*This blog contains a video and short article for more clarity.

*Some of the example exercises can possibly be categorized into multiple categories.

One of the most common questions I’m asked is about warming up. While my opinion has changed a bit over the years, I still believe the warm up is a vital component of MMA training. There are so many movements involved with our training so it is important to do a general warm up, dynamic warm up for MMA, and specific warm up.

Allocating about about 10-15 minutes if possible would be a great idea. It also helps to mentally prepare as well.

Nobody knows your body like you

You will hear different strength coaches give different views. One may tell you to do foam rolling first while another may tell you to do foam rolling at the end. While the science is important, you have to do what works for you. There is also value in keeping it simple. You want to warm the body up, not exhaust yourself before your main workout.

General warm up

The general MMA warm up would just be doing some continuous exercise to break a sweat. This could be light jogging, rope skipping, or light calisthenics.

Dynamic warm up

Here we want to warm up specific areas that may be prone to injury or simply important for many of the movements we’ll be doing. Example exercises of our dynamic warm up for MMA are running patterns such as skipping, carioca, high knees, and butt kicks. We also perform “supermans” for stabilization and other dynamic warm up exercises such as arm circles, hip circles, gate swings, etc.

Specific warm up

During this phase of the warm up we perform exercises that are sport specific or similar to the ones we perform on the mat or in the ring or cage. Examples are lunges with takedown motion, staggered stance to push ups, sit ups from the guard position, mountain climbers (which can simulate knee strikes), and Gracie get-ups. Finally, we may “rep” exact MMA movements but at a lower speed until we’re ready to go full throttle.

Let me know (by leaving a comment below) how this compares to the dynamic warm up for MMA you’ve been doing. Are you gonna make any changes? What helps you with injury prevention and preparing your body and mind for MMA training?