How to Build Your Own Strength & Conditioning Program for MMA

16 hours ago

7 min read

If you are new to MMA, you have probably searched for a strength and conditioning program online. Maybe you asked ChatGPT to make one for you. You may have ended up with a six-day Push/Pull/Legs program, a long list of exercises, several different types of conditioning, and enough ab work to make you wonder when you're actually supposed to train MMA.

The problem isn't that any of those exercises are necessarily bad. The problem is that a long workout is not the same thing as a good MMA strength and conditioning program.

When you're starting MMA, you don't need to train like a bodybuilder. You don't need six different exercises for your chest, three exercises for your biceps, or a separate “arm day.”

Your strength and conditioning work should help you become stronger, more explosive, better conditioned, and more durable without taking away from your MMA training.

So if you can't train with me at BLAST and you're trying to build your own program, where should you start?

Start With General Physical Preparation

One of the most useful concepts for a new MMA athlete is General Physical Preparation, or GPP. GPP simply means building a good general athletic base.

Before worrying about highly specific MMA conditioning, you want to develop the basic physical qualities that allow you to train hard and consistently. That means getting stronger, learning basic movement patterns, developing explosiveness, and improving your aerobic capacity.

Think of it like building the foundation of a house. You don't need to make your strength training look like MMA. You need to make your body better prepared for MMA.

For a beginner, this can be surprisingly simple. You might have two strength and power sessions each week and one dedicated aerobic session. Your MMA classes provide the sport-specific work. Your strength and conditioning sessions fill in some of the physical qualities that MMA training doesn't develop as efficiently.

Get Stronger

Strength is one of the easiest places to start. You don't need a complicated bodybuilding split. Instead, learn a few basic movement patterns and gradually get stronger at them.

Your program should include things like:

A squat or similar lower-body movement
A hinge such as a deadlift or Romanian deadlift
A pressing exercise
A pulling exercise
Some type of carry or trunk exercise

You don't have to use these exact exercises. The important thing is the movement pattern and the training effect. For example, you could use a squat, dumbbell bench press, pull-up, Romanian deadlift, and farmer carry. Another athlete might use completely different exercises.

The goal is not to collect exercises. The goal is to get stronger.

Don't Forget Power

MMA isn't just about being strong. You also need to be able to produce force quickly.

That's where explosive exercises come in. Jumps, medicine-ball throws, and other explosive movements can be useful because they teach you to produce force quickly.

But there is an important difference between power training and conditioning.

If you're doing jumps, for example, you shouldn't turn them into a 20-minute exhaustion workout. You want each jump to be fast and explosive. A simple starting point might be 3 sets of 3 quality jumps or throws before your strength work. You don't need dozens of explosive exercises. You need a few good repetitions performed well.

Build Your Aerobic Capacity

This is one of the areas that gets overlooked by people starting MMA. A lot of beginners assume that because MMA is an intense sport, they should do more and more hard conditioning.

That's not necessarily the best way to improve your conditioning.

Your aerobic system is important for MMA, including your ability to recover between hard efforts and recover from training. One simple way to develop this is dedicated aerobic work at a relatively easy, sustainable intensity. You could use a bike, rower, treadmill, elliptical, or another appropriate activity. Start with 30 minutes, and gradually build up to 60 minutes per session. The goal isn't to see how exhausted you can make yourself. The goal is to spend time developing your aerobic system.

For someone just getting started, one dedicated aerobic session per week can be a good place to begin, especially when they're already attending several MMA classes.

You can build from there as needed.

Your MMA Training Already Counts

This is where many homemade programs go wrong. Someone might train MMA four days a week and then create a five-day lifting program because they think they need to “hit every muscle.” Now they're training nine times a week. That's too much.

MMA itself is training. Sparring is training. Wrestling is training. BJJ is training. Pad work is training. Your strength and conditioning program has to fit around that work. For many beginners, two strength/power sessions and one aerobic session is plenty to start with.

The BLAST GPP model uses this type of structure deliberately. The goal is to build the physical foundation while keeping the additional training load reasonable because MMA and BJJ already create a substantial workload.

You Don't Need a "Bro" Split

Push/Pull/Legs isn't a bad training system. It can be a perfectly reasonable way to organize bodybuilding training. But ask yourself why you're using it.

If you're training MMA three or four times per week, spending six additional days in the gym to train individual body parts probably isn't the best place to start. Your MMA strength program should be organized around what you need, not around making sure every muscle gets its own workout.

Instead of thinking:

Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Legs

Think:

I need to get stronger.
I need to become more explosive.
I need better aerobic capacity.
I need to build the ability to handle training.
I need to recover from all of this.

That's a much better starting point.

A Simple Week

For someone who is new to MMA, a week could look something like this:

Monday: MMA
Tuesday: Strength + Power
Wednesday: MMA
Thursday: Aerobic
Friday: MMA
Saturday: Strength + Power
Sunday: Rest

Your actual schedule may be different. That's fine.

The important idea is that you are combining MMA + strength/power + aerobic development + recovery, rather than trying to cram every possible type of training into the week.

The BLAST GPP approach uses two strength/power sessions and one dedicated aerobic session as a starting point, with the days moved around to fit the athlete's martial arts schedule.

Keep Your Strength Work Simple

A strength session doesn't need to take two hours. A basic session could look like:

1. Power: Jumps or medicine-ball throws — 3 × 3

2. Lower-body strength: Squat or similar exercise — 3 × 5–8

3. Upper-body push: Bench press, dumbbell press, or similar — 3 × 6–10

4. Upper-body pull: Pull-ups, rows, or similar — 3 × 6–10

5. Athletic/structural work: Carries, unilateral work, trunk work, etc. — 2–3 sets

That's it.

You don't need 15 exercises. You don't need to train every set until you can't do another repetition. And you don't need to turn the workout into a circuit just to make it feel harder.

The BLAST GPP sessions are intentionally built around this kind of simple structure, with quality work, reasonable rest periods, and sessions generally lasting around 50–60 minutes.

Give the Program Time to Work

Another common mistake is changing everything every week. Someone sees a new exercise on Instagram, adds it to the program, gets bored with another exercise, replaces it, then asks ChatGPT for a completely new workout. Don't do that.

If an exercise is working, keep it. Get better at it. Add weight when appropriate. Add repetitions when appropriate. Improve your technique. Your program doesn't need to be exciting every week. Your progress should be exciting.

What About ChatGPT?

This is where I would be very careful. ChatGPT can be a useful tool for creating a training plan, but it can only work with the information you give it.

If you type:

“I'm a 20-year-old MMA fighter. Make me a strength and conditioning program.”

you're probably going to get a generic program.

ChatGPT doesn't know how many days you train MMA, which days you spar, how hard those sessions are, how long you've been lifting, how strong you are, what equipment you have, how well you recover, or what your biggest physical weakness is.

Give it poor information and you can get a very detailed answer that is still a poor program.

That's an important distinction.

The problem isn't necessarily that ChatGPT gave you a bad exercise. The problem may be that you never gave it enough information to build the right program.

Start Simple. Then Earn More Complexity.

If you're new to MMA, you don't need to solve every physical problem at once.

Start by building a foundation.

Get stronger.
Learn to move well.
Develop some explosiveness.
Build your aerobic capacity.
Train MMA consistently.
Recover.

Then see what happens. After you've been training for a while, you may discover that you have a specific weakness that needs more attention. Maybe your aerobic capacity needs additional work. Maybe you're strong but lack explosiveness. Maybe your upper-body strength is holding you back. Maybe your MMA schedule has changed and your S&C needs to change with it.

That's when your program should become more specific. You don't start with a complicated program and hope it eventually becomes appropriate.

You start with what you need now, see how you respond, and build from there.

The Goal Is to Become a Better Fighter

Strength and conditioning should make your MMA training better, not compete with it.

That's the most important thing to remember when building your own program.

You don't need the biggest workout. You don't need the most exercises. You don't need the most complicated split. You need to develop the physical qualities that matter, in an amount you can recover from, while continuing to get better at MMA.

Start with GPP. Build strength. Develop power. Improve aerobic capacity. Train consistently. Keep the program simple. Then progress when you've earned it.

That's a much better place to start than copying a six-day bodybuilding program and calling it MMA conditioning.