FRIDAY, MARCH 12

Logan's sixth blog entry --

Scheduling fights in MMA is a bit of a rollercoaster. Folks around my hometown often ask, "Logan, do you have any fights coming up soon?" It is hard to respond since MMA matchmaking usually involves a few switcheroos and a good bit of late notice. When I do have a fight scheduled, I am not around town enough to tell anyone about it. Relying on the Internet and newspapers to get news around is probably better than talking to people one by one anyway. But fight promotion is secondary to fight training, and the real effects of the disorganized nature of fight scheduling are felt when people fall apart in fights because they aren't properly conditioned.

I haven't had a complete training camp for a fight since before my second WEC bout in August of 2007. Getting eight weeks notice for that bout was a pleasure that I'm afraid I didn't treasure quite as I should have. Back then, I thought the good times of long training camps would become the norm for me. In the three bouts immediately preceding that one, I had three weeks, six weeks (awesome), and two hours of notice respectively. Since then I have had between three to four weeks of official notice for each of my bouts. In my second to last bout, my opponent changed twice in the last two weeks.

This happens in organizations large and small, and, yes, even the UFC has a lot of fighters competing on short notice. This isn't cool and makes long-term or even medium-term planning virtually impossible.

In the long run of things in the fight game, nobody will remember that a fighter took one fight on short notice, and they don't put an asterisk beside the result either. It is the best interest of MMA athletes to develop a different type of work ethic.

Many fighters are motivated by the prospect of competing in front of a big crowd, and others are motivated by some idiotic hatred for their next opponent that they have allowed to fester in their minds (Frank Mir). It would be better to be motivated simply by the prospect of attaining your peak physical condition because MMA fighters will often not know who they are facing or where they are competing until it would be too late for them to be in proper fight shape. Simply motivating yourself to train without a concrete goal in mind is more difficult than it sounds.

Athletes can get into and out of shape in a short time. Regular folks will have a harder time recovering from eating crappy or not training than athletes. It can be incredible to see some fighters out of fight condition, but even for fighters it becomes increasingly difficult to get back into proper shape each time, so I try to split the difference and stay in shape for as much of the time as possible. Cutting from 219 to 186 in three weeks is one of the worst things I have ever done, and I never intend to do it again, but at least I won that fight.

This necessary work ethic includes diet. What you eat is as important as what you do. I have worked to develop a sensible diet that emphasizes moderation and freshness. I'll go into great detail on diet in a future post, but the simple way of stating my eating ideals is just to eat small portions frequently with as little processing as possible. A fighter cannot eat at Taco Bell. Some fighters schedule a cheat day during which they can eat anything they want. I don't practice that policy. Eating a couple of little crappy things each day rather than a ton of crappy things one day just seems like a better policy to me.

MMA fighters and athletes in general all need to have a special ability to push themselves. So next time you are tired and slowing down at the end of a round or thinking about stopping for a chalupa, think of the third round of a fight and how you want to feel. If you want to feel good and able to finish the fight, push through the round and keep driving.

— Logan Clark