Mir: People train too hard in MMA

Frank Mir has not fought since the sport effectively banned the use of testosterone replacement therapy. In an interview with Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie, Mir explained that he had suffered from low testosterone, and thus the prescription was legitimate, but that is was only a band aid. The underlying problem was overtraining, not giving injuries sufficient time to heal, and improper nutrition.

In short, Frank Mir was training like he was 21, and he was no longer 21. He has fought in the UFC 21 times, more than any other heavyweight in league history.

TRT was patchwork – it was putting a Band-Aid on the problem, said Mir. I went to a medical doctor, but I wasn’t searching out TRT. I just purely went to the doctor and said, ‘Hey, I don’t feel good, I have no energy, I’ve got no motivation, I’m kind of depressed. I’m constantly – guys are making jokes that I’m the most injured they’ve ever trained with. Every other day something breaks down on my body. What’s going on?’ Then they’re like, ‘Oh, well this is available.’

He did the blood work and found low testosterone. Now that they’ve banned it, I look at it and realized that wasn’t really the problem. Improper training and nutrition was the reason; training too hard and excessive twice, three times a day, Monday through Friday. That was what was causing low testosterone. Looking back I realize that was just a symptom of the problem. I was just training improperly.

It’s like, ‘Oh, you train improperly, but we’ll fix your hormone levels!.’ It kind of helped out, but it still wasn’t the solution. The real solution was to train more intelligently, eat healthier, have longer off seasons where you train properly, not just sit on my butt and just wait for the next fight to be scheduled.

Now I’m with trainers who are very smart about our training. I have days in the week where we go guns blazing and really hard, but the majority of my workouts are to rebuild my body to feel good.

I still train several times a day, but now my schedule is so sane that I’m not destroying my body. The majority of guys train the other way and I think that’s why you see so many injuries in our sport. People train way too hard in the sport of MMA. I was a victim of that and those were the consequences I was facing.

The good thing would have been if TRT hadn’t been an option. I would have probably got the solution that I came to now sooner.

Mir currently finds himself on a four-fight losing streak, to a murderer’s row of Junior Dos Santos, Daniel Cormier, Josh Barnett, and Alistair Overeem. Saturday night he fights Antonio Silva in the main event of UFC Fight Night 61, live on FOX Sports 1, from Porto Alegre, Brazil.