery. By purposefully fatiguing an already fatigued athlete, the quality of the training drills had to be dramatically reduced. Regardless of the fight drill or skill, performance is always improved when the athlete is rested and fresh enough to execute with quality.

Training in a state of continual fatigue guarantees substandard training sessions, all sacrificed on the altar of building a bigger gas tank.

Smarter MMA Conditioning: Build the Tank, Slow the Burn

Instead of apportioning training time to overloading muscles for the sake of overloading them, and hopefully forestalling the trigger point where they become overloaded, why not figure out a way to slow down the rate at which the fuel is burned?

Instead of training in a state of continual fatigue for the sake of increasing a gas tank by a few gallons, instead of beating the body down purposefully for the sake of being beat down, why not make the fighter more efficient?

Instead of going through all the hell and torture of increasing a 15-gallon fuel tank to 17 gallons, figure out a way to burn through 15 gallons slower.

Any full-time MMA fighter is going to have a great gas tank, or he would not be at that level. Rather than devote extra training time to beating the athlete down, rely on fighter drills and fight skills to improve cardio capacity. Then attack the real gains: determining ways to slow down the rate of energy expenditure.

The smartest fighter is not always the one with the biggest gas tank. The smartest fighter is the one who can fight hard, fight efficiently, recover between bursts and avoid burning through fuel like an idiot.

Equipment Notes for MMA Gas-Tank Training

Fight conditioning is not created by equipment alone. It is created by skill practice, drilling, sparring, recovery, pacing, strength, cardio, and intelligent coaching. Equipment merely gives the athlete tools for repeatable work.

For controlled cardio, fighters and coaches can compare exercise bikes, treadmills, stair climbers, and indoor rowing machines. For combat-focused rooms, cross-training, boxing and MMA equipment can support the drills that matter most.

A rower such as the Assault Rower Pro, a stair climber such as the StairMaster GAUNTLET StepMill, a treadmill such as the Spirit Fitness CT800 commercial treadmill, or an upright bike such as the Spirit Fitness CU800 commercial upright bike can be useful when the mode matches the athlete’s goal, joints, recovery, and fight schedule.

The equipment does not decide the training strategy. The coach and athlete do that.

Safety Note for MMA Conditioning and Fatigue-State Training

MMA conditioning is high risk when fatigue is layered on top of fatigue without regard for recovery, skill quality, concussion risk, joint stress, sleep, nutrition, or fight schedule. Training to failure, forced reps, drop sets, hill sprints, sparring, grappling rounds, heavy bag work, and high-intensity intervals should be scaled to the athlete’s level and total weekly workload.

Stop or reduce intensity for chest pain, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, sharp pain, dizziness, loss of coordination, repeated technical collapse, concussion symptoms, abnormal fatigue, or performance that keeps sliding session after session. Combat-sport athletes should use qualified coaching and medical guidance when needed.

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW editorial perspective and fight-training experience. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, fight-camp, or programming advice.

Related MMA and Cardio Reading

For more Marty Gallagher fight-culture commentary, read In Praise of UFC Fighter Nate Diaz. For broader equipment context, read Cardio Equipment for Home, Commercial and Rehab Use.