Issue 056

November 2009

Last month I wrote an article on off-season training for MMA. Sticking with the American sports nomenclature, I am going to write about in-season training and why you should be doing it. During the off season, you were focused on becoming as strong and as powerful as possible. This often involves training with very heavy loads and high numbers of sets and generally kicking your own butt in the weights room.  

Paul McVeigh is a sports scientist, professional fighter, Cage Warriors champion and is ranked the number one bantamweight fighter in Europe. He fights out of the Dinky Ninjas Fight Team in Glasgow, Scotland.  

Then everything changes. Your coach tells you it’s fight time and you are matched on World Ultimate Cage Craziness Combat Fighting XIII. For the next eight to 12 weeks your emphasis switches from being an athlete and a technician to becoming a monster.  

The Aims of In-Season Training  

During the in-season period there is a big jump in the amount and intensity of sparring and conditioning, all designed to ensure you are good to go come fight night. The amount of technical and tactical work will also be increased from the off-season period. For most of us adding four high-volume strength and power sessions on top of this is a recipe for overtraining (and decreased performance).  

As a result the strength-training workouts usually get dropped completely. Unfortunately, with the big jump in overall training volume and the removal of the strength-training stimulus, chances are that by the end of this eight-week period you are going to have lost a lot of strength and power at a time when you would like to be as athletic as possible.  

This brings us to the first aim of in-season training. During the in-season you must strive to maintain the strength and power you have previously spent time developing. Another aim I would add would be to prevent injury in the weight room. If you manage to get through an entire week of hard conditioning, sparring and pad work only to get your shoulders destroyed after being stapled by a 150kg bench press, I suggest you put a 40kg kettlebell through your face.  

Staying Strong, Getting Powerful

Do not worry, you are not doomed to looking like McLovin’s skinny brother come fight night. In as little as two 30-minute total body-strength sessions a week, you can maintain and often improve your off-season strength and power, even with the associated decrease in volume (sets and reps).  

The key is to keep intensity (% repetition max load) high to ensure that neuromuscular adaptations are maintained. At this time we want to maintain our maximal strength levels while trying to improve the rate at which this force is developed. A great way to achieve this is by combining a traditional heavy lift with a high-velocity variation of the same movement pattern – this could be combining bench press with clap press-ups, or split squats with split squat scissor jumps. This form of training has been around forever, often being called complex or contrast training.  

The way it works is that once a muscle has been forced to work near maximally its ability to exert force rapidly is enhanced, allowing you to play with a greater percentage of your high-threshold motor units, potentially improving both strength and power.  

Staying Injury Free

During the in-season period we spend a lot of time ensuring mobility and flexibility is adequate. If your hips are jacked from Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu practice (they will be) your ability to squat is going to be off and potentially set you up for a nice debilitating injury. Injuries in the weight room are unacceptable if you are an athlete. Get injured in a cage instead, you will get way more hot groupie action (disclaimer: Not a guarantee of hot groupie action).  

For certain individuals I would even recommend removing certain higher-risk lifts such as back squats or deadlifts. It’s not that these lifts are inherently dangerous, but with the amount of abuse the bodies of athletes are taking during the in-season, and the relatively high skill-component involved in the lift, if anything is going to mess you up in the weights room it will be these two (especially when done by a tired, beat-up athlete with sloppy form).  

An emphasis on recovery is important during the in-season. It is all too easy to say, “Screw this, I’m tired, I have been kicked in the head a million times, my brain hurts and I want to go home.” By taking the extra ten minutes to use a foam roller, stretch and get a contrast shower (45 sec cold water, 45 sec warm water, times four) you will be moving and training well up until fight night.