Real Strength and Power Training for Fighters and Martial Artists
How a Fighter Should Train and How to Train to Look Like a Fighter
What follows is the longest article that (I think) I have ever written. It’s also been a long time coming, as I have planned on writing it for over a year. I suppose I knew it would be quite an endeavor, as I wanted to include everything I could think about that would help the fighter in his training. Despite the fact that it took me so long to write, I hope the final result is well-worth the wait. If you’re a fighter or martial artist who needs to improve your strength, speed, and power, not to mention dominate in your particular art or style, then this is THE article for you.
Years ago, in the pages of Ironman magazine, I wrote an article on the “myths” of strength and power training. In that article, I wrote—paraphrasing Louie Simmons, the founder and head strength coach of Westside Barbell, the esteemed powerlifting club—that “bodybuilding had ruined strength training in America.” This was in the early days of the internet, but I’m pretty sure that I received more “hate” mail from that one quote than from anything else that I have ever written, before or since. But I stand by it. It might be even more true for the fighter or martial artist than it is for just about any other athlete who is seeking to improve her performance in a particular sport or other physical domain.
In this essay, I will discuss the reasons why the “typical” training performed in today's gyms—which has been influenced by bodybuilding workouts more than any other form of resistance training—doesn’t work for the martial practitioner and the various forms of strength training that do work.
Although bodybuilding training might have influenced what many fighters do as far as weight training is concerned, it’s not the only influence that has “ruined” the training of a lot of martial artists. The other component that has derailed the physical training of fighters, believe it or not, is some of the historical training of martial practitioners themselves. Most martial artists do various forms of physical training, especially bodyweight workouts, that really don’t do anything to enhance their performance in the ring or on the street.
A lot of martial artists take up resistance training at some point in order to improve the performance in their particular art. And the first persons they often look to are some of the well-known martial artists who did the same thing. A modern martial practitioner might look at what Bruce Lee or Mas Oyama did with weights and then try to replicate it or at least use some of what those legends did. The problem here, to be honest, is that the resistance workouts of luminaries such as Lee or Oyama are outdated. I can guarantee you that if Bruce Lee was living today, he would look at a lot of the current strength athletes—or the ones that became prominent after his untimely death—and he would do a different kind of strength training from what he utilized.
One of the most popular forms of resistance training among martial artists—it’s often integrated into the training of different dojos, dojangs, or other schools—is bodyweight training. Usually, this is done at the start of the class, either before or after stretching. Some of it is good, especially if it’s the only form of resistance training that the martial practitioner does. But it’s also—this may not be true across the board, but I think that typically it is—not ideal. Usually, it involves too many repetitions and doesn’t do anything to enhance strength and power. It does, sometimes at least, lead to better endurance or conditioning, but that’s also the issue with it, or almost any other form of resistance training that the practitioner utilizes. As Pavel Tsatsouline and Dan John wrote in their book Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competition and Dominate in Your Sport, “strength and conditioning” in dojos, boxing gyms, and MMA clubs ends up just being “conditioning and conditioning.” Pavel adds this (he’s a lot harder on the higher rep bodyweight training than me): “Fast twitch, Comrade, which is critical not only for power but for special endurance. Many fighters make the mistake of developing muscular endurance with exercises like high-rep bodyweight squats and push-ups. This does nothing for the fast-twitch glycolytic fibers, and it recruits and develops slower fibers instead. Even worse, it slows the fighters down and builds some useless tissue.” Your martial arts training itself should take care of the “conditioning” aspect of your particular art or sport. If it doesn’t—and often it isn’t enough for the serious competitor—then you should also enhance your training with additional cardiovascular activities such as jogging, jumping rope, or additional rounds of hitting the heavy bag. But your weight training—and pay attention here—should focus on developing strength and power, not cardiovascular endurance! If you need it, then it should also be used to gain muscle, though that won’t necessarily be the case if you’re trying to stay in a weight class, which is why Pavel referred to extra muscle as “useless tissue”. All other things being equal—in other words, technique and skill level—the bigger, stronger, and most certainly faster fighter will win.
So, what’s the problem with bodybuilding, most bodyweight training, or other “typical” forms of resistance training for the fighter? To put it simply, it’s the use and over-reliance upon the “repetition method” of training. Such training often enhances the “look” of the martial artist or fighter, but not the performance. In fact, not only is the repetition method overused, it’s all-too-often the only method that is used. What the fighter (or any athlete) needs is the other 3 methods, the ones that most of them never do: the maximal effort method, the dynamic effort method, or the sub-maximal effort method.
Explaining the Methods
Whether it’s full-body training or any split workout routine, most of your average trainees and gym-goers use the repetition method. It certainly works to build muscle, which is why your average gym-goer and (even the elite) bodybuilder does it. It will make you look better, and if that is your only goal, then it’s absolutely the one that you should use. Perhaps, you’re telling yourself right now as you read these words, that you’re a martial artist but you also just lift weights to look better. Okay, fine. But the problem is that, in doing so, your performance—particularly your strength, speed, and power—is going to suffer. I’ve seen several martial artists take up bodybuilding-style training, only to begin to lose sparring matches in the dojo to their fellow practitioners who don’t do any resistance training. They’re often left confused by this, only to be told by their sensei, coach, or teacher that—as the teacher tried to tell them when they started lifting—“weights make you slow.”
When I started training in martial arts in the early 1980s, that was a common refrain. Many boxing coaches and karate, Taekwondo, and kung-fu teachers back then were adamant about the fact that weight training, and the muscular bulk that came with it, made the fighter slow. Yes and no. They were both right and wrong. Yes, and that’s my point here, bodybuilding-style training will decrease the speed and power of the practitioner. But those same teachers that said weight-training makes one slow also would have their students do bodyweight training—pushups, sit-ups, bodyweight squats, jumping squats, along with activities such as medicine ball throws. And that is still a form of resistance training, just not one with weights. So, they were also wrong. Your body doesn’t “know” the difference between a barbell and your bodyweight. Enter the other forms of resistance training.
When utilized correctly, not only will weight training not make you slower, it will improve your performance a lot more than the bodyweight training used by fighters of the past. So, let’s look at these other forms of strength training.
To reiterate, there are 3 methods that a fighter or martial practitioner should use. They are the dynamic effort method, the maximal effort method, and the sub-maximal effort method. We’ll go into each one in more detail but, briefly, they are this: The dynamic effort method is also called the “speed” method. In these workouts, you use (largely) weights that are between 50% and 70% of your one-rep maximum for multiple sets (6-12) of low reps (1-3). The maximal effort method is where you train, as the name suggests, with weights that are at, or close, to your 100% maximum for low reps (1-3). The dynamic effort method can be used by itself or with the maximal effort method. The maximal effort method should never be used as the sole form of training (more on that shortly). The 3rd method, the sub-maximal effort method, is sometimes known as “grease-the-groove” training, and I have referred to it in the past as the “set method.” With it, you do multiple sets (in a workout or over the course of a week of training; I suggest over the course of a week of training for the fighter) of low reps with “sub-maximal” weights, usually weights between 80% and 95% of your one-rep maximum—still heavy but not absolutely “maximal”.
First, we will discuss the dynamic effort and maximal effort methods. If utilized, they should be trained together. After that, I will discuss the sub-maximal effort method—usually, my preferred method for fighters. It should be trained without using the other two methods, though you might also use “supplementary” methods along with it. As much as I might have seemed to rail against the “repetition method,” there is a place for it, especially if strength-endurance is lacking in a fighter. We’ll cover how to use the repetition method as a supplementary component, along with other supplementary methods, after I finish discussing the three methods and workouts that employ them.
Enter the Dynamic and Maximal Effort Dragons
The dynamic and maximal effort methods have been around for quite some time, going back to the training of former Soviet-bloc countries in the ‘50s, when they began to dominate Olympic weightlifting competitions, but they became well-known in America through the writings of Louie Simmons and his powerlifters at Westside Barbell in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, the methods are synonymous with Westside. There’s just no getting around Westside’s influence.
Many fighters, especially if they are lacking speed or compete in a fighting sport that requires speed above all else (such as competitive “point fighting”), might do well to use the dynamic effort alone, or at least by itself for a training cycle or two. With the dynamic effort method, your workouts should consist of training a few lifts with between 8 and 12 sets of 1 to 3 reps. Occasionally, you might use as few as 6 sets, especially for something such as deadlifts if you’ve already done squats in the same workout. Conversely, you might also do as many as 15 sets if you are just doing one lift in a session. Although this isn’t a “hard and fast” rule, squats or any of the quick lifts (power cleans, power snatches, high pulls) are best trained with 8 to 10 sets of 2 reps, bench presses or overhead presses with 10 sets of 3 reps, and deadlifts with 8 to 12 sets of singles.
The reasons for utilizing the dynamic effort method are a few-fold. Doing any kind of "speed" work where you move the weight as fast as possible, while maintaining good form throughout the movement, is something that should obviously be beneficial to fighters. Speed training, when done correctly, does just what it entails to do: it makes you faster. And there's the kicker—it must be done correctly. Too much weight or too little weight, combined with too many repetitions per set, and your speed work won't be done in the correct manner.
The reason to use 1 to 3 reps is due to something called speed degradation. With each successive rep—once you've performed 3 repetitions—your speed will begin to "degrade". With each repetition performed, even with 50-70% of your one-rep maximum, the speed with which you can move the bar begins to lessen. Louie Simmons once used the analogy of bouncing a ball in one of his articles to explain speed degradation. He said if you were to take a basketball and bounce it as hard as you could, it would bounce really high the first two, three, or even four bounces, but with each successive bounce it loses power and speed—the speed degrades a lot by the time it has bounced ten times or more, with no power behind the bounce. This is another reason that the repetition method of training sucks for building power. You are "teaching" your body to reserve speed and power because your “body/mind mechanism” believes it needs those reserves in order to complete a set of 10 reps or more. However, if you were to bounce the ball really hard and catch it after 3 bounces, then bounce it really hard again, and catch it again after 3 bounces, speed and power would be constant and consistent. But your muscles—unlike the ball—will "learn" to give it their all when you train them in such a manner. This is the reason for utilizing multiple sets of low reps instead of just a handful of sets or fewer.
Most fighters need more than just speed, however. Enter the maximal effort method, which builds, as the name implies, maximal strength. Combining max strength with max speed is what builds power, and that is the primary reason why you should train the two together. Perhaps you’re already fast, so you might think you can get away with only using maximal effort training. The problem there is that max effort training by itself will make you slower. For example, here’s what happens if you only use the max-effort method (and this might be a common experience for anyone who’s tried to increase his bench press): Let’s say that you have been training your bench press fairly regularly so you decide that tonight you will test your strength by working up to a max single on the lift in order to see if all that hard work is paying off. You are elated to discover that your max bench press is now 225 lbs, whereas a couple months ago you could only bench 210. So, next week you decide once again to test your strength, and you're even more elated that your bench is now at 230 lbs. Man, you're thinking, this "max effort" training is gonna make you really strong! And next week, you max out again, only to find that your bench press is back to 225 lbs. Hmm, you think to yourself, it must have been a bad day at the gym, but you're confident that next week it will be different, and maybe your bench will be over 230 lbs. But, lo and behold, at your next workout, you only bench 215 pounds. Why? Because training with maximal weights on the same exercise each week might make you stronger, but it also makes you slower. Your body also, by the way, adapts to the exercise quickly when maxing out on a regular basis, which is the reason that you must rotate exercises and you must incorporate speed workouts into your heavy training. That is, essentially, Westside training in a nutshell. Weekly speed work combined with weekly max-effort sessions, rotating to a new max-effort lift every 1 to 3 weeks. The frequency with which you should rotate in new max-effort lifts depends on your strength level to start. If you’re a martial artist who is new to strength training, then you can stick with the same max-effort lift for 3 workouts in a row before rotating to a new one. If, however, you are more of an intermediate lifter, then you can stick with the same lift for 2 workouts. On the other hand, if you’re an advanced lifter—maybe you’ve been both powerlifting and training in the martial arts for several years—you need to rotate to a new one at each max-effort session.
Here’s a quote from Louie Simmons on the importance of this Westside-style training for the athlete, fighters included: “We hold the use of max-effort training in such high regard because of its impact on all other aspects of strength and athleticism. To put it simply, by raising the level of absolute strength you possess, you increase your ability to display different forms of strength and your overall capacity for these strengths.
“This means that you can run faster, jump higher, and be more resilient by becoming brutally strong. For instance, say you were to add 20lbs to the squat of an athlete who is new to weight training.
“If you were to measure max vertical jump before max effort training, then measure max vertical after the athlete had added the 20lbs to the lift, you would see an improvement in max vertical without incorporating any plyometric-focused exercises.
“Of course, if you couple the gains in absolute strength with dynamic effort training and plyometric work, you could expect even more significant gains in max vertical jump ability.
“To sum it up, we use max effort training to increase an athlete's absolute strength and raise their ability and capacity to display and develop other forms of strength and athleticism.”
Okay, now that I have explained (hopefully) the importance of dynamic and maximal effort training for the fighter, what would this look like in actual practice for the practitioner? Obviously, a martial artist can’t just add a Westside powerlifting template to his regular martial training. For one, it would be too much work, especially if the fighter is doing daily (or near-daily) martial training along with another cardiovascular component for endurance such as running. For another, Westside is made for powerlifters, not fighters.
Let’s back up just a little bit before we look at some example strength-training routines. The martial artist needs to keep a couple of other training components in mind. When you train in martial arts, you are using your entire body when you train. Even boxers, though they only fight with their hands, use their lower body for transmitting power into their punches. Other martial artists not only use their fists but their feet. Some, such as Muay Thai fighters, use feet, fists, elbows, and knees. Heck, a Lethwei fighter (Burmese boxer) even uses his head! Some martial artists, particularly TKD fighters, use their feet a lot more than their fists, but all of them use their entire body. This means that they should also use their entire body—for the most part—in their weight training sessions. Full-body workouts should be the mainstay. If not entirely full-body, then she should use a “full-body split” program where, for example, she squats, overhead presses, and power cleans at one session and deadlifts, bench presses, and chins at the 2nd. Yeah, sure, it’s a “split” routine, but both the lower body and upper body are used at each workout. The worst kind of training a fighter could use would be a multi-split routine where he trains only one muscle group at each session, such as a chest day, an arm day, a back day, and so forth. (Unfortunately, and, again, because of the influence of bodybuilding on modern training culture, that’s exactly what many do, especially a lot of young men I know who are martial artists that take up weight training with their buddies at the gym.)
The other important component—and I just touched upon it—is to select the correct movements to be trained. Squats are a good movement—heck, squats are good for just about everyone. But bench presses and curls, not so much. (Although I do believe in including at least some bench pressing in a fighter’s program.) When you train (and fight) in martial arts, you are not just using your entire body, but you’re doing everything standing—until, of course, a fight goes to the ground, but even then you’re using your whole body in a grappling session. So, it also makes sense that you should also do most lifts in your workouts while standing, as well. In fact, if you’re limited on time in the gym, do all of your lifts while standing. This means that squats, the quick lifts, deadlifts, and overhead movements are going to be superior to any movement that is done lying or seated.
The final component is the “nature” of the movement. Fighters should, once again, by and large, stay away from machines. Your body is moving through space while training in the fighting arts. Your lifts should move through space, as well. The more your entire body moves through space in a lift, the better the lift. The lifts I mentioned above all move completely through space. You should train with free weights: barbells, dumbbells, or kettlebells—each one has its unique advantages—but not so much machines. You might use some cable or band exercises, on occasion, and those might be good for the older martial practitioner or anyone dealing with injuries, as you can recover from cable and/or band work quicker than with free weights. But you don’t want to use a “fixed” machine that locks your body into a fixed plane of motion.
Okay, now we can finally get around to what a workout might look like using a Westside-style template. To start with, I think 2 days per week of training is probably enough for most fighters using this method (we’ll discuss higher-frequency workouts in our next section). It also ensures that you don’t miss a workout at the gym. Regular gym-goers often miss workouts, but you’re even more apt to do so if you’re also training in martial arts 3 to 6 days per week. Here’s a good full-body, 2-days-a-week routine for almost any martial practitioner.
Monday - Dynamic Effort Day
Squats: 8 sets of 2 reps with 60% of your one-rep maximum. After warm-ups, load the bar with approximately 60% of your one-rep max and do 8 sets of 2 reps with that weight. Each rep should be fast but should also be done with perfect form. Take no more than one minute of rest between sets, 30 seconds might be even better. If you start with a one-minute rest, over the coming workouts, try to slowly reduce the time between sets until you’re down to 30 seconds.
Military presses: 10 sets of 3 reps with 60%. Use the same technique as with the squats, but increase the sets to 10 and increase the reps to 3.
Deadlifts: 8 sets of singles with 70% of your 1-rep max. For your last exercise of the day, you will deadlift with the same “speed” technique. Increase the weight to approximately 70% of your max and reduce your reps to just 1. One rep will be enough on each set, as deadlifts take more out of you than other lifts.
Thursday - Max Effort Day
Squats, bottom-position squats, or front squats: Ramps of 5s, triples, and singles. Take your time to do progressively heavier sets of 5 reps. Work up to a hard, but not quite all-out set of 5 reps. Now, switch over to triples and do the same thing. After that, go to singles and work up to a near max single. Unlike traditional Westside training for powerlifters, don’t go for an absolutely all-out max single. The “near max” will be plenty for the fighter. You’re not attempting to win powerlifting meets but fights. Rotate to a new exercise every week, every 2 weeks, or every 3 weeks depending on your strength “level” as described earlier in the article.
Military presses, one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, or bench presses: ramps of 5s, triples, and singles. Use the same technique as the squatting movement. Make sure that you work up to a near-max on each arm for the one-arm overheads. Since I know most lifters (even fighters) probably like to bench press, doing it as your 3rd movement has been included. However, you can also substitute it with another overhead movement if you wish.
Power cleans, power snatches, or high pulls: ramps of 5s, triples, and singles. Use the same method as the other two lifts. The good thing about these lifts is that, even though you are training up to a near max, they still build speed, as you won’t be able to do a max (or near max) single that you can’t quickly pull off the ground. They sort of give you the best of both worlds.
If you wish, though I don’t think it’s necessary, you can split these workouts in half and train 4 days each week. So, you might do squats and deadlifts on Monday for speed, presses on Tuesday for speed, and then do a Thursday workout of max squats and pulls, followed by a Friday workout of max presses. That would work well if you just like going to the gym and doing short workout sessions. If you do elect to do that, do NOT add any extra work. Save the remainder of your energy that you have left over for your martial training.
You will notice that there are no assistance exercises or abdominal work. This workout also assumes that in your martial arts workouts, you will already be doing some of that. Most martial arts classes include sit-ups, crunches, or other abdominal work along with bodyweight exercises such as pushups. If you don’t do any of that in your martial arts training then, sure, add it to your weighted sessions. You can also add in some additional exercises for your arms or calves if you wish, but don’t overdo it. Ask yourself this: Will this extra work help or hinder my martial arts training? If you can’t answer in the affirmative, don’t do it.
The Legendary Weapons of Russia
AKA: Easy Strength for Fighters
“Competitors, especially fighters, often miss the point of strength training. The barbell is not there to make you a better man by testing your mettle; that is what the mat or the ring is for. And you are not training to become a better weightlifter or powerlifter. Iron is the means, not the goal.” ~Pavel
“To me, the sign of a really excellent routine is one which places great demands on the athlete, yet produces progressive long-term improvement without soreness, injury, or the athlete ever feeling thoroughly depleted. Any fool can create a program that is so demanding that it would virtually kill the toughest marine or hardiest of elite athletes, but not any fool can create a tough program that produces progress without unnecessary pain.” ~Dr. Mel Siff
“The difference between exercising and training is having a point. Exercise is done to waste energy, burn calories, or to ‘blow off steam,’ excess mental and physical energy, and tension. Training is done in order to improve something—strength, endurance, neuromuscular control, etc. Exercise is a singular event with an immediate goal.” ~Brian Petty (bare knuckle boxer and strength coach to fighters)
“In my opinion, easy strength training is the only productive way a competitive fighter can strength train. But most people think if you don’t break a sweat, it must not work. This used to bother me a lot, but not any more because I think it is one reason why my fighters win so much.” ~Steve Baccari (MMA coach)
I included those quotes here at the outset of our “2nd half” of this article because they, in many ways, sum up the mentality of the “sub-maximal effort” method. This method has also been called “grease-the-groove” training or “easy strength.” This method of training became popular in this century, and at the beginning of the last, largely through the writings of Pavel Tsatsouline, quoted above. From his influence, you also had strength coaches such as Dan John that started singing its praises, and, well, me, a little over 20 years ago, after I had discovered the incredible ability of the Russian powerlifting methods (high-volume, high-frequency, low-rep workouts) to make me, and others, incredibly strong. However, there is a difference with how the powerlifter should train using grease-the-groove methods compared to the fighter. Powerlifters, weightlifters, or bodybuilders are using their strength training to, quite simply, improve their strength training. They know they will improve in their sport if their lifts improve in the gym—it is just that simple. The fighter, however, can get much stronger in the gym and then, believe it or not, because of that strength, perform worse in their fighting art. To quote Pavel again: “The strength regimen must deliver great strength gains without exhausting the fighter’s energy or time.”
If you’re familiar with some of my writings on both high-set, low-rep training and “easy strength” such as my 30-Rep Program, then you’ll probably know where I’m headed here, but the fighter shouldn’t just take some of those workouts and do them exactly as I have written about previously. Most of my programs have the goal of building either strength, muscle mass, or a combination of both. Obviously, for reasons that I’ve already discussed, a martial artist doesn’t want to just train for muscle mass. Understanding that, the fighter needs to decide if he should use a program to build strength, along with speed and power, or if he should use one that builds strength and power along with muscle mass. Unless you’re a fighter that needs to stay in a weight class—or you simply want a build that is strong, dense, and hard without the concomitant hypertrophy—I would shoot for training for strength and power along with at least some muscle gains. Strength should always be first. The muscle mass should be a side effect of the training and not the primary goal.
When I write my workouts that use the sub-maximal effort method, keep in mind that those programs are for lifters who are not fighters. The fighter needs to make sure that the workouts improve his performance in the ring or on the mat, which means that he should, for the most part, do less in the gym than the average lifter following my “regular” workout routines.
We’ll start here with the “rules” for the fighter using this method before looking at some workout examples.
Rule #1: Use Only a Few Compound Movements at Each Session
This rule, of course, should be used whether you’re following the sub-maximal method or the Westside-style template, as you can see in my example workout above. But it bears repeating here. Five lifts per workout is probably the upper limit of what you should do. Three, or even just two, might be even better. The late, and great, strength coach and bodybuilding writer, Charles Poliquin, used to recommend 5 days of training per week for fighters but only 2 lifts at each workout. That’s not bad advice.
Three lifts might be the best to start with. In fact, a 3-3-3 format would probably work well. Three days of training. Three lifts at each session. Three sets for each lift. In my article Basic Movements, Quick Gains, I suggested that a fighter can’t go wrong with these 3 movements:
Squat of some sort
Vertical press of some kind
One of the quick lifts—power clean, power snatch, or high pull
The quick lift is good because it’s both a lower and upper body pull. It’s also a lot easier on your nervous system than deadlift variations, and your lower back recovers from it much faster. The squat is always good for everyone. And if you have to choose between the two different upper body presses (horizontal or vertical), go with the vertical.
You might want to use only two lifts per workout if you train more than 3 days a week, which brings us around to our next rule for fighters.
Rule #2: Train 3 to 5 Days Per Week
This rule comes down to my oft-quoted saying of the great Russian strength coach and researcher, Vladimir Zatsiorsky: “Train as heavy as possible as often as possible while being as fresh as possible.” The fighter must keep in mind that last point: fresh. The key here is balancing your time with the weights and your time in the dojo, boxing gym, kickboxing gym, or MMA club. If you’re only going to the dojo 2 days per week, then you can handle 5 sessions. If you’re going 3 days to the dojo, then you can probably handle 4 days of training. If you’re going 4 or more days to the dojo, then 3 days would probably be best.
You can also train the two together, if possible. Some MMA clubs have weights at their gyms, whereas a more traditional Okinawan karate dojo may not. But you might want to consider doing this if you have it as an option. You could start each workout with your weight training, and then finish with your martial training. Since you’re not “smoking it” with the weights, the lifting will actually prime your nervous system for your fighting art.
There is also a benefit to “weaving” the two together. If you train with weights while you’re also training in your fighting system, your body will better “understand” that the weight training is meant to aid you in your fighting. So, if you do a workout of squats, military presses, and power cleans, you might do some kicks in between each set of squats, some punches in between each set of military presses, and another technique in between each set of power cleans.
When in doubt, however, stick with 3 days per week of training. That might be a good number to start with. It will probably be plenty, but after several weeks of training, if you feel as if it’s helping your martial training, and you’re still fresh while training in your art, then you can increase the days.
Rule #3: Keep the Total Number of Reps on Each Lift Between 10 and 15
A lot of the programs I recommend for lifters have between 25 and 50 reps on each lift. The classic example is 5x5 training, which equals 25 reps. I’m also fond of set/rep schemes such as 10x3 and 8x5, which work out to 30 and 40 reps. But that’s probably too much at each session for the fighter. Fifteen reps is the upper limit of what you should do on average. Occasionally, you might push that number up a bit, but even 15 might be too much for a lot of fighters. Stick with just 10 for the majority of the sessions, and go up to 15 when you feel good.
This means that set/rep combinations such as 3x5, 5x3, 5x2, 2x5, 3x3, or 3x5,3,2 are best. And, remember, that's the total number of reps. So, that might be 3 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, 5 progressively heavier triples, 5 progressively heavier doubles, or 3 progressively heavier sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps. Place most of your emphasis on triples and doubles.
Rule #4: Rest 3 to 5 Minutes Between Sets at the Minimum
When training fighters, Pavel recommends resting long enough that the athlete’s body “forgets” the last set. This means that they might rest as long as 10 minutes. Steve Baccari, the MMA coach who I quoted above, has his fighters take a full hour to complete 5 sets of doubles! That might be too long for many fighters for the simple sake that they can’t afford to spend all day at the gym, but you should still rest long enough that your cardiovascular system has recovered completely. You want your nervous system to be completely refreshed for each one of your fighting sessions and you can’t afford for your weight sessions to cut into that. To quote Pavel again: “If you want to excel in your sport, you must get over the pump-and-burn mentality.”
Rule #5: Train Heavy and “Hard” but Always Leave at Least 2 Reps “in the Tank”
The top-end sets of your workouts should be somewhere in the 80-95% of your maximum—that’s plenty “hard and heavy”—but you should never take your sets to absolute momentary muscular failure. In fact, unlike what I suggest for the average lifter just looking to get big and strong, you shouldn’t even come 1-rep short of muscular failure. Instead, leave a couple reps “in the tank” at the end of a set. So, a top set of triples should be with a weight that you could have done for 5 reps if you were training all-out. A top single should be with a weight that you could have used for an all-out triple. And so forth. This doesn’t mean, again, that you can’t occasionally go for a max, but don’t do that more than once per month, at the most. Even then, I would recommend a “near max.” The late strength coach Charlie Francis, who coached the legendary (and perhaps, better-thought-of, infamous) Ben Johnson for his Olympic gold medals, explained the reason for this “near-max” rather than going 100%: “There’s a huge difference between 95 and 100% performance. The difference in output and effort is unbelievable. Even though it’s in the 95th percentile and qualifies as high-intensity work, it’s a joke. Keep in mind that this only applies to high-level athletes. If a kid gets a personal best, so what? We’re only talking about world record levels.”
Barry Ross, a world-class sprint coach who has trained some of the top sprinters in the world, has his athletes do 2 to 3 sets per lift for 2 to 3 reps, using 85-90% of their 1-rep max (with 5 minutes of rest between sets, I might add). He explains the reasoning like this: “The benefit is much more rapid strength gains. By keeping sets and reps low, timed and without lifts to failure, lactic acid is minimal or non-existent. The athletes feel exhilarated and ready for a full-event workout after lifting.” I know his domain is sprinting, but the lesson applies to fighters all the same, perhaps even more so, since the martial arts are the one domain where all of one’s muscles are trained in an explosive manner.
Rule #6: Cycle the Training Loads
Even though none of the training we’ve discussed so far involves going to 100%—whether it’s in effort, weight, or training volume—the fighter still needs to cycle her training loads. Dan John’s recommendation for his “easy strength” routines is one good way that you might apply this principle. He prefers this sequence: 3x3 (heavy), 5x2 (heavier) 2x5 (light), 6x1 (working up to a “near max”), 3x5,3,2 (moderate), 1x10 (very light). After that, repeat the sequence. That’s a “systematic” approach, but you can also take a less structured route. Just think “advance and retreat.” If you know your body well, this “intuitive” approach might, in fact, be best. If you don’t know your body that well, then use a structured system.
You can also keep the sets/reps the same but just cycle the load. Bill Starr’s classic “heavy-light-medium” system is an example of this. However, you wouldn’t want to utilize Starr’s system outright. But 3 days per week of 3 lifts at each workout, using a 3x5 system (instead of 5x5) of heavy, light, and medium sessions would work well for the fighter.
Rule #7: Reduce Your Volume In-Season to ½ or ⅔ of your Off-Season Training
If you aren’t a competitive fighter or martial artist, this rule doesn’t apply. However, if you compete in scheduled fights or some kind of tournament circuit, this is a necessity. For example, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, I competed in a JKA-style karate circuit that involved weekly (or every-other-week) fighting tournaments. It took a lot out of you. I didn’t do anything less during the tournament season, nor did any of my fellow karate-kas—but, hey, I was also a teenager with plenty of energy and testosterone. Looking back on it, there’s no telling how much more refreshed I would have been for those tournaments if I would have followed this rule.
In-season, you can reduce either the number of your workouts or the amount of volume that you do at each session. Bill Starr, for example, had his football players go from 3-days-a-week of training to just 2 days. Instead of a heavy, light, medium rotation, they used a heavy/light schedule or even just a medium/light one. If you reduce the volume within the workouts, rather than the number of sessions, you might go from 5 sets of 2 reps to 3 sets of 2, or from 3 sets of 3 to 2 sets of 3. You can still train with percentages between 80 and 95%, but make sure you leave the gym feeling stronger than when you started—that is the key.
The 30-Rep Program for Fighters
To show how you might apply these rules, and everything we’ve discussed so far, here’s how to use my 30-Rep Program. Keep in mind, however, that this is just an example workout. You might need less—possibly even more, but only if you know your body well enough to know that you’ll actually thrive off the increase in work.
For this program, select around 8 to 10 exercises total that you will use throughout the program. The fighter, as already discussed, should do more overhead work than horizontal presses and more cleans than deadlifts. However, you can include some deadlifts and bench presses, just don’t overdo it. Here’s the list of movements I gave in my original program:
Barbell squats (back squats, front squats, or bottom-position squats)
Bench presses (including bottom-position bench presses and board presses of various heights)
Weighted Dips
Barbell overhead presses
One-arm dumbbell overhead presses
Deadlifts (sumo, conventional, deficit, rack pulls)
Power cleans
Power snatches
Chins (wide-grip, close-grip, undergrip, etc.)
Barbell curls
That is technically more than 10 movements if you include the variations of squat, bench press, deadlift, or chins. If you’re new to power training, then you may want to not perform any variations, but if you’re an advanced lifter, then the variety will be a welcome break and it will ensure that your lifts continue to go up-and-up so long as you're focusing on your weak points. By the way, you can also combine two of the exercises and count that as one lift. In other words, you could clean and press or you could do something such as a deadlift curl (a really great exercise that doesn’t get enough attention.)
At each workout, pick three of the exercises to train. (Make sure that your workout session is balanced—i.e., it works your entire body—so don’t just select, for example, bench presses, dips, and chins.) For each exercise, do no more than 10 reps. Set/rep ranges could include 2 sets of 5 reps, 5 sets of 2 reps, 3 sets of 3 reps (I know it’s not 10 reps, but it’s close enough), or 3 sets of 5, 3, then 2 reps. This works out—pun firmly intended—to 30 reps total for the workout.
In the original program, I suggested training at least 5 days per week, perhaps even 6 most weeks. For the fighter, 5 should be your maximum. Start with just 3 days of training to begin with. If you feel as if you are recovering fine, then you can always add another day or two. However, if you do 3 days of training and you find that your martial arts is improving, then don’t do more just for the sake of it.
Here is what a couple weeks of training might look like to begin the program:
Week One:
Monday:
Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps
Power Cleans: 2 sets of 5 reps
Bench Presses: 2 sets of 5 reps
Wednesday:
Bottom-position Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps
Deadlifts: 5 sets of 2 reps
Barbell Overhead Presses: 2 sets of 5 reps
Friday:
Squats: 3 sets of 3 reps
Power Snatches: 3 sets of 3 reps
Weighted Chins: 2 sets of 5 reps
Week Two:
Monday:
Squats: 5 sets of 2 reps
One-arm Dumbbell Overhead Presses: 3 sets of 3 reps (each arm)
High pulls: 5 sets of 2 reps
Wednesday:
Bottom-position squats: 3 sets of 3 reps
Power Cleans: 5 sets of 2 reps
Barbell Curls: 2 sets of 5 reps
Friday:
Front Squats: 5 sets of 2 reps
Military presses: 2 sets of 5 reps
Power snatches: 5 sets of 2 reps
For the 2 sets of 5, these should be done with the same weight for both sets. Pick a weight where you could probably do 8 to 10 reps without straining. The key is to make the 2 sets of 5 reps easier and easier as the workout goes on. Slowly add weight to your 2x5 over the program.
The 3 sets of 3 reps can be done with something a little heavier, but not by much. Use the same weight on all 3 sets.
The 5 sets of 2 are a little different. For this one, start the first set of 2 reps with whatever weight you would use for your 2 sets of 5 and do 5 progressively heavier sets of 2 reps. You must get your last double, but you can still “push it” a little more here than on the other set/rep combinations. That’s the workout where you can use more than the “2 in the tank” rule. Typically, after a couple of workouts for a particular lift where I do 2 sets of 5 reps or 3 sets of 3 reps, I then like to “test” my strength a little bit with the 5 sets of 2 set/rep range.
You can also use some of the other set/rep combos that I discussed above in Dan John’s recommended sequence. Just keep in mind all of the previous 7 rules, and you’ll do just fine on this or any other program you select.
Can You Combine Methods?
This is a topic I know I need to discuss, otherwise I’m bound to get an email about it at some point. Can you not combine both the Westside-style training and the Russian-style “grease-the-groove” methods in order to get the best of all strength-and-power-building worlds? Russian researchers—Pavel discussed this in depth in his book Power to the People Professional—would say, quite emphatically, no. Westside training improves intra-muscular coordination, or the ability to fire individual muscles more intensely. This is “getting stronger.” Russian-style training, and my 30-Rep Program would be included here, improves inter-muscular coordination, or what lifters typically think of as improving your “skill.” This is “lifting more.”
To back up this claim that the two methods cannot be combined together, here are a few quotes from different Russian strength researchers and authors:
Zatsiorsky: “One rep max strength can only be effectively built when the kinematics of your training lift—that is, its velocity and acceleration—match that of the max lift.”
Falameyev: “Slow movements of the barbell trigger different changes from fast lifting in the central nervous system and the muscular apparatus. It’s important to lift the weights slowly if strength is the goal. The muscles adapt to slow, smooth movement and static tension. One must remember the high specificity of the training effect: the organism adapts its functions to the activity it is performing.”
Pavel again: “If you are a grinder, it should be obvious that the right groove will only be ‘greased’ if you don’t explode your weights but make the timing of every training rep, even with light weights, look like an all out single. Otherwise you would be running a different motor program and facilitating a wrong pathway.”
With all of that being said, it’s not that you can’t use both methods of training, but you shouldn’t use them at the same time, and certainly not within the same workout. If it’s speed that you need above anything else—again, “point fighters” should pay attention—then running a program of just dynamic effort training would be a good idea. You could also, on occasion, do a speed workout in place of one of your “regular” sessions if you’re running the 30-Rep Program, maybe one session every 2 weeks.
You can also, however, run an 8-12 week training cycle of Westside-style workouts and another 8-12 weeks of easy strength workouts. Although you might do better to run each training cycle for a bit longer so that—if our Russian researchers are correct—your muscles don’t get “confused” by the varying parameters.
Okay, Sloan, What About the Repetition Method and High-Rep Endurance Training?
I mentioned earlier that I would discuss ways that you can incorporate the repetition method or high-rep weight training, so here goes. First things first, make sure that this is something that you actually need. As I wrote at the outset, the chances are that you don’t need this, assuming your martial arts training is “on point.” Your martial arts itself should take care of your cardiovascular conditioning. If not—and this is where a lot of fighters are lacking—then the simplest, and probably best, thing that you can do is hit the road. If you’re lacking endurance and “gassing out” while sparring at the dojo or in the ring, then it’s probably not weight training you need but a nice, long, and daily jog.
In 1993, when I co-owned a karate dojo with my good friend Mike, we would invite all-comers on Saturday afternoon for sparring sessions. We invited kung-fu schools, Jeet Kune Do academies, and several boxing and kickboxing gyms. (There was no MMA back then. In fact, we watched UFC 1 in ‘93 in our dojo with our students by rolling in one of those big, bulky “old” wide-screen televisions.) We wanted to both learn from other schools and systems and, of course, test our “mettle” against them. I completely and totally got my “eyes boxed shut” by one of the coaches at a boxing gym. And it was mainly because, as the sparring session wore on, he had a lot of gas left in the tank, but mine was almost entirely spent. (Oh, and I didn’t see where half of his punches were coming from.) Afterwards, while I was lying in a pool of sweat with my ego slightly deflated, and he looked as if he could still run a marathon, we talked. I won’t ever forget what he told me. He said he could teach skill. But he’d take an un-skilled fighter who could run a 10-mile jog with ease over a skilled fighter who lacked such endurance. I took it that I was the skilled fighter without endurance. But the lesson is true. So, again, if you lack endurance then hit the road and build some.
Now, there are reasons that you might not want to do that. If you have knee or back problems that prevent you from running, then doing high-repetition kettlebell, dumbbell, or barbell workouts might just be a good plan. A good workout that would build endurance would be the 10,000 Swing Challenge. I won’t go into it here, so click on the link if you want to see what that might look like.
Another good option—and I particularly like this with kettlebells, though it works with some dumbbell or barbell movements—is to do complexes. With complexes, you do a series of lifts, proceeding from hardest to easiest, without setting the weight down. You might, for example, do double kettlebell overhead presses, double kettlebell cleans, double kettlebell front squats, and double kettlebell deadlifts as one complex. You can choose other exercises, but that’s a complex that I’m fond of for almost any athlete that needs some extra endurance and wants to build some muscle on top of it. That’s correct. It will also build some muscle, and if you’ve been paying attention throughout this (rather long) article, then you know that that may or may not be a good thing. Only you can decide whether it’s needed for you.
I also think that if you’re going to do high-repetition training, the kettlebell is probably the best tool for the fighter. No, I don’t sell kettlebells. I have absolutely no “dog in the hunt” or other reason to tell you that they might—and that’s the key word, might—be superior. But I think if you’re going to do high-repetition training, you need a “tool” that can help prevent you from getting slower, and the kettlebell just might be that tool. There’s a big difference between doing high-rep KB swings and high-rep bodyweight squats and pushups. (Go back and re-read my first quote from Pavel on the “problem” with high repetition bodyweight training.)
I’m not going to go into any more detail here with training for “endurance.” Again, and I hate to repeat myself but it probably bears repeating, let your martial arts training itself take care of muscular endurance. If you are training at a “good” dojo or MMA club (or whatever it is; forgive me if I’ve left out your particular “art” in this article), one that actually knows what it’s doing, then you shouldn’t need any extra endurance training, at least not with weights.
Now, the question is this: Is there another reason that you might want to use the repetition method in your training? If you have strength, power, and speed covered with your weight training and cardiovascular/muscular endurance covered with your martial training and whatever supplementary activities, is there any other reason to use the repetition method? Another way of putting it: Is there any other form of resistance training that you should use that we haven’t covered? And would there be a reason for using another method?
Short answer: maybe. Longer answer: There might be a few more methods of training that would be useful for specific fighters, especially if they are “lacking” a physical demand that would be useful in their fighting art. For example, some young men take up either martial arts or weight training because they are, quite simply, small. If you’re a scrawny young martial artist then, sorry, but you need some muscle size. In that case, you should use the repetition method almost exclusively, at least for a certain amount of time, in order to add that size. You should still apply all of the other lessons learned here. You should do full-body workouts. You should use the big, compound lifts with free weights. But you should also do more reps than I have prescribed, but less than what you would use to build muscular endurance. A 3-days-per-week (perhaps just 2) full-body routine of 3 sets of 6-8 reps on each lift is just what the muscle-building doctor has ordered for you.
There’s also some benefits of hypertrophy training for the fighter using what Dan John calls “armor building.” He also calls it “bodybuilding for sport.” It’s the idea of building muscle in all of the “right places” in order to “armor” you for collision. He mainly refers to football or rugby players in his writings on the topic, but it obviously would carry over to fighting, as well. Adding some mass to your arms and legs will not only allow you to punch and kick harder but it will allow you to take a punch or kick to those areas with greater ease. Same thing for abdominals. A fighter shouldn’t worry so much about having a lean, “good-looking” midsection as one that is thick and powerful (that doesn’t mean fat). Adding some abdominal muscle will allow you to take a punch or kick without (as much) pain and will also help to protect your solar plexus. Anyone who has taken a shot directly to the solar plexus understands how much benefit there would be to adding muscle around the area in order to protect it. A big neck will even allow you to take a head shot with greater ease. The neck “holds” the brain in stability. If it’s thick and strong, you are less likely to get knocked out, plain and simple.
A good armor-building program might include squats for the legs, overhead presses for the shoulders, bench presses for the chest, flat-footed cleans for the back and neck, barbell curls for the arms, and a heavy calf and abdominal movement. Anyone who’s taken a kick to calves also knows that calf-training is something the fighter can’t afford to neglect.
So, if you need some “armor” to your physique, spend a few training cycles doing a more “traditional” size and power routine. Instead of 10 to 15 reps total per lift, bump it up to 25 to 30. Do this in the off-season, however, when you can afford to back off slightly on your martial training. A “classic” Bill Starr heavy-light-medium program would be a good choice for your off-season weight training to add mass (and more strength and power).
Hojo Undo or “Supplementary” Training
Traditional Okinawan karate dojos, in the early part of the 20th century, always included “hojo undo,” translated as “supplemental training.” This involved activities such as makiwara training—which is still done in many dojos, but the other methods have been, unfortunately, largely lost to time. It also involved “chi-shi” or “strength stones” and “nigiri-game” or “gripping jars.” When you read karate texts from that time, you often won’t read about hojo undo but that is because everyone understood that it was a part of training. When karate made its way to the Japanese mainland, it also wasn’t mentioned, or even used, with the exception of the makiwara, because the Japanese already understood the need for supplemental training. They lifted weights regularly, and stone lifting has always been a part of Japanese culture, even outside of the Budo (traditional Japanese martial ways). Stone lifting was part of sumo training, but it was also incorporated into various Shinto festivals. But this supplemental training was almost entirely lost in American karate dojos.
In addition to our weight training, is there any other supplemental training that you might want to include in your training outside of what we’ve already discussed? Well, you could just do traditional hojo undo, but there are some other methods that might be easier to incorporate that mimic the same effects.
One of the best training implements for fighters are “Fat Gripz” or any other brand of “thick grip handles” that can be easily added to a barbell or dumbbell. I’ve written about thick bar training in detail elsewhere, so I won’t go into it as much here, but I think it would be advantageous for fighters to, at least occasionally, do an entire workout or even an entire training cycle of using nothing but thick-bar movements. Not only will the training improve your grappling strength or the power of your punches but it has other benefits. Since it requires the use of lighter weights, it forces you to not train as heavy, allowing you to recover easier for your martial sessions. Training with thick bars creates a kind of dense, thick, and wiry strength, a tension that you can’t replicate with other training. It can not only replace the nigiri-game training but improve upon it.
You can replace stone training—if you have access to some heavy stones, then, by all means, utilize it as a method—with sandbag workouts. Buy a couple (or a few) duffle bags and fill them up with sand or stones. It helps to have ones of various weights, hence the need for at least two of them. Sandbag cleans, overhead presses, curls, deadlifts, holds, and carries are all good. Just as with the thick-bar training, you can do an entire workout or training cycle with nothing but sandbags. In fact, I’ll take the fighter who does sandbag workouts over the barbell trainee any day of the week. If you don’t want to do entire workouts of sandbag training, then you can replace one of your free-weight movements with it. For example, a week of my 30-Rep Program, replacing one (or more) of the movements with a sandbag lift, might look like this:
Monday:
Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps
Sandbag Cleans: 2 sets of 5 reps
Bench Presses: 2 sets of 5 reps
Wednesday:
Bottom-position Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps
Sandbag deadlifts: 2 sets of 5 reps
Sandbag Overhead Presses: 2 sets of 5 reps
Friday:
Squats: 3 sets of 3 reps
Power Snatches: 3 sets of 3 reps
Sandbag curls 2 sets of 5 reps
In addition to sandbags, stones, and thick bars, you can also lift barrels and anvils (though be careful when doing so; safety first!) and do some sled dragging. Dragging a sled is another good movement for the fighter because, not only does it build strength and endurance, but it also doesn’t produce much muscle soreness. Since there is NOT a deep eccentric portion to sled dragging, it doesn’t break down your muscle tissue as much, which is the reason for the lack of soreness. Since you can recover quicker from them, it makes sense that they would be a good addition to your program. Again, don’t overdo them, however. I have presented a lot of different training options in this article, so don’t try to do all of them at once. Your focus should always be, first and foremost, on your martial training.
What if I Just Want to Look Like a Fighter?
I have covered a lot in this article, but what if you just want to look like a fighter? I think a lot of casual trainees or average gym-goers—or, heck, just regular couch potatoes—see an MMA or Muay Thai fight on the telly (sorry, I’m a Muay Thai guy, myself) and they think to themselves, “man, if I took up fighting, I’d look like that.” Well, maybe. But maybe not. If you watch a lot of MMA, then you probably know that for every one fighter that looks as if he could step on a bodybuilding stage there are two more who look like “joggers”. If you say that you want to “look like a fighter” then the question is “which one?”
Okay, the truth is that most guys who want to “look like a fighter” shouldn’t take up fighting in order to look that way. Sorry, but most of the time they should just train like a bodybuilder. If you want to be lean and muscular, then look over this blog. I have plenty of training programs and workouts that focus on aesthetics over performance. Get on a muscle-building program to build lean muscle tissue and get on a diet that will reduce your bodyfat. That’s probably what you need instead of all of the stuff I’ve written about in this article.
Now, having written that, some guys want a different “look” other than just being lean and muscular. If you want a thick, dense, hard, but not necessarily big, physique, then the best type of training that will produce that look is high-set, low-rep training. So, if that’s the look you are going for, I suggest reading my recent article High-Set, Low-Rep Workout Variations for Size and Strength. Follow that kind of training for the next year or so, and it will get you there. But if you’re an actual fighter who wants to get stronger, faster, and decidedly more powerful, follow my advice in this article.
The Sum of All Things Fighting
Some fighters may have read this—and some of their coaches, in particular—and not liked it. Why? Because it goes against the grain of what they, or their athletes, are doing. The problem with training in modern gyms is the same problem with the training of modern martial artists. Too many times they think a workout is “good” if it tires them out, makes them exhausted, or leaves them lying in a pool of sweat when it’s finished. As the great, late Dr. Mel Siff pointed out (and that I quoted from earlier) any fool can create a program that leaves the toughest martial artist extremely fatigued when the workout is over, but not any fool can create a training program that actually produces results without unnecessary pain. If you’re a martial artist who is looking for real improvements in strength, speed, and power—improvements that you will be able to see (and others will see, as well) in the ring or on the mat—then use the training principles I have outlined. Not only will you get better, you might just dominate in your fighting art.
Sources
Supertraining by Mel Siff
Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competition and Dominate in Your Sport by Pavel and Dan John
Power to the People Professional by Pavel
Before We Go - An On-Going Philosophy of Lifting, Living, and Learning by Dan John
If you’re a martial artist or fighter—or maybe you’re interested in becoming one—I hope you found this article informative and enlightening. I hope you enjoyed it, too. I enjoyed writing it since it’s a topic that I’m passionate about as I hate to see my fellow martial artists utilize worthless training methods. If you have any questions about anything that I’ve discussed—yeah, I know; I discussed a lot—then please leave them in the “comments” section below. If you want more private correspondence, then send me an email. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you have or look over a program you’re doing if you need some suggestions.
Also, if you enjoy reading this blog and would like to support my work, then please consider purchasing one of my books. Click on THIS link for information on all of my books currently available for purchase. As I was writing this article, I realized that it could be a book unto itself, so I might use it to flesh out a complete book for training fighters at some point.
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