A round is not a 5K. It looks like one from the outside — three minutes of motion, a buzzer, repeat. From inside the ropes, it is a stack of short bursts, clinches, breathing windows, and the tactical pauses that make up actual fighting. The aerobic base matters. So does the phosphocreatine system. So does the glycolytic engine that drags you through the late-round scramble. Train one and call it conditioning, and round three will introduce you to the other two.
Volume 26 reads the combat-sports literature like a coach reads a fight tape. Beneke 2004 on karate kumite. Davis 2014 on amateur boxing. del Vecchio 2011 on MMA work-to-rest ratios. Buchheit and Laursen 2013 on intermittent-training prescription. The honest answer is bout replication, not 5am roadwork. The 5am run is the warm-up. It is not the workout.
Inside this one
- Energy-system distribution for combat sports — what the bout actually demands
- Strikers vs. grapplers — two distinct S&C profiles with one shared compound base
- Bout-replication interval prescriptions you can program tomorrow
- Weight cutting: the honest position (mostly stupid) backed by the position-statement literature
- Berlin consensus McCrory 2017 framing for concussion (qualified clinician owns the decision)
- 12-week S&C support block plus sport-specific programmes for boxing, BJJ, wrestling, MMA
The standard it is held to
Every factual claim in this volume names its source, and every claim carries a confidence grade — settled, strong, emerging or contested. Where the evidence is thin, the text says so. How it’s made, in full → · What we’ve got wrong →