Originally Posted by
Simma Park
How the hell would you know? Have you ever trained MA even 2x a week in any school that emphasizes fighting? Do you have first-hand experience of how exhausting any kind of fighting, let alone grappling, is?
Once again, you're so blinded by your overblown fears of "the fatfuck" that you think you need to go out and contradict people who speak from actual experience.
I am 5'2" woman. When I was 30, I trained about 7-9 hours of MA per week with heavy emphasis on fighting and lifted 3 days/week, and I was putting away massive amounts of food. On an average day, I calculated my calories, and they were in the mid 3000s. Now that I know what can be achieved, I realize that I never got all that strong back then. But I did have visible abs during some of that period. If I had to do it over again, I'd do things differently.
My advice would be that if a school is flexible enough, change focus to mostly not too strenuous technical practice if possible so that you can get the most out of reduced sparring time. If the teacher is amenable, cut out any BS calisthenics so many schools feel obligated to put students through.
I don't know that I'd reduce MA sessions to 1 per week, as I don't think that's enough, but change the focus of the sessions. How many you can do depends on how the lesson plan is structured, how long sessions are, how much time the school makes you train your "fitness", etc.