Inside Athletic Performance, Inc.: Training Like a Champ

I was recently granted an interview with Nick "The Goat" Thompson. Nick has a fight coming up on June 8th in Japan versus Chute Boxing Academy's Michael Costa. Nick is the current welterweight champ for BoDog but has been keeping his options open as of late in regards to his fights.More to come in the interview. What I found to be equally interesting was the training facility that Nick did his morning workout in: Athletic Performance Inc (or API) in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

API is probably best known from the show UFC All Access, through which MMA fans were treated to an inside look at Sean Sherk's training regime prior to his Hermes Franca fight last year. His gorilla training looked intense and unique and few fans probably thought that fellow fighters would be taken through the same kind of training.

Sherk and Thompson are just two of the more well-known athletes that train at this facility, which offers a wide variety of challenging and inventive routines to take athletic performance to another level with such programs as API's Power Training Exercises or the ridiculous "50" workout.

API President and trainer Scott Ramsdell was good enough to walk me through how they would be training and for what purpose. 

I watched as Nick and another mixed martial artist warmed up with about 10 minutes of jump rope.  

From there they began their five minute rounds, which consisted of alternating exercises every thirty seconds in order to maximize heart rate and recovery. Each round would be followed by a one minute rest.

Here is the workout Nick went through:

Round 1: 8.5 mph sprints alternating with jump rope.

Round 2: Stations: 30 lbs medicine ball slam-downs, resistance band ground and pound drills, 70 lbs heavy bag slam-downs, ax-choppers with a sledge hammer and rope pull ups with elevated feet. 

Round 3: Sprints alternating with jump rope. This time the sprint speed is elevated, with each switch up to 10 mph (all at a 10% incline).

Round 4: 10 minutes of biking (mainly for the extra fat burning as Nick is a very big welterweight).

The purpose of this, Scott explained, was to get fighters used to being exhausted and being able to recover.

"The goal is to train them so hard in here that anything they get into during the fight will be easy in comparison," Scott stated.

Scott went on to explain that more elite athletes like Nick will do these workouts three or four days a week as a part of their workout splits (Nick's workout went on to include 20 minutes of bag work and one hour of rolling with teammates who included Sean Sherk and WEC fighter Brock Larson).

"And they never know what workout we are going to do. The point is to shock their system to get them to adapt to anything."

All of this counted as "the morning workout" for Nick. He still had another workout later in the afternoon which included his running and endurance work.

Facilities like Athletic Performance Inc. have helped to take mixed martial arts to another level. We aren't watching fights any more where top-tier athletes are getting gassed 10 minutes into a fight (at least not ones that go on to win).

Trainers like Scott have helped to turn mixed marital artists into some of the most complete athletes in the world and there is no doubt that without these facilities many MMA fighters (not to mention athletes of any nature) would not have nearly the level of success they currently enjoy.

So for a price less than or equal to most gym memberships, you might consider these facilities if you want to train MMA or want to take your game to the next level at a facility like API near you. Unless, of course, you prefer the alternative (i.e Travis Lutter at UFC 83).