So I've just looked back at my year so far and activity in general. And then compared it to last year and my goals for this year. And my cardio has gone. I realised I'm not really doing any dedicated cardio workouts at all. The closest I get is MA classes. I actually feel quite fit, but I think this is more to do with weight loss than any cardiovascular improvements. Instead I've increase my resistance (weight) training. Which admittedly I enjoy doing more, but from an MA and general lifestyle perspective, I'm strong enough and would benefit from cardio more. Normally I rely on bike riding to keep this up, but it's been raining for the last two months straight. I do have a trainer but just haven't used it. But I will, and then I realised I'm not sure where to start. I could do intervals, but how long should work/rest cycles be and how many repeats to do? I'm not really sure where to start. I also have a boxing bag that's feeling neglected that I want to make use of. So if anyone could help me out with some advice on this point, or lead me in the direction of some good web articles it would be much appreciated.
Mine has taken quite a dive the last few months too, as I felt my strength wasn't anything like I thought it was and moved to more weight training at the gym. I still do some cardio but find it hard to really push myself when I'm not 100% well when I can manage to do most other things including weights when I'm not. I vary mine between rowing/erg, cycling/spinning, running and circuit training.
Once a week: 100 burpee challenge (for time) followed by a 'light' set of 4-6 800 meter sprints as fast as you can. Do the runs for time. It's not the longest cardio work out but if you do it once a week in a month you will significantly improve your endurance etc
Joel Jamisions http://www.8weeksout.com/ site is hands down the best site there is for conditioning, and his book probably the best book out there on MMA conditioning He has trained more elite MMA fighters than probably anyone else and was the former official conditioning coach for pride Not sure if this is allowed but he started a thread on sherdog http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f13/how-finally-solve-your-conditioning-problem-788235/ which is now over 100 pages i think and has ever thing you need to know on it about conditioning for fighting
