There’s a lot about information about strength training for MMA right now, but very little in the way of Strength Training for Muay Thai out there. Strength Training has an important place in your Muay Thai training, no matter if you are just training for fun, fitness, or to fight. There’s a number of reasons why you might want to do strength training a couple times a week.   You can do it for the every day benefits being a bit stronger brings to your life, or as part of a body transformation effort (i.e. to get ripped or keep muscle while losing fat), or to improve some aspects of your Muay Thai game (such as being stronger in the clinch by adding my maximal strength ability) or as part of a serious strength and conditioning training plan to improve your overall cardio and clinching and striking power during training and fights. To get the full breakdown on why, read my article. If you are looking at losing weight with Muay Thai, read my. If you want at  GENERAL strength trainingroutine/training protocol for body composition or generic strength, then check out my. If you want to do a strength and conditioning program to dramatically improve your overall Muay Thai fitness and conditioning so you never gas out in training, sparring, or during a 5 round right, then head over to my Conditioning series which starts with OR If you don’t need convincing and just want to skip to the actual strength training program, . Why Strength Train? Adding a weight-lifting regimen to your Muay Thai regimen is often a debated topic. On one side of the fence, you have those who will tell you that lifting weights won’t increase your striking power (i.e. lifting weights won’t help you kick or punch harder) and even negatively impact your Muay Thai. Those on the other side of the fence will tell you that adding supplemental weight training is pretty much the bee’s knees — it will increase increase your striking power, clinch strength, improve your Muay Thai fitness and hell, even doyour taxes. As someone who does a lot of heavy strength training in addition to serious Muay Thai training in Thailand, 5-6 days a week, I feel the truth lies somewhere in the middle of these two arguments. Strength Training, when utilized correctly as part of an OVERALL strength and conditioning plan, can provide serious benefits to your Muay Thai. And there are a host of too. Strength TrainingIS heavy resistance training done in a very specific format with the express purpose of increasing your body’s MAXIMAL strength (as measured by various compound lift exercises) over time. But Wait. Won’t Lifting Weights Make You Big, Bulky, and Slow? The common misconception is that weight training will make you bulky and slow, but this is absolutely not true. Strength Training is NOT bodybuilding. It will not make you bulky (provided you are not overeating your calories). It’s quite possible to become quite a bit stronger without gaining any weight even — there are a number of neurologicaladaptions that occur when you strength train that don’t actually have anything to do with building muscle fiber. These are adaptions to your CNS (Central Nervous System) which basically allow you to be stronger without adding more muscle mass. But Thai’s Don’t Strength Train! In traditional Muay Thai circles, strength training is typically completely ignored. Thai’s do NOT strength train for the most part. But from what I’ve personally observed while living in Thailand and training at different gyms here, this is more from a lack of proper knowledge about strength training, lack of resources to strength train (no proper weight sets in some gyms), and the fact that most of them are just too fatigued to lift weights at the end of the day. Thai’s in Thailand train insanely hard — they run for 10-12k in the morning, followed by a 2 hour session. They sleep until the next session in the afternoon, where they also run 4-5k followed by an even more grueling training session than the morning.This happens 6 and sometimes 7 days a week. With a training regimen like this, it’s tough to add serious strength training to the mix. But just because Thai’s don’t, does NOT mean strength training can’t benefit you. It can and there’s a lot of research out there that shows strength training can seriously boast athletic performance across the board for a number of different sports. There is no disputing that Muay Thai is a sport that rewards timing, skill, and technique far more than just pure raw power and strength. This can been verified time and time again when you watch physically-superior guys get dominated in fights but much smaller guys with better skill/timing/technique. But, that doesn’t mean that there is NO benefit to strength training. If things like technique and skill are equal between two fighters, then the one who can generate more POWER during the fight when striking will likely be the winner. This is where Strength Training can provide a big boost — it builds anincreased strength platform that can eventually be tuned (by training against resistance explosively) for more explosive power (the rate of force development), both in your striking and clinch abilities. But before you can increase your power, you need to have the strength base first — you can’t add more explosive power in your muscles than you currently have without first adding the (extra) strength to enable that additional explosive force capability. And this is what strength training aims: to help you build your overall foundational strength. Again, if you really want to get into the WHY of it, do read my article on for the full explanation on why you need to first build up raw strength before you can train your muscles for more power. Every question you likely have is answered there! Strength and Conditioning…Where Does STRENGTH fit in? In the sports world, there is a lot of talk about Strength and Conditioning. Athletes are not only training their sport, they are also doingsupplemental training, commonly referred to as Strength and Conditioning. Strength and Conditioning, as it applies to Muay Thai, is not about increasing your strength or your conditioning, but rather developing your body’s capacity to produce and . This could be increasing your maximum force production (strength), your overall power output over the rounds (power endurance), more explosive power per strike (i.e. knockout power), or developing your body’s energy systems (i.e. increase your body’s ability to produce ATP) so they can produce more energy and utilize it more efficiently when you need it. So strength training when looking at it from a Strength and Conditioning perspective is only ONE aspect of your S&C. That is Strength Training has the stated goal of helping you increase your overall MAXIMAL strength which can then be trained for more explosive power. Strength Training, however, is only dealing with muscular adaptions for power. It WILL NOT improve other aspects likeConditioning, which comes down to optimizing your body’s three energy systems (and the support systems like your heart, capillaries, oxygen carrying systems), the Alactic, Lactic, and systems so you can produce ATP (muscle fuel) faster, more efficiently, and for longer periods. Training your maximal strength causes increased recruitment and motor control of existing muscle fibers, optimizations in your CNS (Central Nervous System),  and increased productions of hormones which allow your body to better adapt to potential conditioning. Without getting to deep into the science of it, Strength Training does a lot of good SHIT to your body in general and a lot of it can help your general conditioning. You can actually view your general strength training program as part of your overall Strength and Conditioning plan; it’s the precursor to building up explosive strength, and having more strength can actually help make some of your later conditioning work more effective when you beginning towork on your Alactic and Lactic energy systems to better produce and handle ATP. If you want to know more about these energy systems and how to improve them to transform your conditioning and fitness so you never gas out, read our  for the best guide Muay Thai guide to strength and conditioning you’ll find online, bar none. I want to be clear here that Strength Training for Muay Thai has a specific purpose: You are not trying to compete with power-lifters here on how much weight you can lift in the gym. The goal if you strength train is to become as strong as possible (and depending on your goals, with minimal or NO weight gain), as quickly as possible, all to improve your strength and explosive strength for Muay Thai WITHOUT negatively impacting your current Muay Thai training! So If My Maximal Strength Increases, I Can Punch and Kick Harder? Not exactly. There is a stated difference between your strength (that is your maximal force development) and applying that strength explosivelyin a fight (power). It’s not enough to just be really strong. I’ve seen guys who can bench-press hundreds of kilos and dead-lift twice that, but they can’t punch for shit. Ignoring the fact that they don’t have the technique to correctly apply some of that strength to strikes, most of their raw strength can’t be used explosively. Increasing ONLY your raw strength won’t likely give you more powerful strikes — yet. But what it will do is give your body the strength foundation which you can then train to be more explosive. I will say there may be some direct relationship between your strength improvement and your clinch game however. If you have NEVER done any strength training before, it’s likely that you can within 3-4 months, become 20 or 30 percent stronger than you currently are. This is because your body will readily respond to the initial training. After the a few months, your strength gains will level off, but you will be stronger. Becoming a little bit stronger (say 5 or 10percent) might not make much of a difference in the clinch. But if you are 20, 30, or 40 percent stronger, this will ABSOLUTELY make a difference if you clinch guys your weight (ignoring any skill and technique difference) Types of Strength Training There are a number of different ways to go about Strength Training, each depending ENTIRELY on your stated goals. Someone who is training Muay Thai to get ripped has an entirely different goal than someone who wants to Strength Train for increased power in a fight. I’ll break these into three groups: Strength Training for Aesthetics There are a number of people out there who don’t really care so much about improving their Muay Thai performance for fighting but rather they want to build a muscular physique while training Muay Thai. They train Muay Thai to burn calories and for fitness but also want to lift weights for…well…body image reasons. It’s true that doing a lot of cardio will hinder muscle growth. If you train Muay Thai because youa week. Let’s break each of these training options down specifically: Three Day Strength Training Split Functionally, it would be better to change the lifts around so Squats and Dead lifts are NOT on the same day so these don’t cannibalize your strength, but I’ve found it’s just too taxing spending a couple days recovering from doing heavy squats on Monday only to hit your body hard a few days later again with deadlifts. This is especially true when you are doing a lot of running and your legs are just brutalized all the time from the lifts. Session 1 Benchpress Close Grip Bench / Incline Bench Weighted Dips Weighted Overhand Pullups Session 2 Overhead Press Barbell Curl Hammer Curls Weighted Close Grip Underhand Pullups Session 3 Squats Deadlifts Rows If you are training for a fight (fight training tends to be harder) and/or you are training MULTIPLE sessions per day, strength training 3x a week will be too much for most. You’ll have to train 1x a week or twice a week (2x is idea, IFyou can do this). This requires adjusting WHAT muscle groups you train into either a single session (full body workout routine) or two sessions. If possible, I would opt for 2 sessions per week over one because you can lift more weight by focusing on different muscle groups (let’s say Push and Pull). Two Day Strength Training Split Session 1 Pull muscle groups Deadlifts weighted pullups (close grip underhand and/or ovehand pullups) bicep curls rows Session 2 Push muscle groups squats overhead press bench press weighted dips. Sometimes though, you simply are training so much you don’t have the juice to lift hard and heavy twice a week. For normal Muay Thai training back home, this won’t be the case, but if you are say living in Thailand, training twice a day 6 times a week, lifting twice a week will be hard to do (trust me, I’ve tried and it doesn’t work). In this case, you either pick the first day of the week or the last day of the week and smash your entire body with a full bodycompound workout. I prefer the twice a week sessions because with the once a week full body workout, you won’t be able to lift as much weight with each compound exercise when you smash all the major muscle groups in a single, brutal session. This means your squat will take strength from your deadlift, which will tire you on the Bench Press which will eat into your Overhead Press strength. However, I have worked with a few fighters who successfully do 1 strength training sessions per week and they do see strength gains from week to week. So it’s possible! It’s just not optimal for building the most strength in the shortest period of time. One Session Per Week Strength Training Squats Deadlifts Rows Overhead Press Benchpress Weighted Pullups Weighted Dips If you can’t do all of these because of fatigue, then just keep the following 4 which will work your full body: Squats Deadlifts Benchpress Overhead Press 4. Strength Train in the Morning (before you Train Muay Thai) To ensure you canlift the most weight and see the most strength gains (more weight lifted = stronger stimulus to CNS = more strength gains) you should lift weights BEFORE you train Muay Thai. Ideally, if you train Muay Thai in the afternoons that means doing your strength training in the morning, if you can fit that in. This also will give you between 4-8 hours before you start your Muay Thai training, giving you enough time to recover so your strength training doesn’t affect your Muay Thai training (at least not too much!). If you are in a situation where you train Muay Thai in the mornings then it’s best to do your strength training 4-6 hours after (i.e. the afternoon or evenings) so your body has a chance to recharge. If you train Muay Thai twice a day, say somewhere like Thailand, and you are unwilling to skip morning sessions so you can strength train, then you’ll just have to strength train after Muay Thai. I’ve done this before. You can strength train AFTER Muay Thai sessions, but don’t expectto be pushing as much weight as you normally could as your muscles will already be fatigued from training. Because you can’t lift as much weight as you normally could, you won’t see as much strength gain as you could if you didn’t, but if you have no choice, it’s better than NOT strength training — you will still see results. I’ve personally worked with several fighters who strength train AFTER morning Muay Thai training and they still managed to push heavy weight and see strength gains from week to week — so it can be done. It’s just not ideal. 5. At least one day of rest between each strength session This is critical. If you don’t give your body enough time to recover, you won’t get stronger! It’s not lifting the weights that makes you stronger, it’s the times between weight sessions where your body rebuilds damaged muscle tissue that you actually get stronger. Don’t underestimate the importance of REST and RECOVERY. I’m assuming you will be training at least 3-4 times a week withMuay Thai, maybe even 5-6 times a week. You need to give your CNS (Central Nervous System) time to recover between strength training sessions. You can think of your CNS as the wiring connecting your brain to your muscles. Each time you lift heavy weights to increase your maximal strength, your CNS is fried and will be unable to send a strong enough electrical signal throughout your body to fully coordinate all your muscle fibers when you lift heavy — not until it’s recovered. A schedule that I find works for me (I train Muay Thai Monday to Saturday in the afternoons with a 30-45 minute run before the session) is to lift weights: Monday Wednesday Saturday I do my heaviest compound lifts on Saturday. The two day break helps my CNS recover enough to push maximum weights on the dead-lift and squat. If you strength train twice a week, I would suggest something like: Monday Friday The above schedule gives you the 3 full days off from weight training between Monday and Friday and 2 full daysoff between Friday and Monday, allowing your body time to recover. 6. Heaviest Lifts done before day off It’s a good idea NOT to lift your heaviest at the start of the week because your training will suffer for a couple days after. I’ve personally found that when you lift for maximal strength adaptions, your body is completely shot for a good 1 or 2 days. If you train Muay Thai as usual, you might find your stamina during Muay Thai sessions will go down, you’ll be more fatigued, your muscles will be sore, less energy, etc. A better strategy I’ve found that can mitigate the above negative effects is to lift your heaviest lifts (dead-lifts, squats) on the LAST DAY OF TRAINING BEFORE YOUR DAY OFF which means it won’t negatively affect your Muay Thai training by fatiguing your Nervous System or Muscles for 1-2 days after your workout. Assuming you do NOT train on Sunday, this day would be Saturday morning. If you don’t train Saturday and Sunday, then this day would be Friday. If for somereason you are a genetic freak and don’t find your heaviest strength training lift days (deads and squats) don’t affect you, then do your heaviest compound lifts on Monday, when you are your freshest. This means, ideally, you can lift more weight which will stimulate more strength increase once you recover. 7. Optional: Consider Taking One Day Off After Three Days of Training If you are training twice a day  with Muay Thai and incorporating 2x-3x a week of Strength Training, you might want to consider having a full day off from BOTH Muay Thai and Strength Training sessions in the middle of the week. This one day off will do wonders for your recovery. Rather than going hard for 3 days then having a shitty 3 final days of the week because you are so fatigued, you will be able to go hard from Monday to Wednesday, have Thursday as a full day off, then train HARD again Friday and Saturday. 5 Good days beats the hell out of 3 good days and 3 shitty days. I’ve found this strategy particularlyeffective for ensuring I don’t feel over-trained in the middle of the week. 8. Take a FULL week off  both Muay Thai and Strength Training every 6-8 weeks of training I know a lot of people will chaff at this, but complete recovery is a critical part of your strength training regimen. Heavy Strength training and heavy Muay Thai training takes a huge toll on your body. There is only so much stress your nervous system and hormonal systems can handle before they are unable to cope. If you do NOT take a recovery week, chances are you’ll start to feel run down, start to get sick, and your endurance, power, and strength will all dramatically decrease. Until you take an extended break, your performance will be down. To give your body a chance to fully recover and your hormonal system to reset, you need to take a week off. I recommend every 6 weeks if you can, but if this is too much, then do so after 8 weeks. If you REFUSE to take a week off from Muay Thai, then at least take 1 full week offfrom strength training after 6 weeks. 9. Nutrition This itself is a whole nother topic which I won’t cover extensively here and it’s out of the scope of this article to provide you with a list of what you should eat for each meal, etc. However, nutrition  is important to nail down. If you don’t, you won’t see as much (or any in some extreme cases) strength gains. I recommend you thoroughly read my to find out H and for information about putting together a proper nutrition plan that meets your goals (gaining strength/size, losing fat, getting ripped, etc). I will say though, you need to keep your protein levels high. I suggest around 1.5 grams of protein PER lb of bodyweight. This is a bit on the higher end of what’s needed perhaps, but it’s enough to cover all bases just in case. If you don’t get enough protein in, you won’t see the strength improvements you would otherwise see. Get your protein from natural sources if you can, but if you need to do a number of protein shakes per dayto reach it, then do it. At the macro level, you have a couple options when it comes to eating. These will affect your strength gain AND your muscle/fat gain: Calorie Surplus: You can be on a calorie surplus, which means eating more calories than your body burns. If you strength train while on a calorie surplus, you will see the MOST strength gains and the MOST muscle size gains. However, this also means you will gain weight, which might not be a good thing if you FIGHT at a certain weight class. Not all weight will be muscle, you will also likely gain some fat, which is a necessary evil. This option is good if you are NOT fighting and just seeking to add muscle to your frame Calorie Maintenance: If you are eating roughly around what you burn, you won’t gain a lot of weight. If you have NEVER lifted weights before, you may see some initial muscle gain and you will definitely see strength gains, especially the first 3-4 months as your body adapts to strength training. Eventually,however, your strength gains will stall as your body won’t have the nutrients to add more muscle (which means more strength). This is good if you fight at a certain weight class but just want to increase your maximum strength without the associated weight gain. Once your maximum strength is up, you can train for more explosive power. This is probably idea for someone who fights and you are happy at your current weight. Calorie Deficit: If you eat less than you burn, you are on a calorie deficit. Strength training can be challenging while on a deficit because your strength will, for the most part, not improve while on a deficit. You are mainly trying to hold on to your existing strength and muscle while you shed fat. If you cut calories but don’t strength train, your body will shed muscle — this is WHY you want to strength train while on a calorie deficit. This option is good if you are trying to fight at a lighter weight class. By shedding fat and keeping your strength (and muscle),you improve your fat to muscle ratio and you might not have to cut as much before a fight if you shed BODYFAT as opposed to water weight. This is by far the best way to ‘make’ weight. Losing bodyfat als0 can allow you to reach even lighter weight classes than you normal couch reach by just cutting water weight. 10. Sleep If you strength train, you need to get your sleep in. It goes without saying that you should have at LEAST 8 hours of sleep a day. Training Muay Thai and Strength Training takes a huge toll on your body and you need sleep to recover. Protein Synthesis (i.e. muscle development) tends to happen at night while you are sleeping, so if you don’t get enough sleep, you wont’ see as many strength gains. Personally, I’ve tried both methods and I find I can train harder in my Muay Thai sessions if I save deadlifts squats for the last day of training. Since I ensure I have 1-2 days off from strength training before I do these lifts, my strength is usually not negativelyimpacted when I do these lifts. 11. Strength Training and Fights If you are a fighter and strength training is a MEANS to build more powerful strikes and more strength in the clinch, then you are going to have to plan out how long you strength train. Ideally, you should look at strength training as a BLOCK training — you train for 2-4 months with the stated goal of improving your maximum strength X amount, then switch to another style of training as you approach a fight. If you want to convert your increased strength foundation into FUNCTIONAL explosive power, you are going to have to change your training from Strength Training to Power/Explosive Training. This means you should in fact be doing Power Training or Power Endurance training the last 3 weeks to 6 weeks before a fight and NOT strength training. If you are strength training only before a fight: You never want to strength train the week of your fight — it will tax your body, your training will suffer, and you may be tiredduring the fight. At the very least, you need 7 days between your fight day and your last strength session. You may find that fight training the last couple weeks coming up to the fight is so taxing that strength training sessions might interfere with training. If that’s the case, you may want to look at doing 1 full body session a week rather than 2 – 3, for the last couple weeks leading up to the fight. Trust me on this, I’ve gone into multiple fights with very little time off from pure strength training and my body and strength took a big hit by the time of the fight because I was so over-trained. You don’t want this to happen to you! Putting It Together Strength Training will help you become stronger and this will only benefit your Muay Thai. However, if you want to fully reap the benefits of your increased strength by increasing your explosive power, Strength Training needs to be part of a coordinated of which it is only one element. Ideally, after you build up a level of strengthyou’ve never had before, you will start to train your muscles to be more explosive to reap the benefits of that increased strength in your striking. I’ll have an follow up article in the future about Explosive Power Training for Muay Thai that will give you some basic guidelines on how to train your Maximal strength for Explosive strength. As I’ve mentioned in my article, just having more strength and explosive power is not enough; you have to have enough energy production  to support a sustained usage of it. If you have powerful striking but a tendency to gas out long before the fight finishes, then this is a serious limiting factor. This is where the CONDITIONING part of your Strength and Conditioning comes into play. We’ve talked about the Strength part of it (and there is still more to cover in regards to building explosive strength and power endurance), but your JUST (and I’d say even more) important a role in allowing you to continually tap into that power and strength for all 5rounds of a fight! To take full advantage of explosive strength and power in a fight, your neuro-muscular system, your hormonal system, and your cardio vascular systems need a number of biological adaptions to dramatically increase their efficiency as they work together to supply your muscles with enough continuous ATP to support your power output. The better each system is optimized, the better your cardio. And the way to do this is to improve your body’s different energy systems (aerobic, alactic, and lactic systems) to better produce and process ATP. Discussing the complex topic that is CONDITIONING is beyond the scope of this article. But fortunately for you, I’ve already written it. So to now read about the conditioning part of the strength and conditioning equation, start for the first article.