Peaking an MMA Athlete: How Coaches Manage Performance Without Overtraining
Peaking an athlete gets talked about like it’s always some flashy, complicated plan.
In this episode of Behind the Design, OPEX Coaches Brandon Gallagher and Daniel Persson laid out a much cleaner idea, peaking is mostly about timing, load management, and keeping the athlete confident and healthy when it matters most.
Brandon’s examples came from MMA, a sport where “training hard” often means taking real damage in practice. Add weight cuts, unpredictable fight dates, and multiple coaches pulling in different directions, and peaking becomes less about perfection and more about making smart choices with the person in front of you.
What peaking an MMA athlete actually requires (and why it’s rarely a straight line)
Brandon’s starting point was simple, MMA might be one of the hardest sports to peak for. Not because it’s mysterious, but because of what the athlete has to tolerate. They’re not just practicing skills. They’re getting hit, thrown, squeezed, and strained across striking, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu, often in the same week. That adds a type of wear and tear most sports don’t have.
A big theme was that peaking doesn’t look the same for every athlete. Coaches can get stuck thinking peaking has to be a dramatic ramp into explosive work, maximal intensity, and some “special” protocol. In reality, even when you plan things well, MMA camps tend to swing up and down. Athletes feel great one day, then come in foggy and beat up the next. The coach has to decide when to push and when to hold back.
That decision gets harder late in camp because training stress rises while recovery resources drop. Fighters are cutting weight, eating less, sleeping worse, and training two to three times a day in some cases. Brandon pointed out that fighters often do the opposite of what a coach would recommend to a general fitness client, and they still need to perform.
So the goal becomes less about adding more “fight-like” stress and more about filling gaps around what the MMA gym already provides. Fighters already get plenty of lactic conditioning, speed demands, reflex work, and isometric strength from grappling. The strength and conditioning work needs to support that, not pile on top of it.
The coaching team around a fighter, and why communication can make or break the camp
Another layer that changes everything is how MMA coaching teams are built. Brandon described a few common setups, and they can look totally different depending on the athlete, the gym, and the stage of the fighter’s career.
In a typical structure, a fighter might have separate coaches for jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and striking (sometimes boxing plus Muay Thai or kickboxing). On top of that, they may have a strength and conditioning coach, a nutritionist, and sometimes a head coach who focuses on game planning.
Big gyms can run more like teams. Brandon used American Top Team (ATT) in South Florida and Kill Cliff as examples of places with deep talent pools and in-house coaching staff. In those environments, fighters often pay a percentage of their fight purse that gets split among coaches. The upside is access and consistency. The downside is that coaches can be overworked, and individualization can be limited unless the athlete is at the highest level.
On the other end, some fighters hire their own team and build their own training schedule. Brandon described working with Amanda Nunes in that type of setup. He also mentioned a third model where one coach (in Ariane Lipsky’s case, her husband) oversees most of the training and brings in the right partners and support as needed.
One of Brandon’s strongest points was cultural, MMA can drift into “my lane, your lane” coaching where nobody talks, and everyone wants credit when the athlete wins. When coaches don’t communicate, the athlete pays for it through mismatched training stress, poor recovery, and preventable injuries.
Amanda Nunes: peaking by keeping the champion healthy and confident
Brandon’s first case study was Amanda Nunes, who he worked with for her last two fights before retirement. He framed her as a very specific kind of athlete to peak because she was already established at the highest level. In that situation, his job wasn’t to rebuild her as a fighter. It was to keep her healthy, confident, and able to execute.
A key moment was her rematch with Julianna Peña, after Amanda had lost the previous fight. Brandon shared that Amanda was dealing with a lot at the time, injury issues, overtraining, and a mindset that “if some is good, more is better.” That approach can work for a while in MMA, until it doesn’t. Fifteen years of hard training adds up fast when the sport includes blunt force trauma.
So the peak started with a different mindset: Amanda at 100 percent health is already the best in the world. That changes what “good programming” looks like. It becomes less about proving your value with complexity and more about protecting what the athlete already has.
Brandon also noted that the mental side matters more than many coaches want to admit. Fighting is confidence-heavy. Any doubt is an opening. Part of peaking is making sure the athlete feels fast, sharp, and capable in their own body. That can mean choosing training that’s effective while also being enjoyable and motivating enough that the athlete stays engaged through the hardest part of camp.
What showed up in Amanda’s final 4 weeks (lower volume, higher intent)
When Brandon walked through the last four weeks, the pattern was clear: volume drops, intensity and intent go up, and everything gets filtered through “does this keep her healthy for fight night?”
He described building a base earlier with simple strength work and even some basic bodybuilding, because Amanda liked it. She enjoyed getting a pump, seeing her physique respond, and doing straightforward work alongside powerlifting-type movements. That matters. Buy-in matters, and it’s easier to keep training consistent when the athlete likes the process.
As the fight got closer, the approach shifted. Warm-ups moved from the wall to the floor and emphasized shoulder function, scapular control (protraction, retraction, elevation, depression), and preparation for faster work. He emphasized keeping low-level plyometrics in year-round training so the athlete can transition into more explosive work without getting banged up. If you wait until the “peak” to introduce jump and rebound work, you’re often late.
He also used tools like landmine work, which Amanda enjoyed. It isn’t complex, but it can deliver rotation, extension, footwork, and a “fast” feeling without beating the athlete up. Brandon’s point wasn’t that landmine work is magic. It’s that peaking choices should create the right physical stimulus while also building the mental state you want on fight week.
A practical detail he shared was what a session can look like late in camp: fewer exercises, one primary movement (like carries or prowler pushes), a small amount of accessory work, and optional light conditioning. If the athlete came in smoked from MMA training, the conditioning got dropped. No ego, just the right dose.
Planning the week in MMA: keep high days high, and low days low
One of the most useful ideas from the episode was how Brandon arranged stress across the week. A “normal” week close to a fight can include two to three sparring sessions, often five rounds of five minutes. Over several weeks, that builds to the typical number of spars before a fight (Brandon mentioned a common target of eight to 12, with big variation by athlete).
With that in mind, he preferred a simple rule: on high sparring days, keep the day high and pair it with heavier lifting. On technical days, keep the day lower and use aerobic work or recovery-focused training.
He gave an example schedule where sparring days sat on Tuesday and Thursday, with lighter technical work on Monday and Wednesday, and lighter days through the weekend. For Amanda, he also mentioned she liked running. On days Brandon didn’t see her, she would run at an easy pace for 30 to 40 minutes, more of a nasal-breathing effort she could sustain without digging a recovery hole.
The logic is stress organization. When the body gets a hard day, let it be hard, then let the next day truly help recovery. Instead of turning every day into medium-hard, you protect the athlete’s ability to show up and perform.
Daniel added a useful parallel from CrossFit: the week before competition isn’t just about reducing fatigue, it’s also about building confidence. Sometimes that means touching specific movements or sessions that make the athlete feel ready. Peaking is performance-focused, not just rest-focused.
Ian and the short-notice fight problem: micro-dosing and staying ready to pivot
Brandon contrasted Amanda’s situation with Ian, who was climbing and taking fights quickly, sometimes with very little notice. That changes the entire planning process. You might have a clean build on paper, then the athlete says, “I’m fighting in three weeks,” and everything shifts.
To handle that, Brandon talked about creating recovery while keeping the athlete ready to transition into camp fast. MMA off-seasons can be unpredictable, two weeks, three months, a year. The athlete still needs to stay close enough to readiness that the ramp-up doesn’t break them.
This is where he brought in the concept of “micro-dosing” fitness, inspired by coach Cory Schlesinger. Instead of two big strength and conditioning days, he spread the work across the week in smaller pieces. Heavy work might happen after a sparring day, then aerobic work on a technical day, then another heavier session later in the week, with optional lighter accessory work on the weekend depending on readiness.
Brandon also described preferring a tight training window when possible: finish sport training, then go straight into the lift while the body is already warm. In his view, restarting the engine twice a day can cost athletes mentally and physically. A single combined window can give a longer true recovery gap until the next day.
Daniel raised a fair counterpoint: some athletes do better splitting sessions because they can bring more intention and output when they’re fresh. Brandon’s answer came back to context. In MMA, maximal strength output usually isn’t the top limiting factor late in camp. Protecting recovery to keep sport training high quality often matters more than squeezing out another 15 pounds on a lift that week.
Stop trying to bring the cage into the weight room
Both coaches hit on a trap that shows up across sports: trying to mimic the sport inside strength training. Brandon summed up his approach as training qualities that support the sport, without trying to recreate the sport in the gym.
A punch involves internal rotation and scapular protraction. That doesn’t mean you attach a band to the fist and throw fast band punches in the weight room. The fighter already has technical coaches for that. The strength and conditioning role is to build the range of motion, joint control, and strength that lets the athlete express skill without second-guessing their body.
Daniel added a helpful filter: consider whether the sport environment is fixed or chaotic. Olympic weightlifting is fixed, so skill and strength training can look very similar. MMA is chaotic, with unpredictable contact and constant problem-solving, so it often makes more sense for strength and conditioning to stay more general, build capacity, and reduce injury risk.
Another strong takeaway was about prerequisites. Coaches can assume peaking means plyos, ballistics, and speed work, but those methods have skill demands. If the athlete doesn’t have the strength, joint control, and coordination base, the “peak” work can turn into junk reps or a new injury risk. Peaking isn’t the time to introduce something the athlete can’t do well.
The strength coach’s real job in the final month: load management, not hero work
Brandon described his role late in camp as partly being the only place training load can be tightly controlled. In wrestling or jiu-jitsu, “going light” can turn into a scramble the moment someone threatens a choke. But in the gym, every piece can be adjusted, warm-up, movement choice, set volume, conditioning, and the stop point.
That’s why he tries to avoid rigid deload thinking. Instead, he prefers building training that’s manageable week to week, with adjustments as needed. In a perfect world, he described a longer runway:
About 12 weeks out, heavier strength work and structure.
A transition phase with power work, still heavy but more explosive.
The final four weeks, more peak-style methods like French contrast, isometrics (yielding and overcoming), plyometrics, and ballistics, only if the athlete is ready for them.
But he kept circling back to the same coaching skill: scrap the perfect plan when the athlete walks in cooked. The athlete might come in after a brutal session and have no mental bandwidth for a complicated lift. That’s not the day to force it. Coach the person, not the program.
He also called out the ego trap in MMA camps, where coaches don’t communicate and each tries to be “the reason” the athlete wins. When coaches collaborate and align with the game plan, the athlete gets the best of everyone.
Where to follow the coaches and tools mentioned in this episode
This episode also included a few updates and resources connected to the broader OPEX coaching community:
Brandon mentioned Coach Connect, a small-group coaching, mentorship, and education experience designed to raise coaching standards by improving sessions and day-to-day coaching quality.
The episode referenced the training software Brandon used, with a link available for a CoachRx free trial.
OPEX also shared the OPEX Method Mentorship program for coaches who want a deeper path into assessment, priorities, and individual design.
You can also connect with the coaches here:
Toward the end, they also teased future topics around mindset and preparation, with a mention of a video featuring Daniel Cormier and Tom Brady discussing practice intensity, plus a nod to Trevor Wittman’s coaching approach and how his team coordinates in camp.
Conclusion
Peaking isn’t about cramming more work into the final weeks. It’s about protecting the athlete’s ability to train their sport hard, staying healthy through the weight cut and stress, and showing up on fight night feeling sharp. The best peaking plans are often the ones that look “too easy” on paper, until you see the athlete move better, recover faster, and perform with confidence when it counts.
If you coach competitive athletes, what’s one part of peaking you’ve had to simplify to get better results?
Connect with the coaches
Brandon Gallagher: Brandon’s Instagram (@bgperform_)
Daniel Persson: Daniel’s Instagram (@danielcapersson)
Join us live on Tuesdays mornings 10:30am EST on the OPEX YouTube Channel
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