Look Like A MMA Fighter with Cage Fitness

Cage fitness is a workout routine developed by former MMA champion Matt Hughes. Contrary to what the name suggests this program does not involve getting beat up in a cage by a professional fighter. Thankfully, it is also not about getting beat up by a professional fighter either! If you have every watched UFC fighting, you know that the athletes who compete have defiantly achieved physical perfection. With the cage fitness program, you can get the results of MMA training, minus the bruises and injuries that go along with being a professional fighter.

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Get back to fightin’ weight with ‘Cage Fitness’

Cage Fitness class participants perform a ‘knee on 12 punch’ move at the Leading Edge Martial Arts school in Allentown, Penn. The classes, which provide a quick, intense workout modeled after a championship mixed martial arts bout, have proven very popular at the school.

When Dan Evans was sent home from “The Biggest Loser” last spring, he’d lost just 15 pounds. A year later, he’s down over 100 pounds more, thanks to a combination of diet, treadmill running and something called Cage Fitness, a fast-and-furious workout routine based on mixed martial arts.

Mixed martial arts, also known as ultimate fighting, is one of the world’s fastest-growing combat sports. Bouts are fought in an octagon-shaped ring called a cage, and fighters use moves and techniques from various fighting disciplines, including karate, Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai and boxing. It’s quick, it’s brutal and it’s incredibly popular. Cage Fitness workouts mimic the structure of a championship MMA bout — minus the injury. Created by Matt Hughes, a nine-time world welterweight champion, Cage Fitness workouts are just 30 minutes, with five, five-minute “rounds,” followed by a minute of rest. It’s high-intensity interval training, using familiar moves like squats, MMA-specific techniques like Kimura crunches, and a weighted fitness dummy for added resistance.

Cage isn’t the only MMA-based fitness class — martial arts studios across the country are adding programs that promise to get students into fighting shape, without the impact. Team Lloyd Irvin Martial Arts and Fitness, in Arlington, Va., offers a ladies-only Ultimate Fitness Kickboxing class alongside its judo and boxing classes. And the MMA Fitness Drill class at Houston’s Paradigm Training Center promises to get students into “octagon shape.”
It took Vanessa Yanez, of San Mateo, Calif., awhile to work up the nerve to try the Cage classes at Gold Medal Martial Arts. Yanez, a 40-year-old mother of two, had seen the sessions, which started before her cardio fitness class. And they looked pretty intense.

“While at first the class looked a little scary with the heavy bag and all, I found that I really liked the 30-minute aspect of it,” Yanez wrote in an e-mail. It was short enough, she added, where she wasn’t looking at the clock all the time. And: “The exercises end … unlike machine work or long-distance running, there is a reward every five minutes: Rest.”

Each Cage workout starts with a warm up, and then moves quickly to an upper body round, a lower body round, a “combo” round, and then a cool-down, with core work.

Each round of Cage ends with a ‘ground and pound,’ where members punch and elbow their fitness dummy for 30 seconds. It’s a great way to work on endurance — and it’s also a great stress reliever. The Leading Edge Martial Arts school, where the photo was taken, is in Allentown, Penn.

And every round wraps up with “ground and pound,” a 30-second flurry of punches into your fitness dummy.
“No matter how tired people are, they always get a huge burst of energy for the ‘ground and pound,’” said Jessy Norton, who helped design the Cage workout with Hughes.

Cage and KiDo, a martial-arts-inspired cardio workout, helped Yanez lose 40 pounds. “More importantly, I’ve increased my endurance and muscle tone to where instead of someone who just works out, I feel like an athlete,” she said.
Since its inception almost two years ago, Cage Fitness has expanded to over 280 martial arts schools, gyms, military bases and police academies. There’s also a home kit, which includes a weighted fitness dummy, gloves a training manual and seven DVDs for $349. It’s what Dan Evans, who’s now a certified Cage instructor, uses when he can’t get to a scheduled class.

“Cage is a huge part of my weight loss regimen,” he said. “There’s only so much you can run on the treadmill.”

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Developed by Matt Hughes, a formed mixed martial arts champion, the cage fitness routine promises to whip you into shape. The regime involved kicks, punches, lunges, and other moves used in marital arts- these moves are done with a grappling dummy and punching bag equipped with straps for adjustment of angles. Even experienced martial arts students have noted that this routine is quite challenging and intense for anyone- the words we like to hear when it comes to taking strength training and body sculpting the next level. This routine is slightly more popular for men than women, but either gender can participate and see impressive results with the commitment to the plan.

This routine is made up of five, five minute rounds that are followed by rest. This high intensity workout is a form of interval training- a type of training with undeniable effectiveness. Every workout begins with a warm up that moves into an upper body round, lower body round, and combo upper/lower body round, followed by a cool down and core work. Ending the rounds is a ground pound that involves a punch and elbow to the fitness dummy for 30 seconds.
Former Biggest Loser contestant, Dan Evans, lost 100 more pounds than he did on after leaving the show after losing only 15 lbs.- accrediting diet, running, and cage fitness.

Watch this video that explains the cage fitness workout…