Junior dos Santos won the UFC heavyweight title in 2011 by beating Cain Velasquez at UFC on FOX, but he gave it back to Velasquez a year later. Reflecting on his December loss to Velasquez, JDS says he overtrained for the fight.
Dos Santos told Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole that he peaked about 15 days before his fight with Velasquez and that he overtrained for the match-up. The evidence of overtraining was JDS’ urine being a brown color the day after the fight.
Here’s Iole’s description:
The morning after the bout, his urine was a very dark brown, the color of Guinness Stout beer.
He wasn’t urinating blood, as some fighters do after a grueling match. Rather, the brown coloration of his urine was due to rhabdomyolysis. His muscle fiber was breaking down and getting into the blood steam.
Dos Santos was treated and brought in a physiologist to help him train for his UFC 160 fight with Mark Hunt. JDS now has his blood monitored constantly, and his training was recommended to be to two 75-minute sessions per day and a two-month long training camp. Previously, JDS trained twice daily for up to three hours and held a three-month long training camp for the Velasquez fight.
Iole has more quotes from dos Santos, who talks about how long he would like to fight during his career.
Many people believe you have to train, train, train, and do nothing but practice in order to improve. Dos Santos shows us that’s not always the case, and in some instances, can be detrimental.
Thanks to LBS contributor D. Lee for the tip
