Much of the talk surrounding Jon Jones return to action earlier this year was about his intensive weight training program, which saw him pack on muscle to his long, lean frame.
His eventual fight with Ovince St. Preux was not one of his finest hours though, despite coming away with a unanimous decision victory.
“In my last fight, it definitely played a factor in me being conservative and conserving the way I used my energy,” Jones said at a UFC 200 media event.
“I felt like I was in good shape, my lungs were strong, but I felt like my muscle endurance maybe wasn’t in the right place.”
With that in mind, Jones has completely changed up his training regime for his upcoming rematch with Daniel Cormier in the main event of UFC 200 on Saturday night.
“For this training camp I’ve done almost zero weightlifting whatsoever,” Jones revealed.
“I’ve actually been focusing in burning off muscle by doing overloading on endurance. I think you’ll be able to tell in the weigh-ins and during the fight that I’ll look a lot more like the way I used to look, a lot less bulky. My endurance feels amazing.”
This is a strategy that makes sense for Jones in the run-up to the Cormier fight, as ‘DC’ himself had admitted that in their first encounter back in January of last year he had been caught off-guard by his opponent’s strength.
That was prior to Jones focus on weight-lifting, so it suggests that it’s not an area of his fight game that’s actually in need of intense focus for this particular match-up.
Unfortunately, the downside of all this is that Jones’ reservations about his performance when he has more bulk on his frame appears to have cooled down his ambitions of fighting at heavyweight, as in a separate interview recently he indicated that his intention was to just refocus on being the best at 205lbs instead.
