The battle to get Nate Diaz fit for UFC 196 was intense.
A lot of people were a bit skeptical when Dana White announced that Diaz would fully fit for UFC 196 after agreeing to fight at a week-and-a-half’s notice.
But the UFC president told us that the younger Diaz brother was training for a triathlon at the time.
However, Damian Gonzalez, a triathlete who has worked with the Diaz brothers for six years, admitted that this wasn’t exactly the case.
As soon as the fight was booked, Gonzalez immediately got in contact with Diaz to get him off the beach and to work on his conditioning.
He revealed to MMA Junkie that Diaz, his coaches and pretty much everyone around him were concerned about his fitness, so the battle to get him ready for war had to begin.
“He was going to cram in a lot of work in short time, but he needed to recover from it. Basically what we were doing was shorter workouts, but a lot of workouts throughout the day, doing short duration.
“But the volume was pretty high, with a lot of intensity and a lot of recovery. They can’t take any illegal supplements; they’re not really into all that stuff, so basically, it’s just, when you’re not working out, you’re recovering.”
We know that short bursts of high intensity exercise really can get you more bang for your buck in terms of boosting competitive performance.
These short, hard and high volume sessions can bring athletes a broad range of physiological benefits much quick that long endurance sessions – like increasing the body’s maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max).
The hard hours spent training paid off for Diaz as he lasted longer than The Notorious at UFC 196.
McGregor looked gassed after trying to finish the Stockton native in the first round, while Diaz conserved his energy and eventually rocked him with a big left before locking in the submission.
