Why fighters should Balance Combat, Zone 2, Intervals, and Strength Training to Truly Perform
Walk into any gym and you’ll see it.
The fighter who can throw all day on the pads, but almost passes out after round two.
The guy with textbook technique, but no gas tank to use it under pressure.
The one who’s strong in the weight room, pumping pecs all day, but slow, stiff, or always injured.
In fighting, talent alone doesn’t cut it. Conditioning alone won’t carry you.
Skill alone won’t save you when you’re exhausted and the lights are bright.
To perform at the highest level, you need balance, between energy systems, physical attributes, and sport specific skills. A fighter’s training must integrate:
Zone 2 aerobic conditioning (your foundation)
VO₂ max and lactate threshold intervals (your engine at redline)
Combat specific skill work (your software)
Strength and power training (your hardware)
Each of these systems feeds the others. Ignore one, and you expose a weakness, often in the worst moment possible.
Zone 2: The Foundation Every Fighter Needs (But Most Skip or do too much)
Zone 2 training sits at around 60–70% of your max heart rate. Unique to each person as well. It’s steady, controlled, and repeatable. Think nasal breathing, long efforts, smooth output. And it’s absolutely essential.
Why? Because it upgrades your physiology in ways no other training does:
Increases mitochondrial density (more energy at the cellular level)
Improves fat oxidation (you use fuel more efficiently)
Enhances recovery between rounds and between sessions
Science says:
Dr. Stephen Seiler, one of the world’s leading sports physiologists, found that elite endurance athletes spend 80% of their training at low intensity (Zone 2). This builds a deep aerobic base that supports every high-output effort.
In combat athletes, Zone 2 work has been linked to faster heart rate recovery, better sparring endurance, and reduced fatigue under pressure.
My insight:
Zone 2 doesn’t make you soft, it makes you last. It builds the base that keeps your brain sharp and your technique clean when others are drowning in fatigue. It should not however be the only training you are doing with your combat work.
How WE do it:
2–3x per week
30–60 min sessions
Stay aerobic (bike, jog, row, shadowbox with HR monitor)
Breathe through your nose for as long as possible
VO₂ Max and Lactate Threshold: THIS IS Where Fights Are Won
When it’s time to push pace, chase a finish, or survive a firefight, aerobic base isn’t enough. You need the ability to operate at redline, and recover from it. That’s where VO₂ max and lactate threshold work come in.
VO₂ max intervals train your ability to use maximal oxygen under stress
Lactate threshold training increases the speed and intensity you can sustain without crashing
Science says:
Midgley et al. (2006) showed VO₂ max intervals improve peak aerobic power and recovery between bouts.
In combat sports, higher lactate thresholds are directly linked to greater repeat effort ability, especially in striking and wrestling exchanges (Chaabene et al., 2015).
My insight:
I Don’t watch who throws the hardest, I want to see who can throw the hardest still in round three or five, after taking a hammering, still having a weapon in the chamber to smash his opponent.
How we do it:
1–2x per week, carefully programmed
Examples:
4x 4min run at 90–95% HR max, 2 min walk
3x 8 min run at 85-90% comfortably hard, 2-3 min walk
Pad or bag intervals: 60s max effort / 60s rest x 5–6 rounds
10x 30s Air bike sprint (90%+ effort), 90s slow
Combat Training: Your lifeblood
No amount of conditioning makes up for poor timing. No strength can substitute for bad positioning. Skill is the lens through which your conditioning is expressed.
Sparring, padwork, drills, wrestling, these are your sport. But too often, fighters use skill sessions as conditioning and skip real energy system development.
Science says:
Skill based training, while necessary, creates inconsistent physiological stress. It often lacks the structure to properly develop energy systems unless carefully planned (Slimani et al., 2017). Worse, technical sessions done in a fatigued state reinforce poor patterns.
My insight:
Your sparring and combat training should sharpen your skill, not just “get you tired.” Conditioning should support your fight prep, not replace it, or hijack it.
How we do it:
Prioritize quality, not just volume
Use skill work to refine, not survive
Match intensity to purpose: hard sparring ≠ every day
Strength and Power: Building the Machine
If skill is the software, and conditioning is the fuel, then strength and power is the hardware. It’s what allows you to express your technique under pressure, again and again.
Strength = force production (clinch, takedowns, impact)
Power = force fast (striking speed, reactive movement)
Stability = injury prevention and movement efficiency
Science says:
Multiple studies show that resistance training improves strike velocity, grappling power, and injury resilience (Turner et al., 2011; Rhea et al., 2015).
Periodized strength work enhances neural drive, rate of force development, and even anaerobic conditioning.
My insight:
You don’t need to lift like a powerlifter or bodybuilder, but you need to lift like a fighter. Strong fighters fatigue less, recover faster, and hit harder. We have shown the benefits of this first hand over many years now, evident with all our amateur to elite fighters.
How we do it:
2–3x per week (depending on the athlete’s phase, recovery, and overall training load. The goal is to develop transferable power and resilience, not create gym heroes who can’t move in the ring.
Each session is designed around 3 pillars:
Compound lifts (squat, hinge, push, pull)
Explosive work (jumps, med ball throws, Olympic lifts if qualified)
Core + rotation + unilateral stability (rotational lifts, anti rotation holds, single leg hinges, and isometric core work)
Sessions are adapted based on the phase of fight camp (general prep, peak, taper).I monitor readiness and adjust intensity/volume to avoid interfering with high skill or sparring days. Never just train muscles, rather train movements, outputs, and resilience.
The goal is simple: build a body that can deliver your skills at full force, for the full fight.
example Week of Intelligent Fight Prep
Zone 2 conditioning 2–3x/week (40 min nasal breathing jog or bike)
VO₂ Max / threshold 1–2x/week (4x4 min hard efforts or 30s sprints intervals)
Combat training 3–5x/week (Padwork, drills, sparring, grappling)
Strength & power 2–3x/week (Full body strength / explosive power, including metabolic conditioning)
*This is a blueprint, every fighter would refine based on commitments, recovery and lifestyle factors
At the highest levels, fighters don’t leave things to chance. They train with precision, purpose, and structure. You do not need to be at an elite level fighter to train like this either.
The key isn’t to do more, it’s to do what matters, in the right proportions, at the right times.
It is well documented that fighters who balance their system:
Recover faster between rounds
Maintain sharpness and energy when others fade
Stay healthier across camps with less injury
Maximize their physical and technical potential
Stay in the game for longer
If you're serious about performance, stop training randomly.
Build your system. Own your engine. Sharpen your skill. Done one simple step at a time.
