Rulon Gardner Admits He Turned Down Big Bucks to Fight Fedor

It would have been cool to see Fedor fight Rulon Gardner, both are such respectful honorable guys. Fedor has already beat several Olympic medal winners, it would have been interesting. People think the purses from the UFC are big, the UFC is small time, even now. Pride offered Rulon Gardner 1 million to fight Fedor almost a decade ago.

Tim Sylvia on Arlovski and 3 Fight Deal with One FC

I’m not sure why Tim Sylvia is so obsessed with getting back in the UFC.  If these fighters would realize that they are what’s important, not the organization.  Just go out, fight and win and constantly improve.  In boxing you don’t go to see Don King promotions, you go to see Mike Tyson or Roy Jones Jr.  MMA are just so brainwashed these days they go to see a promotion half the time.

If Frank Mir hadn’t of worked out for Daniel Cormier, at least Sylvia would have been a name guy for him to fight, even if he is past his prime.

New Workout Program: Day 2

If you haven’t read Day 1 yet, you can find it here:  http://ironfitnessonline.com/?p=139

Resistance Training:

Back & Traps

Pull ups (these are done on the total gym, so I am only using about 50% of my body weight, meaning I can do way more than normal).

Reps  12/15/10/10/15/10

Back Row -3 sets, reps 25,20,20 (I will be increasing the weight next time)

Shoulder Shrugs 3 sets, reps 20 (I will be increasing the reps on this exercise as well and will be aiming for the 8-12 range)

Cardio

This cardio routine I will be alternating in with my caveman training.  I did 3 rounds of 5 minutes each, working various combinations and strategies on my heavy bag.  I love this training because it not only gets you into shape, but it’s very sport specific and develops punching power and technique.  This almost doesn’t even feel like exercise as it goes by so quickly.  My goal will be to work up to 5 rounds.

I also had a 10 minute stretching session in between my resistance training and cardio.

ELO MMA Heavyweight Rankings

Top 10 (The number beside their names is how many points they currently have)


1. Fedor Emelianenko  2149

2. Junior dos Santos  2143

3. Alistair Overeem  2097

4. Josh Barnett  2076

5. Fabricio Werdum  2074

6. Daniel Cormier  2067

7. Cain Velasquez  2046

8. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira  2001

9. Frank Mir  1982

10. Antonio Silva  1971

Why use ELO MMA Rankings? http://cinemakingdom.com/?p=256

New Workout Program: Day 1

I just got back from vacation yesterday.  After taking a week off and resting up, I am ready to get back to it but I am pretty burnt out on my previous program so I changed everything up today.  I’ll be posting my new workouts each day I do them for anyone who also wants to try it.

My slow weightlifting cycle is over.  Now I am going back to regular speed and cutting my exercises way down.  I just don’t feel much like lifting weights right now so I am sticking with a short, simple program.  But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Each week I will increase my reps or weight.  This is merely the beginning.  Today my resistance training looked like this:

Chest & Triceps

Push Ups -5 sets (I used push up handles for an increased range of motion, which makes push ups much harder).

Reps 16/21/15/15/21 (max out)

Bicep Curls -3 sets, 20 reps each (I am going to increase my weight a lot next time, this first workout was just experimenting to see how much I could do)

Hammer Curls -3 sets, 10 reps

That’s it!  It may not sound hard but all of those push ups were pretty rough!  I set a timer to make sure I finished everything in 25 minutes or less.

I enjoyed it.  After lifting weight slowly for the last few months it was nice to move at normal speed again.  I did way more reps this way and it definitely helped cure my boredom.  Not doing as much resistance training helped as well since I was becoming tired of it.

Cardio

I started my new cardio program today as well.  I am doing what is called caveman training.  I am starting with 3 rounds of 5 minutes each (with the goal of doing 5 rounds of 5 minutes each eventually).  You just move from exercise to exercise for the whole 5 minute round without stopping (or doing the best you can to not stop, it’s rough!).

I barely made it through my 3 rounds.  I did a mix of kettlebells, hitting my punching bag, MMA drills, and Ground & Pound on a Heavy Bag for each round.  For an example of what a caveman program can look like just check out this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcznQd5cu0g

I feel great and it was a nice change of pace.  I also worked in 10 minutes of stretching.  The workout ran for a total of 50 minutes (and once I add two more rounds of caveman training down the road it will take an hour).  Looking forward to the next one!  Let me know how your workouts are going!

UFC 151 Canceled

UFC 151 has been canceled. Pretty crazy news considering the UFC has never canceled a show before and then just completely skipped that numbered event altogether.  Zuffa has said this will be a "lost show" and they will move on to UFC 152 next time (probably because they would have to change all the commercials and posters for several events).  They tried to save the event by giving Jon Jones a fight against Chael Sonnen but Jones turned it down.  He later accepted a fight against Vitor Belfort on a different card.

Dana White blamed the cancellation on Jones and Jones' coach, Greg Jackson, who advised him that accepting the fight with Sonnen would be the "biggest mistake of [his] entire career."  The biggest problem with the canceled event, and one Sonnen called Jones out on, was that now all of the other fighters on that card trained for nothing.  All of their fights will have to be rescheduled and they will miss out on their paycheck the lower level guys need to survive.  I think Jones should have stepped up and fought Sonnen to save the card.

Street Jiu-Jitsu vs. Sport Jiu-Jitsu

They make a lot of great points. This video is definitely worth a watch. This is probably one of the reasons a professional fighter like Frank Mir tends to get pounded out whenever someone on top of him punches him. It's like he doesn't know how to react to it or deal with it and he comes from a sport Jiu-Jitsu background.