Alex Pereira details just how much his training his changed over the years
With UFC 335 a little over a month away, Alex Pereira has outlined how he fine-tunes his training for efficiency rather than volume.
Alex Pereira is preparing for a heavyweight clash with Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 335. With the matchup just over a month away, he has touched on how much his training has changed, along with the challenges of staying sharp at nearly 40 years old.
Training is also about injury prevention to Alex Pereira
On Dec. 12, Alex Pereira will face Sergei Pavlovich in the co-main event of UFC 335. It promises to be one of the more explosive matchups on the card, and the winner is likely to go on to fight the winner of Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit for the heavyweight title. Ahead of the fight, 'Poatan' took part in an interview on the Connect Cast podcast, during which he detailed just how difficult it is to maintain the same kind of training volume he used to in his younger years (29:08):
"I think I train technically. I do drills, train my technique, but I have decreased my kickboxing training. I'm 39 years old. It's hard to maintain that. I think I'm doing well, I think I'm doing the right things to avoid injuring myself, because it's very easy to."
When asked to elaborate on how he has improved the efficiency of his training camps, Pereira highlighted how difficult it is to continue training at the same intensity with grappling included.
"There's no way, there's no way to maintain that. Like, if I were only training kickboxing, I think I'd maybe be training more, but man, the grappling training is really tough. It's really tough."
This prompted the interviewer, Alexandre Lemos, to ask the former UFC light heavyweight champion if wrestling drills cause more injuries than kickboxing ones. Pereira didn't hesitate to confirm that, at least, in his experience, wrestling is harder on his body, especially as he's added more weight to his frame.
"I think so, and man, you've seen how much my body has changed, how much weight I've gained. When I arrived here in the United Stattes, I weighed 92 kg. So, it's been an absurd change. So, there's no way to keep training so much. I have to train in other ways, and I'm more dedicated now. That's why I've been evolving, but you can't train that all the time."
Throughout his UFC career, many made the assumption that Pereira's biggest weakness is his defensive wrestling, and that once he faced anyone with a strong takedown game, he'd lose. This was proven true at UFC 313, when Magomed Ankalaev, by far the best wrestler 'Poatan' has thus far faced, managed to neutralize him against the fence with clinch work. However, Pereira's takedown defense was impregnable, as he stuffed every single one of Ankalaev's takedowns. His only shortcoming was his inability to break away from the clinch.
Against Pavlovich, he'll have the luxury of fighting a fellow striker, but the knockout threat will be concerning, given that Pereira was TKO'd in round two at UFC Freedom 250 by Gane, who is not an especially powerful heavyweight. If he loses, Pereira has already expressed a willingness to cut back down to light heavyweight, where an automatic title shot awaits.
