Weight Training and MMA

[Jay Evans]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice :) I've recently taken up MMA training with James Saville and I'm having alot of fun so far which is cool.

The thing I've thought about though is that I weight train four times a week to gain muscle mass ( doing quite well so far gone from approx 9.5 to almost 12 stone this year ), is this a bad idea when training MMA? Will it put me in position to get injuries easier?

Any advice will eb greatly appreciated, hope this is the right place to put this!

[Jay]

from another forum:


Depends on the frequency of your mma training. If you're training mma once a week, you don't need to make much adjustment to your weight training. As you start to improve in mma and increase your frequency and intensity of training, you can't keep up the bodybuilding routine; it's just not wise as you won't be giving your muscles enough recovery/repair time and your mma AND weights performance will suffer.

So, once mma becomes predominant, change to full body workouts 2 or 3 times a week. As for rep range, you probably wanna stay away from the 8-12 range. So 5 or less if you think you need more strength and 15 or more if you want endurance. Cycle your rep ranges. Be aware, neither of these rep ranges will do much for hypertrophy, or increasing muscle mass.

Deadlifts, squats, benchpress, chin ups, clean and jerk/press, snatch, power cleans etc etc will eventually make the core part of your programme over the week. Obviously, it's not wise to go straight from bodybuilding routine to a power routine involving cleans and snatches straight away, so you use the full body compound routine to transition from a muscle building, isolation based routine to a more speed/agility/power based routine.

pretty much summed up the main points that i'd think would affect you.

[ChokeYouOut]

Quick answer: Yes, you are more likely to overtrain and injure yourself.

Here is a reply i wrote to someone who had a similar question to yours:

Hey man,

i used to go to the gym 4/5 times a week. During that time i used to do MMA maybe once a fortnight or something.

After a while, i wanted to take MMA seriously as well as my bodybuilding. I kept going to gym 5 times a week, but also did intense thai boxing and mma sessions most days.

I was overtraining man... the isolation movements that i did at the gym tired each muscle out completely, and getting armbarred and shit the next day didnt really help my recovery.

I want to take both seriously, but it just aint happening. Delete all isolation movements from your gym workouts... no more concentration curls, tricep extensions, e.t.c.



Start doing more compound excersises: bench press, pullups, deadlift, squats, press ups, rows. You'll still get big, but won't tire out each muscle as much, as more than 1 muscle is being used in each of these workouts, unlike isolation movements.

Just go for 1 or 2 hard gym sessions a week. Less is more




Hope this helps

[Jamie Taylor]

Jays post is all you need.