You will want the energy to focus on these important strength movements, and your central nervous system will be taxed after the week of training. Again, this is just an example of how to hit the full pie in a week for your needs and time restrictions.

You may also make the strength workouts a bit more enduring by super-setting the two pairs of exercises. What if the fight comes up short notice Example: 4 weeks How do we adjust? Again, there are many ways to adjust and it will depend on where you are with your strengths and weaknesses.

It will also depend on what your coach is going to make you do, whether it's right or wrong unfortunately. Typically, a month before the fight, your skill training will increase in intensity.

Your coach should be putting together more taxing workouts, more sparring, etc. At this point, hopefully your body is pretty well prepared, and it's time to train the mind through your training so that you are ready to step in the ring or cage with clarity.

Heavy strength training should be tapered off to eliminate soreness and risk of overtraining. You could increase the intensity of it by combining both strength workouts Tuesday and Saturday into one workout.

I would hit that on the Saturday, and super-set it. You might put the deadlift series with the pressing series, and then the squatting series with the pullup series. Decrease your workload to about three sets of each. Right now, you're looking to maintain strength and focus on the power endurance and conditioning.

What you have for strength now is what you have, and it's best to cut down on the muscle soreness and begin to rest the body. On the other days, Monday to Friday, there will be a lot of technique work and conditioning. This means more sprints and plyometric work, maybe twice a week.

The hard mitt and pad rounds should increase as well. Depending on what you have been doing in training and exactly how far your fight date is, you might need to take a few days off to rest right away while you can. As a fight nears, we can often overwork ourselves.

It's hard to take it easy when all you can think about is your opponent. There is a fine line here. On the other hand, when you get that deep achy-bones feeling or your CNS is fried, you may need a day off or an active rest day, maybe with a bit of low-impact cardio for recovery.

The next day, you can put more into your workout instead of being further beaten down. A good coach should be able to monitor this. You'll have good days and bad, but mind-over-matter is the spirit of a fighter. We over-train on purpose to be mentally prepared for war.

Do I have back-off periods in the periodization program, not including tapering? Every fight prep is a period. Say you fight three times in a year, as most amateurs do. They may not be perfectly spaced out, but if they are, then there is a fight to prepare for every four months.

After a fight, you must rest. You can take a week or two and do almost nothing, or active rest. This is when I like to do things that I enjoy, like go for hikes, bike rides, go fishing, go to Cancun Hardcore athletes have to alienate themselves most of the time, and post fight time-off is good therapy.

Get it in while it lasts though, because you have work to do and things to improve on back at the gym. Nobody likes the shadowboxing guy. There are a few ways to look at that. All fighters and athletes are so unique. Maybe one guy will make good gains or improvements from training for four weeks before hitting a plateau or needing rest, while another athlete might make good gains for 9 weeks, 3 days and 22 hours.

So why stop the latter at 4 weeks? I think in this case you should take it by feel. When your improvement slows down, you start feeling overtrained, you get bored, or your coach just plain tells you to do something else, then that's when the period should change.

Life is good! You feel sore, you're losing some snap and starting to feel overtrained. You know what overtraining leads to? It leads to no gains, injuries, anger, frustration, and unfortunately sometimes in MMA, a royal ass beating that will break your heart.

Yes, it's time to back off. I might do this in a number of ways. I might just cut out the strength workouts for a couple weeks, and continue on with the other forms of training, or I might back everything down slightly for a bit.

If I feel really thrashed, maybe I took a while to hear the overtraining call, then I will take the time off completely or just train whatever I want every three days or so.

After a period of weeks, training can resume. I usually go right into a full schedule, but ease into training for the first couple of weeks. No need to do max efforts the first week. Get your body back into it and work out some imbalances and work yourself up.

At this point, I'll change my strength and conditioning workouts. maybe get after the prowler! As far as the weight training and contrast workout, maybe I'll jump into a phase of olympic lifts on those days. Olympic lifting is a great way to strength train for combatants as well.

In other words, try to periodize in relation to your fight schedule, and other than that, listen to your body and coaches. I know most periodizations have preparatory periods, but what if your aerobic level is on a ok level?

would we skip this part and focus more on anaerobic workouts? Like I said above, ease your body into any new style of workout. Measure your progress to make gains. If your cardio far exceeds your strength, then yeah, focus on it for a while.

But never leave cardio training out. Just kidding. You might need to work on strength, but a fighter can never have enough cardio.

The preparatory period given for a specific workout that follows a periodized format can be different, depending on what it is the workout is focusing on.

Would you happen to have a sample program for a fighter that has like weeks to train for a fight so I can have a better understanding of this concurrent and conjugate method?

The schedule that I gave above in the first answer is a good example. As with anything, you have to see how it works for you, nothing is cookie cutter for any athlete. It is a good place to start and see how you respond and what you might need additionally or minimally depending on your current skills, strengths and weaknesses.

You need to eat properly in order to ensure proper recovery and meet the energy demands of your training. I find that there is a huge lack of proper nutritional knowledge among fighters and trainers in general for some reason.

You may need to lose weight, build muscle,etc. for an upcoming bout. Either way, proper fuel is a must. Previous Next. Call Us Hours Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm EST. Contact Us Get in touch with our team. FAQs Frequently asked questions. FREE SHIPPING! Need to access your Online Course or Ebook?

Learn More. Home Excerpt What is periodized nutrition? What is periodized nutrition? Larry Kenney. This adaptation in- has proven to be the superior design VL of resistance training decreases creases RFD 51,54 , maximal force pro- for athletes participating in concurrent as the athlete moves from the devel- duction capabilities 51 , and maximal training 33, Each successive meso- opment of hypertrophy to strength.

power output 86 , which match the cycle will have a greater overall This makes way for the increased Strength and Conditioning Journal www. A loading paradigm used to manage the overall training stress over a macrocycle. The last week of the pre- competition mesocycle forms the first week of the 2-week taper volume of technical and energy sys- plan, increases the risk of overtraining morning heart rate, and rate of per- tem training.

Relative distribution of 20,31 necessitating careful athlete ceived exertion using questionnaires the training workloads for this period monitoring of fatigue state. To monitor such as RESTQ-Sport, profile of mood is presented in Figure 3 and Table 1.

training load and its impact on fatigue states, and total quality recovery. Train- Table 2 depicts the weekly schedule effectively, a number of strategies are ing loads should be modified if this for these training tasks.

The loads should be monitoring data provide evidence of preplanned and based on the capacity increased fatigue. Self-reporting should A large volume of concurrent training, assist in athlete monitoring by record- Field tests should be conducted during as is common in an MMA training ing fatigue level, sleep quality, resting the first week of each mesocycle to Figure 3.

Distribution of training workloads over the specific preparation mesocycle. This is sug- repetitions are to be performed not to and to monitor the impact of the pre- gested to be the superior approach failure.

Table 4 presents the resistance vious training cycle Table 3. These when developing a training plan training prescription and loading performance tests will assist in identify- 23,40,63,72,83, Targeting muscular schedule.

This information stimulates increases in cross-sectional POWER TRAINING should also be presented to sports- area, anaerobic capacity, and fat-free The sequenced approach to this train- specific coaches to help determine the mass, which provides the foundation ing plan aims for maximal power gen- prioritization of training tasks thus for the development of strength in the erating capacity to peak on completion allocation of workloads over the meso- following block However, caution of the final mesocycle, thus, the resis- cycle and within each block.

How- system conditioning may be prioritized weight for their class. The improved ever, the weightlifting activities and over technical work in a training block.

strength aids in the development of their variations that are included allow Alternatively, an athlete may have low power in the following mesocycle for the development of both force and strength, and the development of this The resistance training frequency, velocity components Velocity- capacity may increase in priority.

Special volume, and loading should fall within specific improvements are trained in attention must be paid to the potential the optimal bandwidth for high-level this period through the inclusion of interference effects that can impact adap- concurrently training athletes plyometric-type, and low-load ballistic tations.

Thus, if an increase in strength or Additionally, to provide necessary un- and weightlifting tasks during energy power is desired, it would be beneficial to loading, the presented program incor- system training and technical sessions. lower endurance-training workload. porates only 2 sets in the final week of Such modalities are understood to this mesocycle.

This The development of strength in this iation in intensity, which optimizes mixed-methods approach is recog- mesocycle is in accordance with the the- recovery and adaptation 32, nized as the superior method for devel- ory of sequenced training.

This method The principle of dynamic correspon- oping power suggests that the development of one dence 19 would suggest that multijoint ENERGY SYSTEM TRAINING ability potentiates the development of exercises including weightlifting activities the next 47, Thus, each training are ideal.

In accordance with the findings As LIIT delivers improvements pre- period should facilitate the improvement of Izquierdo-Gabarren et al. How- Table 3 ever, this should shift to HIIT strate- Physiological testing battery for MMA gies, which are bioenergetically specific to an MMA bout.

In the example pre- outputa maximum 1RM sented Table 5 , a Hi:Lo ratio is Loaded lower-body power Jump squat at a load representing the weight used and would allow a fighter to effec- outputa class of the athleteb tively prepare for an anticipated grap- pling-dominant fight.

This is in Upper-body dynamic strength 1RM bench press accordance with the indication that Lower-body dynamic strength 1RM back squat grappling sports have higher work-to- rest ratio than striking sports Intermittent aerobic and Yo-Yo intermittent recovery level 2 test 18,59,64, A Hi:Lo ratio could anaerobic capacity be used for bouts in which striking ex- 1RM 5 repetition maximum.

changes are expected to predominate. a These tests will be conducted if a linear position transducer is available. Additionally, the work intervals con- sider the finding that approximately b For example, a fighter competing in the kg weight class will use 77 kg for this test.

seconds Strength training prescription Furthermore, no conditioning using MMA-specific activities is prescribed Tuesday heavy Friday medium in this final week to allow restitution Clean Hang power clean and press from the intense collisions associated with this mode.

Push press Back squat Deadlift DB Press TECHNICAL TRAINING Because of the large number of disci- Bench press Single-arm DB row plines that compose MMA, technical Barbell row Stiff-leg deadlift sessions likely comprise a greater por- tion of a training plan than many other Loading schedule single-event sports.

sparring in positions where the tech- nique can be applied. However, spar- ring sessions may also be delivered recovery sequences lasts approxi- the right 29,42 eliciting improvements independently of other activities.

mately 5 minutes, which replicates in lactate buffering capacity, which is the duration of a round. As technical sessions increase in prior- critical considering the high lactate ity, the sports-specific coach will be In addition to greater specificity, the pro- levels experienced by MMA athletes directed to increase the training work- gression to HIIT in this mesocycle min- 7.

Energy system conditioning strat- load for this mesocycle, distributing imizes the disruption to the development egies can use resistance training, cycli- the training workload in accordance of strength 51 , power 86 , and RFD cal activities, or more sports-specific with the loading paradigm used.

In accordance with the inclusion or removal of sessions or and HIIT capacity 57,74, This form the loading pattern, training stress adjusting the duration of the session.

of interval training can shift the lactate is increased over the first 3 weeks, Furthermore, the intensity or duration threshold and onset of blood lactate to whereas a considerable decrease is of the live sparring component can be Table 5 Energy system training strategies based on a Hi:Lo ratio of Mode Set length Work intervals Recovery No.

Repetitions Sets Rest min Sports-specific 5 min A takedown against s low-intensity 10 Week 1 a resisting opponent, grappling or sparring Week or s striking Week combination Week Resistance complex 5 min 15 s 15 s of either hang s back squat. clean Change each work interval.

An effec- Resistance complex 1 1 1 1 tive taper reduces overall training Cyclical activities 0 1 1 1 stress, allowing fatigue to dissipate, thereby maximizing preparedness. Total 2 3 4 2 It has been shown that a correctly designed and implemented taper can improve performance to varying altered to meet the requirements of the reduce the risk of such injuries degrees depending on the training period Table 7.

Because of the low Injury prevention strategies that type and characteristics of the ath- prioritization of tactical sessions in this focus on precise lower limb align- lete. A meta-analysis of tapering data mesocycle, such tasks can be easily ment during specific plyometric and on endurance performance shows integrated into technical sessions with- ballistic tasks are recommended.

that the most effective strategy is to out extending the training time exces- Such exercises may include depth implement an 8-day to 2-week taper sively. Technical workouts should be drop variations, progressing to single- that reduces training volume by 41— scheduled early in the day to minimize leg-bound and stick actions.

Furthermore, it seems as the potential for fatigue to interfere with may be included in the dynamic though a reduction in training vol- the skill acquisition required from these warm-up at a submaximal effort.

Addi- ume while intensity and frequency sessions. The 24 hour period between tionally, such activities, performed with are maintained has the most positive sessions, including sleep, will aid in the greater degrees of effort, will form effects on performance in highly consolidation of these complex motor a fitting complement to strength-power trained athletes In this example, skills resistance sessions in the following the taper begins 2 weeks before mesocycle.

base of support, and of the lower a fatigued state. Implicit learning strate- limbs themselves. MMA is a complex sport requiring the lapse about an excessively extended Application of close qualitative analysis concurrent development of a broad knee, are reported to increase the risk and feedback on movement quality in scope of abilities.

The development of of noncontact anterior cruciate liga- technical and tactical sessions will pro- these attributes requires training inter- ment injury 4, Improvements in vide further opportunities to improve ventions which illicit distinct and often neuromuscular control seem to neuromuscular control.

conflicting adaptations. This increases the risk of mismanaged training work- Table 7 loads and poorly integrated training Frequency, duration, structure, and intensity guidelines for technical tasks, which will certainly limit per- sessions formance gains and may lead to overtraining or injury.

However, by Week No. This will direct 5 5 90 30 M the management of fatigue and recov- 6 6 90 30 H ery while pairing complementary endurance and resistance training 7 6 90 45 H modalities and sequencing targeted 8 5 60 20 L abilities.

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