You have roughly 3 months to work with.
Imo, for now, spend 2 months working on gaining strength, explosiveness, and improving your work capacity.
Spend that last month on maintaining your strength gains but bust ass and get some sick conditioning in those last 4 weeks.
Reason being, 90% of your first classes are you huffing and puffing, you’re basically just there learning doing conditioning work when you should be focusing on technique.
If you walk in there already at least 1/2 way prepared physically you’ll be in a better position to learn more because you won’t spend all your time sucking air.
Since you only have a barbell, dumbbells, and a bench. I’m assuming you don’t have a squat rack.
Also, I’m going to hope that you have a challenge amount of weights for that barbell. IMO, build a routine around the deadlift and power clean. Variety of things we can do for your upper body.
First order of business… Go through a few articles (there are a shit-ton just use the search function) about getting any imbalances you have fixed and mobility drills. All that shit. You want your body to be in tip top shape so you dont have to do any corrective shit while you’re trying to learn how to fight (much less get stronger).
Second, those walks should provide you with at least a minimal level of fitness but before you even touch your weights I think you should have this basic level of fitness:
100 pushups
12-20 pullups
100 standing squats
In my personal opinion weights are a privilege to be EARNED, not a right to be misused.
For your size, you should be able to do this. If not, break it into sets, and let that be your workout till you can bust that out.
Thats just a GENERAL fitness guideline.
Unless you’re a pretty unique individual, you might have skipped over that. I want you to read it again. Sit down and actually try it. if you can’t bust out that minimal amount of work, get crackin on that before you worry about the weights.
again just my opinion, you don’t have to take my advice but you’ll be better off for it in the long run.
Plus it’ll help build up the work capacity to be able to handle the following training protocal i’ll outline.
off the top of my head…
1 day upper body
2 lower body days
1 day conditioning
Upper:
One arm pushup
Bent Rows
1 arm bench press
you can use a variety of exercises, but i would make the one arm pushup your main indicator. If you can’t do one, there are quite a few progressions online, if you can’t find any i’ll write one for you just ask. You also can do 1 arm snatches, overhead press, overhead jerks, curls (not inherently bad just overused), shrugs, skull crushers, full contact twists, there are a TON of things to try. Be inventive.
DL Day:
Heavy DL
option being pull from the floor, stand on an elevated surface (increases distance the bar travels, makes it harder), Rack pull (place barbell on something, so the distance is shorter then you can use a heavier load)
pistols
again a lot of progressions to make these easier.
walking lunges
Power Clean Day:
Jump Squats
you should probably just use the bar, or even hold onto just one dumbbell (if its light), you can also do tuck jumps, or sit down then jump, there are a variety of things to try i can go into that later if you want. But basically Jump. You’ll be teaching yourself to be explosive that way.
Oly Pull
can be power clean, clean pull, snatch pull, power snatch, whatever you feel like drilling. Personally Id stick to the power clean and snatch pull. Think about bar speed more than anything else. You want your pull to be QUICK.
Front Squats, oly Back Squats or Overhead Squats
Your choice, Id go for higher reps since this is obviously not going to be an attempt with a lot of your max since you don’t have a rack. Condition the shit out of your legs, I mean super high reps to a fucking a 100 if you can.
Conditioning day:
There is a myraid of things you can do. We can spend a year going over stuff. Best references for you are to check out rosstraining.com and google javorek complexes… Those resources should give you enough conditioning shit to keep you going till you’re a pro. FYI The “randy couture workout”… are javorek complexes, nothing new under the sun.
anyway you want to try things that are going to be TOTAL body and vigorous, you shouldn’t really be able to identify a specific location of soreness your whole body should just be effected. Thats why its metabolic conditioning… your whole system goes “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON”.
I like things that mix running and lifting.
for example
10 dbbell swings per arm
sprint 40yrds
15 jump squats
sprint 40 yrds
10 dbbell snatches per arm
sprint 40yards
20 pushups
sprint 40 yards
10 thrusters
rest 1 min… rinse repeat 4 more times.
If you dont have an area to run you can sub jumping rope if you have a FAST rope and willpower. There’s no one with you to push you, the only person who can make you not act like a bitch while no one is watching is you so press hard.
I really like Ross Enamit’s “Magic 50” so look around on his website and you should find that.
For that last 4 weeks or so that you’re working on your conditioning, only do 1 upper day and 1 lower. use that extra day to do more conditioning work. seriously amp it up and you’ll be able to survive your mma class without feeling like you got nothing out of it other than the urge to puke.
arranging the schedule:
Su- DL
Mo- Upper
Tu- Rest
We- Power clean
Th- Conditioning
Fri & Sat Rest.
or
we- power clean
th- rest
fri- conditioning
sat- rest