The Striking Specialist Protocol
Stop training like a Bodybuilder. Start Training like a Lethal Weapon.
Striking is the epitome of refined violence.
There are very few forms of unarmed combat, where you can neutralise multiple opponents within minutes.
Mike Tyson grossed $500 million dollars & become one of the most notoriously feared men on the planet from his ferocious striking ability.
Theodore Roosevelt garnered the respect of his peers at Harvard with his boxing prowess. Combat sports was a pillar of his mental toughness that he leveraged to become the presidents of The United Stated of America.
It’s one of the very few martial arts where it commands respect, regardless of age, race, class or faction.
A mastered jab, cross & hook should be a part of every mans resume.
Whether you’re participating in Boxing, Muay Thai or Kickboxing - you should not be training like a bodybuilder. You need a system to become fast, strong, powerful & explosive.
A protocol to become a lethal striker.
Whether you’re a hobbyist, amateur or professional fighter, you should not be training like a bodybuilder if you want to become lethal.
Here’s why…
THE PROBLEM WITH BODYBUILDING FOR STRIKERS
I am going to assume that your priority is to maximise your striking performance.
There are many reasons why pure bodybuilding as your weight lifting routine could become problematic:
Recovery costs: unless you’re on performance enhancing drugs, blending 4+ striking sessions per week with a push, pull, legs split is going to be incredibly difficult to recover from. You’ll likely need to be eating north of 4000 calories to continue building muscle whilst completing long striking sessions.
The cost of high muscle mass: maintaining & building muscle is metabolically costly. The more muscle mass you hold, the higher the oxygen demands and utilisation. This may lead to you gassing out faster, being slower & performing poorly. We saw the effects increased muscle mass had on Conor McGregor’s performance when he moved up to 170lb when he fought Nate Diaz. While he started strong in the first 2 rounds, he withered away due to the additional mass he added to his frame.
Movement stiffness & loss of fluidity: If you watch a bodybuilder throw punches, they look as stiff as a board. As you get stronger & develop muscle mass it can create stiffness & compression throughout the body which reduces your range of motion & mobility.
Does this mean you need to look like shit & be skinny to be a good striker? No. But just building mirror muscles without the performance to match is incredibly stupid.
This is the new era of training & becoming a Lethal Gentleman.
Here’s another common myth in the martial arts world:
DOES WEIGHT TRAINING MAKE YOU A SLOW FIGHTER?
This is arguably one of the most common misconceptions in the combat sports world, particularly in the minds of older martial arts trainers.
The amount of times I have personally been told that weight training will make me slow & heard this from ELITE combat sports skills coaches is astounding.
Here is why they may hold these beliefs:
The athlete & coaches do a poor job of blending weight training with their skills training, whether they are recovering poorly, lifting heavy before their skills sessions or just overall not managing their schedules well, each of these factors could greatly diminish performance & confirm their biases.
The athlete is only doing bodybuilding style training which is slow, controlled tempo work. Now, this is great for building durable joints & relative strength, but if you can’t produce force quickly, you WILL be a slower athlete.
So what’s the solution?
THE MISSING PIECES IN STRIKING TRAINING
If your primary focus is to be a better striker, this needs to be on top of our needs analysis.
Every action that we take, needs to logically supplement or enhance striking performance.
A common question I ask myself whenever I am developing a protocol is:
“What are striking athletes missing from their skills training that they can get from a high performance protocol?”
Let’s answer this using first principles & 3 MAIN QUALITIES that strikers typically do not get exposed to in their skills training:
1. MAXIMAL STRENGTH
Striking is ballistic in nature. This means that you are often projecting a body part (your arm or leg) with no external load, in a high velocity fashion.
The only time that striking isn’t ballistic is in clinching engagements, which unless you are training Muay Thai, is a low proportion of your total competition & training exposure.
To develop maximal strength, it is necessary to exert force against a near-maximal external load, typically achieved by lifting heavy weights. Maximal strength development requires training with loads that are close to an individual’s one-rep max (1RM), which cannot be effectively replicated in most skill-based activities like striking.
Unless an athlete is engaged in a clinch with an opponent who is significantly heavier and stronger, the intensity of force required to stimulate maximal strength adaptations during a striking session is generally limited. Striking primarily develops other qualities such as technique, speed, and power, rather than maximal strength, which necessitates targeted resistance training for optimal development.
As a result, it’s crucial that we integrate the development of maximal strength in the most efficient format possible, which is lifting weights.
2. EXPLOSIVE OUTPUT
Although striking is a ballistic sport, it does not fully address the entire spectrum of speed and power development. This is because the majority of striking training is extensive in nature, involving hundreds of submaximal expressions of speed and power. While this is beneficial for technique and endurance, it does not provide the necessary intensity to maximize speed and power adaptations.
To optimize speed and power development, training must include maximal efforts. This involves performing maximal jumps, plyometrics, and explosive movements, rather than relying on lower-intensity activities like skipping or submaximal jumps. These maximal training efforts are crucial for achieving peak performance in terms of speed and power.
However, it is important to note that integrating these high-intensity exercises into training should be done gradually and intelligently. Maximal plyometric and explosive training carries a higher injury risk compared to lower-intensity exercises, so it should be carefully programmed to ensure proper recovery and injury prevention.
3. DURABILITY (INTELLIGENT HYPERTROPHY)
But Jack, you said hypertrophy makes me a worse fighter? Like anything in life, there needs to be nuance. The nature of striking is that is repetitive. You are completing the same actions hundreds of times over, which can lead to muscular imbalances in the body.
I view hypertrophy for striking athlete’s as forging armour around the most injury prone areas of the body. Building stronger muscular & connective tissue in these areas that are most frequently hurt, makes logical sense.
These body parts are:
Neck: during clinch engagements & absorbing strikes.
Shoulders: from constant punching volumes & clinching exchanges.
Lower Limb: from the sheer volume of skipping, kicking and load that is placed through the foot & ankle.
Wrist & Hands: to absorb impact forces from sparring, pad & heavy bag training.
I have used the UFC Performance Institutes data collection which found these areas to be most injury susceptible.
The way I have structured the protocol for you all is to maximise the injury reduction effects of hypertrophy based training, without neglecting maximal strength, speed & power development.
We want our gains in muscle mass to have the closest correlation to an increase in strength. If we gain 5-10lb of muscle, but are also significantly stronger & more powerful & it doesn’t negatively effect conditioning, the trade off is worth while.
This is obviously athlete dependent, particularly when you are looking at fighting at specific weight classes, and are in the professional ranks of fighting, every % counts.
Now that you’re aware of what our focuses will be, how to we integrate that into a training protocol?
THE STRIKING SPECIALIST PROTOCOL
I have created an entire 12 week training cycle so that you can see the application of the protocol in action. This will be divided into 4 week blocks, each block containing:
3 Full Body Anabolic Protocols.
3 Durability Circuits.
The breakdown of the session types and what will be covered in each session
ANABOLIC PROTOCOL (2-3x WEEK)
Maximal Strength
Speed & Power
Hypertrophy
Mobility & Flexibility
Core Durability
DURABILITY CIRCUITS (1-4x WEEK)
I suggest completing these at the end of a skills session to work on:
Neck
Shoulders (Rear Deltoids & Rotator cuff)
Wrist & Hands (Grip Strength)
Lower Limb (Calves, Tibia, Foot & Ankle)
Let’s dive into the key training qualities we are looking to develop within this protocol:
ANABOLIC PROTOCOL
We are going to leverage the weight room to cover a majority of our resistance training benefits.
The main physiological adaptation we are eliciting from this session is:
Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Release
Testosterone Release
Insulin like Growth Factor (IGF-1)
This anabolic concoction is responsible for both growth & the stimulation of the recovery process so it plays an ample part in any training regimen.
These sessions are going to ‘fill in the gaps’ of what you will not be able to get from striking skills training which includes:
MAXIMAL STRENGTH
We will be working on developing maximal strength across 3 primary movement patterns, I have also added some rough strength standards that I like athlete’s to aim to develop over their training careers.
SQUAT (BUILD TO 1.5-2x BODYWEIGHT)
HINGE (BUILD TO 2-2.5x BODYWEIGHT)
PULL (BUILD TO ~1.5x BODYWEIGHT)
You will notice that 2 of the 3 exercises are lower body based, and that is for good reason. Lower body maximal strength has the greatest correlation to punching power (source here). This logically makes a lot of sense as the biggest muscles in the body are found in the lower body (glutes, quads & hamstrings).
EXPLOSIVE POWER DEVELOPMENT
Developing power is something every single striking athlete dreams of. To be able to strike with devastating intent, we must build these frameworks, here’s how we do it:
LOWER BODY
VERTICAL JUMPS
HORIZONTAL JUMPS
UPPER BODY
PLYOMETRICS
MEDICINE BALL THROWS
The way I have integrate this into the protocol is going from easier, less intense variations, to maximal efforts. These exercises have the highest chance of injury, so must be programmed intelligently to mitigate these risks.
These are also concepts vary rarely integrated in “mainstream” fitness protocols, so going through The Striking Specialist Protocol, will be the same as a Harvard tier education for striking athletes.
DURABILITY CIRCUITS
In order to keep the anabolic protocols efficient & streamlined, I have created a variety of durability circuits to micro-dose hypertrophy exposures after your skills training.
As these sessions are completed in a circuit fashion, it will take you no longer than 10-15 minutes to complete, with the significant ROI of minimising injuries from training.
Here are the main areas we will be targeting (I have provided exercise examples for free subscribers too):
NECK
I have been an advocate of neck training & arguably the figurehead on Twitter to push this training modality. Every combat athlete should be training their neck, the aesthetic benefits alone make it something worth pursuing. The consensus on neck training and concussion risk is murky, however absorbing blows and clinching exchanges benefit greatly from developing a strong & durable neck.
SHOULDERS
The shoulders are loaded significantly in striking, particularly upper limb dominant derivatives (western boxing etc). Shoulder injuries are some of the most common striking related injuries & the objective of these durability circuits are to minimise:
Rotator cuff tears
Rotator cuff related shoulder pain (shoulder bursitis)
Labral tears
WRIST & HANDS
Due to the nature & impact forces involved in striking, the wrist & hands are the most common site of injury (source). Building durability in these structures are paramount to keep your wrist & hands healthy long term (this should be coupled with load management & correct wrist wrapping).
LOWER LIMB
Depending on your striking art of choice, you are often in bare feet (Kick boxing & Muay Thai). As a result you require much higher level ankle & foot durability compared to sports that have closed footwear (Western Boxing), and are at higher risk of ankle sprains.
For this reason, this is an area we place considerable focus toward when developing our durability circuits.
DOWNLOAD THE PROTOCOL
Before you explore the protocol, I highly encourage you to watch all of the video tutorials. This will allow you to apply everything with greater effectiveness & really understand why you are training this way.
Download by clicking the button below