MMA for beginners

Men come in and tell me they want to train MMA. I ask what they have trained before. Usually the answer is nothing, or a year of something in high school. Then I ask what they think an MMA class is.

The picture in their head is a cage and a lot of shouting. The real thing is three separate skill sets that you learn apart and then join together slowly, with somebody who has done it watching. I fought for a living, I came from combat sambo and wrestling, and it still took me years to make the parts talk to each other. So let me save you some time.

What the full MMA class actually is

The Adult MMA class is the integration class. It assumes you can already do some things and it teaches you what happens when those things collide.

Striking changes when a takedown is possible. Your stance is different, your kicks are shorter, and the hands you learned in boxing get you taken down if you throw them the same way. Grappling changes when strikes are possible. A guard that works beautifully in jiu-jitsu gets you hit from the top. Wrestling changes when submissions exist, because the front headlock you shot into is now a choke.

That is the content of the full MMA class. Not punching and grappling. The seams between them.

Which is why a brand new person does not walk into that one on day one. There is nothing to integrate yet, and the class is a members class anyway. New students book Intro to MMA, a free class on Monday and Wednesday evenings at our Sterling academy, where a coach gets to see what you have and tell you honestly what to build first. Then you go and build it.

The order that works

Grappling first, and there is a hard reason for the order. A great many fights end up on the ground or pressed against something, and the person who is comfortable there is the one who decides where the fight happens. In my view six months of No-Gi jiu-jitsu does more for a beginner's MMA than six months of anything else. Every MMA fighter at our Ashburn academy trains in the No-Gi classes, because that is where the ground skills come from.

Striking second, or at the same time if your schedule allows two nights a week. Boxing if you want to be competent fast, Muay Thai if you want the complete stand-up game and the clinch. We have written about that choice in detail, and for an MMA path the clinch is the argument for Muay Thai.

Wrestling third, and sooner if you can get to it. Takedowns and takedown defense are the most transferable skill in the sport, and the difference between a person who can wrestle and a person who cannot is visible in about four seconds.

Then the full MMA class, once the pieces exist. For most adults I would put that somewhere between three and six months in.

A realistic first six months

Month one, you pick two nights and you keep them. The adult beginners class in Ashburn, Beginners No-Gi Grappling, runs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 PM and is forty-five minutes: core positions, escapes, and control, taught step by step in a class built entirely for new students.

Month two, you are sore in places you did not know about and your grip is failing before your lungs. That is normal and it eases off after a few weeks. Add a striking night. Boxing in Ashburn runs six days a week including 6:00 AM on Tuesday and Thursday, and Muay Thai is Tuesday and Thursday at 7:15 PM.

Month three, something usually clicks in the grappling. You stop surviving and start doing, which is a specific enough feeling that most people remember roughly when it arrived.

Months four through six, you add the third thing. Adult Wrestling runs on weekends, Saturday morning and Sunday midday, and it is the single most useful thing an aspiring MMA person can add to a grappling base. Somewhere in here the Intro to MMA class stops feeling like a different language.

Two or three classes a week is the pace for a beginner. Three a week beats one hard session, every time. In every gym I have trained in, more people quit from doing six days in week one than from doing two days for a year.

What this costs you physically

I am not going to pretend this is gentle. Your neck will hurt from the grappling. Your shins will hurt from the kicks. You will have a finger that does not bend right for a while, and one morning you will find a bruise shaped like somebody's elbow and have no memory of it.

What you should not be collecting, in a well-run room, is head trauma. Sparring is always optional, especially for beginners. Live rounds come after technique and drilling, never instead of them, and a coach pairs a new person with somebody who knows how to work with a new person. If you want to train MMA for ten years, and you should, the first year is where you build the habits that protect your head.

Tap early. That applies to the guy who was strong in high school more than anyone.

Do you have to fight?

No. Competition is one hundred percent optional, here and in any room worth training in, and plenty of people train the sport for years without ever booking a fight. They are there because it is the most interesting hour of their week and because the fitness is a side effect they stopped tracking.

If you do want to compete, we have active competition teams in BJJ and MMA, and nobody is going to talk you into it or out of it. Amateur MMA has its own rules, its own weight cuts, and its own timeline, and my own rule of thumb is a year of consistent training before that conversation gets serious.

I came here to build world champions. That does not mean I think everyone should be one.

Common questions

How do I book my first MMA class?

The free trial class for MMA is Intro to MMA, Monday and Wednesday at 7:30 PM, and it meets at our Sterling academy at 45714 Oakbrook Ct #160. The full Adult MMA class in Ashburn, Tuesday and Thursday at 8:15 PM, is a members class. Book the Intro class online and a coach will take it from there.

Am I too old to start MMA?

Our adult classes in Ashburn have more members in their thirties, forties, and fifties than in their twenties, and the conditioning follows the training rather than preceding it. Our whole argument about that is in starting martial arts out of shape at 40. Recovery is the thing that changes with age, so two or three sessions a week is the right dose.

Should I start with jiu-jitsu or boxing?

Jiu-jitsu, if you can only pick one. It decides where a fight happens, it costs your head the least while you are still bad at it, and it is the base nearly every MMA fighter leans on. No-Gi jiu-jitsu for beginners covers what the first month of that looks like.

Can my kid train MMA?

Kids, Youth, and Teens MMA classes run at our Sterling academy on weekday evenings. At Ashburn, young athletes build the base first in wrestling, jiu-jitsu, and striking in age-grouped classes, and step into MMA when they are ready. Nobody puts a child into cage work.

What do I wear to the first class?

Shorts and a t-shirt or a rash guard, nothing with zippers, buttons, or pockets, plus a water bottle and a towel. Trim your nails. That is all you need for a first class, and the coach will tell you what to buy later.

Come to an Intro to MMA class and let a coach see what you have. Book it free at Sterling, or start with the grappling or striking side in Ashburn and work toward it.