How McGregor has adapted his physiology for boxing
“If you look at the work-rest ratio of boxing, it’s about 3-to-1. If you look at the work-rest ratio of a UFC fight, it’s about 1-to-4. It completely flips the physiology on its head, right?”
UFC lightweight champion has had to make tremendous changes to prepare for tonight’s Floyd Mayweather fight. MMA uses the same punches as boxing, but with significant technical differences, and radically different set ups. That’s huge.
Perhaps huger still is the conditioning. Boxing is 12×3 vs. MMA’s 5×5, a total of 47 minutes vs. 29 minutes, or well over 50%. And the action is boxing is steadier, with MMA requiring periods of maximal explosiveness, often with pulling, with relatively static motion.
McGregor has chronicled his preparation at the UFC Performance Institute on his social network.
Conor has used our altitude chamber extensively, said UFC Performance Institute vice president of performance Duncan French to Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. Ultimately what he’s trying to do is change his physiology somewhat. If you look at the work-rest ratio of boxing, it’s about 3-to-1. If you look at the work-rest ratio of a UFC fight, it’s about 1-to-4. It completely flips the physiology on its head, right? Which means Conor has kind of adapted his physiology to 12, three-minute rounds rather than five, five-minute rounds.
Things like just doing the interval work that he’s been doing in the hypoxic (altitude) chamber is gonna try and help his physiology to support that. He’s used the altitude chamber extensively. A lot of his workouts are based on heart-rate assessment and looking at high-level threshold training.
You’ve gotta to switch up the nature of your interval work that you do, high-intensity efforts for short work intervals and the emphasis not so much on some of the strength work that goes with grappling and wrestling and the ground fighting in MMA.
It’s common knowledge that he has had an ACL injury in the past and he’s not a big fan of road work and running. He likes cycling and rowing, in particular. But what we were able to do is using the buoyancy of our underwater treadmill, he felt really confident in doing that cardiovascular workout … without the stresses and the rigors normal running would place on his body.
Combat sports are a race to recover, right? French said. So in a six-week training camp, it’s about how you not only train and optimize your training, but that recovery speed means you can come back the next day and train hard again. [The UFC PI’s cryotherapy technology] been a great tool that he wouldn’t have otherwise had in his usual training facility in Las Vegas.
“The UFC Performance Institute offers Conor capabilities that he wouldn’t have otherwise have in his regular training facility. He’s embraced those. He’s an athlete that’s very in tune with his body. He’s in great shape, he’s ready for the fight of his life. And he’s prepared effectively and used every piece of our capability that he wanted to to help him in this process.
Video Gallery of Conor’s UFC PI Training:
