Anyone who has ever tried MMA knows that it is a very challenging sport, and any advantage is welcome.  A lot of fighters have good upper body quickness because of their boxing or martial arts backgrounds; however their lower body quickness and balance are sub-par.  This could be the difference between a win and a loss in a fight.  Jamie Hale writes that it is very important to work on a fighter’s lower body quickness, and it is not that hard to drastically improve lower body quickness and agility.  Hale reports that the factors that limit agility are lack of balance, quickness, hip mobility, coordination, and reactive strength.  Don’t worry, these factors are fairly easy to correct with the right training.  Doing cone drills along with the agility ladder will help improve quickness and agility faster than any other technique.  Some other exercises that will help are tumbling drills, non-equipped wide range drills (back petal, side shuffle, carioca,) different jump rope drills, and bag or barrier drills (jumping over or around bags or barriers,).  The agility ladder and cone drills will be the most important because they focus on the fast twitch muscles along with the brain.  Eventually your brain will be trained along with your muscles and require less time to calculate what to do; this will also help with body balance.  Basically your reaction time and balance will improve dramatically.  You may also want to take a yoga or pilates class to improve on your balance and strengthen your core.  So, if you are training to be a MMA fighter take lower body quickness and balance very seriously.

There are a lot of different ways to improve your explosion and quickness, but the best way to do so would have to be the use of plyo-metrics. Plyo-metrics vigorously train your fast twitch muscles, which in return leads to improved quickness and explosiveness.  These exercises can help you run faster, jump higher, throw a faster jab and just become more powerful.  There are upper-body and lower-body plyo-metrics, so you can train total body, or be specific with which part you want to train.  You have to make sure you stretch well when doing plyos because there’s a risk of straining muscles.  You have to do plyos at a fast speed to improve the fast twitch muscles.  Here are some examples of plyo-metrics broken down by upper and lower body...

Examples of Upper-body Plyos:

• Clap pushups- do a regular pushup but at the peak explode your hands off the ground and clap, then catch yourself and keep going for a set.
• Line Pushups- Find a line or pretend there is a line splitting your hands in push up position.  Then throw your body from side to side having the opposite hand touch the line each time.
• Medicine Ball Clap Pushups- Start in push up position with a medicine ball between your hands.  Explode into a clap push up, but land on the medicine ball.  Once you land on the medicine ball, do a close-grip push up on the medicine ball, then drop hands back on the floor to regular push up position and repeat on the opposite side of your body for your number of repetitions.

Examples of Lower-body Plyos:

• Bench Jumps- Simply stand next to a bench and jump onto it as fast as you can.  You can change it up by facing the front, back, or the side of the bench to work different twitch muscles.  Also, if you become advanced you can rotate your body in the air, or go side to side to work on agility and balance, as well as improving fast twitch muscles.
• Speed Skater- First, start with legs shoulder width apart, jump and explode out to the right as far as you can and land on your right foot.  Try to quickly make the weight transition and explode as far as you can to the left to complete the exercise.  Do this for your desired number of repetitions.
• Knee Tucks- Start out standing with feet shoulder width apart.  Hold your arms straight out with your palms facing the floor.  Jump as high as you can and at the summit of your jump snap your knees to your palms as quickly as you can.  Do this for your desired number of repetitions.