There are some people in here just starting to train and when I first started I did all kinds of things that made my workouts ineffective. Watch these trainers that like to push beginners too hard. It's called overtraining. Once you get to a certain heart rate you stay there the whole workout even if you have to rest half the time. If there is no heart monitor around measure it with the intensity of breathing. Keep it to where you must breath deep, but not frantically suck wind. This is where you're putting too much strain on your body and you're forcing your body to heal and not build wind. Same thing with muscles. You don't have to work and work until failure. Use about 90% capability, then stop, let your body build back up.
Make for damn sure you stretch before anything cause most of your injuries are gonna occur from this and more can be done after stretching. Stretch while your resting too because your muscles will start to tighten during the workout.
You also don't have to bench 500 pounds to be strong. That is just bs bodybuilding stuff and I've seen plenty of bodybuilders that cannot fight. The power is in all those tiny muscles you work with little girley 10-20 weights and action specific motions. I take 15 pounds weights, hold them to the side, go straight out, down, go straight out in front, repeat 10 times. Then chest flys like this, behind the back, triceps... These excercises make me feel alot more ripped then all the military presses, and bench lifts.
There's also people that train endurance by running and running like they're getting ready for the eco challenge, but we're talking about a fight no longer then 20 minutes. There's no need to run 5 miles a day for a fight. The real endurance comes from running up hills, steps, and inclines on the tread mill for a good 20 minutes of pure hell to simulate the 20 minutes of pure hell in the ring. Increase the speed and intensity of your endurance workout, keep the time the same as the fight although I can run with no incline for that long and still need to get out the defibulator. So it depends on your level of fitness.
And lastly the order that things are done must be right. Start with endurance like round and rounds, treadmill, stair stepper, then do strength like heavy bag, weights, then practice reflexes and timing so your're used to landing hits tired. This is working out though, I prefer to spar and practice moves seperate from getting in shape.
Anyway, I've managed to screw up in all the above ways before stretching, workout duration, overtraining, order, and unversatile lifting so if anybody has something they've noticed has been robbing themselves of a good workout add it in to.