How to Keep an MMA Training Journal

MMA training is uniquely hard to track because you're not doing one thing. On any given week you might have striking sessions, grappling sessions, wrestling practice, sparring, and conditioning work. Most training apps are built for single-sport athletes, so they don't handle this kind of variety well.

But that variety is exactly why a training journal is useful. When you're juggling multiple disciplines, it's easy to lose track of what you're actually working on, what's improving, and where the gaps are.

What to log after each session

Which discipline and how long. Striking, grappling, wrestling, sparring, conditioning. Just the label and the duration. Over a few weeks, this shows you how your training time is actually distributed across disciplines, which is often different from how you think it's distributed.

Effort and quality ratings. Two numbers, both 1-10. How hard did you work and how well did the session go. These are quick to log and they give you a baseline for tracking load across different types of training.

One technical note. What did you drill or work on? Keep it short. "Worked on level changes into double leg" or "practiced checking leg kicks and countering." You're building a searchable record of what you've been training so you can look back and see the full picture.

One observation from sparring or live rounds. What did you notice? What worked, what kept going wrong? "I kept dropping my hands after throwing the jab and eating counter hooks" gives you something specific to fix. This is where the real learning lives.

One intention for next time. What will you focus on in your next session? If you noticed a pattern, set a plan for it. "Next sparring session, I'm going to focus on keeping my hands up after every combination."

Why this matters more for MMA than single-sport athletes

When you train one discipline, the patterns are easier to see. In MMA, the patterns are spread across multiple types of sessions. A journal lets you see connections you'd miss otherwise. Maybe your grappling feels worse on days after hard striking sessions. Maybe your wrestling improves faster when you pair it with a specific conditioning day. You can only see these things if you're writing them down.

Keep it fast

This should take two minutes after each session. Rate it, name what you worked on, write down what you noticed, set an intention. That's it.

If you want something that tracks your training load and surfaces patterns across sessions over time, Sherpa is a free app designed for athlete training reflection.