My buddy and I have taken up MMA 1-2 times per week at a gym. We both love it. There are a lot of big, strong, well conditioned guys at the gym we will be grappling/training with/against, so we want to structure our next training cycles in a way that would specifically help with MMA specific performance. Are there any programs of yours that you feel would be a great fit? If not, are there any tips or suggestions you could give to help us formulate a workout plan/structure? Any help and knowledge you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you!!
No, I don’t have any plans for MMA. The one plan that would be the closest is the “Fiready” on T-nation.
I’m in a similar situation though as I’m doing lots of fighting work… martial arts 3x a week and boxing once a week and I’m gearing my own training more toward that.
While, for obvious reasons I cannot provide you with a program here (you can check out Fiready, it would be a close fit), here are a few things that I’ve learned myself:
Conditioning is king. Yeah, strength helps, but lack of conditioning is a zillion times worse than lack of strength. Especially since have lots of strength when you first start to learn can actually make it harder to learn proper technique as you tend to over-rely on your strength, and because of the adrenaline you will tense up… the more muscle you have, the more likely you are to gass out when under high adrenaline. I learned this the hard way myself.
While you can find relatively “weak” grapplers (at least in the weightlifting sense), you won’t find any decent ones with poor conditioning. This should be your top 3 priorities (conditioning, conditioning and conditioning). Especially since you are likely starting from a point where your strength is closer to where it needs to be than your conditioning.
It’s impossible to learn proper technique if you are gassed out, so re-read points #1 and #2
That’s why in my own training I have two weekly workouts that are anaerobic capacity/aerobic power sessions. Typically those kinda look like Crossfit WODs but without high-skill exercises and ideally using exercises that do have a carryover to fighting.
Those conditioning sessions are typically 4-6 rounds of 4-6 exercises covering the whole body. Here are some exercises I like to use:
Dips
Farmer’s walk
Bear hug carry with a boxing heavy bag
Barbell zercher carries
Prowler pushing
Snatch-grip high pull
KB "hook rotations (holding a KB with both hands in front of you, elbows bent, perform the rotation asped of a hook with the hips and trunk)
KB swings
KB long pulls (similar to a KB high pull but you lift the KB up to the full overhead position, but in a straight line, not like a KB swing… you can see this exercise if you look for Alexander Karelin workout on Youtube)
Zercher squats
Boxing heavy bag “RDL” (basically like a supplex… hold the bag in a bear hug, bring it between your legs as if lowering a RDL then lift up to full extension)
Assault bike
Rowing ergoment
See-saw overhead press for speed
Hitting a tire with a sledgehammer
Chin-ups
I typically pick 4 to 6 per circuit and repeat the circuit 4-6 times. Normally I’m shooting for 25 minutes of work (equivalent to 5 rounds of 5 minutes).
My strength sessions are quite minimalist. It’s 2-3 whole-body sessions per week using 4 exercises. My personal choice is:
Snatch-grip high pull from blocks (I’d do power cleans or power snatches, but I don’t have enough mobility yet)
Zercher squats
Weighted dips
Barbell curls (curling strength is actually quite important in grappling)
Prior to the strength workout I use a “warm-up” that also has an impact on conditioning. Some of the exercises will not be familiar, I’ll try to film them eventually, but you can find most of them on Youtube (although they might have another name)
That warm-up/conditioning is done without rest between exercises, typically for 30 seconds per exercise.
A. Dopamineo band exercises:
A1. Russian curls
A2. Boxing footing drills holding the bands
A3. Hooks with the bands
A4. Slam down
A5. Judo over shoulder throws (right)
A6. Judo over shoulder throws (left)
B. Plate drills
B1. “Around the head” with a 25lbs bumper plate (clockwise)
B2. “Around the head” with a 25lbs bumper (counter-clockwise)
B3. Plate lift overhead
That lasts around 5 minutes, sometimes I do it twice.
It might be a good idea to add neck and grip work.
End each workout (strength, conditioning or MMA) with abs work.
Don’t train to gain muscle. I find that I actually gained muscle training this way, mostly in my arms, back and traps. But that’s the result of the performance training. Purely hypertrophy work will likely do more harm than good.
You will likely need to do plenty of mobility work, especially for the shoulders and hips.
Really appreciate the emphasis on conditioning - with examples I’m going to add to my own training.
What I’ve learned in 20+ years on the mat is that when you are fatigued, you really can’t think effectively. It is amazing how dumb you can become. There are a lot of activities that you can keep doing reasonably well when fatigued because there’s relatively little thought involved. But in combat sports, especially highly technical activities like grappling, that inability to think clearly when fatigued can be devastating - and needlessly so.
For a long time I thought that the point of conditioning in combat sports was about trying to be a Colby Covington “Cardio King” type of competitor. It’s really just about being able to control your heart rate and your “mind rate” so that you can do the things you know how to do.
I learned that when my wife was training to be a police officer.
I always found it weird that (at least in Canada) the physical tests to get into the police force, and even more so when trying to get into tactical intervention units, are extremely cardio-biased.
To me, it didn’t make sense, as police officers rarely run or swim for a long time. But they are likely to have to fight a big dude. I thought that strength was key.
Until my wife had to an obstacle course which ended with the participant having to hold a gun to a target while staying centered for 30 sec (the gun had a laser pointer).
What happened was that a large proportion of applicants would breeze through the course, but just couldn’t keep their gun pointed at the center of the target because they were shaking and didn’t control their movements well.
Turns out that the faster your heart beats, the harder it is to do a precision task. This is what makes biathlon challenging and also why there is doping in sports like archery and pistol shooting… but not with steroids, with beta-blockers to slow down the heart rate.
The better cardiovascular shape you are in, the less your heart rate will elevate (the stronger heart can push more blood with each contraction)… under stress (or physical activity) someone with a resting heart rate of 40-50 will not reach the same sky-high level as someone with a resting heart rate of 80.