Hi everyone,
I train mma 3 times a week and do 1 session of strength training.
I’d like your opinion on the best way to maintain my strength to be as fresh as possible for my mma training.
Do you think it is better to do 3×5 rep or 3×3 rep ?
On the one hand I feel less sore after 3x3 than 3×5, on the other hand I don’t want to fry my cns too much for my mma training.
Opinions ?
Thanks a lot
Here’s an outstanding article on the subject that I believe can help give you some guidance from one of the most widely respected strength coaches out there
Thanks for your answer.
I used to do 531 when I was younger, and I made good progress with it.
Now that I’m older and I don’t recover as well, I don’t progress anymore with it and find myself too tired to train properly mma.
That’s why I switched my goal from progressing to maintaining and do only I strength session a week.
I think it depends on the exercise. We know that once we’ve earned the muscle it’s super easy to maintain, especially if you’ve held it for a while. There was one study that showed 1/9th of the volume could be enough which is quite insane.
I would probably do something like
5x3 on squats (with something I could do 5-6 with), focusing on a fast concentric, slightly slower eccentric. You don’t wanna hammer yourself with overly intense sets if you’re worried about your CNS)
Bench Press 3x3 maybe a little more intense but be sensible with it
Everything else just 3x3-6, autoregulate it, don’t limit yourself to a rep range, if there’s an easy rep there you may aswell take it. With something like deadlifts I might use only 70% and do multiple sets of 6 to get the pattern in.
You’ll likely lose top-end strength whatever decide to do, but that has the potential to come straight back if lifting ever becomes more of a priority.