Strength Training for Muay Thai: Why Your Lifting Is Killing Your Fight Speed

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Most fighters still train like bodybuilders—and it’s wrecking their Muay Thai.

You show up to sparring with dead legs from yesterday’s squats. You’re slower, heavier, and you gas out faster than before you even started lifting. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

After 25 years coaching fighters, I’ve learned there’s a specific structure—a particular order to train qualities—that builds strength, power, AND speed without killing your skill training.

This 60-minute session is designed to do exactly that. And it all starts with one principle.

Train qualities in order of maximum velocity.

Or to put it another way: lightest to heaviest.

To develop maximum speed, you need to MOVE at maximum speed. To develop maximum power, you need to move at maximum speed under load. There’s no way around this.

But here’s the problem.

As your session goes on, fatigue accumulates. And fatigue slows you down. Your nervous system literally can’t fire as fast or as sharply.

So if you save your speed and power work for the end—after heavy squats and deadlifts—you’re training speed… slowly.

And SLOW speed training doesn’t build fast fighters.

The fix is simple: flip the order.

Start with your lightest, fastest movements while your nervous system is fresh. Then progress to heavier, slower movements as the session goes on.

By the time you get to your heaviest lifts, YES, you’re more fatigued. But that’s fine—strength exercises allow more time to grind against the load. You don’t need millisecond-precision timing. You just need to produce force.

There’s another benefit to this order: potentiation.

The lighter, faster exercises at the start actually wake up the neural pathways you’ll use in the heavier exercises that follow. Each section prepares you for the next—like a built-in warm-up progression.

So the optimal order for every resistance training session is:

Movement Prep. Speed work. Power work. Strength work.

But there’s one more piece to this structure: supersets.

To fit high-quality speed, power, AND strength work into 60 minutes—without drowning in fatigue—we pair non-competing exercises. Lower body with pull. Push with core.

This gives you the training density you need, without the fatigue that slows you down. You’ll see this in action through each section.

Let’s break it down.

Movement Prep is NOT five minutes on the treadmill.

For a resistance training session, we need to prepare specifically for the movements coming up.

In sports science, there’s a warm up protocol called R.A.M.P.—Raise, Activate, Mobilise, Potentiate.

Raise: Elevate heart rate and body temperature. For lifting, this is actually the least critical—your energy comes from fuel already stored in the muscles. And “raising” happens naturally as you move through the other steps, if you’re deliberate in the order.

Activate: Wake up the muscle groups that tend to stay dormant—glutes, lower traps, deep core—so they fire properly during the lifts.

Mobilise: Access the range of motion you need. Squatting? You need ankle, hip, and knee mobility. Pressing overhead? Shoulder mobility and thoracic extension. Target the specific ranges you’re about to use.

Potentiate: Prime your neuromuscular system with low-level dynamic movements. Remember the POTENTIATION benefit I mentioned? This is where it starts.

A simple Movement Prep might look like: 2 minutes of foam rolling and 2 minutes of dynamic hamstring stretches and wall slides to mobilise, 2 minutes of single leg hip bridges and lateral squats to activate, and 1 minute of pogos and jumping jacks to potentiate. Seven minutes. Done.

It’s not wasted time—it’s investment time.

Quick note: foam rolling CAN be done anytime—before, after, or on a separate day. And stretching at the end? If you’ve done your strength exercises through full range of motion, you’ve already been building flexibility during the session.

After Movement Prep, your neuromuscular system is primed and ready. This is when you do your speed work.

Speed work means unloaded or very lightly loaded movements at absolute MAXIMUM velocity. Plyometrics. Med ball throws. Reactive drills.

The goal is pure speed—moving as fast as your body can possibly move. This is where you build the snap in your punches and the whip in your kicks.

This has to come first, while your system is completely fresh. Even a small amount of fatigue will cost you that top-end velocity—and that’s exactly what we’re here to train.

Imagine a radar gun clocking every rep. Your LAST rep should be as fast as your FIRST. The moment you slow down, the set is over.

Here’s where the superset structure kicks in. We’re pairing lower body plyometrics with core plyometrics—such as box jumps with overhead med ball slams. Non-competing movements, so one recovers while the other works.

Do 5 box jumps—step down and reset between each. Then immediately do 10 overhead med ball slams. That’s one superset. Rest 60 to 90 seconds, then repeat for 3 total rounds. About 5 to 6 minutes.

In my full programs, I add a third element to each superset—usually a mobility drill or isometric hold. This increases training density and naturally extends recovery between high-output exercises. But for today, two exercises per superset will get the job done.

The exact VOLUME LOAD of speed work shifts depending on your stage in the training cycle—Foundation, Strength, Power, or Peak. For a balanced session like this one, two exercises for 3 rounds is the sweet spot.

After speed work, you move into POWER work.

Speed is maximum velocity with MINIMAL load. Power is maximum velocity UNDER LOAD.

This is where you do weighted jumps, Olympic lift variations like hang cleans, kettlebell swings, and resisted sprints or sled pushes.

You’re still trying to move as fast as possible—but now against significant resistance. This is how you convert raw strength into fight-ready power. The kind of force that moves an opponent.

Power work comes AFTER speed work because your nervous system is still primed to explode. Same rule applies: if your last rep isn’t as fast as your first, the set is over.

Now, power exercises tend to demand more from the whole body—so instead of pairing two power movements, we use the recovery time productively. One power exercise, followed by two mobility drills, then rest.

For example: 5 trap bar jumps, then a hip flexor stretch, then a thoracic rotation. Rest up to a minute if needed, then repeat. 3 rounds total.

The key is at least 2 minutes should pass before you repeat the power exercise. If your last rep is losing pop, extend the rest a little.

This way you’re building power and mobility in the same section. About 10 minutes.

The volume of power work shifts depending on your training cycle. In the Strength stage, it stays in the background. In the Power stage, it becomes the priority. In the Peak stage, it drops to maintenance as speed takes over.

After speed and power work, you move into strength training.

By now, you’ve accumulated some fatigue. But that’s fine—strength exercises allow more time to grind against the load. You’re not chasing velocity anymore. You’re producing maximum force.

And here’s where exercise selection becomes critical. Instead of training muscles, you train movement patterns.

Lower body: squat and hinge. Upper push: horizontal and vertical. Upper pull: horizontal and vertical. Core: anti-extension and anti-rotation. Eight patterns total.

Your two main sessions each week—Session A and Session B—use different patterns from each category. Over the week, you hit all eight. Your body stays balanced. No movement is weak for you.

If you’re weaker in a particular pattern, your body will cheat. It’ll find another way to make the movement happen—an inefficient way that leads to overuse injuries and robs your true power.

Same superset structure. Such as lower body paired with upper push. Upper pull paired with core rotation.

For example: hex bar deadlifts paired with overhead dumbbell press, then chin-ups paired with a landmine twist. 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps each. Rest as needed between rounds.

In my full programs, I add a third mobility exercise to each superset—but for today, this pairing gets the job done. About 20 minutes for this block.

Now here’s something most people get wrong. Even though the load is HEAVY and the movement LOOKS slow, your INTENT is still to move as fast as possible—while maintaining strict, controlled form. The load prevents the speed, but the intent drives the adaptation.

This is how you build a body that can express force in any direction—without breaking down. And it sets a higher foundation of strength that converts into greater power and speed as you move through the training cycle.

Where POWER and SPEED transfer directly to your strikes, STRENGTH transfers directly to the clinch.

When the structure clicks, you feel it. Richi, one of my athletes from Madrid, put it this way: ‘I liked a lot the way you combine power, plyometrics and strength. I felt really good and motivated doing it.’

That’s the feeling of a well-structured session. You’re working hard, but everything has a purpose.

So let’s see the complete picture.

A 60-minute resistance training session:

Movement Prep: 5 to 10 minutes. Raise, Activate, Mobilise, Potentiate.

Speed Work: 5 to 15 minutes. Unloaded, maximum velocity movements while your system is fresh.

Power Work: 10 to 15 minutes. Maximum velocity under load, with mobility work filling the recovery time.

Strength Work: 20 to 35 minutes. Movement patterns in supersets—lower body, upper push, upper pull, core.

The time allocations shift based on your training cycle. No fluff. No wasted time. Every minute has a purpose.

And here’s what changes across the training cycle:

In Foundation, Movement Prep gets extra attention—you’re resetting and building movement quality. In Strength, the strength portion is the priority. In Power, power work becomes the main focus. In Peak, speed work takes over.

The structure stays the same. The emphasis shifts based on where you are in the cycle.

That’s how you build everything—without bloated sessions that wreck your Muay Thai.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ve got the complete picture:

The Big Picture—your training year. The Medium Picture—your training week. And now the Little Picture—each session for maximum results in minimum time.

But here’s the truth:

Knowing the principles is one thing. Executing them—session after session, week after week—is another.

You need to know which exercises to select. When to emphasise speed versus power versus strength. How to adjust when life gets in the way.

And then there’s loading—how heavy to go on any given day.

Load incorrectly and you move at the wrong velocity. You think you’re training power, but you’re actually grinding instead of exploding. You think you’re training speed, but the weight’s too heavy to hit true max velocity.

The loads must be prescribed to truly target the quality you’re after in each cycle stage.

And the ratio of speed, power, and strength work shifts across the training cycle.

In the Strength stage, you’re developing strength while maintaining speed and power. In the Power stage, you’re developing power while maintaining speed and strength. In the Peak stage, you’re developing speed while maintaining power and strength.

Get this WRONG and you’re either peaking too early, plateauing, or burning out. Get it RIGHT and you show up to every session—whether it’s competition or hard sparring—sharp, powerful, and ready.

That’s exactly what Heavy Hitters delivers.

It’s the complete done-for-you system I’ve refined across 25 years and well over 1,000 fighters—from beginners to world champions.

No more showing up to sparring with dead legs. No more guessing. Just a system that WORKS.

There’s a self-directed version you can start anytime, and a version with direct coaching from me that opens twice a year.

Check the link in the description to see which option fits you.

If you found this valuable, subscribe—next week I’m showing you how to put all of this into action.