Fighters Only

Issue 091

August 2012

A short but effective beginner strength program that won’t tap out your technique sessions

TUF 14 cast member Paul McVeigh is a sports scientist and a pro fighter, ranked as the number-one bantamweight in Europe.

As a strength coach I want to get the best performance increases for my athletes with as little work as possible. Recently, I was tasked with designing a program for those new to strength training. A program they could do prior to skill training, which was under 45 minutes and would not leave them hating barbells for the rest of their lives.

I realized from the start that the volume in this program was going to be low. Altering the volume in a program can be a great way to drive improvement, but it is also the quickest way I know to burn out an athlete.

If you do not feel like walking for a few days do 10 sets of 10-rep front squats and see what happens. I was consistently reminding my guys that they were combat sports athletes who lift weights not weight lifters who do combat sports.

Being a fan of round numbers I decided that for each lift I only wanted around 10 total reps and no more than 15 total sets per workout. I was concerned that 10 total reps would not be sufficient for the athletes to really get a feel for the exercises so I added in a back-off set at the end. After the work sets were completed the athlete would strip some of the weight from the bar and perform one set of 10 reps with a moderate load. This was to be viewed as technique practice.

This is a paltry volume for anyone who has done a workout from a muscle magazine, but it’s a volume that has consistently worked well with guys who are training hard in skill sessions. They get stronger but their skill development, sparring and conditioning sessions are not adversely affected.

The main aim my athletes had was to get stronger so they could get better at kicking opponent’s heads off, so I stuck with the relatively low rep ranges. The program would consist of three lifting sessions a week with each day focusing on a specific set and rep range. With these parameters in place it was time to move on to selecting the exercises themselves.

Exercise selection

I knew I was going to be using the same exercise template each day for a number of reasons. Firstly, the more exposures an athlete gets to an exercise the better they become technically. And me logistically teaching one workout to 20-plus people is way easier than coaching three separate workouts to the same number of people.

A lot of strength coaches argue about the small details in their programming philosophy, but they tend to agree on way more things than they disagree. All of these guys did not seem to have a problem with some form of upper-body pushing, upper-body pulling, squatting or hip-dominant exercise; in fact they all seemed to agree that these four exercise categories were important for athletic development.

For the upper-body pushing category I opted for the close-grip (shoulder width) bench press. I find this lift better than more traditional benching as it is less nasty on jacked-up shoulders and I feel the movement has more carry over to many jiu-jitsu positions and striking movements. And I added pull-ups. I love pull-ups more than I love doughnuts – and I really like doughnuts. For those who struggled with the movement they used bands and for those who thought the rep ranges were easy, they added additional weight.

I decided that I wanted to go with the front squat as our squat of choice. I like it because it acts as a self-limiting exercise; if you do it wrong and do not maintain an upright torso you will lose the bar. Guys who get good at front squat form rarely have many problems going to the back squat, but going the other way can be ugly.

Our final exercise choice was an easy one. The trap-bar dead lift eliminates almost all of the common ugly parts we see in a bad dead lift. You stand inside the bar and can grab the raised handles, very few people have mobility issues with this variation and everyone seems to get the technique quickly.

Try this stripped-down program for a few months and let me know how you do.

DAY ONE (MON)

FRONT SQUAT - 3 SETS

PULL-UP - 3 SETS

CLOSE-GRIP BENCH - 3 REPS

TRAP-BAR DEADLIFT - 3 REPS

DAY TWO (WED)

FRONT SQUAT - 2 SETS

PULL-UP - 2 SETS

CLOSE-GRIP BENCH - 5 REPS

TRAP-BAR DEADLIFT - 5 REPS

DAY THREE (SAT)