UFC 191: Frank Mir's secret to MMA resurgence is strength and conditioning, says trainer

Frank Mir claims to be the best he's ever been, but how exactly did he turn around his mixed martial arts (MMA) career?

Through a rigorous strength and conditioning program, according to one of Mir's trainers, Ricky Lundell. But most of the credit in creating the program goes to his wife, Holly Lundell, who makes sure Mir has the explosiveness and quickness most heavyweights lack, while also ensuring he doesn't gas in the later rounds.

His comments to Moxie Empire:

"Frank Mir, a lot of his resurgence has come from his strength and conditioning training. He works with Holly Lundell on his strength and conditioning. It's 100-percent about making him more explosive, more powerful, faster, and more conditioned. Inside of the heavyweight division, a lot of the times you see these athletes that are not conditioned enough to make it to the third, fourth, or fifth round. So they start to break down over time. Holly, she does an incredible job of making sure that doesn't happen and the fighter can continue to move. These heavyweights hit hard, they grab things, and they break bones easily. They are strong. But a lot of them don't have conditioning, they don't have the ability to continue moving forward and keep going. That's what Holly does best, she makes these guys able to continue to keep moving. So without these types of workouts, he wouldn't be able to do his stand up or submissions as fast."

See some of Mir's improved quickness here.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, as Mir has now won two straight contests via first-round knockout over Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva and Todd Duffee, respectively, while putting all those retirement suggestions to bed in the process.

The former 265-pound champion will look to make it three in a row when he battles Andrei Arlvoski in the co-main event of UFC 191 -- which goes down this weekend (Sat., Sept. 5, 2015) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Check out the video embedded below to get a sneak peak of Mir's program: