My friend is into Martial Arts and will be competing on the national team in the World Tournament this year (originally was gonna in New Orleans). He came up to me and told me he needs to gain around 15-20 lbs of muscle before then and asked if i could put together a program for him. Obviously his cardiovascular endurance is great and he has never touched a weight in his life but has done loads and loads of bodyweight exercises (push ups and push up variations, pull-ups, bodyweight squats, bodyweight squat jumps etc).
So I was wondering what type of program would be best for him? I was thinking about making it simple, performing 3-5 lifts a session focusing on compound movements (pressing movement, squat/deadlift, clean variation, pull movement, amstring assistance) Of course before i throw him in the fire I am going to teach him correct technique on all lifts.
You have the right idea. Stick to compunding exercises and make sure you are balancing his volume of training with each exercise.As a Fighter, it woiuld be important to saty struturally balanced. Once he has the form down I would work speed training with a solid weight, keeping the reps low but fast and a good number of sets.
Just remember he can not afford to become a slow moving individual although he maybe has put the muscle on.
If I were you I would try to ask Alwyn Cosgrove or Charles Staley about it. I’m pretty sure they both have extensive experience designing programs for martial artists.
If your friend is to fight this year then he doesn’t have time to put on 15 lbs of muscle. If he is to compete in Judo, do snatches twice a week until he competes; if karate then clean and jerk twice a week; if MMA olympic weight lifting type work is good. No matter what move the weight fast. Most folks would do better with more time on the mat or in the ring. Most fighters have more strength than technique.
A bit OT re: putting on size - but worth a look anyway for MA, is Martin Rooneys [sp?] book: training for warriors which you can get at elitefts.com. Really good. And/or you could ask Martin the same question over on the elitefts.com Q&A - also a plenty MMA articles on the site as well (covering GPP, metabolic conditioning, etc)