This interview with Firas Zahabi popped into my feed casually, didn’t know him but I’m glad I watched it. Damn, he has a lot of wisdom. The main message he explains is that it’s consistency over intensity when it comes to training. I learned this in the last year from natural bodybuilding channels mostly. Here some quotes from Firas.
Training should be fun, it should be addictive. It should be like a pulling force for you.
The volume is far mor important than the intencity. High intensity needs to be done periodically.
Bodyweight exercises are very easy to recover from. It doesn’t cost as much neurologically.
Crossfit is too fatigue seeking for an mma fighter.
There is no way the guy who goes all out every day is going to add up as much workout and as much training time as the guy who is going 70 to 85% of his max.
The champion, the best guy, he’s training for the long run he’s far more intelligent he’s getting far more workouts in than me. It’s consistency over intensity.
Fighting is for fight night. In practice, it’s only practice. – Angelo Dundee
My personal training has really changed since my earlier days. When I started it was all about hardcore, old-school “no pain no gain.” That was really stupid because I overdid it and got multiple injuries which were a big setback. As a result, I got discouraged and trained only periodically for several years. Then I got at it again but this time through bodyweight training. Books like You are your own gym and Convict conditioning showed me that you can train perfectly in any place, with a much lower risk of injury and a more balanced strength. Then I started to become interested in powerlifting because I could get a lot of training volume in short time. And I fell in love with squats, thanks to Clarence Kennedy, Romano Rengel etc.