Mindset: How to Approach Iron × Violence
This programme will ask you to lift heavy weight. It will ask you to move fast. It will ask you to show up three times a week, week after week.
It will not ask you to suffer.
That distinction matters more than it sounds.
This Is Not About Toughness
Most training culture equates effort with value. The harder it feels, the better it must be working. Push through the pain. No days off. Earn it.
That logic is flawed — and for fighters, it’s expensive.
Suffering in the gym doesn’t build strength. It builds fatigue. And fatigue is the one thing you cannot afford to carry into sparring, drilling, or competition.
Iron × Violence is designed so that you finish each session feeling capable, not depleted. That’s not a concession. It’s the point.
Why You Should Leave Power in the Tank
The strongest training blocks in combat sport history — Soviet, Cuban, and modern MMA camps — share one common principle: athletes were rarely pushed to failure in the gym.
They were pushed close. Then they stopped.
This works because strength and power are not built in the moment of maximum effort. They are built in the recovery that follows controlled, high-intent work. The moment you cross the line into grinding, grinding reps, you shift from building to breaking down.
Leaving power in the tank is not laziness. It is load management. It keeps your nervous system ready, your recovery short, and your next session productive.
Mindset as a System, Not a Feeling
On some days you will not feel motivated. That is normal and expected.
Motivation is not a reliable training input. It fluctuates with sleep, stress, nutrition, and a hundred other variables you cannot control.
What you can control is the system: show up, follow the programme, train with intent, recover properly. Repeat.
Iron × Violence does not require you to feel a certain way before you train. It requires you to be there and to move the weight deliberately. That is the entire mental demand.
If you are tired, reduce load — not intent. The programme accounts for this through RPE. Use it.
What “Training With Intent” Actually Means
Intent does not mean training angry or training hard. It means every rep is deliberate.
You know what you are lifting. You know why. You move the weight with control on the way down and speed on the way up. You are present for the set, then you rest fully before the next one.
That is it. There is no internal monologue required. No visualisation ritual. No pre-lift psychology.
Lift. Rest. Repeat. The consistency of that process is what builds the fighter.
The Short Version
- You do not need to be motivated. You need to be there.
- You do not need to suffer. You need to train with intent.
- You do not need to push to failure. You need to leave power in the tank.
- You do not need to feel strong before you train. The programme builds strength through repetition, not willpower.
Show up. Move the weight. Recover. Come back.
That is the mindset.
References
Seiler, S. (2010). What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes? International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 5(3), 276–291.
Isaacs, P. E. (2019). “Autoregulation in Strength Training.” Strength & Conditioning Journal, 41(3), 1–8.