Jiri Prochazka is no stranger to unique training techniques to get ready or stay ready for a fight, but nearly drowning while trapped under ice is definitely a new one.
As he prepares to face Khalil Rountree Jr. in a potential No. 1 contender’s bout on Saturday at UFC 320, the former light heavyweight champion detailed his recent experience swimming underwater — beneath a giant sheet of ice — and how it offered him a new perspective on fighting. While the entire ordeal was supervised and done with safety precautions in place, Prochazka admitted it was a terrifying yet exhilarating experience.
“When the offer came, I said to myself, ‘Why?’ Why? Because I want to. Just I wanted to,” Prochazka said about swimming under ice during UFC 320 media day. “I came there, and then I realized, f*ck, you can die there. You can just die there. Because when I first go down under the water, and I just watched under the ice, just to know the environment, how it looks under the ice, man, that was scary. No light, nothing.
“I said to myself, you can’t do that just because you want. You really have to want that from your heart to do that, to be accomplished in that. Because this is not a game. I took it like that. Really like a fight, just I will win or nothing. I had to be accomplished in that because I don’t want to stay under the ice somewhere.”
Prochazka admitted that the whole experience was humbling, but it spoke to him, especially knowing the life-or-death situations that fighters deal with every time they step into the cage to do battle.
“Maybe that’s why I’m fighting,” Prochazka explained. “Because you are touching all the time this essence of loss, of death, to lose everything. When you’re giving everything in training, everywhere, that’s the point of life. I want to live a rare life. To feel myself, I’m alive.
“All these points, climbing the mountains, training in nature, all these things, meditation, it helps me to improve all of my abilities to be a better fighter.”
In addition to swimming under ice, Prochazka also added another new training technique to his camp, where he ran sprints without actually breathing.
Now that’s something he’s seen other UFC fighters employ, and Prochazka was excited to see how that kind of endurance exercise would eventually pay off in his fight career.
“The sprints without breathing, it’s the oxygen advantage method with one of my coaches from the Czech Republic,” Prochazka said. “We started to work on that like two and a half years back. I think one of the guys who showed that to the world that it worked was Israel Adesanya.
“It works for your tolerance for carbon dioxide. So you have more endurance, more power. We have to work with our breath, with our strength, dynamics of all these abilities of our bodies, so the last one and the main one is the mental strength.”
Outside of his unique and sometimes unorthodox methods to prepare for his fights, Prochazka also recently accomplished something else when he received his Master’s degree in college.
Prochazka previously noted how important education was for him, and now he can stand proud that he earned that diploma.
“What can I say? For one month, I totally changed my life. Totally,” Prochazka said about the dedication he showed to get his Master’s degree. “For the others, it doesn’t matter what you are learning, if it’s college or university or high school, just do that.
“For fighters, it’s much more useful because we have to work with our heads, because the punches first and the second is the strategy and the tactics in the fight.”
From swimming under ice to sprints without breathing and even earning a prestigious college degree, Prochazka uses everything in service of his fight career, which kicks back into high gear on Saturday.
He faces Rountree in a fight between two of the best light heavyweights in the sport, and Prochazka promises he’s ready for the challenge ahead of him.
Prochakza may have a lot going on outside the cage, but when it comes time to fight, he’s putting everything into winning.
“I don’t underestimate anybody, especially Khalil Rountree,” Prochazka said. “He has really good, dynamic starts, good kicks, combinations, and this is where all my preparation, I learned now to dance with this style and know how to play with that.”