Workout with Junior dos Santos to Develop Knockout Power

by Phil Daru
American Top Team Strength & Conditioning Coach

Today we’re working with UFC fighter, Junior dos Santos. He’s about five weeks out from UFC down in Australia and our focus today is maximum strength. We’re trying to induce the most amount of force production (aka knockout power) that we can. So we’ll be working with the four press for our main list. Then we’re going to be working on accessories and some supplemental work to work on the posterior chain or bleak sling console auto stability, making it happen so that he can knock this dude out.

Phil Daru the Explosive Strength Workout for Knockout Power

 

 

Tips for Creating More Knockout Power

Why triceps are important when pressing…

So as we’re pressing, it needs to be a straight line.  If you’re arching back, you’re putting into the Delt too much. We got to work on that. I want you to work more on the triceps. I rather you have stronger triceps because that’s going to be at the end of the punch. You’re not rolling forward too much. So I want you to have this. You’re not punching from your pecks either. The peck, you can only do this to can track your pack truly, you’re not doing none of that shit inside of the fight. You’re throwing the jab through here. So I want the triceps to have this more power there.

Why Does Coach Daru use the floor press with his fighters?

So right now, upper body maximal strength, he’s working through a floor press. This primarily is a better lift for the fighters that I choose. I use about four different compound lifts. This is one of them. Twist the body in the right position. It’s a lot safer for the athlete and also he’s creating the ability to strain underweight. And that’s what’s really going to help with that maximum strength. So we’re going to give him a little bit of a break. Let them recover his ATP and we’ll start again. He’s doing a max single right here for absolute strength.

So a lot of the times with maximum effort, we’ll see breakdown in muscle. So from there I’ll get to go ahead and correlate the accessory work after receive the breakdown from a maximal effort. The good thing is we got what we wanted from an adaptation standpoint and I got to identify a weak point that we can hit on in the accessory work.

Accessory work to fix weak links…

So now we’re getting into accessory work. Trying to work on a posterior chain. We’re going on the hamstrings, working on the upper back. Things that I see that we need to work on from a structural standpoint. Want to mitigate any type of injury or at least reduce the risk of injuries. And then also to maximize our potential to be strong in all muscles.

Working on multiple physical qualities.

Now basically what we’re doing, is we’re super setting goals so we can maximize our time efficiency, but also so he’s not sitting around idle. Obviously Junior is a ball of energy. So I got to make sure that I maintain that energy. The reason why we’re doing this anti rotation, I want you to be able to be strong and have stability. I want you to be able to maneuver whatever way you want that if you’ll knock him out.

Phil Daru is a strength coach in South Florida and trains some of the top mma fighters in the world.  Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Dustin Poirier, King Mo Lawal, Tecia Torres, Jake ‘Brutal’ Bostwick, Ryan Quinn and many others trust Coach Daru with their strength and conditioning plans.  In this episode we discuss developing workouts for fighters.  Whether you are out of camp or preparing for a fight, Phil shares his thoughts and methods that he uses to prepare his fighters for battle.

Check Out Phil’s Training Plans for Fighters

1. Fight Strong 365 – If you’re tired of being thrown around in practices and competitions, or looking and the mirror and wishing you could be just a bit stronger, then you aren’t alone. Strength training coach Phil Daru is here to help! This program addresses foundational, off season strength.
2. Fight Ready – If you’d like to train like a top MMA fighter, and do it in just 4 hours per week, without mindless running, muscle destroying circuits (in a bad way), or unproductive powerlifting, I’m about to show you how to do it.
3. Ground Control – If you want to learn what weaknesses plague most grapplers, the ones that make them feel like they are getting manhandled, and not ‘not getting any better’ AND how to turn those weaknesses into strengths, so that YOU can be the one dominating on the mats… this is the definitive program for you…
4. Heavy Hitter – If you’re ready to get Full-Access to A World-Class Boxing Program and Take Your Power and Endurance To Levels You’ve Never Experienced Before… Invest In Phil’s Boxing Specific Strength And Conditioning Program And Become The BEST Version of YOU!