fight training or slackness?

So two weeks ago some of the guys on the fight team for lei tai fighting and I got together to do our stamina and endurance training at the high school track and stairs. It was planned we would meet every sunday at a time and do some of this important workout. We had an awesome workout running a mile, stretching, busting out a circuit on the stairs that combines push ups, running, burpies, mt. climbers, jump squats etc. some wind sprints, etc.(not as intense as the MMA school's track drill but with lei tai timed rounds and productive non-the-less.) i was very happy with this.

So last weekend, I group text the guys as a reminder and I get two responses "coach says for us to start 6 weeks before fight to build aerobic training before and to not burn out/get burned out"
and so they quit the Sunday workout already until closer to fight. I not to happy about this.

For me, fight training is all-year round, it goes from out-of-season training into in-season training but just gets more intense towards the fight. At the MMA school a fighter starts at 12 weeks out of a fight. i just counted 14 weeks to the fight. So idealistically Early May should be the time to really start stepping on the pedal to the metal. its never to early to get your stamina and endurance training on!

anyways we did a ultra light version of the track workout and can make it much more intense towards the fight.

Training at Chinese school vs training at former MMA school:

chinese school:
Saturday/sunday- Tai chi (Saturday) and Sparring (sunday). i'm current doing boxing sparring on this day as well. (additive on Saturday)
Monday- no class/rest or work out on own.
Tuesday- sparring and Tai chi after
Wednesday- no class/rest or work out on own.
Thursday- Sparring.
Friday- rest/work out on own.
*let me add I work a desk job sitting 8 hours a day so sometimes I can get a morning workout or lunch time office gym workouts are available and recovery during work hours in regards to sitting all day.plenty of rest time.

former MMA school schedule:
Sunday- morning: track stamina/endurance workout, evening- boxing.
Monday- muay thai class/sparring.
Tuesday- Crossfit and conditioning.
Wednesday- morning boxing, evening boxing.
Thursday- Judo/Muay Thai.
Friday- rest day.
Saturday- sparring.

I feel the chinese school already slacks not having training everyday and needs the added track workout on sunday. for me its an excuse not to train hard, train more regularly, train smarter (cause opponent might already be training hard). "train hard- fight easy", as the saying goes.

Quick question though:
How were/are they feeling after the Sunday workouts?

Not all workouts you can survive are good for you.
If you jump into something too intense too early, you can hurt yourself.
If the DOMS is so severe it's hurting their other workouts, then there's no reason to go that hard.

If you've got a schedule that's working for you, then there's no reason to deviate.
Part of training intelligently is having the courage to take a day off.
MMA endurance and lei tai endurance are actually quite different.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't even amateur rounds 5 min in mma?
Yes, the lei tai fighters should strive for a higher level of conditioning, but they still gotta keep in mind what their body can handle.

When I lived in the MD/DC/NoVA area, the prevailing thought was that you had to do 45 to 60 min of road work every morning.
I've never been much of a jogger.
If I actually followed through with that advice my knees and back would be so shot that I would be useless in the gym.
I butted heads with a lot of folks over that, but my stamina was never an issue in sparring, no matter how hard.
I had to stop listening to people giving out advice on diet and exercise; most of the advice turned out to be counter productive.
Either the workouts were too much for me to handle or they made me feel bad about what I was able to accomplish.
The diet advice has been crazy - anywhere from "consume less than 25g of carbs a day" to "don't eat certain nuts because they'll damage your knees".

My current schedule looks like this:
Monday - yoga (starting to add a little muay thai afterwards, with focus on flexibility & technique)
Tuesday - cardio bag class at krav maga gym (basically 1 hour of tabata intervals on the bag and doing calisthenics)
Wednesday - muay thai (lots of focus on conditioning with calisthenics)
Thursday - lift weights (heavy) & hold pads for my friend, maybe a little bag work
Friday - muay thai (lots of focus on bag work)
Saturday - muay thai (sparring class, but really an all-around training for fighters)
Sunday - rest

Some days I can't make my Thursday session.
Some weeks I have to go light.
If you notice, I don't really do any dedicated long-distance slow (lds) cardio (at least not yet); but stamina's never really an issue (unless I'm sick or something else is going on).
I don't lose any sleep over workouts I can't make or workouts that I have to tone down, because all the working out in the world is useless if you can't heal up from it.

I may tweak my schedule closer to my August fight, but it'll still be a load that my body can handle.

Thanks for the feed back Eric-

My original feeling was the workout wasnt to hard and my impression was they got a lot out of the training. amateur rounds in MMA around here are usually three 3 minute rounds. Pros go 5 minutes.

In Lei Tai the prelims are 1:30 sec rounds and finals are 2 minute rounds. you can win in several ways: KO opponent, get fighter off platform 3x in one round, win the first two rounds, etc.

Our circuit intervals were only 1:30 sec work x3 rounds that day.

Nowadays I have plenty of rest/recovery time and I have to train on my own and with friends. I do beleive in hard work and adding the "Yin" which is rest (8 hours sleep), meditation, qigong, and Tai Chi (sometimes Pakuachang or hsingyichuan).

The way my former coach Jeff Ruth (whom you know) as part of Lloyd Irvins academy believes in hard work. As someone who is approaching 40, i have modified my workouts, but I do feel stronger than when I was younger. I do get injured a bit more and time to heal takes a bit longer. this will be my last year for fight training. After July, I can rest and retire into the Taiji/Pakua/Hsingyi life. Muay thai and boxing are a bit to much for me and Crossfit/heavy weight lifting hasnt been nice to my body past few years.

One of my chinese teachers always says that the chart of an athlete has high and low days so that is natural. I probably do need to incorporate more of the yogas into my routine and stress less on if I am getting enough toughness training.

I agree with you, if they're backing out of less than 5 minutes of actual work, I have to wonder about their commitment.

At the same time, as much as I like guys like Jeff Ruth, Dave Carter, Tony Tidbits, Lloyd, Mike Easton, and even Dave Kaplan (though half of those guys probably don't remember me); there was definitely a vibe with Lloyd Irvin fighters & affiliates at that time of like "We're Team Lloyd Irvin and you're not". It reminded me of dealing with the football team back in high school. They had a rep for going all out all the time. My team mate would go down to the Arlington gym and Kaplan would just beat him senseless. Brooks also had some similar stories about sparring down there. Not everyone's into that hardcore mentality. There are different approaches, all equally valid, and everyone works better under one style or another based on their comfort levels.

At the 2005 WKA nationals, after watching a bunch of my friends fight (Jon Tissue, Samisoni, Vivek, and another One Spirit guy who's name I'm forgetting), I wanted to jump in there so bad. I told Jeff "I want to fight so bad, but I can't seem to find a weight class" - my weight is naturally around 230, but I have no business fighting heavyweight. I still remember what Jeff told me "If you want it bad enough, you'll find a way." I still use those words to motivate me, even after setbacks in 2005 and 2009.

You need to balance the intensity or you burn out.
You can't train year round the same way you train for an actual competition.
That said, what yo do year round will directly effect how quick you get into "fighting shape".
The closer you are to it, the better of course.
Common sense.
I would suggest that one maintain the same routine ( in terms of time and rounds and such) but coming into a comp, increase the intensity in terms of less rest between rounds and up the "power outage" and number of workouts per week.
You can't sustain that year round but for a couple of months anyone can without burnout.