Ever wonder how the undefeatable athlete Khabib Nurmagomedov, who dominated the UFC octagon, trained in his prime? Former MMA artist Phil Daru has now tried Khabib’s training regime, shedding light on what it entailed. A strength coach for many UFC athletes, like Dustin Poirier and many more. Daru tried out the high-volume training program. Let’s find out how the undefeated UFC athlete trained.

Daru had Nurmagomedov’s training schedule chalked out on a board. The Bear Wrangler did two to three training sessions in a day and repeated it for five to six days a week. He used to do four to five hours of training each day to maintain his dominance in the octagon. Revealing the same, Daru broke down the strength and conditioning training of the undefeated UFC athlete.

The Bear Wrangler did compound, foundational, and fundamental lifts like bench presses, deadlifts, and squats, as part of his training. These lifts were done to increase maximum force production and strength. Nurmagomedov focused on maintaining the high intensity while doing lower reps. For power and speed workouts to maintain his athleticism, he did plyometric movements. 

The undefeated UFC athlete also did jumping, bounding, skipping, and hops to be quick and explosive while in a fight. These movements not only made him quick but also helped him recover from some of his injuries. To boost his endurance level, he paired up the high intensity with low volume and the low intensity with high volume and followed that. To take it one step further, he also did swimming, rowing, hill sprints, and wrestling with bears. 

Daru highlighted that the Dagestani fighter got injured in 2014, 2015, and 2017. Since then, the undefeated UFC champion has been focusing on plyometric movements to aid in his recovery. After shedding light on the current training regime of Nurmagomedov, Daru also revealed what he would have the UFC fighter do if he was charting out his training routine.

The fitness trainer has a plan ready 

Daru showcased how in his method, he would have Khabib start with a proper five-minute workout on the rower to increase the tissue temperature and rev up his nervous system. Then he advocated doing five minutes of dynamic stretching and heading straight to the plyometric movements. The coach also recommended that the plyometric movements should last around ten minutes. The movements include single-leg hops, bounds, skips, and pogo jumps. Along with the jumps, he added medicine ball throws to increase power and elasticity at the same time.

For the strength portion that lasts about twenty minutes, Daru banks on foundational patterns. In muscular endurance training, he did a ten-minute circuit exercise with different movements and a sprint interval. The total duration of this workout will be ten minutes. 

What do you think of the training regime that the Russian UFC champion follows? Will you try to add exercises from it to your training routine? Let us know in the comments.