Mixed martial arts (MMA) is at the pinnacle of variety for combative athletes. Incorporating Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), submission grappling, wrestling, muay thai and boxing, you might be scratching your head on how to organize your training and conditioning into a weekly MMA  workout   routine .

First off, you should realize that your routine will almost never be the same week in, week out. At times, you’ll be peaking before competition, at others you’ll be concentrating on your technical skills. Other times you’ll be recovering from injury or overtraining. In still others, you’ll be trying to gain strength, lose fat or increase your work capacity.

No matter what is going on, your weekly MMA workout schedule will be ever-changing. However, it doesn’t have to be chaotic: I’ll discuss the basics which will help you organize your workouts on a week to week basis.

First and foremost, there is no “magic MMA  workout   routine .” There are numerous ways to put together your training, and often times your workout schedule is built around your other training goals.

One adjustment you can make is to plan your hardest and most intense workouts towards the end of the week when you might be taking a day or two to rest.

The reason? Recovery.

Think of it this way: If you do your most intense workouts at the very beginning of the week, you’ll likely be sore and exhausted for the rest of the week. You might grit through the rest of the week, but more than likely, you’ll be tearing your body down, making you more susceptible to injury or catching a cold from weakening your natural defenses.

Probably the best way to figure it out is by finding what already works for successful professional fighters and essentially copying what you can from them and then tweaking it to fit your own personal MMA training schedule and goals.

Take, for example, Mario Sperry’s MMA  workout   routine :

Monday through Friday – Jiu-Jitsu training during the day. Muay Thai training in the evening.

Conditioning Training 3x per week

Tuesday and Thursday wrestling.

You’ll notice that he does some form of circuit training two to three times per week and then other conditioning workouts throughout the week. Hopefully this helps you understand how you might organize your workouts as well.