In my last post I was looking at the idea of strength and conditioning in muay thai, current attitudes towards it and the possible benefits to be reaped from it. One of the key points I made in the article was this:
I’m a big believer in planned training sessions with a specific outcome in mind, rather than simply stringing together a random bunch of exercises with the simple aim of “getting tired.”
This principle is something I truly stand by. I won’t just do a workout; I want to know what qualities I am trying to improve in a given session and exactly how this is to be achieved. As mentioned in the previous article, S&C is a supplementary part of our training, therefore we need to get the maximum benefit with the minimal impact on our core, skill based sessions in the muay thai gym. Remember, you’re a fighter not a weightlifter.
Fighting, and training to fight, is stressful. You’re training hard, eating less, focusing on making weight, thinking of the fast approaching time when someone is going to try and separate you from your consciousness. Planning is key. If you have a plan, written down and easy to hand, you know what you need to do now, what you need to do later tonight, tomorrow, next week, etc, you will save yourself a bunch of unnecessary stress and ensure you are making the best use of your time and making the best choices. As the saying goes, “proper planning prevents piss poor performance.”
Given you have a set date for your fight, you also need to make sure you are hitting your peak physical potential come fight day. This peak is not something you can sustain indefinitely. Peak too soon, and you risk overtraining and the associated injuries, fatigue and other problems that come with it. Peak too late, and you won’t be at your full potential when it matters. A proper plan made ahead of time, detailing what sessions you will do and what you do in them day by day, week by week can help ensure you peak properly.
That being said, you want to be flexible. There will be days you feel battered, sore and just run down. This is an inevitable consequence of hard training. On those days, attempting an intense, max weight session may just be a recipe for frustration, further exhaustion and injury. Be prepared to adapt as you go, and learn to listen to your body.
So what do we have so far?
- Make a plan
- Write it down
- Follow it
- But be prepared to be flexible and adapt
One of the most important aspects of any fitness regimen is progression. If you are doing the same workout again and again, how do you expect to get any better? Most often we think of progression as lifting more weight, or more reps, or a longer run, or more pad rounds. This is all good, but we should also think of progression as one quality building upon another, like a jigsaw coming together. Whilst there are various ways you could list the physical qualities required in muay thai, I like to keep it simple when it comes to S&C with three main quaities:
- Strength- the ability to exert raw force
- Power- the ability to exert that force quickly
- Power endurance- the ability to exert force quickly, repeatedly, without any significant drop
As you can see, these qualities build upon one another. You can’t get powerful without first getting strong. But raw strength alone is not enough as fighters. We need explosive power, and the ability to keep power levels up round after round. So a planned, progressive program that builds from one quality to the next is what we need.
This idea is similar to those expounded by Don Heatrick, a strength and conditioning coach specialising in muay thai. He has a great analogy about plate spinning– whilst we need to focus on specific areas to elicit the greatest response, it’s important to keep working each quality to some level in each training block, otherwise the plate drops and we start to lose that quality. This is known more formally as conjugated periodization- breaking “training phases into shorter, linked blocks that sequentially emphasise individual qualities (with the majority of the training volume) while maintaining the others with limited training volume.”
If you haven’t checked out Don Heatrick’s website yet, make it a priority as he really knows his stuff and, importantly, knows how to apply it to the specific demands of muay thai fighters. If you can’t be bothered reading it all, Don gives a nice summary of many of his ideas in this great podcast interview with Sean Fagan (the well-known Muay Thai Guy). Check out the other podcasts and articles on the site too, there’s some great info on there that I guarantee will get you pumped for training!
Ok, enough of the link love. Back to the 3 phase plan.
The length of each phase will depend on how long you have until your fight, but I would usually say make each phase roughly the same length. So, say you have about 3 months (12 weeks) until your fight, you might spend about 4 weeks on each phase. Note- I think it’s best to avoid any lifting for at least a week before the fight in order to ensure your body fully recovers and is able to peak. Plan accordingly.
Taking into account we want to keep all of plates’ spinning (to use Don’s analogy), you might try something like this:
- PHASE 1- STRENGTH- 3 sessions a week focusing on building raw strength
- PHASE 2- POWER- 2-3 sessions a week building explosive power, with 1 session focusing on maintaining strength levels developed in phase 1
- PHASE 3- POWER ENDURANCE- 2-3 sessions a week building power endurance, with 1 session a week on either strength, power, or a combination of the two
Obviously the amount of sessions comes down to what your schedule allows you to do. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the luxury of training 2-3 times a day, 6 days a week. Muay Thai just doesn’t really pay, so we gotta earn some pennies in a day job and train around that.
The next question is what to actually do in these phases/sessions. I will start covering that in the following parts of this series.
Before I leave it, though, I’d like to make two quick points that you may be thinking right now.
- What about cardio? Aerobic / anaerobic fitness?
I haven’t forgotten this! However, you should be getting plenty of work on your cardio outside the weight room. Running, pad work, bag work, these are key for your cardio n a fight. In the following articles I will consider how you can tie your roadwork in to your lifting in a complementary fashion.
- What about CrossFit?
I could write a whole article about this, and I probably will in the near future. But let me just say this: CrossFit is NOT strength and conditioning. CrossFit uses many of the exercises and movements you might come across in S&C, but it is its own sport with its own aims. Your muay thai S&C needs to be aimed at what you need as a nak muay.
That’s enough for now, keep an eye peeled for the next article which will look at the first phase of our plan: Strength.
Read the first article in this series here.
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