Wave Run

When fighting in long sparring sessions or when fighting many rounds in competition, you need to learn how to pace yourself. If you go at it too hard in the early rounds, you may burn out in the later rounds and give up a lot of points. If you fight at too slow a pace in the beginning, you may give up a lot of points. If you fight at the same pace throughout, you may give up points because there are times when you needed to pick up the pace. To learn to pace yourself, you need to run the “Wave.”

To run the Wave, you need a stopwatch and a distance that you mark at the 110, 220, 330, and 440-yard distances. You can use a track or a straight distance, but the distances must be marked so you know exactly where they start and end. You run each measured distance 4 times, starting with the 440-yard distance, alternating a recovery pace run with a hard pace run. The hard pace run is the pace that you want o be able to maintain during a round of fighting. Finish all the work at one distance before going to the next shorter distance. Once you have run a few sessions, you will have a goal time for the overall session. You want to try to hit this overall goal time during each session. The goal time you set for each distance is a subset of the goal of the overall session. At the end of a 4-rep session, you will have run 2.5 miles. If you up the session set reps to 6, you will have run 4 miles. Run the Wave at least once a week.