Mixed martial arts is a combat sport that combines skills from different styles of fighting into one discipline.
Regardless of the length of the round you fight, to develop an effective cardio program for going the distance every time you step into the cage, it is vital to develop both aerobic and anaerobic fitness to maximise your performance.
To develop your aerobic fitness levels, engage in regular running, swimming, cycling or rowing.
There are a number of different training drills you can do for these exercises, long slow distance training, or shorter workouts performed at a high intensity, during which you maintain your fastest pace possible.
You want to always make sure that you do the long slow distance training before the more high intensity work, so as to warm your body up so you are more alert, and most importantly to reduce the chance of injury.
Anaerobic fitness is the ability to perform high intensity work without oxygen and is a large part of MMA.
Your ability to slow the build up of lactic acid, being able to push through the pain barrier and flush it out of your system effectively is what anaerobic fitness is all about.
A method of this anaerobic training is interval training, this involves alternating periods of high intensity exercise with low intensity recovery.
In other words for every period of work, you would rest twice as long, and make sue to only rest as long as you would be allowed to in a bout.
Sprinting, circuit training, and sparring are all examples of interval training.
Anaerobic training is much harder than aerobic but it is much more relevant to the demands of MMA.