Illustration by Taylor CarvinIllustration by Taylor Carvin
The 30,000-square-foot UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas has been helping the organization’s athletes train since 2017. And now, the UFC’s PI model is going global, with a second facility having opened in China in 2019 and a third being planned for Mexico in 2020.
Nearly two dozen UFC athletes have moved to Vegas to train full-time at the PI in recent years. (More recently, the UFC Performance Institute has also opened its doors to a growing number of athletes from other sports, including NHL, NBA and NFL players, and Olympians.) The Vegas facility’s open layout allows a staff of nutritionists, physical therapists, trainers and sports scientists to work together to form a comprehensive picture of an athlete’s fitness. The data collected from fighters training at the UFC’s facilities—and from those working out remotely while plugged into UFC’s athlete management system—enable the organization to provide comprehensive analytics of how each athlete should train to reach peak performance.
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The Vegas PI features a pool treadmill, a state-of-the-art nutrition room, a Hypoxico altitude chamber (where athletes can train under different air pressures), a weight room, a recovery room, a boxing ring, wrestling mats and a cage for sparring. “We have guys who are competing against each other in three days’ time on the treadmills right next to each other,” says James Kimball, the PI’s VP of operations. “You would think they have beef outside of the Octagon and there’s a lot of animosity, but it’s not that type of vibe.”
In 2019, the UFC opened its second Performance Institute in Shanghai, China, to meet international demand. The facility, which is three times larger than the original PI in Vegas, mirrors the youth-academy model of European soccer clubs by offering athletes an option to live on the premises while training. By staying in hospitality suites, athletes can attend fight camps (condensed periods of training ahead of a match) and have direct access to skill coaches, nutritionists and trainers. The UFC hopes to use the facility as a training hub to develop UFC talent from China and the greater Asia-Pacific region.
The UFC says the 93,000-square-foot facility, which opened its doors in June, is the world’s largest state-of-the-art MMA training and development facility. One of its clients, the Chinese Olympic Committee, has sent rowing, canoeing, kayaking and speed skating teams to train. The Shanghai PI has entered into a multi-year deal to support China’s Olympians as the “High Performance Advisor” of the COC through the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. “Our partnership with the COC reflects the larger ambition of the Performance Institute in becoming a true global leader in sports performance,” says Kimball.
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Mexico City has been chosen as the location for the third Performance Institute, with the UFC planning to open that location in 2020. The goal is to add as many as 30 to 50 athletes to the UFC roster from Mexico and other countries in Central and South America over the next several years. “UFC doesn’t really have big Mexican stars. We used to have a former heavyweight champ who was Mexican, but we can count on two hands our number of Mexican athletes,” says Kimball. “And that’s the growth model for the PI: we build these around the globe.”
In 2019, the company also opened UFC Apex, a 130,000-square-foot facility located across the parking lot from the Vegas PI. Apex features more than 50,000 square feet of production space and another 70,000 square feet of office space. It includes an arena space for smaller fights, and in 2020 a control room will be installed that will allow UFC to produce and broadcast live events taking place anywhere in the world.
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