ULTIMATE FITNESS BY JOHN PLUMMER UFC fighter Mark Weir describes what it takes to step into a ring with the toughest guys on the planet. Since Royce Gracie won the first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993, the event has grown into the biggest martial arts competition in the world. It is the showdown that every fan wants to watch and every serious fighter wants to take part in. Only a handful of British fighters have been invited to trade elbow strikes, chokes and punches on the big stage and even fewer have left with their arms raised. So what Mark ‘The Wizard’ Weir has achieved is special. He is a three-time UFC veteran who caused a sensation on debut in 2002 when he knocked out American Eugene Jackson in 10 seconds. He has been equally devastating outside of the UFC in a 20-year fighting career that ranks as one of greatest in British martial arts history. He was tae kwon do world champion in 1988 and 1991 and has also been crowned the world extreme fighting Champion. The Wizard is still conjuring up magic at the age of 37. His longevity in a sport in which one pummelling is usually enough to deter most people, is a tribute to his skill, determination and, most of all, phenomenal fitness. No aspect of his fitness programme has been more valuable than strength training. In the past, some martial artists believed pumping iron would make them slow and stiff but views are changing. “Years ago I used to be much stronger than my opponents,” says Weir. “But now I don’t notice much difference. I know from what I’m lifting that I’m not getting any weaker so clearly things have changed and everyone else is taking it more seriously. “These days martial artists have no choice but to do weight training. If they go into a fight and can’t match their opponent’s strength, they won’t have much chance.” Weir got his first taste of fighting as a 12-year-old boy. “I messed around with the next-door neighbour and gave him a nosebleed,” he says. A couple of years later he took up boxing but his mother soon called a halt. “It was the early 1980s and there was a lot of concern about Muhammad Ali getting Parkinson’s,” says Weir. He turned instead to tae kwon do. “I didn’t tell mum too much about it,” he says. Full of youthful cockiness, he went to a class and told the instructor he could kick better than any of his students. “The instructor said ‘OK, you’re welcome to give it a go’.” Within a couple of months he had lived up to his claim. Just three years later 20-year-old Weir became the 1988 TAGB tae kwon do world champion. “I found out I had passed my black belt in May and in July I was fighting in the world championships,” he says. Back then there was no such thing as mixed martial arts. Fighters did their own style and usually mocked everyone else’s. Weir was different: he realised everything had something to offer and his willingness to learn gave him an advantage when mixed martial arts hit the UK. He converted a garage at his parent’s home into a gym of sorts. “I had a weight bench, two bags for kicking and a matted area for fighting,” he says. “If anyone said they knew about judo or jiu-jitsu I would invite them round. I was adaptable and I wanted to learn everything. I would go to London, whatever it took, to better myself. My attention was drawn away from clubbing and some of the bad friends that were around me and into martial arts.” Weir effectively taught himself mixed martial arts before the concept existed. On the competition circuit he continued to focus on tae kwon do and in 1991 repeated his world championship success. Then, a couple of years later, he watched a video that changed his life. “My friend said ‘Mark, you’ve got to watch this’,” he recalls. “It was the first UFC and it was a real eye-opener. I must have watched it six times, analysing it all the time. Some of the fights went to knockouts but seeing the submissions and the way they fought was something else. I didn’t lose faith in what I’d learned but I realised that if a fight lasted more than a few seconds, it would go to the ground and I had to train for that.” Three years later, Weir got his first taste of mixed martial arts when he was chosen to represent Europe in a challenge match against American Buster Reeves. He took just two minutes 10 seconds to settle matters. When a few more Americans flew home with their asses whipped, the UFC promoters invited the Brit to compete in one of their shows but a collar bone injury forced him to refuse. He thought his chance had gone. “When I recovered I called them but they kept putting me off,” he says. “Then one day they told me they were bringing the UFC to the UK and would I like to take part.” UFC 38, the Brawl at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2002, was the biggest martial arts event ever staged in the UK. Thousands crammed into the famous old venue and many more watched around the world on pay-per-view TV. “The Royal Albert Hall is made like a gladiator pit,” says Weir. “I’d watched films like Ben Hur and as I walked in with all the spectators around me, I thought it must have been like this in the old days. It was an unbelievable feeling. To have so many people watching me and all the media taking an interest was incredible. I had been fighting since the 1980s and now martial arts was on pay-per-view; I was so proud.” Inspired, Weir delivered a performance that catapulted him into UFC immortality by knocking out Eugene Jackson in 10 seconds. It was the quickest knockout in UFC history, “It put British fighters on the map and helped me make history,” he says. Suddenly the Gloucester man was hot property around the fighting world. Four months later he was invited to Las Vegas to take on Phillip Miller in a middleweight clash at UFC 40. Once again Weir thrilled fans but this time it was for his part in a brutal, see-saw battle which he lost to a rear naked choke after 4 minutes 50 seconds of round two. “We were both undefeated going into the fight and it could have gone either way,” he says. In April the following year Weir was in Miami to fight David Loiseau at UFC 42. “That was my worst one,” he says. Convinced he would have beaten Miller in his previous fight if he hadn’t tired, Weir tried to conserve energy, got caught cold and was knocked out in the first round. “I remembered him elbowing me several times and felt myself going when the referee stopped the fight,” he says. Being elbowed in the face is a hell of a way to make a living but severe injuries are much rarer than they were in the early days of UFC when it was practically a case of anything goes. Barbaric stuff like knees to the groin and headbutting have been banned. “It wasn’t the kind of sport I would be interested in taking part in today,” says Weir. “The things you could get away with then could damage you long term. The only time I want to get kicked in the groin is when it’s for real in a fight. I’m a martial artist, not stupid.” Weir, who has won 21 out of his 26 mixed martial arts fights, admits he lost his edge after his first taste of UFC. “I remember coming home and thinking ‘if I never win again I will be happy’. I had proved I could adapt myself to any system in the world. I trained after that but I didn’t have the same hunger.” But this year the hunger is back. Inspired by the likes of Randy Couture, who was UFC champion aged 41 and Bernard Hopkins, the 39-year-old undisputed middleweight boxing champion, he is proving his mettle on the increasingly popular Cage Rage fight circuit in the UK. “I have a new lease of life,” he says. “I want to shock a few people.” Whatever happens, Weir’s legacy as the pioneer of mixed martial arts in the UK is safe. “There were no shows – nothing – when I started,” he says. “Now you can find them every weekend. They’re on TV and more and more celebrities are going to fights. This is the future of combat sports.” ULTIMATE FITNESS As a fighter, Weir needs to be able to explode in short bursts as well as to build strength and endurance for longer fights. “The first part of a fight is physical,” he says. “As it slows down it’s more about strength and stamina.” His weekly training programme reflects the demands of his sport by mixing weight training with a mixture of short and long runs, as well as daily fighting practice. Mondays begin with four or five brutal shuttle runs up a hill. Weir sprints against a friend for the first half of the incline then continues against a second colleague waiting half way up for the second bit. It takes between two to three minutes of full throttle, lung-bursting running for Weir to get to the top. When he and the second runner get there they do a series of exercises, such as tuck jumps or shadow boxing for another two minutes then, without resting, sprint back down the hill. Once again Weir sprints all the way while his two colleagues share the load. He repeats the exercise, which cultivates explosive speed, four or five times before stretching and moving on to weight training. There is nothing fancy about Weir’s weights routine. With all his kicking, he doesn’t train legs at all: the emphasis is on adding power to his upper body through basic exercises. He begins with bench presses, performed on a Smith machine, and does seven sets, beginning with 30 repetitions, followed by 25, 20, 15 and three sets of 10. He sticks to a high rep range because he is trying to increase power rather than bulk. He performs each repetition fast but slows down on the last five of each of the first four sets. For these last few he makes sure the bar comes all the way down to his chest and pauses before pushing it back up. He does all of his last three sets of 10 in this slower, more controlled manner to really get a burn. “It’s almost like doing negative reps,” he says. Weir adopts the same number of sets and reps for the shoulder press but he adapts the exercise to make it more practical for fighting. He does this by holding his arms closer together on the bar so he employs a similar grip to the one used in a fight during a clinch. His next exercise, upright rows, is also chosen because of its relevance to his sport. “The movement mimics lifting someone up,” he says. This time he sticks to four sets of 10 reps. He does similar workouts three more times each week, one of which is a pure strength session in which he does fewer reps and lifts heavier weights. Occasionally he does reverse dips and flye presses for variety but the emphasis is on consistent, effective moves. On Tuesday he does another speed session but this time it doesn’t involve hills. He sprints for 15 seconds and shadow boxes for 15 seconds then repeats the two exercises 15 times with no rest in between. It’s back to the hills for shuttle sprints on Wednesday and on Friday he does a longer, slower run. He’s also a big fan of cycling for endurance. On top of all this he has to practise martial arts. He typically does ground striking and grappling on Monday, kickboxing on Tuesday, wrestling and takedowns on Wednesday, mixed sparring on Friday and kickboxing sparring on Saturday. He trains private students on Sunday so his only day off is Thursday, when he gets a massage. Weir gave up his job a few years ago to concentrate on fighting full-time. He has no regrets. “I would love to earn more money but I would rather have something I could look back on and be proud of,” he says. M&F