Book Review: Ultimate MMA Conditioning

This is the best book I have ever read on Energy System Development. It is also the best training related book I have read in a long time.

Joel Jamieson covers all the details about the 3 main energy systems in this book. He outlines how the aerobic, anerobic, and alactic systems work, how to assess each one, and what methods you can use to improve both the power and capacity of all 3 systems.

Joel goes on to outline how he goes about improving the following using an 8 week block training system:

General Endurance
General Strength
Explosive Speed & Power
Power Endurance
Fight Preparation

The final chapter goes on to outline how Joel goes about programming for the 8 weeks coming up to a fight, which is great information also.

This book is in no way a "cookie cutter" approach to ESD, but is a book that gives you the blue-prints to be able to design an effective ESD system no matter what the sport. So this book is about a lot more than just MMA. Believe me. In fact I am of the opinion that if Joel were to re-name this book, more coaches would read it. I feel some coaches maybe put off by the title, and think that it is "just an MMA book".

The main point that I took away from the book was that you can not separate "strength" and "conditioning", as both should actually go hand in hand within a holistic approach to improving performance.

This is a brilliant book, that is extremely informative and easy to read. I highly, highly recommend it!

Stay Strong,
RB